Taki wakes up in a perfumed pastiche of dry man-sweat, streaked white covers, dead flowers, and fish droppings. she is aghast, licks the crust on her eyes, and immediately closes her mouth. she wrenches the sheet into her own fist, spinning a naked Melbourne flying skinnily into the bare ceiling.
Melbourne: ow! that smarts! that didn't wake me up but you do everytime i'm around you. in your presence scents.
Taki: *pointing at Melbourne mercilessly* nobody says smarts!
Melbourne: i know. i'm dumb. most of the time. when it comes to love. but i nailed the jackpot with you, okay poor choice of words. look up at the ceiling. see? plain vanilla plane. too embarrassing to videotape behind mirrors.
Taki: oh my god......oh my OG god.....i can't believe i let this happen to me.....i was too desperate for this story i let my guard down............my usual instincts didn't kick in i knew that water tasted fishy..............i can't remember what happened last night, that's the sure sign!..............oh my god, my defiled body will never look at my loomed educated mind the same way again!
Melbourne: wait wait, i'd never do that to you, i know how that feels. i know we joke around a lot, but i really am a decent fellow. i'm a man learning. ask anyone. NOT my redditors or clients! it was beautiful. we shared Beauty together in this cover. that is now soaked in my blood. poor choice of action.
Taki: *cackling* doused your duvet. i'm laughing out of release. all women cackle like witched hens when they realize it's impossible to be a woman in this society..........sorry. shit, i've never said sorry to a man before.
Melbourne: we held Beauty in our hand. you make me messy.
Taki: what's that mean?
Melbourne: i cummed all over your face.
Taki: you know you really make this hard...
Melbourne: i know. i should emulate more Bob Mueller, he softens steadily with his. what i mean is that your big tits are my treasure chest, i can rub my nose in them and sneeze, peppering them with dandruff paste. lick off their peppermint phosphate and drown in the downward spiral of their born brown nipples, cursing the day i was ever born not like you. break my collared neck as i lay down on them, expunge all my insecurities into them like gleamed natural oils on pillows, my detritus falling like snow on an ashen apocalyptic field. covered from the craving of your cobwebbed cunt colds. i can shoot my scurrilous male shit into your tits, fold them around my sewer spunk like layers of jelly, wait five minutes like everyone's first Easy-Bake Oven microwave, and out pop a batch of muffins! without their stem, smelling of sweet and floral. fuck i love your tits. i'm too excited to sleep on them.
Taki: can a serial killer be poetic? is there anything inside to draw from?
Melbourne: but that's the thing. why can't we behave like raunchy teenagers in the back of a bike? just cos we're old? we're over the hill which means we've conquered the hill. it's all swallowing gravy from here.
Taki: how does it feel to be a gigolo?
Melbourne: but i'm not a gigolo. i'm a male escort. paid gigolo maybe, but one with morals and kindness. you're not just another, you are my other. i like you................notice i didn't go straight to love after one meeting. like my clients always do. i know the business i'm in and i'm here to stay not play.
Taki: you've eased me for now, made me feel secure if not altogether safe. after all, we're still in the altogether.
Melbourne: i have that Goya in my marble-mannequin room. look, i see the writing on the wall, and it's a mounted wallclock showing the hands at evening shade.
Taki: i was about to reach for my phone and go straight to Emergency Kittens on Twitter to calm me down. i usually call my absentminded son for a laugh but...he's absent...this could all be a parlor trick not a passion of yours.
Melbourne: COMpassion, CON,
with you. you've changed my life, for the butter, i can now trip over my grave.
Taki: alright Raunchy Romeo, where to? next bat?
Melbourne: i'm almost comfortable with the Sunday sportscar drive in the park. you just need to nudge me.
Taki: so like, you're into and do rich-people sports? like golf and tennis?
Melbourne: pashaw, boring golf and even-boringer tennis are poseurs, better suited to a community center once the equipment is donated. tis country-club sports, i'm talkin' bout REAL Wealthy Wanderings, Warriors of Waste, taking up endeavors which have no other purpose than to flaunt and fixate and fashion a new way to destroy toys. come. i'm all tapped out. i've never cummed so hard in my life just now! never had to work so hard to let it all out so easily and naturally and swimmingly. like a faucet. that's what happens when you introduce love into sex.
at the hospice, Doryce is punch-drunk, coughing up pufts and tufts of Yuban smoke and spitting beans like a Tommy gun into Gladyce's face like a handball court. Doryce needs to sniff up and clear the catch in her throat and dig up the coffee lining around her teeth with her good finger and spit a full wad every minute.
Doryce: *dazed but not fazed*...why doesn't anyone ever talk about the size of a woman's vagina?...it's not fair to the men...
Gladyce: doctor doctor, she's delirious! is there any hope? is she gonna make it? give it to me straight, doc, i can't take news from online, i'm not good with computers.
two doctors in white lab coats appear from behind the silhouetted changing curtain. they are both shady. of compelxion. The Mooch and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Gupta: *gulps* have you had your coffee and spliff for the day at tea?
The Mooch: i'm still studying to be a chef...
Doryce: *with Harley Quinn's voice* i choose...............YOU, pokemon. the man with the honest face. brokered not broken. no, the other one, Moochie Baby.
Sanjay: i'm not allowed on Nickelodeon anymore so i guess i'll just hang out here. you don't mind if i smoke do you?
The Mooch: i'm not certified or anything but somehow i got this job. certified but not qualified. i will be serving you tonight a full-course meal of Sweet Sam's, Country Archer, Tukwila turnip soup, cauliflower alfredo, Santa Fe vegetable soup, and a crisp fresh copy of VIA magazine. thank my balls The Store is open 24/7. it's scary to shop at night, not cool. i keep seeing my dead mob mother in the melons. you don't get this kinda service at the Obec Hilton.
Doryce: is there seasoning in each?
The Mooch: they were out of seasoning.
Doryce: well there better be, young man, you are not in a position to get off on good looks, you gotta work for it! you're no dreamy Dr. McDougall. now that's the stuff, that's the soup, that's what's right about food.
Gladyce: he's kinda an upper-middle-crust Paul Newman wannabe.
Doryce: WE DEMAND A DISCOUNT!!! WE WANT FLAVOR!!! WE WANT TO SUCK THE MARROW OUT OF LIFE!!! LIKE OUR LOW BLOOD CELL COUNT!!! WE DEMAND SEASONING!!! WE ARE SEASONED CITIZENS!!!
Gladyce: mostly cos it's a Hilton MOtel. not from Detroit.
Doryce: just save all the sipping soup for me. my teeth hurt like the motherfucking dickens.
Gladyce: we're expecting two of our own to come visit...........soon enough, they're our in-laws from Mexico.
The Mooch: i'll treat those Mexicans like family alright. *fist*
at the Mexican border, in a Jose Cuervo bar, there's a sign of the owner's mother's picture over a caption which reads
we were the brave ones. we fought against Prohibition. we made it so you could get drunk during those times. we made your great-grandfather an alky when he was gonna be a priest. you would have never been born
Laertus: hey buddy! look at this neon sign. see the detail in it? the individual coils around each filament of letter? how each square of that filament is its own grid? when the light flashes, each letter flashes on its own time schedule to form the blink? that's NOTHInG compared to the detail that's in
Honneamise.
Dirg: still not as detailed-graphicked as the new
Spider-Man video-game coming out this week on PS10. *puts his fingers in his ears* lalalalalala not hearing your weak-tea argument. you drunk again? i mean ever? is this your first time? being drunk i mean. what's the matter, buddy?
Laertus: i've been nursing this here marble glass o' vino in memory of the finest woman i know. on tv. Samantha Vinograd. she's a quality woman. strong and steady, sewn from stern stuff, willing to stand up to dictators and thugs. knowledgeable and kinky. i'm assuming. she makes me feel safe. i'm discovering these feelings in me for the first time. i think i have a thing for redheads, foxy ex-Fox blondes. i'd like to make a toast to myself. here's to strong independent woman that don't need no man, i want to be in her life. *he clinks the glass on his teeth*
Dirg: wow. i didn't think you had that in you. like physically. she of the two small eggplants and you the eggplant emoji. small eggplants look like grapes. so you gonna lay down the Lae Law to her, on twitter or wherever?
Laertus: *spilling his drink on the grass plant leaves everywhere* too shy to express myself without an alias.
Dirg: but we all wear masks that's already been established. it's a societal necessity.
Laertus: i mean take
Flashdance for example.
Dirg: okay. *looks at his blank flashcards out of his pocket*
Laertus:
Flashdance is what happens when you're given an assignment in film class---much like the film classes we take---that goes something like this:
write a screenplay where the story is simply life in a big city downtown in the '80s.
Flashdance fulfilled that fervent wish to a danced T, symmetrically contrasting each cunt and curse word and choreography with the joy of art for art's sake and grace and nobility, all against the backdrop beat of the sparking hardheaded human heart. i could live in the space of those characters forever, and there's enough space in Beals's warehouse apartment with too much space for one person that i want.
Dirg: excuse you! and your language! never thought that word would dribble out of your chaste chapped lips. this is you hardcore. well, drunk. yeah i liked that movie. it was back when humans weren't so thinskinned, they could take a Polack joke, in fact Polack jokes were your only way out of the kitchen. and a dancing cop could pretend to shoot an unarmed black woman on the street crossing the road and it was no big deal. we humans were too busy back then being in the working class to give a fuck about a made-up concept like racism.
Laertus: yeah, but it seems male scumbags were male scumbags back then, too, only they sipped Diet Rite and went to confession right after the Live Nude Girls Revue. male scumbags anonymous. male scumbags immemorial.
Dirg: don't forget the scumNAGs.
Laertus: *stumbling in hedges* come over here, buddy, follow me for once. let me lead you to the promised land. what's over here?...........what's this? Wine Garden? well that's different and interesting. i wonder what's over this garden bush?
they arrive unceremoniously and surreptitiously into the night of the party that never ends, the endless squeezing-out of supply of celebs with drinks in hand which inhabit the table of Melbourne's all-night neverending garden party on his collection of two back-to-back edge-to-edge Southern lawns. front lawn and back lawn combined. like a working-class assembly line.
Raphael Nadal: did you see that golfer named Raphael at the PGA Fourth One Major? the commentators were calling him Rafa. it's like if you're from Spain and you're Raphael you're automatically Rafa. golf and tennis are not the same thing!
Laertus takes the silky hand of Patty Schnyder slowly and softly, and kisses her ring finger.
Laertus: *weary* my lady, not to be snide, but might i say you are a volley vision this moonless night. you are pretty enough to be a dirty dancer.
Patty: thank you. but i got second place in the Beauty-contest Bistro Brexit d'Switzerland. all the judges were neutral on me. my parting gift was a fondue sauna, which admittedly does come in handy when i can't get in a quick ice-bath for my elbows at the unisex bathroom in the lobby of the Danish bakery. i should have been Federer's wife. doncha think? isn't it ironic? i mean it was just too perfect. i mean we were the only two Swiss tennis players!
Laertus: i came in tenth in the beauty pageant. i technically count that as a cosplay event for me. i wore the swimsuit happily.
Dirg: hey Patty, want me to freshen your drink up for ya? orange juice, right?
Patty: uh, no. no thanks.
Laertus: no, come on man, not cool. sorry. sober sorry, sober sorries, it's wearing off.
Dirg: thanks for tonight, knight. your OOC showed up much more than your SJW.
Laertus: and i am white. and what are you imbibing, fair Woz? you are quite gorgeous without your beard.
Dirg: and you have a nice ass. i saw it. not a Beals Booty but you can never be black like me.
Laertus: or she. Beals.
Caroline Wozniacki: red margarita. gives me dreams.
Dirg: named after Jose Cuervo's sidepiece. her blood i'm assuming.
Madame Pons: *drinking white wine and gulping* i almost had a heart attack. the headline in my sister's paper i read on the taxicab drive over here read
The Pope Death
...it was about the Pope's death-penalty change. we can never lose the Pope! i look up to her sexiness. i want to learn from her. she's alluring like a magazine, she draws people into her like a witch's invisible web.
Patty: what about Bob? like where is he? i'm saying.
Laertus: can you sensei me how to achieve your frizzy hair? just please write it down on the back of my business card advertising my fanfic site.
at the MSNBC studios, Steve Schmidt is at the newsdesk.
Schmidty: hello, friends, i'm Skinny Chris Matthews. you won't get me to blow a gasket at every little Republican unorthodoxy perpetrated on this country anymore, i've learned to pace myself and remain calm and not have a heart attack and look at twitter cats. i've lost weight so i can continue sounding the alarm for you good folks for years to come to act. i won't be around for much longer.
Chris Matthews: *at the wake* Steve is co cool. his real name is Stephen---not Chris Matthews---and though he smiles on his OKCupid profile he's not an actor. i wish i were he. i love his booming baritone, mine is too Irishy and scrappy and scratchy. but how can i have presence without always looking like i'm at any second gonna streetbrawl you? what's his aftershave? his stridency is like a song.
Schmidty: my first guest tonight is Chuck, that lawyer with the ASMR voice. hello? Chuck i can barely make you out, are you talking? are you saying anything? i made it a point to q-tip my ears out for tonight but i can't hear Chuck! Chuck, can you sensei me inbetwen breaks? i want to have presence like you without having to raise my voice, that's true power. that's Mueller power.
Mueller: i'm at the CNN Studios cos i want to remain impartial. neutral. before i get going here, i want every nationally-recognized correspondent and reporter and newsperson and magic person and magic people and dream person and dream people and Alex Jones's hot girlfriend to all get dressed in robes i will pass out precariously close to live showtime this first week of November. everyone put on these robes, get ready for this big day together.
President Bump: weird charges. on my credit card bill. what's going on?
Mueller: i'm gonna indict ye.
Bump: no. you can't, right? i wasn't named in the indictment! it said
Individual 1! i did not confuse my 1 with my L! i mean what am i gonna do if i don't do the Presidency? what is my post-Presidency gonna look like? so what, i'm gonna need those bungling Secret Service guys' protection to follow me forever like the stench of the oil from the undercarriage of a dead Porsche when i never leave my house? i'm never gonna be invited to those pizza parties where, like, 5 Presidents all share the same stage and hang out with the pizza for the photo op. are they just gonna stand me up at malls and hope the whole "respect the office" thing will stay in place for me? am i gonna go back to being a reality-show host and all the contestants are just gonna ignore the fact that the boardroom table is the prison messhall table and the camera-lens has bars and the viewers are just gonna pretend my decade in office never happened? go back to the way things were, back to normal? order?
Bump: if you have to wear robes, make them black robes. this is a funeral.
the two semi-lovebirds are rounding the corners in Melbourne's black 1937 Alfa Romeo 8C Touring Berlinetta. Melbourne has his head laid right on top of Taki's tits while she forces her fingers through the steering wheel to do the driving. the cars are all ready on the grass.
Taki: i can't decide if this from you is sweet or sick. Romeo Raunch. Romeo Rotten.
the car drives like a dream. each hill rises up to curve around lush slicked empty streets which wind through country cottages in the city one on top of the other built upon pile and stack of country archer arrow and the smell of baked bread on the sill, waved on by men wearing white scarves on their heads and the womenfolk fixing all the diagonal street lights to blink. safety is not the standard, sights are. this race brings the community together, like no other race can. the nearby villages and hobbit bridges overhead and half-cities and hill stations hidden in the alcoves are one by the strings and strands of this road race's reach. it's time to traffic in temperance, tickets, and tans. the roads aren't painted so the cars can ride as fast as they can. everywhere you speedily brace, you see a chain of people hugging, forming the line, the highway and lowway boundaries to drive. in the country part of the path, the apple-color street-cars and Formula 1 tipster cars and Formula 1 tipsters follow the formula but are anything but formulaic. you see their white stickers as a ghostly blur topping their trajectory past each other, all the colors of the apple, the red, the brown, the green, swirling like ice cream and matching with their corresponding leaf color in the fallen trees and arches and acreages. big pumpkins hang from the rooftops of the canopy like large bells, ringing their insides---lining the streets in but never littering them out---smashed on the road, dashed by the drift. a trailing odor of petrol mixed with pumpkinseeds fills the hot streets crisped by autumnal airs. the concrete is cooling and the asphalt is autumn, too, autumn and green. not a hint of blue to be seen.
it doesn't matter who wins. the two of them are together.
Taki: i wonder if i can spot my most fervent wish when i'm with him. at least in this position he can't get to my ass.
the plane makes the first turn past the green. Melbourne is shaked and about to crash into the car on the far road! but it's not him in the vehicle, it's Michael Avenatti of course, he enters every race. cheeky natty bastard. Avenatti wears just the monk hood, unhooded---not the robe---and waves handsomely.
Taki sees her son driving the car, wondering how to diagonally position himself to put the stops on and brake that thing.
Taki: steady, steady. easy easy. like you're driving the car. how many more extreme sports are there?
Melbourne raises his hand of three fingers keeping his eyes closed.
Taki: that's digusting! you do NOT come anywhere near my slice with that thing!
Melbourne's lips look puckered like he's sucking on an orange with his mouth closed.
Taki: i wonder...what happens to Melbourne when he falls asleep in his own dream?
in Heaven, John McCain proudly raises his arms up and carries the full load of the angelic choir and the stage and Aretha on his fingertips easily. he has a twinkle in his eye and a grin in his butter-stained teeth. tears do not fall from his eyes, flowers form under his bags, blooms bloom there.
McCain: so i'm at my wake and all i see are long faces. i thought I was the ugly one! where's the laughs, the yucking around, the merriment, the bad jokes?! what's going on? it's a celebration, people!
Omarosa: sorry, i don't smoke.
McCain: but you must. we must all carry on living like nothing happened. otherwise what's the point? the alternative is too dark to think about, we must will our memories back to life. dress them up in costumes with pins and Tetris slats and scrambled eggs if it makes you feel better, if it keeps you dancing. where's the notetaker with the Joycean mandolin humming Father's mistress at school? do you know what the meaning of life is?: handwritten love notes. where's the pizza! where's Pasqually and his accordion? accordion according to the Bible. was the Devil's instrument. something about squeezing out that sound. put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Omarosa: guess you're shit out of luck. i don't have bags under my eyes so i can't provide you with bagpipes. i don't read good books. i write them. i don't smoke. look at my classical Greek profile, not a blemish nor spot. spotless. this is easy. easy. look what happened to O's soldier down in Florida. he won cos he was black. that's all i have to do.
McCain: that's tortured logic. and as we all know, torture is illogical. do you own a gun?
Omarosa: of course.
McCain plucks a bloom from his eyelash and plugs it into the rifle of Omarosa's gun.
McCain: who's gonna eulogize you at your funeral? who are your eulogists? you must think of these things as you live. don't you see what i did? i had my two defeators do mine. to show. cos eulogy is effigy is erudition is eucharist. cos in Heaven none of that stuff matters anymore. there are no more flag flaps, only the flag draped over my coffin.
McCain: it's okay. it's alright. i'm happy. i was humbled a long time ago.
