WITHOUT TAPES: LONELY SOLDIER OF LOVE

there's a knock at the door of the House.

Puck: come on, Pedro, you're not fooling anyone. want me to dangle your restraining order in the face of the flappy glass door like a pardon?

Pedro: please, Puck, i want to make amends. i am a changed man. i have seen the light. even on this rainy day.

Puck wipes the tears from his eyes with his plaid sleeve.

Puck: it's my wedding day and i'm getting emotional. it's good luck when it rains on your wedding day, right? i never thought this day would come. most bike messengers don't see their 30th birthday.

Pedro: *smiling* just don't get any on the carpet.

Puck smiles and turns the knob.

Puck: don't be a knob no more. you've done a lot of stuff.

Pedro: i brought chips ansd salsa. cos everyone thinks i'm Mexican. where's the blushing bride? can i see her?

Puck: she's getting ready upstairs. it's bad luck to view the bride before the ceremony, Viewtiful Joe.

Pedro: i've already viewed Rachel as you put it. saw everything. i fucked her even though i'm gay. in her butt.

the ceremony is about to begin, and the crowd inside the House is intimate and small-gathering despite the large public interest in the event. Bunim calculates and estimates and finally determines that at one time during the two hours EVERYONE in the world with a tv watched at least a portion of it. the stair bannisters are festooned with pink bells and green holly. because of various death lawsuits there was no money for a proper church wedding or grand microphones or food so there's a small tray of stale cheese widgets and soggy Ritzs and coffee cube cake with icing like a paste brick and a box of day-old wine that tastes like vinegar that was taken out of the trunk of her ice-blue Subaru Forester parked by her apartment suffocated by streetlights.

Bunim: hey what can i say. vinegar is holy. it cleanses. extra virgin.

Rachel slowly and methodically parades down step by 12-inch-high-heel step, glowingly and gracefully like a human swan, her already-prettiness accented by rushed-red spraypaint on her cheeks and orchid garlic bulbs around her neck. her dress is dirty-white Courtney Love grunge chic with ripped tatters as coattails and a see-through aesthetic of clear glue. there wasn't time so her bouquet also acts as her headdress of flowers. despite all she is beaming and her smile reaches side to side the room. music provided by Mohammed who plays a kazoo.

the happy couple exchange wedding bands by poking each other in the bellybutton with them under their dresses. Puck sneezes on impact, letting loose a full-grown golden-nugget of a soggy mucusy snot-rocket for all time right into Rachel's unsuspecting mouth, the extra debris waters the hanging plants.

Puck: sorry i get nervous at weddings. shit, the wallpaper is peeling off all the walls which are soaked cos of me that's my fault sorry. that wasn't my vows, it's not Whitesnake i promise, i got better ones i wrote down, in my pocket, but my pockets are all wet so the paper has turned into a spit-rocket. fuck it, you know i love you, Rachel, poetry is a luxury, campaign in poetry, govern in prose. our marriage is not gonna end in divorce, not like my parents i think, i'll make sure of it.

Rachel: that is so romantic, honey! just making sure you're not a nuts-n-bolts robot, that you have a bellybutton down there not a red buttom.

they kiss in front of 100 billion people. China withheld its numbers.

the wedding bands are those bottle-rocket popup caps all the Congressmen wear these days.

President Bump: what are those golden pins all the Members in Congress wear now on their lapels? i want one. where is MINE?

Bush, the Father: i should ask the same thing, who's in charge here? they look like miniature portraits from the Haunted Mansion ride. hey, is there still a line to get into the Haunted Mansion like there is in my time?

Pedro: Puck, my new friend, after you get married, what say why don't you go back to Miami with me and live with me there?

Puck: um, no, i'm from San Francisco. i'm native here. i'm a wild native. Rachel's parents in Arizona have agreed to let their daughter stay here, tho admittedly when i last called them they were muffled, like their sound was curtailed by a cloth around their mouths or something.

Pedro: STOP THE PRESSES!!! and the ceremony! i've just received an answering-machine message, i'll play it now once i move it to the center table. *push*

message: uh, hello, this is, uh, Alex Escarno. this is not a threat. imma blow up the House. with my own party, i'm crashing this sham of a commitment ceremony with my own civil ceremony which will be more civil. America doesn't want to match or watch your garbage, they want to see two committed people get married, two men, that is real commitment, i mean imagine the sharing-of-the- bathroom situation between two men!!! WE keep civilization together, we've been through the fire so we'll keep each other, not some floozy bimbo dithead sorority sister and a weedwacker weeded-out pale smelly token hauler with big lips and donut eyes. America is tired of this, they want new horizons, new united states.

Cory: Alex? i'm praying for you. i've never heard you speak like this to us before. do you still have your mustache?

Alex: i'm standing right outside the House, but i won't be forced in, i'll keep my distance, i just want you to know, to inform you, i'm completely concealed under a bush. yeah, so it's what we call in the biz counter-programming. while you revel in your stupid straight affair, a current affair, we'll be showcasing on a media-sharing site i invented called YouTube a four-hour concert that came after Pedro's commitment ceremony with Sean. their wedding bands were revolutionary, chiseled made from Himalayan pink salt found only in the mucus of the nostril of Olmec.

Pedro: hey, i can't control my cunado.

Bunim: YouTube you say? look into that for me, babe, i want the first shares as soon as the Stock Market opens again. this sounds like it's gonna have an office building in Downtown SF.

Alex: Oprah will be hosting the after-show.

Oprah at the Red Circle table: i've weighed my options---i used to weigh heavier---and i've decided i don't want to be hated anymore...hey remember that interview i did with Michael on ABC that time ago that was, like, more watched than the M*A*S*H finale or the Beatles on Sullivan? back when people still talked about things over watercoolers? well hope y'all forgot about all that cos now i'm light enough to ride the Ferris Wheel at Neverland Ranch! secretly running for President burns off the pounds more than any Weight Watchers ever could. and i'm not talking about running.

Alex: we'll see who America believes in more. see you in Cuba i mean so goodbye, i'm getting off the phone before i say something i'll regret.

Pedro takes Puck aside at his own ceremony and has a heart-to-heart with him by the hushed bannister.

Pedro: come on, man, let's take a walk you and i just the two of us. down the street. i got your engagement gift at my old haunt. Macy's. i'll show you, let's go.

Pedro leads Puck past down the parking-lot escarpment to a deep disturbing unknown underground tunnel with a shaft but no elevator. they rockclimb till they reach the very bottom cellar of the Macy's shrouded in cobwebs and a big silver disc that may have acted as a stone sundial in a previous century. dusty pictures of Bull Durham hang on the ceded moist grey spotty walls.

Pedro: Puck, meet my lab. well my lab-away-from-home. make yourself comfortable, try the veal.

Puck: there's nowhere to sit.

Pedro: lie down on the white table i just want to try something.

he does and Pedro instantly socks Puck in the nose.

Pedro: come on, bitch, give up your snot, your liquid gold. let me have it, fight me! you want me to go get the lightsabers locked up in the storage unit over there? they're crystalline now, new look. just have to pet a few rats in there to get them out of the way.

Puck: no man, i'm not gonna fight you. i'm all about peace and harmonious non-tainted love. my namesake is a mischievous imp who just wants humans to blow. i'm crying cos i'm hurt, Pedro, more specifically my feelings are hurt. will we EVER be true friends? take whatever you want from me, it's yours! my shedding skin, my blood in units, my loyalty!!! rape me and take all my worth! i am sub-human in your eyes, nothing can change that. i'm but a pawn in your ultimate evil scheming goal.

Pedro: well that was anticlimactic. never matter and never you mind.

Pedro pours Puck's snot-rocket viscous into a bottle he already had on hand, a Specialty Smurf bottle that comes in a glass case and purple mini-jewel pouch with gold string exclusively from Macy's---when LUSH came to Macy's. and chippings off a purple crystal he got from earlier before.

Pedro: and voila! i just combine the ingredients to form a more bluer potion and...drink it and...slug it and...IT WORKS!!! IT FUCKING WORKS!!! i can already feel the illness in my stomach and heart killing off!

YOU CURED AIDS!!! I MEAN I CURED AIDS!!!

Pedro: oh, yeah, whatever, have a nice life. i get to HAVE a life now!!! MUAHHAHAHAHAHA. imma outta here!

Pedro gives the V Victory sign with his forked penis on the way out.

it's the Big Day, the other Big Day. Puck preps himself at the top of the Crookedest Street on the famous Hill which has seen many a cool-guy Eldorado Steve guy become the real Queen and ride off into the sunset by jumping into the sun.

Bump: Steve McQueen, he was cool cos he made McDonald's.

Puck squeezes his crankshaft and does his laces and latches his fixes and tightens the screws platonically with a screwdriver and fastens the bolts and lacquers one last time onto his wooden steed before the big race. with his tongue. he touches the tip of the green feather in his derby crash helmet.

Bump: i would never treat Dana Plato platonically.

Puck: i was in a rush to get married cos from this point on, i don't want to get divorced. my soapbox derby car is all cherried and ready to ride! it took extreme work and i have no money again but it was all worth it. when this thing goes down that hill, well street, and i'm in it with my bomber-jacket tails flapping behind my back in the crazy wind and my tongue hanging and wagging out, sunglasses split from sheer G-force, my smile will be so wide all of San Francisco will be gay. gay for me, happy for me, that i accomplished my goals when so many do not even bother to try. no need for seatbelt buckles here, it's a tight fit. i'll self-push me down and away we go! finally. this is for the record! everything is stable, including the wheel frame and my mindset's sanity. the steering wheel has a big knob in it. i want to feel the wind in my spiky hair! ready, everyone!!? thanks all for coming out, it's a big crowd.

Rachel: *on phone* no it's not it's just me, honey, member you said you wanted this to be our honeymoon instead?

Rachel waves her painted hand from way on the other side of town at Fisherman's Wharf. she's jostling through her purse and doing some afternoon sightseeing. of swole shoals.

Puck: i am naked before you with my naked bike. it was raining furiously and fastly earlier but i took a deep breath and it's sunny now. no excuses. *he slaps himself in the face* come on, gotta be clutch in this moment, gotta have muscles like Carrot Top even though i'm skinny as a bike rail. performing in dives. and GO!!!

Puck wheels down the first corner with ease, colliding only a plant and unsuspecting pedestrian. but the second turn is where things get dicey and the wheels come off. the plan. it's so tricky that all the crooks of the crookedest come crashing into his face all at once, he's gliding grossly, he's unable to steer cos he's lost his manhood and moral compass being in that reality-show House for four months. he screams in the spin and pain of not gonna do it, not gon dut, not gonna make it!

Puck makes one last push to stop himself. he reverses his ass so it goes high so he can put the brakes on the thing and abort. but it's too late. the soapbox hits a large boulder Steve is climbing and flies into the air uncontrollably, careening into clouds. it's here Puck sees his family, his dad and mom and sister forever together who loom and look like the same person but with imperceptibly-differently-cut gold hairstyles.

Puck: you're not Aaron. i don't remember your face, none of you's faces.

dad: i'm your father, Puck. we're all dead now, good job. you left the family, remember? that one day you went crazy with the aspirin and climbed our screen door like a monkey with no tail and sniffed the entire aspirin bottle and vowed never to return, you made your family worried sick. so much so we died from worry. but you never called after that, you carried on with your crazy travel plans. you said you'd swim to San Fran if need be, live on the folding Folsom bridge. you were just a block away from the water. you're dead, son. i see your bloodied body scattered in pieces all over Lombard Street.

Puck: this is a blessing. it took death for all of us to finally come together as a family.

Puck: WOO HOO! I'M FLYING!!! LIKE A REINDEER!!! I BELIEVE I CAN FLY!!! arms up.

Puck's derby car with Puck in it flies until it can fly no more, as it hits Fisherman's Wharf and the ledge Rachel is on on the other side of town, Puck goes to wave at Rachel but at that exact moment Rachel turns away to try the new sugary crabfish and misses the whole show. as Puck is flung into the ocean and Bay, a huge salty wave knocks him back the other direction antigravity onto Lombard Street with a deadening thud.

Puck: i died.

President Bump is on the phone with Kim in the Oval Office square. he puts his feet up and cracks open and smokes a cigar.

Bump: baby, baby, i got you, you want all the trains and cigarettes in the world all to yourself. you say trains are romantic and you're nothing if not romantic. and it's not sexual this train. got it, done, deal. America doesn't manufacture trains anymore, those were the good ol' days. not as a means of escape to blow up bridges, got it. just don't ever get on a train with my boss Codrus let me tell you, that is NOT a train ride! *hands up*

he goes to hug the American flag by his desk.

Melania: *her arms crossed and she cross* i wish you'd hug me like that, Mickey!

Bump: Melania, didn't hear you come in. that's the problem. you're a robot, right?

Melania: robots experience love, Mickey. let me tell ya about it sometime, inquire about my lovers. not a bot my lovers. ask your son, i tell him everything.

Bump: i'm down. i see Lawrence O'Donnell on tv saying that check i wrote out is gonna be the new Nixon tapes, the smoking gun, that image of the check with my signature is gonna end up on red caps and toilet paper sold from now on in all the gift shops in America. i wanted my legacy to be i was the first President to have 100-dollar-bills as my toilet paper, not personal checks! cash is always more impressive and balla, checks are weak! let's see how Roger is doing *click*

Judge Berman: anything to say this time?

Roger Stone: Judge Doom is the real hero of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. i'm known as the Missouri Huckster.

Judge Berman: Missoura. more like Messyri. Messy Journey. are you from Missouri?

Stone: no.

Judge Berman: another lie told in my court.

Roger: sorry, judge, but i've been down lately. David Gergen called me a dandy, a fancyboy. i respect Gergen, he was okay with Nixon, so this is tough to take.

at Inverness, a sleeping beauty is waking up, a sleeping giantess. Maria LaRosa moves her formidable backside and mountains form from the rumble. she is eating those Froot Loops donuts from Carl's Jr. and making a mess in her mouth.

Goody Paul: can i have some? i love it when you chinwag.

Maria: no.

Goody Paul: yes, Jesusa. we need you back on air doing these kind of things, eating food and dancing the fool and acting around and hijinxing.

Maria rolls the eyes to the back of her head in ecstasy.

Maria: oh my GODDESS these are so good! heavenly you might say, except you can't distinguish one color from another, they all taste the same.

at the SNL studios, John Mulaney is making final preps and reps for his showcase of all the scripts he wrote as an SNL writer which were burned and rejected before he became famous.

Mulaney: have you ever heard of a famous writer? you ready for the big live show tonight, Pete? you memorized all your lines?

Pete Davidson: i was born ready, you can tell it in my eyes.

Mulaney: i moved the Froot Loops donuts from out of your dressing room, i know for an E guy like u they look too much like colorful club pills you used to rave on about, that's too much overstimulation for your mind which you can't handle, your brain will explode with all those colors. you need to be concentrating with your brain, burn out on higher thoughts of wisdom found buried like gems in the script i wrote, not in your onair improvised ramblings.

Kate Beckinsale places a call from her hanging hotel suite overlooking the SNL stage. at night.

Kate: hello. you got my intel? no, Beck is not for sale he's just going through a hard time so his music reflects that. okay, thank you, just making sure, just checking. in on Pete. this has gotta work out, i can't get divorced again, i'm starting to tarnish my image, people are whispering i'm a difficult partner. the age difference is such that i am sure not to be a widow. yes i know i'm a vampire and a werewolf and i consulted all the tribes on both sides and they said i was immortal.

Robert Mueller is wearing ashes on his forehead. he puts on his priest stole and prepares to apply ashes with his priestly puncture of a pointer finger on President Bump's forehead but it doesn't take. Bob has laid out his briefcase all the piles of paper on the couch, he is at the Oprah show being interviewed.

Bump: for the record, it didn't take on Oprah's forehead, either...

Bob gets up on the couch and jumps on it, he is ecstatic on his face and begins to toss all the papers everywhere, like white birds filling the air of the studio ceiling to all corners of the studio audience, who eat all this stuff up with glee, collecting any flying paper they can, kissing the papers and crumbling them into their pocket as a keepsake momento worth millions.

Oprah: Bob, i thought you were gonna keep things quiet.

Mueller: YOU GET A REPORT AND YOU GET A REPORT AND YOU GET A REPORT! look at my cracked thumbs, i don't care anymore. the only way America will believe in me is if i trot my behind right up to Congress to testify. 24 straight hours, live tv only on CSPAN.

Bump: no, Bob! everyone in America is sick of hearing your voice!

Bob Barr: the Barrs and the Muellers will be friends after this, right? i can't lose this friendship!

Mueller: after this? my ex-friend, you fail to realize: like Neverland, this will never end...

Laertus: why haven't you thrown out all your Michael Jackson records by now? even the vintage ones. i thought YOU of all people would do it. the treehouse is filthy and needs to be fumigated!

Dirg: hey, he's still the King of Pop. *pops bubblegum bubble* oh you mean like a spring cleaning? i guess i could do that. after finals or whatever.

Laertus: you don't go to school. only i do.

Eye Luggage: speaking of, with us today is a special healer who works at the LUSH on campus. she's known by all, in the underground resistance movement anyway, as the wild witness. Ms. Madame Pons!

Pons: thank you thank you, is this mic hot? come on over to LUSH and let's have a chat. discounts for students and janitors alike! you know i'd just like to say to all my girls out there that come in and ring the twinklebell at the top of my door that it's not all rainbows puppies and unicorns out there JUST cos you bought our latest purple divining crystal. yeah, i know from experience and essence, that crystal isn't gonna immediately point you to your dream man, thank you for your time.

Dirg: Queen were wrong, if it wasn't for Wayne and Garth NO ONE would have known about "Bohemian Rhapsody". no one EVER cited that song before Wayne's World came out, it was completely forgotten.

Laertus: Selma Blair was a true hero. made me cry, she was MS Oscars, as in the classy Ms. Oscars out on that runway!

Dirg: i need that pimp cane. she's a real hero, unlike say a certain Kardashian. i was there at Selma last weekend, locking hand in hand with my brothas and sistas, commemorating the pressure of water-pressure.

Eye: well, i got my schedule cleared and freed up the rest of the week. you know what that means, everything we missed last week, we're doing Oscars FASHION!!! you, Dirg, will dissect each and every dress that came up.

Dirg: NO NO NO!!!!!! VERY NO!

Eye: hey, member i've got leverage over you, you do what i say or sing like a pig. you want a fate worse than death? see these tapes here? imma gonna FORCE you to watch Tropical Cop Tales.

Dirg: *head in his shoulders* *meekly* anything but that.

things are heated up at this morning's ESPN First Take:

Molly Qerim: *frantically* why are you guys talking about sports like it was College English? at a time like this? this is a crisis in America that goes unreported. or worse, underreported. human trafficking, um, hello!!? here's the number i put it up on screen if you suspect human trafficking at your local nail salon. this is ridiculous, why are we talking sports like it's some fun thing? i went into the wrong field, i'm gonna follow Kaylee Hartung's lead and after this show blows up when my tits start to sag imma moving to hard news and CNN. i gotta hard tongue, i'm an ethnic girl, i tell it like it is.

at the Hotel Theresa, the Red Circle table has set up shop. hot filling in The Breakfast Club takes over MC podcast duties from Jada.

Trevor Noah: it's so fun to bamboozle white people with foreign languages. i feel like Noah before the Flood and during Babel. we're due like the Big One in California for another one of those Floods. i want to host the Oscars next year!

Kevin Hart: don't do it, brah, have a heart, you don't have to to have an in with the gatekeepers, you're whiteskinned enough.

the crones are at that famous Rock McDonald's in Chicagoland. Doryce is cooking up fries with a latticed-basket deep-fat fry-cooker bath with hot hot hot wax and oil and grease in that basket. knob turned to 100.

Gladyce: don't burn your fingers, dear! you need those to cast spells! and for good fingering sex!

Doryce: they're not cooling right, do you guys have spaghetti?

R Kelly: McDonald's Spaghetti? maybe.

Doryce: how much was it again, dear?

Gladyce: remember? two minutes, two minutes to heat any water.

Doryce: *stirring the pot* undercooked is worse than overcooked. the water is not bubbling and boiling, needs a witch's touch. you know i tried this trick with my latest spaghetti, filled the pot up with hot boiling water to start, so it would cook faster, but it didn't cook faster, still took 12 minutes to cook. you still have bacon on all your products?

R Kelly: you're too old for me so i'll answer you. no, that was a limited time offer.

Doryce: but The Year Of The Pig is all year! where can i get some bacon around the corner?

the pair of eternal lovers finally broom their way to the Hotel Theresa and the galley of heat lamps out front in the lobby. a slab of meat is featured in the center. Spike Lee is trying to slice it with a knife.

Spike Lee: screw this, it's too much work.

Doryce: screwing takes time, and a gentle hand.

Spike: you have to cut this slab of meat with a knife to form the bacon slices. are you kidding me? ain't nobody got time for dat! no wonder this slab of meat was free! i'm too old for this shit. this meat is too hard and marbled. this slab of meat is gonna go uncut, uneaten, smelly and wasted.

Gladyce: wait two minutes for it to melt, dear.

the show ends with a final trip to Obec Woods for the cast. and the Reunion Special on MTV the  night after. Obec Woods unfortunately is closed for loud summer-long construction of a new two-lane highway down the middle of the sleepy village, so the trip and any subsequent last-minute bonding is scrapped. Pedro comes into the studio with his tats all blazing on his open one-hair chest and arms and elbows scaring the female MTV reporter.

Pedro: Allison Something, right? don't worry, i don't bite. are you black? i mean really black like Sean. Sean works for me now. you seem timid, do you even know anything about music? now, anyone in the audience have any questions for me?

crowd: yes why are you a hologram?

Pedro: pero i'm not dead. in fact i've been more alive recently than i could ever have imagined. i'm speaking to you from a projection cos i'm not really here. i'm in Cuba currently. i have taken over that country, military coup was successful and swimming, i have installed myself as King For Life and there was much rejoicing and rejoindering and the throwing of bananas in the streets. i get money by kidnapping and rekidnapping Rachel across the border once a month. she has developed an appetite to cope. the stupid Americans really love their sex symbols safe. i've introduced Cuban Capitalism into the bloodstream, a form of Keynesian and Adam with my own unique spin on it called Pedroism. basically consists of me selling my patented potent blue potion which cures AIDS to the masses. all trucks allowed to pass through the bridges. do you like my pointy crown? it's part of my head.

crowd: wait. if you're there, then who's the Pedro here?

Pedro in the studio puts on his rubbery mustache to reveal himself to be Alex Escarno this whole time!

Alex: i'm a good actor, huh. needed on a reality show.

it was Alex Escarno pretending to be Pedro in that famous last group picture of the cast hugging under a rainbow taken in the waiting room of the hospital where Puck lay broken bruised and near-death, taken just hours before Puck's death. that pic was turned into an oil painting and sold at auction for a million Banksy dollars. bank.

Bunim: got the shot. bonus! bingo!

the audience claps.

Alex: i brought the answering machine with me so you can hear all the disgusting messages to each and every one of the cast members left by Pedro in Cuba during one of his free-time periods he seems to enjoy after he had his T-cell count rise like his rise to power. i can't control Pedro, i can only love him. *push*

the tape plays, it's swear word after swear word in all the languages of the world, one after the other. said fiercely loudly and profanely by Pedro over the loudspeaker mic of the answering machine. the cast and audience assembled on couches don't know quite how to react to this since no one understands it, but they ooh and ahh and gasp in hushed tones all the same.

Pedro: bringing the world together, one language, one swear word at a time.

President Bump: hello. Judd? i want you to do a comic where Superman wears the American Flag as his cape.

Judd: no, sir, this is where i draw the line---get it? draw---i thought it would be a wet dream of mine to get a call from the President, but i thought he would be more like Bush, never dreamed it would be someone like you. you know i'm gonna assert for the first time my...creative privilege or something whatever i guess...do the work i want, you can't stain Superman's legacy with your rulebreaking, some things still are sacred. you can't get out stains on a cape by eating Tide. i did a show about diversity. and mathematical feminine Russian inequality. simple math. i'm putting my foot down on the Nam sand. i will print, edit, conceive of the dialogue bubbles, draw and yes even ink myself a tribute graphic novel about Puck entitled Puck & Me: My Best Friend Is Dead, it will sell in all stores, not just the alt-right stores, cos i need the money. out in paperback always. but i'm not doing this for the money, this is about what an icon Puck has become for our world.

Judd travels to Vietnam to work on his graphic novel. there he falls stricken to an unknown strain of dengue fever and is close to death. he gets fixed up with white bandages all over his body which provide him comfort no brown bandages could. no more sickness in him. he is warm inside and out. his mind was muddled thoughout the whole cot process and he doesn't even remember being taken out of Nam on the M*A*S*H helicopter. Judd could have sworn the face of that nurse who tended his psychological wounds was Pam's face, but it was all gauzy. and he tells himself they all look the same, to avoid having to deal with his feelings. he also had a dream where he was being interviewed by Ed Sullivan…

Mo has that same interview dream with Ed Sullivan for his debut reggae album coming out. Ed is not into black music except for The Beatles.

Cory urges Mo to break-and-enter for her, to break into the Macy's and steal all the perfumes. Cory explains that her parents back home in Fresno are lily-white and boring, and atheists, but not the asshole kind of atheist, they're nice people to boot. that's why she booted herself outta there. nice and boring, Cory thus wanted excitement in her life so she turned to crime.

Cory: otherwise i'm just the white girl from Fresno, you know?

Mo: girl i get it, but i've turned over a new leaf in Hell. i want to do good now. i want to be a beacon of hope, a symbol representative of my religion Islam, i will make Islam the religion of peace known the world over starting today, it all starts with me, good works...

Jo and Rachel grow closer. like, really closer. Jo discovers a brand new mineral on one of her nature hikes from drilling down on the Earth's core for hours with her pickax for oil and names it after herself, a new gemstone which bleeds blue and purple she calls BritBox. she puts it on the internet on her own webpage so that makes it official. Jo's nose starts to flatten as she ages, which proves her ultimate theory. the two girls yuck it up after marriage and permanent granting of restraining orders and giggle and have a good ol' time around town. the two are inseparable, lock arm in arm, and do something together which not many twentysomething pretty young thang girls do these days: chow down every chance they get at McDonald's. yet somehow, through the magic miracle of television, these two remain young and pretty and slim. and accented.

btw, Jo's ex-husband Steve has completed his rock journey and now works in residence at the Rock N Roll McDonald's in Chicago.

Aaron, Mo's girlfriend, Rachel's parents, the two other roommate auditioners, Dom, Dom's grandpa, Sean, Geoff, Randy Shilts, Jack Kemp, and Christopher Hitchens: whereabouts unknown.

Pedro: and now you come to me, you end with Pedro. i beat it. every night. i beat AIDS. throughout i never hid my HIV, i was proud of it, wore it like a sword. i never cried myself to sleep, i screamed myself to sleep. i cured myself with my immense power of will and volition. i directed my body to quit carrying it. i can love the way i want to now. forever. and the way i love, well, i hate when i love. everyone's got their own slant on things, right? left? some call me a trailblazer, others say i was a scorched-earther. but i was never a flat-earther. all of you blamed us for starting AIDS, before it was a mysterious harmless local disease entering the consciousness and stream and blood, one which nobody paid any mind to. not until it jumped. then it started to slip into your bloodline and you took notice, now suddenly it was a scourge on the Earth and capable of wiping away an entire population. courage for the scourge. well my plan didn't work. it would have been funny if it ended up wiping away all you bigots. all of the discrimination and savagery and hate and homophobia and podunkness, eliminated and laminated with fire. you blamed us, called us the bad guys, wanted our people to die off, our skin to suffer and drop, to collect our hides we had hidden, not knowing the virus had jumped off the island over water. it was a matter of hygiene for all of us now. but we're not the bad guys, you are the bad guys. you who would dare judge me. judge me for living, judge me for loving, like lice there will be a reckoning, and i shall lead it. it will spread from Cuba into the farthest corners. your systems are too slippery not to tumble and crumble. like a snake in the night. i will strike when you least suspect it, i will get you with my kiss.

i live. I LIVE!!! so now i'm trying something new, to achieve my ends. mark my words, i was the first, but i shall not be the last. down the road, in some years time, there will be a 2nd person who is cured of AIDS...