BOXED: EMBRACE THE BRACE

Marianne Williamson tiptoes on the stones of her palatial estate staircase one by one like a pro in her heels. she looks out at all the people at her beck and call eyes and mouths open waiting for her next word of inspiration, tongue thought, with baited breath and eardrums. attentive as fuck, there is silence. even though they are all at a desert.

Marianne raises her arms.

Marianne: now i know how Madonna felt. i mean Evita. oh hello, Neale.

Neale Donald Walsch tiptoes with heavy boots in black cowboy garb even though it's the desert and kisses Marianne on the tongue. Marianne responds with a heavy hug. Russell Brand looks on angrily with a scowl...or is that just how all British people look in their resting best face?

Marianne: 8 kids, right?

Neale: i'm afraid so. i had a lot of distractions during my journey. they call me The Donald.

Marianne: okay then, i won't hug you so tight.

Neale: i was right about Bump. i'm playing him in the movie. if President Bump DID do the infrastructure everyone wanted of him, those drills would have continued and i wouldn't have been able to hear that '90s payphone call which got me out of base poverty and into my radio DJ job! and my heartbreak to this day! back in my day, Amazon still sold books. and sold MY book. now they've like taken over the old Golden Age Hollywood Studio System for some goddamn reason. well looks like the party's all here! why is it that all deserts MUST have motorcycle gangs? we got that one pink chick who insists on having pink hair. Gandhi wannabe by the reflecting pool. and Pablo from the Star Wars freaks.

Marianne: HELLO LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! you know, whenever you see an infinity pool in a stone backyard, you're either at Stonehenge, Los Angeles, or at a Colorado Springs massive spiritual ritual retreat!

the audience laughs like a motherfucker.

Marianne: OKAY bye bye, i'm going in now.

Llywarch blocks the door with his hoof.

Llywarch: whenever you see on Instagram a hot babe roaming Joshua Tree desert, you KNOW that woman is an unbroke actress.

Marianne: unbroke actress?

Llywarch: an actress who has yet to experience her first big break.

Marianne: okay i was thinking something else. fuck me, are you a...…...goat man? i need to meditate harder.

Llywarch whinnies.

Eye Luggage: okay, ma'am, the McDonald's commercial.

Marianne: I'M LOVIN' IT!!!

Dirg: no way, man, NO WAY. are you kidding me? can you imagine if that were a young woman student and an old-fart professor? the elites don't want to see the common man win.

Marianne: should have been two women, but i'll take their two men. ah, takes me back to my college days...which were just right now when i met Russell Brand. it's a mystery how we met, people are still trying to figure out the power dynamic.

Laertus: i'm just trying to see this commercial in the frame of our Obec College. this would never happen here, our Professors are too surly. the struggling student goes to office hours with the prof, just the two of them all alone in his big expansive office that's almost an outdoor stage with the huge-ass open windy windows. all wooden and stature and grand of course, smelling of erudition. the boy trips over his bike chain and to break the ice offers his teach a nice hot brown bag of egg mcmuffin and fountain orange juice with ice. the juice with foam in the morning.

Eye: that is so heavenly. that's a bold student! i don't think i'd have the balls to buy my professor food like that, it's too trying to buy the Grade A, right? wouldn't the teacher be smart enough for that? or do you need glasses to see through?

Marianne: i'm thinking the reverse. cowgirl. like the professor inviting the struggling student over for office hours and he buys the young man the coffee and burger and vape smokes. plies him with fries. softens him up. his mind that is so he can learn gooder.

Dirg: you can't learn how to write a paper. it's not like math problems.

Marianne: as President i want the world to be this soft and unsuspicious. mentor and student, eating a meal together, learning together, harmonious learning from each other, it's like me and Russell Brand.

Eye: people wonder: did you do his radio show as a favor, or was it the other way around?

Marianne: this was back when we were both considering a Presidential run. we had actually met earlier...but we both forgot...cos the sex was that good. we met the day before. we met for office hours in a wooden open-air office that was way too big for two people. despite no drapes drawn the stupid students were too busy faces buried in their phones to notice anything happening in the office as they strolled past. Russell and i, it was love at first sight, not in a saying way, we both REALLY believe in such things! like actual kinetic psychic energy between our third eyes blinking in unison! Russell threw me on the desk and fucked my ass so hard i couldn't meditate in my usual yogic yonic position for weeks, i had to do it upside-down. don't worry, i only fucked the G.O.A.T.---Russell---not any goats, i'm not a Satanist, okay? i rode Russell's long hair so hard he went bald, his head hair dropped into his monk beard. i sucked his penis so hard it came out of his butt, which is the final Vedic transformation from man to god. you see those statues strewn everywhere, right? like in hotel lobbies. with the extra hands? he cummed so hard on my glistening nude body from the golden-hour university clocktower sun angle it shot off like a kind of spilled white-out liquid-paper fluid which completely covered the entire stack of midterm essay papers, so hard it loosened softened the staples on all the pages. that was when we realized we were soul mates---and that we had no idea who had which grade anymore.

Eye: so...who was the guru and who was the student?

Marianne: we forgot, we had crossed the threshold of ecstasy, gorged on guruness, forgotten our past selves, our previous roles in a society we no longer recognized. suffice to say Russ and i were joined in universal celestial union, our third eyes were one eye, our penises and vaginas were flower flutes. his long scruffy monk beard was my vag hair. we fucked up high in the sky. and had Holiday McDonald's Pie afterwards, served all year! later Russell got into some kinky stuff. he smushed a rare McDonald's mudpie in my face and said, "here's mud in your third eye." he poked my eyes with fries. he covered my entire naked body with 1000 ketchup packets' worth of ketchup all spread to every one of my limbs, he was doing this blood-bond thing cept the blood was just ketchup...

Russell: ...let's not talk about those things, dear, everyone has their own unique journey they must travel alone. i'm not lonely, let me see your phone, so you can never have this phone again, you need to get spiritual. MORE spiritual. wait, you have more followers than me? now i feel as small as The Atom.

Eye: wow. that's when you know you've got something special with someone, when you forget.

at the G7 Batman James Bond white roundtable, President Bump calmly places a call to Puerto Rico:

Bump: that Red Table was annoying anyway. lady, look, nukes or paper towels, your call.

Bump: NUKE FRANCE!

Macron: WHAT!!? NO! CALM DOWN!

Bump: what were you doing with Iran!!? France and Iran were secretly plotting without me and were gonna nuke America!

Macron: no. here, rest your big head on these Trudeau rainbow socks, they make any man calmer. see? like you're riding the NYC subway.

Bump: ahhhh, thank you. where is Trudeau anyway? where is Melania?

Macron; she's, uh, with my wife.

Bump: well then, she's the prettiest one there, prettier than Melania.

Macron: thanks, best friend.

Bump: *on unsecured batphone* you know how to play golf, Vlad?

Putin: if China invented it, then yes.

Eye: okay Fed, your turn. tennis roundup.

Federer: hi, thanks, guys. i'm really depressed. i'm just back from a job.

Laertus: oh yeah, we saw you on tv! you're a great EXTRA correspondent! you were so cute with your microphone covering your mouth.

Federer: uh, thanks, yeah i had a nice sitdown with Damian Steiner. we talked about his destination wedding in the Bahamas and Barbados, his newest knickknacks for Fall, and who we wants to win. the Election.

Dirg: bro, you should have asked Damian about the fact that the system is rigged against you winning!

Federer: i know i know, i had a golden opportunity, but i haven't been feeling myself. where i used to shine and conquer, i now retreat. i keep losing these first sets, the fire in me is gone, i'm just a sack of croaking coal out there on the court, i don't hear the screams anymore. now the screams are in my head.

Genie Bouchard: Rog, i admire you, i really do, i look up to you---not like that---but what were you doing in my room?

Federer: it's not what you think! i wasn't looking for a pick-me-up, a bad-streak-breaker. i just went into your closet to try on all your babydol tennis dresses. to see if they were a good fit for the men. we need an openly gay male tennis player on tour. to distract from my devastating losses. whoever you are, please come to me first! don't worry, i'll pay for the hotel room. look, when i said i was your brother, i meant it in the whole-of-humanity sense, we're all brothers in life.

Genie: Roger, why weren't you at the weeklong US Open festivities a week before the tournament?

Fed: what? that was a thing? why didn't anybody tell me? see these are the parties i don't go to anymore.

Chrissie Evert: Serena and Sharapova, the rivalry continues! the rivalry that never materialized! look on these two giants one last time, folks, it will be the last time! these two twinkling tennis titans have shared everything: the Grand Slam, money, fame, the spotlight, unfair scrutiny, drugs, clothing line, men...

at the Alvord desert, the two crones are silent eyes closed in prayer squatting yogically and yonically on the hot sand.

Fuerza: get up, girls  you've prayed your peace. i'll look after the girl. well, Jill will at HomeCountry, she'll train her up, she is our brightest prospect since you two and Merkel! she'll make a fine witch.

Gladyce: *tearing* she was trying to exceed her limits like any good spell does! one last ale for the void, no more weird Japanese drawing porn, dear.

Doryce: she'll make a killing at camp. yeah, you're right my Liegess, she'll make a fine specimen, she'll be fine in our arms, the only ones who understand her. hell, she was going at it all wrong during her short time in the Living World. she was seeing ghosts when we witches were right in front of her eyes the whole time! she didn't wear cheetah-print, she WAS cheetah-print. you know this place is a very spiritual desert, reminds me of Colorado Springs. i've been having problems cooking my European circle bacon. i use our plates to cook two filets for 4 minutes and the damn thing is so damn hot and i burn my spellcasting fingers! there's gotta be a better way!

Gladyce: use the natural sand in this desert, dear, shape and fire your sand dish here. see? it's nice and cool in the desert...…...also, we really need to get new plates, those stone plates we have leftovered from the wedding/funeral conduct too much heat!

at LUSH Madame Pons checks out Buff City Soap. online.

Sue Su walks in the store dinging the bell. she is smiling for the first time in a long time and wears a silver band around her head counting digital numbers.

they hug and embrace tight.

Pons: so glad to have you out and about on campus again, dear! outside, what a concept! of all my girls you're like a daughter to me. i know, i'm the young cool mom. i'm young but i'm desperate to be a mother. you'll never get over what happened to you, but perhaps you can move on.

Sue: i don't want to talk about it, i have a new venture which will bring me out in the open again. see? got my Instagram channel up. a couple more followers and i'll have enough money to buy a video-game chair! i can start playing video games but i need to go to the gym every day for 8 hours instead of classes so i can build up the phatness of my butt, need to get it nice and big so i can fit into the new chair.

Pons: okay, hon, just be careful, i'll be watching. you know maybe I need to get into the digital game. anyone out there looking for a naturopathic life coach?

Sue: *laughing* u know i followed your pink crystals. they'll bring me love someday i know it, it'll be one of my followers, you'll see. i am using your crystals in a special way...on my body.

Pons: yeah you young folk use Instagram nowadays to find your mate, right? perhaps....nah...

Marianne joins the podcast later in the evening. she takes food in with her inside the studio---which is a big no-no but Eye lets it slide---Marianne takes out a brandy muffin and ladyfinger from her brown bag and begins eating right next to the microphone.

Eye: never knew this was a mukbang but nice. just means more followers. what were we talking about again?

Tyzik: oh, about how Lily Tomlin was ripe and primed to play the part in 9 to 5 cos she was already adept at answering a telephone.

Eye: Conversations With God, go.

Dirg: have you ever smelled those books at a bookstore? they had the most lovely covers, like they were made of velvet or something.

Eye: i got them for Christmas one year. all three all cute tied in a red-ribbon bundle. on flash-drive.

Laertus: okay THIS film. THIS fucking film. blew my mind! and i'm not talking about the New Age spirituality stuff in it, that's old hat---literally---Neale's jumbled together old ancient shamanism and old-world logbooks and Hindu prereligions and Norse burial rituals to form his new mishmash philosophy, a philosophy which saved my life when i quit college the first time and slept on my stomach in my empty room back home with my parents for nine months conceiving the baby of i didn't like Marilyn Manson anymore, i couldn't like Marilyn Manson anymore if i was gonna have a healthy life.

Eye: we need to talk about that on our first date...

Laertus: no i'm talking about how this movie---which is essentially an infomercial for Neale's branch of book-series divinity---is actually a damn good movie! it really works! it has everything a good move has: pathos, humor, sexual frustration, and a guy in a neck brace walking everywhere!

Dirg: dude, i heard about the neck-brace thing, but when i actually see it, i mean that shit was funny as hell! he should have just worn that neck brace the whole movie even years later...just cos there's something about a dude with a Grizzly Adams beard and a neck brace walking around '90s Portland going on buses bus-hopping and the mountains in the background and that shit is fucking hilarious.

Marianne: sometimes i tell Neale to put the neck brace back on when he's with me...

Dirg: no but seriously, this really is a hero's tale, a Bildungsroman, coming-of-age, Campbellian Hero quest from start to finish, it shows the whole journey from being literally homeless to being an Amazon star---old-skool Amazon---and it's very well done, the script is full of crisp knowing writing. let's start with the love interest, that bitch was hot as hell, unfortunately she's just some Portland Shakespearean local theatre player actor who will never break out, she does Twelfth Night every night in Portland instead of being the Bond Girl to Black James Bond. but man, talk about taboo Iranian spiciness!

Laertus: didn't you really feel it when Neale thought after he achieved a modicum of success, got back on his feet like everyone does, by becoming a disc jockey---right, Rachel Maddow?---and then he finally thinks this babe has got to be his manna-from-heaven reward for pulling himself up by the bootstraps and not being homeless anymore, and of course Rear Window-style he sees the babe kissing on another handsome hunky soap-opera actor man---local---in the parking lot.

Dirg: and he's like, i'm sharing pizza with my homeless buddies instead, i...still like my life...yeah, that's it. what was up with Theo Huxtable as the gang leader of the homelesses at that park? like, bro, he's getting a little too comfortable in his role as park dictator. my man is too comfortable being homeless. aren't they all for social progress?

Laertus: are you talking about the brothas again? your homies? stop it. to his credit, Neale never did drugs or drunk. maybe he should have, at least for the neck pain.

Dirg: and there's always the blonde chick in beads in the trailer park cabin who's the leftover hippie all the homeless want to bang.

Eye: and the Vegas homeless tunnel-dwellers. i clicked on her porn vids so many times.

Dirg: and the bus-station girl. come on, World, Universe, America, let the old man have some fun. he makes an awkward pass at her at the bus station and she tells him, "don't get weird on me, Neale."

Laertus: he should have been like, "you haven't seen weird yet, wait till i come up with my own personal religion." guys, the age-gap thing, and you go straight in on the i-want-to-marry-you cos i'm desperate and don't have much time left and i know you from our seven bus trips cos seven is a spiritual number number. that never works, right?

Eye: pre-book deal? nah.

Dirg: he wanted to have the busstop chick's babies. she thought they were just exchanging jokes for stand-up material, but he was serious. i wish she asked him about his kids.

Laertus: Neale, don't throw the coffee at the empty window, that's no good, that's just a waste of good coffee. save your throw, throw the burger you found in the trash at that arrogant punk white-nationalist waiter.

Dirg: when Neale's doing his show, it was like a Vegas magic act, like i'm watching old '90s X Files.

Laertus: why does there always gotta be one heckler in the crowd? Neale is helpful enough to give away all the secrets, making hard complicated life easy and understandable, and the bald crowd bro in the middle-row doesn't appreciate him? that guy's a crisis actor.

Dirg: why is the voice of God some straight white Protestant man? wouldn't it be more realistic if the voice of God was a Chinese woman?

Laertus: oh god this took me back. to yellowpads. remember yellowpads? everyone wrote on yellowpads, not just lawyers. and the scene at the seaside restaurant with the publisher and the agent, they are squabbling over whether a book is worth 1 million dollars or 100 million dollars. don't they know that soon books will be worth nothing?

Dirg: okay, and here comes the moment of truth, that very awkward scene at the Amazon Borders when the woman whose son has been killed in the drunk car accident confronts Neale and tells him God is bullshit.

Neale: what they didn't show was that i peed my pants during that in real life.

Eye: remember when Borders had that huge airy New Age Spirituality book section? always next to the brown waterfall fountain. all the soccer moms raced to that section when they dropped off the kids at the music section where you could buy a whole bundle of 10 present-day death metal albums for a dollar. sigh, i miss Borders. i miss their carpet. i need my Borders back.

Dirg: so how'd you come up with that answer that the son died early to not cause his mother more pain? you pulled that one out of your ass-penis.

Neale: made that shit up. on the spot as i went along, like Scientology. i mean it came to me. in my pants. thank god it worked. or goddess or whatever. i remember seeing James Redfield on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. they never asked me on that show. James tells Bill there are many bibles. James is still pissed off that his billion-seller book was a box-office bomb, he still can't explain it, his New Age can't explain that, no matter which Age circle ring era it is now, the Ninth? *hahahahaha* Celestine made me celibate.

Laertus: weren't you accused of plagiarism?

Neale: no i just forgot.

Laertus: and the final scene. so symbolic. the two Neales, talking to each other, the homeless Neale and the now business-suit-successful-man Neale, successful spiritualist swimming in knockers and pixie dust. the two paths that could have been...one did...merging...shaking hands with each other...walking and talking with each other, learning from one another.

Neale: no actually that was meant to show that there are in fact two of me and i am the clone.

Dirg: admit it, Lowkey Santa, your gonzo bonzo religion is basically the dude who couldn't fuck the babe at the radio station so he invents this thing to make him feel better to lick his wounds. that's what all religions are. and where the hell were all your kids this whole time you were struggling?!! you were always constantly alone with your demons! no help! be straight with us: are you in fact crazy? you hear the voice of God.

Neale: hey i'm but a vessel. a medium, get it? that's my choker size. take it or leave it. i choose to take it. the space vessel that is, Planet Earth will be uninhabitable soon.

Eye: thank you for coming. in. where are you staying at now, Neale?

Neale: i live on the eye of Hurricane Dorian. in a beach bungalow on the entire state of Florida. and the entire Gulf of Mexico. i'm real, i'm not a picture. i feel gray, it's not just my beard. don't worry, i fitted my garage door with a bracing kit.

Marianne: Neale hates it when i force myself into his mind and force him to role-play Kenny Rogers in bed...the sheets are all stained chicken-roasters in the morning...

Laertus: *later in the evening* are you sure about this? why are we buying guns?

Dirg: for the game, numbnuts, they're not real! we need it for the video game. i feel empty...like when a great life-changing spiritualist leaves the studio.

Laertus: yeah but i feel uncomfortable buying a Nerf gun now. at Walmart no less. can't even hold it. put it back on the rack!

Dirg: hold your jock instead. hold my jock instead, you can see it.

Laertus: you okay?

Dirg: not really. all the Jack In The Box. you know it seems like a rad concept, but actually eating a fastfood burger EVERY night fucks up your stomach. it's all rumbling inside me down there, the mass ball of fat and grease, i want to vomit it all out but my stomach is conspiring against me to keep it in.

Eye: are you still cutting off your own supply of Mountain Dew? self-enforcement, that's always the addict's cry. and crime.

Dirg: i'm not a cutter, that's weak and lame. it's just not the same playing video games with red Coke Classic. you see the giant green cases of Mountain Dew at Walmart and they're all video-game characters on the covers. you simply have to gamer with Mountain Dew. it's alright, i'll just never wash my hands again.

Laertus: so are we doing this or what. are we dancing? are we Dance Dance-ing?

Dirg: i can't move.