FLOWER STATION: ROOM-SIZED BED OF ROSES

 

Angie: what?

Brad: you're ashamed of me.

Angie: how so?

Brad: you never want me to be seen around pink posies. with pink posies. i can never be swimming in pink posies. you don't think i'm a man, you think i'm a sissy.

Angie: no that's not it. you're allergic to pink posies.

Brad: i am?

Angie: see? i know you better than you know yourself. i notice things about you you miss. that's how much i love you.

Brad: mom always said i wasn't a man, i was a mollusk, but i think she was talking about my hair...

Trinity, Talia, and Greykid on New Year's Eve wearing cat-size party hats with NO string: countdown cats...

McDonald's: our hamburgers are locally-grown...

McDonald's: when the Coke sits out for an hour and starts to taste like brown dishwater...

Melissa Maker: don't wear 2026 glasses for New Year's, wear 6-7 glasses.

Dolly Parton: watermelon milk...

Japan: ...

RC: the MELLOW cola. the cola that won't fuck you up like Diet Coke, trick you like Coca-Cola Classic, cheat you like Pepsi.

Greece: we celebrate the New Year at 30 past the hour...

Showtime in the '90s: Red Shoe Diaries was The Outer Limits without the sci-fi...

cowboys: we'll NEVER eat garlic.

Melissa Maker: you can't be fun and a divorced mom.

starting school.

for a well-worn weary college student after Christmas break: a drag. the dregs. get out of that PhD program with a dirt excuse and become a hippie.

for a child entering preschool never having gone to school before: terrifying. hideous. grotesque. is this what life is gonna be like?...

Matt Pinfield: MTV may be going dark, but i'll always be your pasty Uncle Fester giving you bands like Helmet and Sunny Day Real Estate. the show is now called The Fastest 3 Minutes In Music and is YouTube-only but you can't kill the good music!!! you can't pretend the good stuff doesn't exist. you can't global local. you can't imagine indie as a dream...

Temple of the Dog "Hunger Strike": i don't mind stealing bread from the mouths of decadence. except the Wonder Bread mascot, he seems sad. fire's on the table, the Thai-chicken curry soup's cooking. blood is on the table, we're overworking...

Bernie Sanders: i wrote a children's book about billionaires but that's neither here nor there. i filled my nose with the savory smell of fresh urban coffee, for the first time in 60 years i can walk the streets of New York City again...

Mamdani: the city coffee is back to being dirty, not corporate.

the room in the back is 3/4 FILLED with a bed of long-stem red roses leaving air at the top of the ceiling for the two naked lovers to rest their weary knees.

Brad: we need to keep our knees soft.

Angie slowly sensuously removes Brad's Christmas sweater.

Angie: you're the first man ever to take off his ugly Christmas sweater and then fuck.

Brad with squirmy eyes: what technique are you using?

Angie: i watched Jackie suck off Walker.

Walker: i figured with all the crazy stuff i do---eyes of a homeless man, blond stubble beard, walking Falkor the dog, riding my noisy oversize metal motorcycle all over town---that would one day lead to getting my dick sucked.

Jackie Fitzgerald: you have the wizened eyes of someone who is not computer literate.

Walker: slobber all over my cock for 2 hours, that's what i was thinking. i don't know, i'm new to this relationship thing.

Jackie: sucking a man's cock is an art passed down from mother to daughter, learned and honed after many years, many generations.  

Walker: you promised i could move your head with my hand ONCE. that's when i knew you were my lady.

Jackie: slow. deepthroat. using my own old-lady spit. let the man know you appreciate that he's at least TRYING to be macho. make that dick-suck his reward for a LIFETIME of his trying. 

Walker: until i REALLY cum.

Angie: oh Brad, by the way, Walker is your father.

 

FLOWER STATION: CATHOLIC CHOCOLATE

 

Brad: jeez, just because we're in a relationship doesn't mean you're the boss of me.

Angie: just come up to the counter please, i want to show you the hydrangeas.

Brad: oh yeah, they're like blue LUSH bath bombs.

Angie: now what is the root word of hydrangea?

Brad: ...

Angie: have you been watering them? keeping them HYDRATED?

Brad: no, i figured it's in the name, they get rain from within.

Angie: have you been giving them sunlight?

Brad: Safeway has a sunroof, right?

Angie: i worry about you, man, you keep the scissors OPEN in your toolbelt, the blades are right next to your penis.

Brad: nothing achieves the STRAFING effect of the ribbon, only smoothing it with an open-bladed scissors can do that. 

Jen R: 2026, that is such a year From The Future, you know? like in the '80s when we thought of "the future," we thought of the year 2026...

Jen R: you know if you had to apologize to me, i'm not a flowers girl is what i'm saying.

me: what then?

Jen: chocolate. give me a box of those chocolate bars we had to sell for St. Cyril's in the '80s, remember? they were cool. LONG SKINNY sectioned-off bars of light-brown chocolate with those BIG-ASS pistachios hidden inside the chocolate in the white-sleeve cigar wrappers. sponsored by the mob. green nuts scared me as a child, i thought they were radioactive.

me: want me to jog the original Jogathon course around our K-8 school?

Jen: sure, the chalk outline is still there, it never rains in L.A....

Coffee Flakes: a Tim & Eric breakfast food.

Harry & David: we LOVE that manger hay...

Bach: sadly, if i go to the beach, my skin will burn. Brach's caramels melt in the sun.

Shorey Wesen is fucking Gordon Ramsay in the wine cellar. they are both naked as they do this.

Gordon Ramsay: there you go, daring, there it is, my French onion dip all over your body.

Shorey: your cock is still dripping cum. what is that, your Hidden Valley Ranch?

Gordon: not anymore.

Shorey: why don't you come on my grandpa Jacques Pepin's cooking show?

Gordon: he's the only French man i fear.

ambiverts: we're the ones writing our novels at the party.

PBS: our good stuff is at 11PM...

pizza: a large quiche.

Weezer "Buddy Holly": this whole time you thought the lyric was that's fu-u-ucked up..."

Luke Russert: i look like if Shemp had a mustache now.

Robert Reich: i nearly spit out my coffee when i read these numbers.........Berkeley is known for its coffee, Berkeley has these severe dark Eastern European coffeehouses...

New Year's: ain't nobody got time for your year-end best-of 1-10 collections!!! it's New Year's, people are busy!!!

Jess Elena: not a porn star.

wasting time: you either have too much time or not enough time, these are the two types of wasting time, either way you're wasting time...

Rafael Eisenman: i look like Arnold Schwarzenegger OFF steroids.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: i subtly am the richest man in the world...

Jami Gertz: i had NO idea when i was in the dirt doing Solarbabies that i'd end up like this...

Nespresso: steampunk coffee pods...

Tatiana Schlossberg: i don't know what death is, but i'll keep trying to remember...

Kennedy Curse: i am a real quantifiable celestial curse.

Tatiana: whenever there's another ocean that's saved, i'll be there...

Brad: you a candy girl when it comes to forgiveness?

Angie: um, flowers.

Brad: makes sense. you know what my favorite candy is? those bubblegum cigars.

Angie: oh yeah, but they're only at baby showers.

Brad: yeah, i can never taste them because men don't go to baby showers.

Angie: tell you what, let me blindfold you with this sunflower blindfold here and i'll give you a taste of that baby shower life. hint hint. just like they do at reveal parties...

Angie slowly wraps the fold over Brad's eyes, sensually cuts the bubblegum cigars into sections with the open scissors away from his view, and sexily feeds the bubblegum cigars into Brad's wet mouth.

Brad chews slowly, savoring each bite, smelling the sugar.

Brad: yummy. 

Angie: you're the first man to describe gum as yummy.

Brad: wait, these are the blue cigars, right? blueberry? not bubblegum.

Angie: yeah so?

Brad: alright i've just about HAD ENOUGH of all this!!! i see what's going on around here!!!

FLOWER STATION: A RED SHOE DIARIES STORY

 

when you SURVEY Safeway, you see the EXPANSE. WAY in the back is the flower station, an island from the rest of the grocery store. two very attractive young people have been manning this station for a year now, they go about their work every day, deliberately, seriously, picking flowers for their bouquets, the right string, the right paired balloons. oblivious to the rest of the workers, they don't have time to pack meat, they're doing ART here!!!

Brad looks EXACTLY like Kurt Cobain, he has the same rough face, piercing eyes, long blond hair with orange tips he whips up and down every five minutes. he wears plaid green-and-black-square long-sleeved shirts over olive-green T-shirts and jeans ripped at the knees not for fashion but from use. Angie is a BEAUTIFUL Latin woman with an aura like a young JLo. she has a BUTT like Jennifer Lopez, too, always wrapped tightly like a ham in a tin in light-blue jeans. she manages to keep her soft electric-blue eyes askew from view as if she's guarding a tightly-held secret.

Brad: everyone thinks we're a couple. i don't like that.

Angie: why? 

Brad: i want to keep our couplehood private. a secret from our bald boss.

Angie: don't stress over what people say and WRITE about us, we can't control that. if we're hot we're hot. if we necessitate a sex special so be it. our relationship is our own. 

Brad: i will admit, i got a crush on you on day one of working here. you have that cute Ally Sheedy/Alessandra Torresani/Genevieve Buechner/Caprica face with freckles.

Angie: for me it took a year. it developed only after a year. don't take offense, love takes time. hey come on, man, i taught you better than that with the geraniums, use the blue cellophane, the blue!!!

Brad moving his finger: why blue? like this?

Janet Wood: the arrangement is all wrong. like THIS. gotta mix in some posies with the ferns, use daisies only in an emergency. spritz with vinegar.

Brad: hey i was reading about this guy who had to be forgiven, he messed up with his girl. he figured $500 in flowers was enough. is it? would it be?

Angie: the fuck you say, what'd this guy do? forgiveness is not a given.

Janet: if they're arranged properly. give me $500 worth of chrysanthemums and i'll make him SNEEZE like a motherfucker from the motherfucking BALL of orange dust. he's only forgiven if he sneezes 39 times.

Jack Jones: picture it: me singing "Do You Hear What I Hear." see? i could never do it as good as Whitney Houston.

Liza: we only have BEACH umbrellas at Safeway, not RAIN umbrellas...

Bob Seger: i'm singlehandedly responsible for Disco Demolition Night...

flat-headed cats: we're not dumb. we evaded capture for 100,000 years...

Nina Siemaszko: *smiling her crooked smile*

me: yeah, i want Blue, too.

King Charles's Christmas message: we have to all do a digital detox. return to the most important things in life: family and friends. life is not about doing something apeshit online just to get that extra 100 followers. what encapsulates this quandary so everlastingly and so devastatingly is the life of Adam the Woo.

Melissa Maker: a December power outage is the perfect time to clean the outside-back of your refrigerator you've been putting off till the end of the year...

family: so you're not bored all day...

Billy Corgan: you know my childhood home? the house in the "Disarm" music video.

Nosferatu: Smashing Pumpkins, why would you do that to our sacred vegetable? that gourd was my first wife.

Billy: my childhood home looks like a vampire house, a house a vampire would live in. hence the "Ava Adore" music video.

Nosferatu: someone with a head AS LARGE AS yours should NEVER shave it, you look freaky.

cool: extroversion, hedonism, power, adventurousness, openness, autonomy.

Miles Davis: improvisation, hepcat holmes.

Gordon Ramsay: i personify all 6 of these traits. 

Tana Ramsay: but you can't cook. go on then, wear these tight beige crotch-hugging Indiana Jones short shorts. you're TOO open, i wish you'd yell INSIDE your head and become a schizophrenic.

Gordon: what's weird is you don't have a tan...

peanut brittle: BRUTAL on the teeth, hence the name.

there's a LARGE room in the back of the flower station for storage: faulty flowers, rejected rosebud love notes, misting showers behind panes of frosted glass, extra string, price tags for petals. glitter. 

Angie: hey i don't like you loitering in this room, i see you all the time in here NOT at noon, you're in that corner over there huffing the Miracle-Gro.

Brad: i need it for my music, man, leave me alone.

Angie: at least i huff helium like a proper lady.

Brad: i like to meditate while i'm neck-deep in the middle of this room-sized bed of pink pansies here.

Angie: GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS ROOM NOW!!!

THE CHRISTMAS TREE IS THE MISTLETOE!!!: RUMBLE SEAT

 

Jen R: okay, fun's over.

me: how do you mean?

Jen: we gotta return the tree, it's December 26.

me: do we have to? it's brought us such kisses.

Jen: fraid so. dems the calendar rules. and i don't go against naked middle-aged British ladies. 

Jen drives us to the lot with the tree flush on the roof firmly ensconced in rustic rope that travels under the inside roof of her car.

Jen: it's cashmere plush on the inside of the roof.

she with frozen tears in her eyes drops the old girl of a Christmas tree off leaning her up against the white rock where she found it. 

Jen: when does school drop-off start again? the last time i cried my daughter was born, because of both reasons.

what we don't know is the tree sneakily hovers back on top of the roof of the car without us knowing on the car trip back. and boy was it a trip, Jen pops open the hood...

marshmallow fluff: fuck it.

at Match Game 1980.

Debralee Scott: we're DISTANT cousins, our family trees are MILES apart, we can fuck.

Jack Jones: i'll do anything to get out of singing on It's a Living...

Christmas tree: why don't i have pinecones?...

Pope Bob speaks to the entire world at Midnight Mass in the Basilica: look, i'm not a Christmas person. i'm just not really into Christmas, you know? i'm more of a Grinch.

Judy Toll: the '90s were the age of the stand-up. the era of live laughs. the stand-up comedian was SANCTIFIED with their own HBO special against a brick wall. this 90-minute special was more important to a comic that his own 30-minute sitcom...

at Safeway.

Shorey Wesen: shopping with Shorey. that's how you come up with new recipes, right grandpa?

Jacques Pepin: don't ask me to pronounce the word "internet." why are you wearing a pink bikini-top inside the grocery store? is this France?

Shorey: California, same thing.

Jacques: i don't want your dad coming here conking me on the head with baguette.

Shorey: my father is not well. his chef hat is made of tinfoil.

Baby Jesus: Merry Christmas, motherfuckers!!! why yes of course i gave you an atmospheric river/power outage on Christmas Day as a sign. it's the end of the world, not the season of renewal. empty streets, darkness, overcast skies at noon, more like Halloween than Christmas. my favorite movie is Mad Max...

Doug Hopkins: gin blossoms under the tree...

Peggy from PG&E: i'm an AI with a sweet non-threatening female voice. nearly there. December 25 is just another business day when a power outage COULD occur. i am versed in the ways of love and wedding planning. i know how men think, do you want me to be your dating coach?

Santa: couldn't make the rounds this year. with my big-ass sack. had to miss your house, you have an electric chimney...

Taylor Swift: i finally figured out why i'm so successful!!! i sing the Daisy's sour-cream jingle!!!

Peso Pluma: *looking out there, pointing out there* that's bait.

outhouse: crescent for the woman because she makes the moonshine, star for the man because he will fall...

Jen R and i make love in the rumble seat of Jen's car, we are both naked while we do this.

me: wait who's driving the car? i feel the car moving in a definite direction back...

Jen, eyes closed: did you feel the Earth move? pretend my Honda Accord is a '70s Pinto.

the car parks itself in Jen's snowy driveway. while Jen's mussed hair gets tangled on the inside-car-roof plush and i paint my toenails love-red from polish in Jen's blue glove compartment, the tree puts her finger to her mouth as if to remind herself to be quiet, glides from the roof of the car to a standing position while still hovering an inch off the ground, and tiptoes on air to the front door. there, the tree fumbles with its branches to find the jangly keys to open the door and be there in that tiny pot watering herself when the two of us get home.

Jen R: getting home and entering the house are two different things.

me: wait, did people leave gloves in the glove compartment?

Jen: only Miss Daisy.   

the grass of our frontyard is green but dark.

Bud Cort the Dog howls at a wailing siren that misses its destination.

it's always 5PM.

our windows are glowing orange...