me: when things start to get going they start to get going.
Jen: yeah.
Jennifer Pizarro and i are at a computer fixit shoppe in Berkeley.
Jen: yeah. but like what?
me: my racing thoughts. i mean here we are AGAIN wasting our lazy Sunday afternoon in line to get my computer fixed. what's the point? life wasn't meant to be about tapping on a god-damn computer keyboard the rest of your god-damn life.
Jen: yes. throw your computer in the ocean. you don't need it. talk. talk to real people face to face. you really need to learn how to live without reading the comments.
me: tell me about it, girl. there was life before comments. but i don't remember.
Jen: who cares what complete strangers say? why would a complete stranger's critique of your comment make you feel a certain way? make you feel bad the rest of the day. you see how you can't win when it comes to comments. cos there's always the NEXT comment...
Jen caressing my neck: do me a favor, babe. NEVER put one of your plays online. leave it UNPUBLISHED before putting it online...
me: i'm in a right state. i'm antsy angry.
Jen: you need to go to St. John with Jen Carfagno for some wort.
me: that funeral didn't help.
Jen: sigh. no. why do funerals always come before weddings? that was a sad ceremony. Zoe Luper was a symbol of progress for so many around the world, including us.
me: their memory lives on in the small incremental progress the world makes.
Zoe Luper: that's a joke. i turn my head and the world makes no progress at all, it's REgressing, backtracking incrementally so we don't see it...
me to Jen: i'm at your house which is really a house on an island so i think i'm protected and no one can reach me. but a stupid cop in a hoopty motorboat comes speeding on shore crashing into the dock like a rock. he starts questioning me forcefully, why i'm there, treating me like a loiterer. man the cops here are dumb. they're the only Republicans in Berkeley so they feel they have to act EXTRA macho.
Jen: it's amazing how a person looks when they're alone.
me: right? i look so much better when i'm holding your hand. i feel safer in your hand. i told the cop to look into a growing problem among teens, he should try it, the Boat-Jumping-Off-A-Speedboat Challenge on TikTok, i told him the wake would be safe, both meanings.
Jen: you're lucky you have me, babe. i soothe your savage intentions. you'd be in real trouble, in a real pickle, without me there to watch over you. you are my HUSBEAST in every sense of the word...
we get to the one show the NYC New World Stages traveling company is performing in Berkeley, the Alan Freed show.
me: let's be honest, mostly for the backstage dressing-room stuff.
Jen: what a CUTE stage!!!
Constantine Maroulis: VERY SMALL stage, INSANELY TINY dressing room for all 30 actors to squeeze in. incredibly tight quarters, the cast got to know each other well.
Jen: it'll make for a CLOSE INTIMATE viewing when we fuck. i always say, sardines show us the way to love. the tone of tuna. you two don't mind watching, right? we're all actors here.
Constantine: as long as Joey Pants doesn't mind...
Joe Pantoliano: i have stories. i mean i have some James Brown stories but they're NOTHING like Sharpton's stories, you know? The Rev Al's got the key to James Brown's diary hidden in his perm.
Jen: this place is known for its food. you know how much i love food.
Constantine: yeah, quaint shoppes all around here.
Jen: do they serve Wimbledon pizza and Wimbledon shepherd's pie?
Rev Al Sharpton: yup. and snake pie...
i fuck Jen under her plaid skirt before and after the show. so smushed in that dressing room are all we the door is a black line. everyone's faces are too cross-eyed from the pressure to watch.
Jen: cum on my once-in-a-generation butt.
Jen: did you see how PARTICULARLY BIG my butt was today?
me: i noticed that as your butt was swaying about.
Jen: well that's cos of all the PIZZA AND PIE i ate beforehand, silly!!! food gives my butt GIRTH AND POWER.
Ash Barty: yeah i had a kid. you thought i was a.........? man, FUCK YOU.
me: every day i get further away from adult swim...
Julie Kotter: yeah i'm gonna sit my CUTE TINY TINY TINY BUTT on this radiator here...
Fucsovics: i'm just doing tennis till i can play Karnov in the movie.........or maybe in an Indiana Jones movie...
Fucsovics: okay then maybe in Game of Thrones...
Golden Girls: the number 4 is unlucky? pashaw!!! look at US!!!
Tonganoxie: where Neutrogena comes from...
Madame Pons: ...
MAIL: yeah i WISH i was going to Maui...
side stitch: your security detail.
Victor Wembanyama: ...
Chris Eubanks: the bank is open. bank on me...
Tiafoe: but...
Chris: nah, ME.
Ben Shelton: but...
Chris: naw, ME. i'm not disingenuous like you lot. i'm the real deal, real steel, i'm smooth as silk like chocolate milk. i make you blink, i make you THINK. Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech, but that ain't my ride. Ramblin' Rec as in the tennis recreational center at Georgia Tech. unknown no more, you know the score. i don't play tennis, i'm just the most opportunistic server of all time. my smile is contagious, my fearhand outrageous. i got overhead smashes for days. my smile is INFECTIOUS, my stans are NUMEROUS. stans in the stands filling up like electric not gas. i go far cos i'm the REAL STAR. I'LL be the first one to win a Major since Roddick wet his Jordache jeans. taller than Kevin Durant, i quake the wake of the Slim Reaper. i coulda been a game show but i play tennis, man. i got Scrooge McDuck's First Dime in my London flat. i got ALL his dimes. grass is just mass and i'm the MOTHERFUCKING PRIEST.
me: is this a hazy dream? or is this real? is my life right now REAL?
Jen taking my hand: there's no caffeine in root beer, that's why when you drink it that heavy dank draft syrupy malaise falls over you, you become listless, can't do nothing, you fall asleep at the bus stop...
Whippany: my home. the place where S&M was born...
Whippany: Whippany, not any, not just the end...
Mr. Badger: Mr. Toad's a jaywalker. Whippany is where our gang holds book club...
Codrus: oh sure, YOU get to pluck at the forbidden fruit but i can't.
gardeners: cos we're Mexican. cos we got this cool long bronze ORANGE-PICKING TOOL. with the Inspector Gadget-villain clangy wavy aluminum sharp silver claws that pick up both pits and rusty nails. this is the master's mansion, this is the master's tree, not yours.
Fuerza: *smirks*
Tsunade: hey animators, if you have the time to animate me complaining that Sakura is weak, you have the time to actually make Sakura a STRONGER CHARACTER!!!...
James Wilder: i'm not the dude who boxes David Duchovny naked in that Red Shoe Diaries movie...
rebi: to become bisexual again after noticing the dating pool has pee in it...
rebi: also one of those strange little boy Star Trek: The Next Generation children kids with the Dutch hair who wear those weird sweatery bodysuit civilian clothes with the knurls and the patches...
after the Broadway musical i hold Jen's hand down that lonely street in the dark on a cold summer Berkeley midnight early morn.
Jen: our love lights the way.
we don't discuss the play, but rather an episode of television.
Jen: the particularly softening Outer Limits episode "Worlds Apart..."
me: oh my GODDESS.
Jen: right? i mean what a ROMANTIC episode it was!!!
me: you know how i get, you know "Someone to Watch Over Me" SENDS SHIVERS DOWN MY SPINE whenever i hear it...
me: "Someone to Watch Over Me" sends me into HIVES...
me: hey wasn't that All My Children Port Charles soap-opera vampire in this? but with his trademark long locks shorn. i'm loving how headquarters is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Jen: this episode presents an impossible choice, a cumulative quandary: would you give up the love of your life to explore strange new worlds?
me: sounds familiar. i NEVER would because galactic space, no matter how wonderful and infinite and stellar and time-consuming, is not a woman's touch, it's not LOVE.
Jen: but what if you discover a whole new FORM of love out there in outer space? an alien love that's BETTER than our measly human love. that lasts longer than 100 years and is ice-based...
me: that one scene with the now-husband and the woman talking about the woman's ex-lover when they were both young was BEAUTIFULLY well-written, i loved it, so well done. the woman...
Jen: Bonnie Bedelia for the win, a little plumper but no worse for wear. famous Olympic gymnast...
me: the woman describes the young man she knew, the two of them were young but in love and planning to get married and have a life together but the man was DESPERATE to get off our doomed planet of Earth and explore the furthest reaches of stars, planets, galaxies, and black holes which compress 20 years into 20 minutes. to find out what life REALLY means which can only be gathered by collecting little pieces of stardust swimming in a cosmic waterfall a quadrillion light years away into a glass tube. wanderlust has overtaken him, impulse guides him, FAR sends him, he is OBSESSED with the universe, not her. she tried to stop him from taking that rocketship, treating that rocketship like a bus. but she couldn't stop him.
Jen: and the husband says, "i'm like him in a way, i explore the unknown universe under a college lab microscope. but one thing i would NEVER do that he did, i would NEVER give YOU up."
me: same, when it comes to you, Jen. i love you, baby. not even for God himself. cos YOU'RE my God.........well, erm, you know what i mean...
Jen smirks warmly.
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