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Lydia: Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick, quick.—Fling Peregrine Pickle under the toilet.—throw Roderick Random into the closet—put The Innocent Adultery into The Whole Duty of Man—thrust Lord Aimworth under the sofa—cram Ovid behind the bolster—there—put The Man of Feeling into your pocket—so, so—now lay Mrs. Chapone in sight, and leave Fordyce’s Sermons open on the table.

Lydia: How’d I do? I finally memorized the lines.

Gavin: Yeah, not too bad.

Lydia: But not too great? Look, this shit is 300 years old. I’m trying.

Gavin: I know.

Lydia: It just feels perfunctory. What in the actual hell is really the conflict?

Gavin: Yeah, so imagine you needed to clear your browsing history because all you ever do is read soft porn, and your teacher wants to check what you’ve been up to?

Lydia: Ohhhhhhhhh.

Gavin: Does that make sense?

Lydia: It does. Do you read 18th Century soft porn?

Gavin: Well, as a director for the Royal Shakespeare Company….

Lydia: It must be really thrilling.

Gavin: And yet, a few scenes later, Sir Anthony says “all this is the natural consequence of teaching girls to read.”

Lydia: Kind of sexist.

Gavin: Aren’t you happy you know how to read? Even if you don’t read anything? Or a steady diet of soft porn?

Lydia: Better a perfidious panther than a pusillanimous pig!
Gavin: Which means what?

Lydia: I don’t know what I’m saying…

Gavin: Then make the audience feel it!

“Dammit, that’s not an ending!” exclaimed Bartholemew, throwing his copy of Isaac Asimov’s “Second Foundation” across the room. It landed on a cat, who screamed.

“This can’t be the ending!” continued Bartholemew. “And it’s for nerds, so I can’t call up one of my friends on the bowling team and tell them ‘The Circle Has No End’ whaddya think of that, eh?”

He rolled over and tried to make peace with the cat. “Here, Carnissa,” he cooed to the feline. “You can take this book and shred it and pee on it, just like you did with “The Robots of Dawn”. Carnissa purred. Very soon, the apartment would smell like piss.

“I know, “Robots” was a hard book for me, too, since I’m Demisexual, as you well know, and all the characters are horny.” The cat rolled herself into a ball and started licking various hard-to-read places. “But, because I’m also a masochist, I’m into reading things that showcase pleasures I don’t personally indulge in.” Carnissa rolled over, cascading her hair all over the futon.

“Come to think of it, there was that year when I was a born-again Christian and I gave up EVERYTHING for Lent.”

Carnissa remembered. She had been put up for adoption, for a week, until Bartholemew read an article on “theodicy” and decided that if there was Evil, giving up good things only made it worse. Boy and cat were reunited. Also, Bartholomew had felt guilty, so he let Carnissa pick the books he would be reading. As a penance.

Bartholomew may have suspected that Carnissa only cared about the cover illustrations. If he had any children’s pop-up books, those would probably have been even more interesting. For both of them. Now, Bartholomew was about to commit himself to another huge book. He brought out the two choices for his judge to inspect. That cat refused to consider “The Name of the Rose”, but seemed very excited by “The Goldfinch”.

Bartholemew checked the page count. “775 fucking pages! Jesus Christ on a hot cross bun!” Carnissa’s claws were out before you could say “A Funny Thing Happened On The Road To Emmaus”. Bowing and apologizing profusely, Bartholemew slunk off to find a band aid and some antiseptic. Good thing he had a week off. Reading books. Can’t beat it!

“My name is Curtis, actually.”

“Curt, my man, tell me in one sentence or less why you would be the ideal candidate for this job.”

“Oh, I don’t know where to begin…”

“Next question.”

“What about the first question?”

“Live in the now, Curt!”

“But…”

“Forget regret, or life is yours to miss!”

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard that in a song somewhere!”

“Let’s just go ahead to question 3.”

“Sure, OK.”

“It wasn’t a consensual thing. So, if a client were to curse at you, what would be your response?”

“I would steer them toward less objectionable cuss words. My maw-maw is from Minnesota and she had a whole bunch of these for any occasion.”

“OK, so a customer is yelling WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU CUNTY SKANK! You would say what?”

“Son of a sea cook! Someone’s got a bee in their bonnet!”

“And then the customer pulls out a handgun…”

“I would say, gosh darnit oh shucks! Jesus Christmas, will you put that thing down? We don’t need to go back to the Big Bang!”
“And then the customer cocks the handgun, it is loaded and pointed at you…”

“Jesus, Mary, Crosby, Stills, and Nash! Have you heard the good news? Put down the gun and you don’t need to go to prison for life!”

“Curt, I have to say, these responses won’t really fly in our urban business environment.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Someone pulls a gun and tries to fuck you, you don’t just curtsy and bend over.”

“Have you read the Bible, though? That’s where I get all my ideas.”

“I don’t….read…all that much.”

“It says, REJOICE AND BE EXCEEDINGLY GLAD. It doesn’t say, despair and curse. It says TURN THE OTHER CHEEK. It doesn’t say…”

“Curt, why did you think you wanted to work at a drag queen supply store in Beverly Hills?”

“Glad you asked. My paw-paw used to wear my maw-maw’s wigs. Only when she wasn’t looking, of course. They were from Minnesota, and descended from Vikings, and we all know that whole culture is completely 100% straight.”

“I mean, the Vikings wore dresses and braided each other’s hair…”

“Tunics, that’s what they wore. Listen, I recognised that my paw-paw dressing up, doing what nowadays might be considered tucking and vogueing and lip-synching for his life…”

“You mean, he…”

“I caught him singing along to Patsy Cline records several times. Oh yah, and he always chose maw-maw’s curliest wig, too. He used to run his finger through it, just like so. Coy like that. I told myself, If I can’t be as strong or as seductive as my dear paw-paw, well, dag nabbit, I can at least sell all the stockings and heels and makeup to those who have the balls to be beautiful women!”

“Thanks, Curt. This changed everything. I’ll get back to you later today.”

My name is Eldritch. Weird Al Eldritch. Am I a ridiculous, gonzo, boho mofo? Not really. My name is a distraction. You know, to distract the Angel of Death. Maybe that’s too weird for you. Talk to my parents about it.

Love goes on forever. Somewhere. In Hollywood. Not in Bird In Hand, Pennsylvania. Whatever I think I have in my hand, might not actually be there. But if I open my hand, maybe the bird will escape? This kind of evanescence would have sent David Hume to an insane asylum. Where he could have hung out with my brother, who was told he was schizo and then started acting like he could talk to Shih Tzus.

I am not sure I like walking around in the outside world. I am very much into interior dialogue. It’s how I escape Pennsylvania, which is called the Keystone State. I am not the keystone species, meaning, if I disappeared, the ecosystem would not collapse and things would not change. Except for the bird which I am holding in my hand, which would presumably finally be liberated.

Someone, I dunno, a person with time on their hands, would write an effusive elegy, chock full of alliteration. Our weird friend wended a way well weighted with the waste of waves and wizards, woven with woe-begotten wealth and warmth. I wouldn’t want to hear a post-mortem eulogy that makes even less sense than my life, would you? I started out so bubbly, so effervescent, like a little gas giant, and now things are so attenuated, so etiolated, or, as the kids put it, so beta.

It was Valentine’s Day, and I had nothing to wear. I did, of course, have a closet full of things to wear, and they were all 50 shades of Taupe.
Call it earthy. Call it flesh tone. It’s just who I am.
My name is Mud. My name is not Mud, but why would that be wrong? Adam, the first man in the Bible, is named after the earth.

This particular outfit is tapered. It shows off my badunkadunk.
But I don’t need it to be so taut I can’t breathe. It’s loose enough so that when I walk across the room it’s like I’m moving between different states of matter. This, I hope, will confuse the Angel of Death. It’s like a cloak that’s a cloaking device. In any case, I haven’t died yet, and whenever I’m at rest I’m very conspicuous and amused. That would be at least half of the time, right? What does that say about people who never move?

My mother taught me, the best thing you can be in life is a Taurus. She was very stubborn on this point. And, if you’re not a Taurus, my mother said, find a Taurus and ride on their back. Worst case scenario, you won’t have to walk. Best case scenario, it feels good down below when you’re holding on bareback.

Tonight, I said to myself from the depths of my walk-in closet, tonight I will take the bull by the horns. Even if there is no bull, tonight is mine. Anyway, the proper study of man is man. And if man is in the moon, then tonight, we set our sights on the stars!

“Little Lion Man”

written by Victoria Masteller
directed by Jesse Edward Rosbrow
featuring Sheree V. Campbell, David Michael Kirby, Hraban Luyat, & Ed Malin

I vacillate. I can’t help it, can I? It’s like I am always a note above and a note below myself, which is called a mordent. It feels like I’m either retaining water or my past lives. Or both.

This is the essential question of modernism. How do I know the future isn’t going to be more fucked up than the past?

The feeling surrounds me, and fucks up my dreams the way McDonalds fucks up the rain forest.

It gnaws it me like when rich people put their feet in a tank of piranhas to get exfoliated. But I am not doing it by choice. So mordant.

I wish I could throw pie à la mode at Thoroughly Modern Millie. I mean, how thorough was she? Did the carpet match the drapes? Did she wipe her finger prints off the murder weapon?

And speaking of Modernism, we must end (must we not?) with T.S. Eliot, the pinnacle of it all. The author of The Waste Land, and Murder in the Cathedral. Of course, I don’t want to give away who the murderer was, but it was the Rum Tum Tugger.

A lady who did not like limerence
Set off to have sex with indifference
Her mammoth clitoris
Like a tyrannosaurus
Set off to orgasm with beneficence

She slept with mailmen and street sweepers
Get nailed up against Virginia Creepers
Got a rash on her vag
But because she’s a Sag
Was impatient to plunge even deeper

While listless she came to the club
In the corner jumped in the hot tub
I called her my pet
And because she was wet
Up against me she commenced to rub

She’s looking for something not licit
Here, take this, I won’t even miss it
She swallowed it whole
Then could not feel her soul
I wish that I weren’t complicit

I burned her with hot sexy wax
It made her feel good #FACTS
The forces of friction
If you’ll pardon my diction
Gave her a twitching attack

In the morning we went to a diner
I’m sorry, there was nothing finer
We ordered some eggs
While she said, on her legs
I can’t sit straight, so where’s the recliner?

We ate danish and lady fingers
Just like a good dream when it lingers
Coffee and contragestion
Sleep was out of the question
We were surrounded by Meistersingers

During the New Deal, no one knew they were nude.
This is what folk singers of the period tell us.

People were too busy working, building ugly office blocks, and track and field facilities, and, occasionally, theaters.

They would build bridges without bras. Build carparks without codpieces. Erect LGA airport without a lick of clothing on.
Manifest libraries with visible labia. It didn’t matter if you had an innie or an outie. No one was refused admission.

When everyone works together as comrades, you see, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing. Different kinds of clothing are a divisive tactic imposed by the class system. So, when we work together, we can assume we have come back to an age of innocence, where such discernments are not the point.

To my critics who say such a thing is indecent….I don’t give a Hoover Dam what you think.

To those who say wait a minute, I saw that mural that Diego Rivera painted of all the wonderful workers of the western world laying bricks and putting up drywall, okay, okay. Who’s to say they didn’t give Diego a bottle of tequila and ask him to cross his eyes, turn around twice, and THEN paint the mural? American clothing, if you could get it at the time, was dirty and not worth wearing. Besides, all the WPA projects were completed during the summer months, obviously. You wouldn’t build the Triborough Bridge during a snowstorm, would you? Did god give us muscles so we hide them away? Are workers allowed to believe in god? Will she get mad?

The one thing that all the workers of the western world could agree on back then–all 99% of the population–was that we must all start anew. Not like a new constitution, or a revolution or anything up that alley. More like, everyone would make a New Deal Resolution to like the old things just fine as long as there was a paycheck involved. Or maybe some bagels.
You can tell how much everyone liked the New Deal. All those highways, so straight, so many arches, and flagpoles, with eagles carved on them.

She had what seemed like a very silly compunction. She avoided storefronts with signs that featured compound modifiers.

It all started when she and her girlfriend had moved in together and were hotly debating whether to adopt a Shih Tzu. Little did either of them know that this incident, and their polarized takes on it, would spotlight their completely opposed attachment styles. Not to mention their existential, karmic baggage. Surely, only someone unconcerned about enlightenment would allow “dykes with butch haircuts” to come anywhere near a long-haired dog.

It was summer. They had lit the citronella candles on the patio to repel mosquitoes and bad blood and past lives. They had saged the bedroom. Was it too early in their lifetime love bond to get a dog? More to the point, would a Shih Tzu, which means Lion, be beneficial during the year of the Tiger? Was it cruel to cut a dog’s nails? Should this be done by a professional?

A short stroll from their place was a little hole in the wall called Self-Dog Wash. It seemed very clear what happened there. You went in to wash your dog, by yourself. But, no. She had her hand on the doorknob and fainted from the rush of colors. A bystander and her Yorkie quickly sprang to her assistance, and in no time her face was licked (by both the bystander and the Yorkie) until she regained consciousness. Nothing to worry about, she assured them with thanks. As a HSP–surely you know what that means, don’t you? You don’t? Should I be offended? I’m just kidding, I learned not to be offended, now I’m just indignant! As a HSP, sometimes I pick up vibrations, and, not to blame you or anyone else, whoever let those intentions, for what else are vibrations but the good intentions that pave the way to hell?, just let them fly, well, they will keep going in their trajectory until somewhere, on this planet? on the astral plane? Deep Playa? Santa Fe?, they hit a target, and bullseye her in the chest. That is what happened to me, but look at me laugh at trouble and pick myself off the ground.

By this time, the bystander had grabbed the Yorkie and run away down Graham Avenue, a place which had Dissociative Identity Disorder and sometimes called itself Avenida de Puerto Rico and other times Via Vespucci.

Self-Dog Wash! That must mean there is an inner dog. That dog is dirty, oh so dirty. Let the dog out! How dare you imprison the benign canine! Self-Dog. Do not question the hyphen. That hyphen is there is a bridge. A covalent bond. A mystic marriage of Sweet and Savory. An atom-smashing moment of absolutely dreadful certainty.

Back home she went. How can we be in love when you haven’t even washed your inner dog? Don’t you know you’re wearing an invisible leash? After that, she had a hard time remembering what she said during the conflict. Suffice it to say, it led to the locks being changed.

To this day, she refuses to live in any dwelling where metal keys are required. But magnetic entry cards are OK, and are below her HSP threshold. The less physical items required to cross a barrier, the less sensory information floods back.

One thing, however, remains to be said. Who is the narrator here? It is I, Yetta the Yorkie. I saw most of it, and what I didn’t see. well, that lady’s neighbor’s Labrador told me the next day at the dog run. Humans think they’re highly sensitive, fine, but just imagine how much better you can read the room after thoroughly licking someone’s face.