THE REAL MCCOY

 

Jen R and i are at a Baltimore strip mall.

Jen R: the one on the corner, you know, that one. the concrete corner. this place has so many shoppes squeezed into it, so many experiences and colors and tastes.

me: sexual tastes not just food tastes? i'm getting that wavy scared feeling again.

Jen: relax. i'm here NOW, that's all that matters. forget the future, the future is now. all anyone of us has is now...

me: is that an Indian place named Nirvana?

Kurt Cobain: the curry is a little dry but they have welcome wet fish. the boys and i recorded the latest Nirvana album in there, Nirvana's Sgt. Pepper's...

in the crowd is EZ Taylor from Three's a Crowd wearing a blue bucket hat that says PRAY FOR SURF, and Peter Griffin fitting his fat hind legs in the line.

Peter Griffin: it's the queue in Quahog.

Peter Griffin: it's Weird Wednesday now, right? new episodes of Family Guy on Wednesday nights, nobody's gonna remember to look us up, people work Wednesdays, the ratings will tank, no one's watching. even more so. this quality show. Fox said i needed to lose 50 pounds. studios suck. shoulda just moved our little show to Sundays at 7PM...

Jen: oh look, it's one of those mall chiropractor's.

Mardith: no i'm in here. 

me: you're looking green in the gills and supine, Mardith, what happened?

Mardith: i'm on my back. as usual. i should be evergreen in the gills. i'm sick. see i've been manifesting the wrong way. manifested wrong. i thought it was just magic dropping on your lap and you didn't have to work for it. you actually have to WORK at getting a better life for yourself. hard work 24/7.

me: i know, right? i feel ya. it's the WORK thing that's hard about life. 

Jen: nothing comes from magic, dearies. trust me i've tried. chance romantic encounters hurt, Hollywood meet-cutes are bunk, you actually have you work to get a date.

Joanna Newsom is strumming the harp at the automatic-doors entrance to Circuit City.

Jen: when we die and go to Heaven, Joanna Newsom will meet-and-greet us at the Pearly Gates and she'll be playing that same churchy harp. 

Joanna Newsom: it's not ageist, it's the truth, right, Jon Stewart? Gavin my uncle and everyone's daddy would make a fine leader, he actually kills it in debates...

Chris Meloni: he's more of a zaddy than i am.

Gavin Newsom: the waiting is the hardest part...

Jen: hey what were you doing on Baltimore Beach all alone?

me: i cannot lie to you, i was trying to search for that topless woman in that Where's Waldo puzzle.

Jen: no need to apologize, i understand. it's a gamer's completionist thing. tabletop games.

Doryce inside the indoors Circuit City restaurant: when they cook the bacon here, it comes out like a crispy vagina. i want a meaty vagina.

Gladyce: that could be a flower's pistil, dear...

Jen: hold tight, i'm going into THAT rock store to make you something no woman has ever given you before...

Dan Souza: add a bay leaf. don't skip that part.

Skip Bayless: ...

Dan Souza: i said we're entering Veggie Land, not VeggieTales, okay?...

Naruto: as a kid i lived alone in that apartment in the Leaf Village like a second-year Berkeley student...

Irish bar: get your football kicks in here before it's too late, cuz soon it will be.........March.........and nobody wants to do their NCAA Tournament brackets in an Irish bar...

farmer: you didn't think i knew what the word "plethora" meant, huh?...

James Gandolfini sitting in a Don's Plum booth: the continuation of Tony Soprano's story is left to the viewer's imagination. i can tell you from my end that Tony's future wasn't good.........real-life black screen...

Gladyce: dear, the Shinnecock Sisters on Weather Channel, why don't they make a show about THEM?!!!

Doryce: no one would watch, dear, shows have to be men-driven...

Hiawatha: not to mention the Native American experience exposure...

Arthur the King: '80s Benji in 2025...

Benji: if it wasn't for me, Lassie wouldn't have been famous...

a rainbow is a circle: Flat Earthers HATE this...

District Attorney Jack McCoy out of Manhattan gets ready to film his Amazing Stories episode "Mirror Mirror" way on the other side of the country at that famous house.

DA Jack McCoy: i wasn't going to pass up a chance to be directed by Martin Scorsese!!!

Martin Scorsese: call me Jack. you're a veteran, man, you know your lines and your marks.

McCoy: yeah but this is a BIG-ASS mansion of a home. your home?

Martin: me and Burt Reynolds swap on weekends. wives, too.

Jen: there's that house again!!! if Frank Gehry designed a spaceship...

McCoy: you've never seen Jack McCoy like THIS before!!! surly, angry, not very judicious and law-abiding and orderly, biting orderlies' heads off.

Laertus: telling a sweet clumsy novice of a writer who spilled all his written pages while trespassing to LEARN TO TYPE!!! both heartless AND sexist!!! as an aspiring writer i didn't appreciate that.

McCoy: not to mention you see me naked. my bare chest. you see my well-manicured toes. AND you see an important attorney in the City brushing his teeth, a very intimate act.

Madame Pons: i mean look at that BATHTUB!!! that is a thing of Classical BEAUTY!!! a true mosaic LUSH tub. it just needs some Princeton vines. with the ancient Roman vessels of Neutrogena Rain shampoo on the shelves. to have this in your bathroom...

Jen: and the stained-glass over your head, very churchy.

McCoy: McCoy is always nonplussed and calm under pressure, unfazed under his blazers, here you see McCoy screaming at the top of his lungs and carrying on like a crazed banshee. did you love it when i gave it to that cop who was just a security guard with a mustache under the Sherman Oaks Galleria parking lot gate-arm? seeing things in my mind's eye.

Scorsese: i love in-depth visual examinations of man going nuts...

Helen Shaver: for the first and last time, no i don't shave down there, i'm Canadian. i dipped my toe so far into all this great anthology sci-fi horror fantasy stuff i ended up being one of the progenitors of The Outer Limits!!! the good '90s Canadian series. 

Scorsese: i tried to get you two lovebirds into a real naked love scene but Steven was having none of it.

Spielberg: family show. at 8PM.

Scorsese: so i did the next best thing, i got Helen and Sam kissing in bed.........clothed...

Tim Robbins: you see the strange tall gangly monster before you i cut with my profile here in mirrors and eye irises? i look like the priest from The Exorcist AFTER Satan possessed his face!!! this monster face is what Susan Sarandon was looking at while she made love to me on our honeymoon, i was so embarrassed...

Dick Cavett: you look like Father Guido Sarducci of SNL on a speedball, which was every breakfast.

me: do you have a crush on Jack McCoy?

Jen: yes. but only when he's ready to retire.

Dick Cavett: why did i have to interview all the assholes? g'night folks.

Lindy Lenz at the strip mall is on a weightlifting block at a weightlifting shack.

me: you don't have to do this to yourself, Lindy!!! you don't have to put all that WEIGHT on your shoulders!!!

Martin Scorsese wearing Body Glove in Baltimore trunks: she ain't heavy, she's my sister...

me: here let me spot you.

Lindy: thanks. long time, eh? life has been LIFEY lately.

me: and you are a wordsmith.

Minster: female seminary, i'm all for it, there should have been Catholic priestesses from the start.

The Pope: right?

Modelo: let's have a commercial with an all-girls tagging crew on junkyard cars cuz women don't drink our beer and we need our chicas drunk and having a good time, too.

Arcee from the Transformers: carousing...

women: so if we graffiti we can only use pink-paint spray cans?...

Boc: when i walk, it's not like i'm doing this because i'm on parole or something, i have to fulfill my parole or anything...

The Olympics: the Ozempic Olympics...

Jen fashions for me a PHOENIX NECKLACE!!!

Jen: red phoenix-shaped glass, very churchy. in between pooka shells and walnuts, it's very Islands...

i give Jen the most non-sexual heartening heartfelt kiss on the lips a man could ever offer a woman.

me: OH MY GODDESS THIS IS NICE!!! nobody's ever done anything like this for me before. i shall wear this phoenix necklace with pride EVERYWHERE ON MY NECK: to the movies, to Chipotle, to the dentist's, when i'm sleeping and sexing, underwater in a tub and in the ocean, when i'm cloudbusting with Kate Bush, and in my grave like a good goth. you're the best, you know that? i just want you to hear it from me firsthand directly as we look eye-to-eye that you are in fact the best human who ever lived, Jen R. i just want you to know that if it all collapses tomorrow.

Jen: you're welcome. 

me: i thought it was gonna be a blowjob.

Jen: nah that's old hat. i'm just an old hag knitter, you know? i sleep everyday from 3PM to 6PM. let's watch The Killing Fields together now at the corner cinema, i'm feeling morby this afternoon...