Jen and i are in Jen's soft rattan bed in her bamboo bungalow bedroom by the roaring river. it's so quiet here you can hear a pin drop. we are on opposite sides of the bed.
me with my hands fingers clasped behind my head: i never thought i'd reach the day when it was THE DAY AFTER.
Jennifer Pizarro: as well as THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. come on, hurry up, i got dress rehearsal at noon.
me grunting in a very awkward way: i'm trying. i forgot we were both naked, the air here is a blanket.
Jen: cum on my face.
me: wow. i never heard of a girl who WANTED a facial, who REQUESTED it. isn't it humiliating for the woman?
Jen: you're not a proper actress until your face has been properly cummed on, you know? we find it bemusing, odd, strange, fanciful, debauched and depraved, but we also see the glint in your eye, the glimmer in a man's eye when he does it, when he accomplishes the act, that adds whimsy to the ritual.........oh COME on, dude, you got it RIGHT IN MY EYE!!!
me with no more drip: sorry.
Jen: my blue eye has turned RED.
me: the ocean is now on fire. i am SO sorry, beloved.
Jen scrambles out of bed and squeezes her big butt with a jump into the long windowvane pleats of her blue skirt.
Jen: love hurts.
me: scrambled eggs?
Jen: we just did it. my eye HURTS, it's BURNING.
me: like my love for you, my love.
Jen: and on that wonderfully tortured bit of writing, i shall take my leave. toodles. i'm late for practice. i'll be seeing you. tonight. or maybe not. the company has to work through the night, you know how final play preparations are. huh, you gave me food for thought, does a facial make me a freak? or am i just normal.
an hour later and i haven't gotten out of Jen's bed. the lawnmower sound of Jen's boat has long since dissipated into nothingness. it's a bit scary. but also strange and exhilarating. i've never experienced this feeling before, i allow myself to FEEL THE PRESENT. here i am. i'm actually in Jen's bed, i cant't believe this is happening to me!!! i'm in her house, her home, her SEA SANCTUARY ON STILTS. i lie spreadeagle over her sheets, the sea breeze from the open beach-glass windows lilt the hairs on my knee and carry me to the sky and back to the ocean once again on their lithe bendy waves. i feel security in my toes, electricity in my fingers, salt in my nose, a light feeling in my heart, i've swallowed soundless summer.
me: if there's ever A MOMENT i never want THIS MOMENT to ever end, it's NOW.........i'm alone.........but also i'll never be alone again...
Roger Federer: Genie, how could you?
Genie Bouchard: i still love you, Roger.
Roger: you never proved it. this is how you show your love?
Genie: look at the numbers, my love, Novak Djokovic is CLEARLY the greatest tennis player of all time.
Roger: yeah and the world HATES him so i don't care.
Novak: it's precisely BECAUSE Earth so thoroughly despises me that i reached this height!!! unlimited motivation rocket fuel. i just keep winning.
me: i admire the families of both of you men.
Nadal: want me to shoot you, Djoker? i mean with a vaccine.
Joker from Batman: i would like to get pricked, yes.
Nick Kyrgios: hey blokes i feel y'all fellas, when i lost to Novak at Wimbledon, it STILL stings. it still HAUNTS to this day. i was happy to be there when i should have realized that would be the ONLY time i will ever reach and compete for a Grand Slam Final again.
Roger: hey you bastard Kyrgios, shut your piehole, why are you talking to Tennys Sandgren? that guy sucks, that moron has the stupidest name in the world.
baseborn: he who plays baseball...
Loiter Squad: ...
Oreo Cakesters: the ultimate sensation. even if you have a blocked ear canal.
Anthony Bourdain: yeah, your world is doomed, but at least you still have Oreo Cakesters over there...
Debrox: you have a blockage in the rear-end chakra of your ear canal.
Naruto: ...
whipsnake: when Doryce visits the station house full of firemen and ear doctors.
Greykid: and knee doctors. i don't like snakes...
Indiana Jones clutching a snakeskin purse and snake whip: can i FINALLY retire now?!!!...
Djokovic: the French Open Sound, it's the sound of a goat boy, a goat-herder boy...
horse-racing coverage on Fox: ruined the sport.........not because of all the terribly tragic horse deaths but because these anchors look like mob flunkies.
Toad: hi, Princess Peach.
Princess Peach: hello, my retainer.
Toad: i'm not your toadie, i'm not your rooty retainer, i'd like to think i'm your...
Princess Peach: pet.
Toad: friend...
Roger Federer: people today in 2023 know who Alcaraz is but not me...
at Kathie Lee Gifford's barn in Detroit.
Leslie Sbrocco: i distracted Regis for a week so you could finally retire out of that hellhole place you were working at on that show in New York. did you finally escape that shitshow?
Kathie Lee Gifford: Regis forgets a week when he's around a beautiful woman. but he never made a pass at me...
Naruto: i don't get it, what's Sasuke's symbol on the back of his jeans shirt? does Sasuke like to play ping pong? is Sasuke the local village table--tennis champion of the Uchicha clan?
John Lurie on the HBO set.
John Lurie: i'm not a recluse. but i did paint the brick wall as a door so no one can come in.
Mr. Kotter: ha. like my wife Julie naked in graffiti on the bricks of my school...
Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers: knock knock. ouch. want some rg burgers?...
John Lurie: you will never lure me out of retirement...
i get a call from the curly landline phone on the nightstand next to Jen's bed. that's when i finally get up.
me: hello?
Jen: sorry i haven't been home. in like a month.
me: i haven't noticed.........that's not what i mean...
Jen: i know, dunderhead, you miss me in your own strange scriptwriter way. i won't be home tonight. or any night.
me: i just meant i've been meditating like a motherfucker. i've been in a tenseless trance. how's acting life?
Jen: i don't want to act life, i want to be real life. the life of an actress is glamorous even when it's not. our director is driving us like slaves. we gotta memorize our lines and HIS lines!!! we gotta learn all the pirate sword swings as if they were ballets. good thing i'm a trained dancer not a trained actress.
me: it's just a little play about pirates, what's his big deal?
Jen: i have time for a quickie from 3AM to 3:05AM tonight ONLY. sorry, babes, it's that or nothing. we'll do it in my dressing room that's skinnier than my butt. i'll see you tonight, come to the stage.
i oblige Jen. although i have to ask for directions to the theater, i lose my way in the dark...
Leslie Sbrocco: i could do Kelly Ripa's job but she couldn't do mine.
Kathie Lee Gifford: it's easy to do a game show, just stop drinking.
Luke Russert, Lindy Lenz, and i get invited to Michael Jackson's wedding. when we get there only Michael Jackson is on the altar. Michael steps down from the marblestone to hand Luke something.
Michael Jackson: here, Luke, the 100 Years Of Wonder Disney100 crystal ring, force it off my middle finger.
Michael: i hope the three of you put this ring to good use. i'm a magic man so i can predict the future, i'm sensing a throuple in your future, a threesome at the Paris Olympics beach-volleyball venue under the Eiffel Tower. TWO of you will get married leaving the OTHER ONE hurt, and damaged goods. toodleloo.
and with that, Michael Jackson winks at all 3 of us and departs the lawn on the sand, swimming into the sea...
Boris Becker: did you see me after match point of my first Wimbledon championship? i missed my calling, i shoulda been a ballet dancer. in tennis and in life i tiptoed with the best of them...
Michael Jordan: you shoulda played basketball with your tongue tells.........and also, you know, because you're tall.
Bernie Sanders at the U.S. Open: it's a shame Bjorn Borg couldn't be here to collect his runner-up trophy...
Leo Borg in Miami: i am not Leo Messi...
Leslie Sbrocco: this is a nice ranch you got here, KLG. nice basement jugs.
Kathie Lee Gifford: thanks, babes. i just need some cowboy lights.
Boris Becker: if you believe that, i got some swampland in Florida i'd like to sell you. and a finca in Mallorca.
Leslie: one of your finca squatters is my ex-husband/sommelier...
Where's Waldo stretching his limbs on a cabled power-rack Nautilus machine whilst eating a saltine cracker spread with Nutella: Waltine?
Lance Armstrong: i just had a brilliant idea. the Naked Bike Ride in London + the Tour de France = Naked Tour de France...
Mama Bear from Looney Tunes: Berenstain? Berenstein? i don't remember EITHER of them...
at World's Toughest Row.
Chris Cornell: my life was the world's toughest row...
Doryce: no that's fucking me.
Ben Shepherd: okay but i actually wrote the song...
Mama Maria LaRosa: Mammatus clouds are all the mammary glands you see up in the sky. they're the sky's tits.
Jen has been crying for over an hour now. i know not why. we're spooning on our bed fully-clothed. on top of our bed with our shoes on. Jen wails and slobbers and squalls and openly weeps nonstop. i shed tears from contact because i love her.
me: come on, beloved, show me your Smile of Reassurance so i know the world's gonna be okay.
Jen slowly turns her head to me, her face still wracked with the pain of guilt, pockmarked with puscle. her lips dulled and chapped by saliva strings of sorrow. her mouth a black hole.
Jen's eyes are RED, bloodshot from exhaustion.
Jen: i can't do that, i can never show you that face again.
me, softly: okay.
Jen, softly: i had a miscarriage. we lost the baby.
my eyes shut tight like lead anvil locks. my mouth trembling, her lips quivering. i hug Jen HARD, so hard we wind into one person in crisis. closed off from the rest of the world. i squeeze her soft bones, puncturing my lung. we lay there on our bed, spooning, stuck together in gelatinous grief. our tears and our sweat are one sticky substance on our tired bodies. we lay here motionless, all through the night, in silence, never sleeping...
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