Hoboken or Bust!
Sweetie, remember this unfinished gem? We started it at Yaddo the year before you left to dry out at Promises.
I was inconsolable, but found some comfort in the arms of a Broadway star, the name of which I promised never to reveal (Cherry Jones). Those were heady times and we were both on the road so frequently, it is no wonder we were never able to finish our Master Piece. I had quite forgotten about it and I thought our sequel to From Hair to Eternity was lost forever!
When I was packing (boxes, darling, boxes!) I came across our martini-stained manuscript you insisted we type on that old Wellington supposedly used by Patricia Highsmith (to type up her list of women she had bedded was the rumor - the fact that you made that list, darling, is a stunning testament to your dogged determination). You said at the time that it would give our story a certain "sociopathic eroticism" which was big at the time, but I don't know. Reading over it now, I think our biggest influence was, and remains, gin.
I wanted to put it here for safe keeping. Your copy remains lost, yes? I still maintain Joe Eszterhas stole it when you two, high on peyote, came up with Showgirls. He was always a shifty bastard, but you loved him so what could I say? We were young, darling, and so very idealistic...
Title: Hoboken or Bust! (A Love Story)
Authors: Vivian Darkbloom (aka theholyinnocent) and LN James (aka adastranot)
What this is: The unfinished and most likely never to be finished sequel to From Hair to Eternity written long ago and under the influence.
What this is not: Required “homework” assigned by our “mentors” at Betty Ford in which we make “amends” to all those we have harmed because of our “problem”.
Whaa? Remember when Xena was all the rage and we secretly wrote reams and reams of fanfic, some of it Uber in nature, some of it naughty, and years later we stumbled across ourselves on the web and recalled that we still had one last hurrah that was only seen by about 10 members of secret email list devoted to Spanking Gabrielle (as well as to “women’s history in Pelopennesus”) so we decided, in the parlance of the today’s world, WTF? Yeah, so this is it.
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"Ok...move just a little to the right...no, not that far..come back a few inches..okay, hold still...action!"
I sorta felt like I was James Cameron directing 'Titantic', trying to get everyone with a lifejacket to either jump off the goddamned boat or fall fifty stories to their icy deaths below, either way, you knew that Kate Winslet chick was gonna make it because who the fuck else was that old lady supposed to be anyway?
Right now, though, I was trying to direct Carson Wilds in what could be my finest work yet and everything had to be just right, not a hair out of place.
"Stash, tell me again why I'm doing this?" My little beauty consultant said this while lounging sprawled across my bed.
I looked through the digicam viewfinder again at the image, focused, and held up my hand, waving a little.
"Carson, baby, scoot over to the left a little...scoot."
You ever have one of those epiphany things? This morning after I rolled off my new babe, Carson, she stood up on the bed and did that scene from Some Kind of Wonderful', where hottie Mary Stuart Masterson is being all butch and telling that annoying Lea Thompson she better not break Eric Stolz's heart or she'd break her legs (as if MSM would go for a limpdick like Stolz in the first place..hello, 'Mask'?) It was then that I saw my future from such a perfect angle and my artistic side emerged once again.
"This isn't going to show up on e-Bay, is it?" Carson whined.
I sighed. Carson had asked this question five times already. Despite the fact that I probably *could* make a shitload of cash for a .jpg of this, I had bigger plans for my art.
Much bigger plans.
"Hold still, baby...every time you talk, it blurs the picture. Could you spread a little wider?"
Now, some people might consider what we're doing porn. Sure, Carson Wilds was buck naked and her snatch was displayed across my Queens apartment wall on a gigantic
85-inch-surround- sound-MegaTube-PanasonicViewtronic big screen. Oh, this wasn't porn though...no, this was Art with a capital "A" and a lowercase "r" and "t". I not only saw Carson's perfect Chia-do, but the key to my vindication and redemption (not to mention an all-expense paid trip to the Poconos and one of those heart-shaped beds).
But to really understand my artistic motivation, you need to know what was done in the past, what was left undone, and who did all that doing. Here's the deal:
For ten years, the art world has been a battlefield and my arch-rival and nemesis was none other than an evil bitch I had come to alternately hate and love, not unlike tequila. Plus, she thought I owed her after that whole suspicious studio fire of which I surely know nothing about.
Her name? Taura Hymen. Her medium? Ice sculptures.
Now, Taura was as cold as her "art", as blonde as Carson wasn't, and as persistent as a 95-mile- an-hour-through-Memphis-high-speed-chase on Cops. That skinny, slutty, evil ice cube never stopped gunning for me and we fought in the press and at all the exhibits. Every art event was a show down between her and I, every show was a fight for wall and space. She won some, I won some, but we always fought dirty: One time, at a coffeehouse display, she replaced my paint with hydrochloric acid and I lost seven precious Arabian horsehair brushes and three works of art from my "Ode to Delta Burke" trilogy; once, I surreptitiously provided the audience with cigars and handy mini-blow- torches to light them. Her "Atomic Popsicles on Ice" melted all over Gia's Galleria in Soho and she was banned from all shows in which parquet figured prominently in the floor plan. Point is, Taura Hymen and I were like the Eisner and Katzenberg of the artworld, only without that fucking mouse.
"Earth to Stash? You gonna answer my question?" Carson was clearly getting restless.
Distractedly, I zoomed in, checked the image on the wall and clicked before I answered, "What's that, baby?"
My sweet inspiration sighed, "Stashy, what's this all about? What's up with the coochie-cam?"
If only LiLi, my mentor and art school teacher, could see me now. She always said, 'Stash, all art is filled with desire, naked and blind. In order to create art, you must first serve art.' No mistaking it, I had served this piece of art. For 36 hours straight. Naked and blindfolded. And in a variety of positions.
"Hoboken." I murmured as I stood back and admired my wall of Carson and envisioned what would become my next Big Thing and what would finally put to rest any doubts about who was tops in the artworld.
"Hoboken?" Carson asked as she got up and stood next to me, looking at herself as if she'd never seen something quite like it, which to be honest, who *has* seen one's own magnified 85 times?
My eyes glazed over, my voice deepened, and I told Carson Wilds of my plans, "I shall use this image as an outline in which I will construct a three-dimensional life-like recreation of your beauty and I shall use paper mache' to mold and form every fold and curve and I shall create the world's largest Chia-Carson and it shall be 85 inches of pure perfection and my Master Piece shall be the finest ever to be entered in the Eighth Annual Hoboken Arts and Crafts Expo and I shall once and for all defeat that blond ice bitch."
*****************************************
I love Hoboken in the springtime. I love Hoboken in the fall. I love Hoboken in the winter. When it drizzles. I love Hoboken in the summer. When it sizzles. I love Hoboken every moment. Every moment of the day. I love Hoboken! Why do I love Hoboken? Because my Stash is there!
"Carson, will you shut the fuck up?" Paolo moaned, cradling his hungover head.
Apparently I was singing aloud. Such is the joy of a well-schupped woman.
Dear reader, are you hungover too? Am I giving you a headache, much as I'm doing to my beloved friend? Do I talk too much? What do you really think of stretch fabrics?
What about wide-wale corduroys? And finally, the question that makes my overloved snatch ache even more: Was it wrong of me to let the incredibly fuckable Stash Maleski use me to settle a score with some blond psychobitch?
Paolo and I were on the road, heading to Hoboken, where my Stash would unveil my Chia Snatch. We were stuck in the Holland Tunnel, where traffic was a huge, aching pimple, waiting to explode. Our vehicle--which I was driving because Paolo's license had been revoked years ago after he tried to do a "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" pose from the sunroof of his ex-boyfriend's BMW after putting the car on autodrive and I really don't know why the cops were so upset, traffic on 9th Avenue is *nothing* at 3 am--was a turquoise blue Firebird kindly lent to us by Paolo's mami.
"Take good care of my baby!" she had cried, as Paolo--limp as a spineless cat--slithered in the car. (I had told him how passe ecstasy was, but noooooo....)
"Mrs. Torquemada!" I had cried, aghast. "You know I always put Paolo before myself." Especially while walking through certain sections of the East Village late at night.
"I mean the car, gringa!" she spat, shaking a fist at me.
Paolo was now setting up the glove compartment as a mini bar. He pulled out the martini pitcher and poured himself one. "No drinks until you hit Jersey," he said to me. He sucked the olive right off the plastic sword that had been moored in the drink.
I pouted, but Paolo handed me an h'or d'oeuvre from the glove compartment. It was a little shrimp puff on a map of Connecticut.
"This whole thing is like that Friends episode," Paolo was saying. He shook the little sword at me (and no, that wasn't a euphemism for anything).
"WHAT Friends episode?" I moaned.
"You know, the one where Ross is gonna marry the English bitch but then at the altar he says Rachel's name instead of the bitch's name. You dig?"
"Paolo, you overgrown man-child, I am not marrying Stash Maleski. For your information, I don't even have a china pattern picked out yet." I tried to give him a cool, Emma Thompson like appraisal. Nonetheless, there was a good reason for that: I thought Stash might want to design a china pattern of our own!
Traffic finally moved, and we were out of the tunnel.
"No, Carson. You said that after you guys did the nasty and you creamed all over your cell phone, you said, 'I love you, Snatch.' See, that's the problem. That's your true love, not Stash. You love pussy too much to ever settle down with just one."
There was some truth in that. After all, Who Can Eat Just One? But wait! That was just a potato chip commercial! Damn capitalist society. But Stash was different. I knew it. It wasn't just the way she purred my name...or screamed it at the top of her lungs while riding me like Debra Winger on the mechanical bull (no, not John Travolta) in Urban Cowboy...it wasn't the way she made me bend over the couch and eased a dildo in my ass while singing "Have You Ever Been Mellow" (and she was right, that song is so relaxing!)...it wasn't even the way she ate licorice twists out of my cunt.
All right, I don't know what the hell it was about Stash Maleski.
Whatever it was, it compelled me to borrow an ugly car and enter New Jersey armed with nothing but shrimp puffs, alcohol, and the cuban heels of Paolo's boots.
"Chica, I don't remember Hoboken looking like this," Paolo was saying, peering around the small town we were in. It was scarily idyllic: there were lots of trees and nice houses. And the people walking around were smiling! Suddenly Paolo's well-manicured nails were digging into my thigh. "Everybody here is WHITE. And they all look like pod people!" He started shrieking in an annoying kind of way (well, I guess no type of shrieking is pleasant unless it's Stash begging you to do that to her one more time, 'cause once is never enough with a hair consultant like you...) and sounding precisely like Estelle Parsons in "Bonnie and Clyde" after Gene Hackman gets his head blown off.
"Don't make me slap you, Paolo," I growled.
"But Carson," he screeched, pointing at rather annoyingly accurate signage (it was Jersey--who would've guessed?) on a street corner, "we're in PRINCETON!"
*****************************************
As I made my way through the Gene "Matchgame" Rayburn Memorial Arts Centre in Hoboken, I felt like I was in some fucking Martha Stewart nightmare. Only this Martha Stewart lived in New Jersey. You ever try carrying a 6-foot paper mache' snatch through booths and booths of hand-tatted pillows, macrame'd purses and plant holders, hook rugs, cutesy wooden mice dressed in country colors (blue and mauve!), those annoying lawn ornaments of cut-out silhouettes of fat ladies bending over, ceramic gnomes, and yes, even shrink art? There is no God.
I fought my way through the crowd, looking for my assigned exhibit space (or as they called it, 'craft booth'). I've gone through a lot of shit for my art and this was a prime example. Of course, my 'performance art' period was pretty fucking embarrassing now that I think about it, but somehow Hoboken always seemed worse than anything you could do with a banana and some chocolate syrup while "Knights in White Satin" played in the background. However, this was the one art competition I knew my nemesis, ice-sculptor Taura Hymen, held most dear. She was from Hackensack afterall.
"Hey, watch it, bitch!" This was yelled at me from a little old lady sitting at her woven string pot-holders booth. The edge of my Chia-Snatch had knocked off a set of matching hot-pink and yellow oven mitts and she was pissed. But this was New Jersey and this was the East Coast so I was forced to respond in kind.
"Shove it up your ass," I muttered as I pressed onward. Fucking Jersey girls.
Actually, come to think of it, I could have literally shoved her up Chia-Carson's ass. In a moment of brilliance, my sexy little hair consultant lover had suggested I add a sphincter to her Snatch-art since I had spent a considerable amount of time getting to know the real one. Creating such a thing was another story, but I think it turned out inspiring.
Speaking of my new hottie, Carson Wilds was a dynamo in the sack. I have never known someone who was able to drink a Bahama Mama while simultaneously riding my thigh and singing "Rhinestone Cowboy" without spilling a drop. It kind of reminded me of that scene in 'Sixteen Candles' where Long Duck Dong rides his sexy girlfriend while she peddles that exercise bike at that party where you're like, someone please kick that prom queen's ass because she trashed Jake's house but in the end you're like, she's really just misunderstood and does have a heart underneath it all because she really kisses Anthony Michael Hall in the end and you're like, maybe there's hope for geeks like him afterall and then you're like, whatever happened to Molly Ringwald anyway?
"Nice try, Stash, but you'll never win with that," purred the voice of someone I knew well.
"Ice bitch," I sneered.
Standing in craft booth #85, right next to mine, was Taura Hymen. Her exhibit was decorated to the nines and a chilling blue spotlight lit up the centerpiece: a sculpted impressionistic replica of New Jersey's governor (and future EPA Administrator), Christine Todd Whitman. Oh, that ice whore was playing up the Jersey vote for all it was worth.
"What's that supposed to be, Stash, your face?" she cackled with derision as she pointed at the snatch I was carrying.
There are very few people in this world who force me into childish retorts, but Ice Ass here was one of them. "No, it's yours, only with less hair," I smiled, knowing what few people knew: Taura Hymen had been a man just five years ago and still bore the signs of too much testosterone, namely a full beard that needed to be shaved and waxed daily, despite her platinum blond hair and big tits. When she smiled even further, I knew my barb had hit a nerve. This would be an all-out war in Hoboken.
"Oh, you clever girl, Stash. Tell me, how is it you plan to win when your..." Here, Taura used her fingers to wave at my Chia-Snatch. I had set it down in my exhibit space and propped it up, using the kick-stand I had fashioned on the back from an old broom handle, "..little piece of pornography there doesn't even have a clitoris?"
I glanced back quickly and was stunned by the sight. Sure enough, there was a gaping hole (so to speak) in the upper center of my Chia-Snatch. Carson's clit! Fuck! I had forgotten the hand-thrown, fire-kilned glossed golden ceramic globe back in Queens! Carson had insisted on bringing it to bed with us last night with a 'Stash, baby, let's just rub this for good luck' and damn if I hadn't forgotten it this morning in bed where it was being spooned lovingly by a sleeping Carson. Fuck! Where was Carson!??
*****************************************************
The Princeton policeman stared at the car's registration papers, then he stared at me. He had been doing this for the past five minutes and I was now thoroughly convinced that Dan Quayle could read faster than this and without his lips moving as much.
"So," the cop finally said, "you are Mrs. Imelda Yvonne Dominguez Riveria Goldfarb Fitzgerald Torquemada?
I cleared my throat. "Si!" I enunciated in my perfect high school Spanish.
Paolo leaned toward the open window and chimed in, while batting his enviable eyelashes, "Officer, honey, my cousin's English is not very good..."
"License?" muttered the policeman.
"Officer, honey, my cousin doesn't have a license. You see, in Puerto Rico, they let us drive without licenses just as long as you have a relative and a Virgin Mary in the car." He pointed to the little plastic VM that swung in a slow, tantalizing bellydance from the rear view mirror.
"Uh-huh. Ma'am, I'm gonna have to ask you to step out of the car."
Paolo lunged across me and I could inhale, deeply, the rich scent of his Paco Rabanne aftershave, and I could feel his package pressing against my thigh. I knew it was not close contact with my thighs that gave him a boner, but this square-headed bland blond man in a uniform. "To each his own!" has always been part of my personal philosophy (as is "As God is my witness, may an FM station never play an Emerson, Lake and Palmer song again"), and if Paolo wanted to play hide-the- salami with this slab of American manhood...and get us out of being arrested, well, damn it, that was hunky-dory with moi. "Officer, honey," he purred deliciously, just like Tina Louise, "may I speak with you alone? Behind that lovely bit of shrubbery over there?"
"Uh. Okay." Before I could say "Outback Steakhouse" Paolo and the local gendarme were behind a bush, and Paolo was making some sort of noise like Julie Newmar as the Cat Woman in the Batman TV series, and while I did appreciate Michelle Pfeiffer in the movie role, Miss Newmar's performance was, doubtless, the definitive one. While waiting for my colleague, I cut my nails, finished reading "The Brothers Karamazov," and practiced saying "I love you, Stash," in the rear view mirror. I actually got it right a couple of times! I smiled. I looked sincere. I was a sexy bitch, baby! Then I heard someone crooning "Sweet Mystery of Life" just like Madeline Kahn in "Bride of Frankenstein" and I knew it was over, 'cause the skinny Puerto Rican boy was singing.
Paolo emerged from the bush, smoking a cigarette and wearing a badge. He sighed as he slid in the passenger seat beside me. He stroked the badge lovingly. "He gave it to me. I think it means we're going steady." Tears welled in his eyes. "Oh God, Carson, I love him! I hate to leave him like this...with his pants down and unconscious in a bush."
I wanted to say something about a bush being the safest place a girl can be, but didn't. "What's his name?"
Paolo stared at me, dazed. "Huh? Oh." Then he looked at the badge. "Officer Reilly."
"Paolo, darling, I'm sure Officer Reilly knows how much you care. He'll be fine, unless it rains."
Just then, several specks of that cosmic dandruff known as snow fell listlessly against the windshield. "Or snows," I added.
Paolo spewed smoke and tossed the spent cigarette out the window. "Floor it, chica."
With the help of Officer Reilly's walkie-talkie (another love memento which I used to contact HQ and, using my butchest tones, asked for directions to Hoboken), we arrived at the Gene Rayburn Memorial Arts Centre. As I parked the car, I felt giddy like a schoolgirl. Rather, more like a pot-smoking schoolgirl who hadn't been laid by her big strapping artiste noir in almost 8 hours.
My head was in the clouds (or up my ass, depending on how unsympathetic you might be to my cause) when I stepped out of the car, stared in the back seat, and realized my fatal error. "Shit, Paolo, where's my clit?" I blurted in sheer panic.
My companion made a face. "You don't know where your clit is? What kinda fucked-up dyke are you, Carson?"
"No, not that clit. I mean the hand-thrown, fire-kilned glossed golden ceramic globe that Stash made for her exhibit!"
A very strange look crossed Paolo's face. "Oh. You mean that thing, it was kinda hollowed out like a bowl?"
"Yes."
"It was sitting in the back seat before we left Queens?"
"Yes."
"And it kinda looked a first-grader's ceramic toy boat?"
"Yessss," I hissed dangerously.
"Oh." Paolo toyed nervously with an earring. "I gave it to Mami as a serving bowl for her Midnight Mass party. She needed something for her special onion dip."
Paolo may run like a girl, but he is faster than an Alabama virgin runnin' from her brothers (another one of Momma's sayings). Nonetheless, I followed him relentlessly, screaming his name, as he foolishly sought the shelter of the Gene Rayburn Memorial Arts Centre, unaware that my dark, brooding Stash lay in wait in that dark brooding building, anticipating my clits, and would kill him dead once she found out what happened and got her very talented hands on him. She wasn't known as the Destroyer of Multimedia for nothing.
All the while, I was wondering whatever happened to Brett Somers.
***************************************
I don't know about you, but I get nervous when I see Charo. There is just something unsettling about that woman. What the fuck is up with her? I mean, really, just what exactly does she *do* besides say "coochie-coochie-coo"? Did you know her real name is Maria Rosario Pilar Martinez Molina Baeza? I think she is a spy. And I think she is here to sabotage me: She is one of the judges in this year's Hoboken Arts and Crafts Expo 2000.
And here I am, Carson-clit-less. "Fuck!"
Okay, so I kind of like to think of myself as the McGyver of the art world. I can make anything out of a few paperclips and some twine. One time, I got stuck at this boring fucking art thing at MOMA. "50 Years of Neo-Postmodernistic Surrealism and Its Impact on Textures and Colors: Why Florida Embraced Pink Stucco and Flamingos" and they served virgin Pina Coladas. No booze. NO BOOZE. You tell me that you wouldn't be trying to chew off your own leg to get out of that beartrap my friends and I'd call you a fucking liar. So, I crafted this simple chute from a cocktail napkin and a tampon string and jumped out of the hole in the air vent I cut using a dime in the ladies room on the first floor. It might not have been pretty, but I was free. If I was going to salvage my snatch-art, I would have to be creative and find a replacement clit before the judges came by my booth. Charo, you are my enemy.
"Oh, Stash, Stash dear..." Taura Hymen was waving at me and smiling while she passed out Little Debbie brownies to passers-by. She's such an art whore! Buying votes and influencing with chocolate. I hate her!
"Fuck you!" I yelled as I jogged past, more determined than ever to win this fucking art show and the Poconos vacation that was the grand prize. Why oh why had I made my precious hand-thrown, fire-kilned glossed golden ceramic globe removable in the first place?
So I sprinted past the stencils and the cross-stitches and the paint-by-numbers and the claymation trolls and the flower arrangements with eucalyptus and the quilts and the woven with loom rugs and the glitter and glue and string and fabric and paint and every other fucking type of art and craft thing until I saw *It*. I had found the perfect thing to substitute for the Carson-clit. I stealthily and literally snatched my new snatch-pea out from under the nose of a mother and daughter craft team from Trenton who were none the wiser.
Serendipity, I am now your faithful devotee! Your follower! Your fan! Your worshiper! Your cultist! Your concubine! Your courtesan! Your cu...well, you get the picture.
I almost didn't see the little pixie shagged one until I nearly plowed over Carson on my way back to my booth with my prize.
"Stash!" Carson threw her arms and legs around me like a vise grip, "I'm so sorry, Stash! Paolo gave away my clit to his mom and then we got pulled over by the cops in Princeton and then Paolo had sex and then I had to stop at Wendy's for a junior bacon cheeseburger and then Paolo made more martinis and then I realized we were going to be late for the show and then Paolo told me not to worry so much because when I worry like that I sometimes get sick to my stomach like that one time, at bandcamp, when I had to do everyone's hair for the variety skit and I didn't have any hotrollers and oh God, Stash! Oh, Stash, Stash, Stash, Stash, Snatch, Stash!"
I kept walking, especially when I saw that the judges were rounding the corner and were only three booths away from mine.
"There's no time, Carson...hey, did you call me 'Snatch' again?" I looked down at her and growled. While it was true that I didn't mind so much about the name thing, especially when my little hair consultant murmured it over and over again deliriously while deeply ensconced between my legs, I was a little perturbed by it.
"Oh, Stash, no no no...you're my one and only Stash, my muStashy, my Stashagogo, my little Snatchypoo" Carson covered my lips with hers before I could say anything else and I had the distinct impression that she was trying to get my mind off the fact that she had spooned her own 6-inch diameter clit the night before and thus, here we were.
I tore my lips away and vaulted us over my exhibition table, landing next to a 6-foot muff sans clit, "Look, Carson, we don't have much time left! Look!"
Carson disentangled herself and looked to where I was pointing. Sure enough, the judges were making their way towards us, Charo in the lead wearing sequins and coochie-cooing all over the place.
"Hey, look, it's Charo! Cool!" Carson smiled and I just gave her the look of death, "Um, I mean, Charo, that evil Spanish spy."
"Quick, see who the other judges are while I get this ready. I found something I could use as your clit." I got to work, using my bare hands, a jigsaw I stole from some dumbass at the wood cut booth, and some lipstick. Don't ask me why I had lipstick, it's a long story.
Carson stood up on her tiptoes and peered at the end of the row. Over her shoulder, she spoke, "Okay, well, there's Charo and oh, hey, that's Corey Feldman. Wow, he hasn't changed a bit. Scary. There's one more, but I can't see...wait....well, now we know what happened to Brett Somers. She's the other judge, Stash."
I narrowed my eyes and kept working, "Must. Build. Clit."
"Oh, Stash, you're never going to win this," That damn bitch Hymen was sing-songing from her booth and I wanted to kill her. "Did you know that Corey's favorite food was Little Debbie brownies? Isn't that a coincidence?"
"Fuck you! Your ice sculpture sucks ass!" I turned to see Carson flip her off and stick out her tongue. My little hero.
"Bite me, shag-queen," Taura hissed and went back to giving out brownies.
"Okay, what do you think?" I asked while I held up the item for inspection. It was round and smooth on one side and I thought, given the flesh-tone it already had, it would easily pass as a Carson-clit.
Carson made the strangest face and looked at the object I held in my hand. With a tilt of her head, my beauty consultant warily asked, "Stash, what, exactly, is that?"
I smiled and raised an eyebrow, turn the object around for her to see. I thought for a minute, my lover Carson Wilds was going to pass out. Her face went pale for a brief moment but then she recovered quickly, being the trooper that she is. When she saw the pile of long golden faux curled hair I had ripped off and tossed on the floor, she whispered.
"My God Stash, please don't tell me that's the head of a JonBenet Ramsey doll."
Turning it back around to the clit side, I grinned proudly and shoved it in the Carson-snatch, where it fit snugly and looked perfect before I wiped off my hands, "I'll just take a lie detector test and deny everything."
*************************************
It seems everyone has a theory about Charo, except me. Paolo, for example, believes that Charo is singlehandedly responsible for Al Pacino's accent in Scarface. And that, if this secret were brought to the forefront of American consciousness, Hollywood would crumble to dust. I kinda think that would be groovy, but Paolo, in a rare moment of clarity, thought that we should just let it be--because something worse would surely spring up in its place. So I think it's enough that Brian DePalma has been punished by directing "Mission to Mars."
And then I once had an affair with this Cuban chick named Fidelia. Well, when I brought up "Scarface," man, did she go off! she went on about how Pacino's accent was the lousiest damn Cuban accent she'd ever heard in her life, and she'd never heard *anyone*--Cuban or Puerto Rican or Mexican or Panamanian or Dominican or Spanish--ever talk like that, and this movie just reinforced all negative stereotypes of Latinos...yadda yadda yadda, I was getting bored when suddenly she blurted out that Charo was responsible for the whole mess of a movie.
When I pressed her about the Charo matter, she grew silent and fearful. That affirmed my suspicions. And when I pressed her about another matter, lower, and with my thumb, she started screaming my name. But she never said another word about....
Charo. You know, Maria Rosario Pilar Martinez Molina Baeza. Former spouse of Xavier Cugat. Fluent in five languages. Winner of "Guitar Player" magazine's reader's poll as best flamenco guitarist.
Hell, Pacino should be glad--he got off lucky, only having to star in that movie with Keanu Reeves where he plays the devil or whatever. Not to mention the Oscar. Who would've thought he'd win a fucking award for just saying "HOO-HAH" every five fucking minutes?
Back to Charo.
There she was, coochie-cooing her way toward us. Stash was twitching like a spastic threatened with a cattle prod, just like I was a few minutes ago when she more or less admitted that the chia clit was the head of a...well, I just can't say it. Not right now. Let me just say, THE PARENTS ARE GUILTY. THEY DID IT.
Where was I? Yeah, Charo.
So even though Charo legally changed her date of birth--which, by the way, would have made her 11 when she married Xavier Cugat in 1963--she is, nonetheless, running along the Mother Teresa side of the age continuum these days. Yet she was wearing a peach-colored halter top, which barely covered her sagging melons. Evil Ice Bitch Taura Hymen was still plying Corey Feldman with brownies and Brett Somers, God bless her, asked Taura, "Honey, these are hash brownies, aren't they?"
But Charo was not interested in Taura's blatant suck-up attempts; we must at least give her credit for that. No, her gaze wandered over to Stash's booth. Her eyes bugged comically, just like they always did whenever she guested on the Merv Griffith show, when she saw the Chia Snatch. Her gaze lingered on the piece of a piece for but a moment--and then she laid her evil Spanish stare on Stash.
While it's true that I can be fascinated with a snow globe for hours, I never imagined that Charo could apply so many inflections, so many interpretations, flavors, and nuances, to the phrase "coochie-coochie." Of course, Charo's had a lot of years to work with that phrase, hasn't she? So many years of perfecting it, honing it...
...we're now in Monte Carlo. It is 1965 and Charo and Xavier are on a yacht with John Huston and the girl who played Miss Moneypenny in "Casino Royale." They are sunning themselves.
Charo: Xavier, my audition for "Persona" is next week. I'm very nervous, Bergman is so tough on actresses. He made Liv Ullman cry.
Xavier: *grunts, is fantasizing about Miss Moneypenny*
Charo: Listen carefully. This is the climactic scene, where I tell Liv Ullman about my failed marriage, my abortion, and my dead cat.
Xavier: *grunts encouragingly*
Charo: Coochie. *beat* Coochie. *another beat* Coo. *a long pause* Well?
Xavier: *grunts approvingly*
...so let's say I was impressed when the Spanish harridan and Stash locked eyes and Charo hissed, "Staaaaaaaaaaaaash" followed by the most evil, most venom-dripping, foulest "coochie coochie!" I had ever heard.
I was so terrified I hid behind my magnificent pillar of dark artistry and grabbed her firm ass. Which got me kind of aroused. I was trying to discreetly hump her when Stash retorted brilliantly, "Coochie coochie to you too, Spanish spy!" resplendent with her trademark sneer. (It's true, there is now a StashSneer(tm), and you can end up doing community services for 48 hours in certain states if you misuse the StashSneer(tm).)
Charo raised a claw-like hand, like a witch, looking as if she were about to put a curse on my Stashcake. I gasped with fear and clutched Stash closer to me, rubbing my breasts against her powerful back. "God, Stash, I'm so frightened!" I said breathlessly, just like Lt. Uhura on the old Star Trek used to say to Capt. Kirk all the time.
"And God, Carson, I'm all wet! Will you keep it in your pants for five minutes, baby?" implored Stash.
"Staaaaaaash," said Charo, "you are the evil one, coochie coochie! You have corrupted yet another woman with your feeelthy waaaaaays. I know now that was your plan, that was how you had me dismissed from teeeeeeaching at Our Lady of Lockjaw."
"Stash?" I asked apprehensively, fumbling with her button-fly jeans.
She swatted my hands away. "Don't listen to her, Carson! She's evil! Pure evil!"
"But tell me, tell me what she's talking about!"
"Go on, Staaaaaaaaash, tell your leeetle friend," Charo said. Then she suddenly spat "coochie coochie!" and this one was staccato, like a gun firing, or an outburst of flamenco dancing.
Stash spoke quickly, like Sal Mineo on uppers. "In 1984 I was a senior at Our Lady of Lockjaw. Charo was the music teacher. She tried to get me kicked out of school because I was sleeping my way through the lacrosse team--"
"I was their coach, damn you!" Charo shouted. "You ruined their focus!"
"--but she was really trying to get rid of me because she knew I knew her secret--she is a Basque separatist! She was spying on us!"
Why a Basque separatist would be interested in a Catholic girls' school in Bison Chip, Kansas, was a little beyond me. Perhaps it was time for me to pass on that therapist's number to Stash.
"Liar!" Charo hissed. She looked at me. "Do you know what the girls used to call this sex monster?" Her sinister eyes glinted and she pointed at my Stasharama. "Stash *Molesty*! That's what! Coochie coochie!" This coochie-coochie possessed the power, the rage, the fury, of a good "So there!"
"You Spanish skank, you're just jealous! You're pissed as hell that I slept with your lacrosse team, and the English teacher, and the home ec teacher, and the social studies teacher, and the remainder of the senior class!"
Charo screeched in disbelief. Obviously she had not known about the others.
"That's right, Charo! I was the McDonald's of cunnilingus that year! 132 SERVED!" screamed Stash.
And this, more than the tongue-curling exercises that she did every morning, explained why Stash is a Muff Diver among muff divers.
Taura Hymen, her frighteningly Martha Stewart instincts on full tilt, approached us. "Well, I think we could all use a brownie after that distasteful little revelation," she sniffed.
At this moment came Paolo, who had been at the snack stand. "Carson, there were no giant corn dogs, so I just got you the curly fries--" He stopped dramatically and dropped the fries. "MIA MADRE!" he squealed.
I had expected this reaction the moment he laid eyes on Charo. But he wasn't looking at Charo. He was looking at the Ice Bitch!
"Paolo!" blurted Taura Hymen.
"Why, why are you here? Oh...how could you!" wailed my best friend.
Charo and Stash were eating brownies and watching.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"Taura, as 'she' is called now, used to be...my...my...MY BOYFRIEND!" Gotta hand it to Paolo, he delivered the line just like Cloris Leachman did in "Young Frankenstein." Then he half-turned, ducked his head, and burst into tears before running from the room, all very much like Sandra Dee in "Peyton Place."
"Christ, I need a drink," said Brett Somers.
So did I.
*************************************
It's hard to be glamorous in the ladies room of the Gene "Matchgame" Rayburn Memorial Arts Centre, but somehow Paolo had managed. He is nothing if not resourceful. My friend had set up shop on a short low couch, complete with a fine silk duvet cover and had hung several tasteful Japanese wall prints. He had removed most of the high-glare fluorescent lights and replaced them with soft pink bulbs. In one of the sinks, he had placed a handful of polished black stones and turned on the faucet slightly, creating the tinkling sounds of an oriental rock fountain. On the counter next to him, he had set up a mini-bar (complete with chartreuse no less) and had a mountain of soft embroidered handkerchiefs available for his use. And he was using one now to daintily dab the tears from his eyes as I walked in.
I looked around the room and shook my head. Paolo was in mourning and this was his traditional method of receiving visitors. I had seen it a million times before. After every breakup, the routine was the same. I did have to hand it to him though, he rarely mourned twice for the same man..er, woman in this case I suppose.
"Oh Carson! My life is over", Paolo wailed, making a grand gesture to put his hand over his eyes and reach for his martini at the same time, "there is no point in going on."
I knew what this meant. I'd have to make myself a drink just to get through his soliloquy. One time, back in 1991, Paolo was so distraught over this actor, Grant Alexsander, who played Philip Spaulding on Guiding Light, he prattled on for hours, crying in his drink and reciting dialog from A Love Story and Terms of Endearment.
Naturally, when I pointed out that neither of those movies had anything to do with the fact that Grant had simply changed hairdressers, Paolo threw his martini glass against the wall and fell to the couch, inconsolable for hours. Only a suggestion to go for sushi and saki roused him into full recovery.
"Carson, he was the love of my life, how could he do this to me! Steve was so cute too!" Paolo let out another loud sob and hid his face in the sleeve of his red kimono.
Trying to be helpful, I sat down next to him and put my arm around his shoulder. Of course, he had done the same for me many times. I'll always be thankful for the time when he helped me get over Greta, this German exchange student at NYU studying hotel management. He told me I'd feel ever so much better if I simply got drunk on cheap American beer (German beer would simply not do) and crashed the gates of the German Embassy, shouting, "guten Tag and place aux dames! Sauerkraut is for wussies! Take your nasty cabbage back and shove it up your ass!" Needless to say, the plan worked because I soon forgot Greta in the holding tank of the 54th precinct, charged with trespassing and libel. It was there I met Lizzie, a Bronx waitress, in for possession and we bonded, both figuratively and literally. There's nothing like a post- incarceration doobie to help you forget about a lady.
"Aye, Carson, I was so in love with him. I remember San Trope, Tahiti, Bali, not to mention South Beach. Oh, the places we went! He, on his motorcycle, me in the sidecar. He was an Adonis to me, darling, an Adonis! God, I think I still love him! Steve, mi amor!" And with that, Paolo flung himself face down into his duvet cover and cried like a baby, shaking and gurgling.
Of course, the doobie I had concealed in bra wasn't going to help in Paolo's case, because his ‘Steve' was actually a woman named Taura and she was now an ice sculptor with a huge rack and a stack of brownies to ply the judges at the annual Hoboken Arts and Crafts Expo 2000. This called for desperate measures. I needed to think of a way to help both my friend, Paolo, and my lover, Stash who, afraid that her precious giant snatch would somehow be sabotaged, refused to accompany me into the bathroom.
It was at this moment that I had one of those light-bulb epiphanies, thanks in part to the second gin and tonic Paolo had poured me while he cried in my lap. I had a plan!
"Listen, Paolo, I need to leave you for a minute," I tried to sit up and was held in the clutches of a Puerto Rican queen in the middle of a drunken crying jag. It took all my willpower to free myself and the look on Paolo's face told me I would need to hurry. It was the look Sally Field got on her face in Steal Magnolias, right before she goes into that crazy grief scene at Shelby's funeral, whirling around and alternately crying and yelling at Olympia Dukakis and Dolly Parton and Darryl Hannah and Shirley Maclaine. I put a finger to his lips and shook my head while I whispered, "Shhh, Paolo, hold that act. Save your energy, I've got a plan."
And with that, I left him alone in his sitting room, not only impressed by his ability to hold it together, but to also produce a tray of hors d'oeuvres from his bag. On my way out, there was a line of visitors calling on Paolo in his moment of grief that stretched down the hall past the water fountain: two men from the macrame' booth, a tall matronly woman from cross-stitching, a man who designed floral wreaths, several ladies from the applique and iron-on display, and Brett Somers, no doubt having heard of the open bar inside. I took it the rest of those in line simply needed to pee.
With a determined, if slightly intoxicated walk, I went in search of three people: my lover Stash Maleski, that ice bitch Taura Hymen, and the whole key to my plan, Charo.
--------------------------------------------
My God, sweetie, we left this story at a cliffhanger! I remember that you told me you were going to write the next part right after you came back from hitchhiking into Saratoga for smokes and a bottle of bourbon. I received your postcard from Promises eight months later and the collection bill for your lost weekend in Albany a few days after that. You still owe me!
I was inconsolable, but found some comfort in the arms of a Broadway star, the name of which I promised never to reveal (Cherry Jones). Those were heady times and we were both on the road so frequently, it is no wonder we were never able to finish our Master Piece. I had quite forgotten about it and I thought our sequel to From Hair to Eternity was lost forever!
When I was packing (boxes, darling, boxes!) I came across our martini-stained manuscript you insisted we type on that old Wellington supposedly used by Patricia Highsmith (to type up her list of women she had bedded was the rumor - the fact that you made that list, darling, is a stunning testament to your dogged determination). You said at the time that it would give our story a certain "sociopathic eroticism" which was big at the time, but I don't know. Reading over it now, I think our biggest influence was, and remains, gin.
I wanted to put it here for safe keeping. Your copy remains lost, yes? I still maintain Joe Eszterhas stole it when you two, high on peyote, came up with Showgirls. He was always a shifty bastard, but you loved him so what could I say? We were young, darling, and so very idealistic...
Title: Hoboken or Bust! (A Love Story)
Authors: Vivian Darkbloom (aka theholyinnocent) and LN James (aka adastranot)
What this is: The unfinished and most likely never to be finished sequel to From Hair to Eternity written long ago and under the influence.
What this is not: Required “homework” assigned by our “mentors” at Betty Ford in which we make “amends” to all those we have harmed because of our “problem”.
Whaa? Remember when Xena was all the rage and we secretly wrote reams and reams of fanfic, some of it Uber in nature, some of it naughty, and years later we stumbled across ourselves on the web and recalled that we still had one last hurrah that was only seen by about 10 members of secret email list devoted to Spanking Gabrielle (as well as to “women’s history in Pelopennesus”) so we decided, in the parlance of the today’s world, WTF? Yeah, so this is it.
-------------------------------------------------------
"Ok...move just a little to the right...no, not that far..come back a few inches..okay, hold still...action!"
I sorta felt like I was James Cameron directing 'Titantic', trying to get everyone with a lifejacket to either jump off the goddamned boat or fall fifty stories to their icy deaths below, either way, you knew that Kate Winslet chick was gonna make it because who the fuck else was that old lady supposed to be anyway?
Right now, though, I was trying to direct Carson Wilds in what could be my finest work yet and everything had to be just right, not a hair out of place.
"Stash, tell me again why I'm doing this?" My little beauty consultant said this while lounging sprawled across my bed.
I looked through the digicam viewfinder again at the image, focused, and held up my hand, waving a little.
"Carson, baby, scoot over to the left a little...scoot."
You ever have one of those epiphany things? This morning after I rolled off my new babe, Carson, she stood up on the bed and did that scene from Some Kind of Wonderful', where hottie Mary Stuart Masterson is being all butch and telling that annoying Lea Thompson she better not break Eric Stolz's heart or she'd break her legs (as if MSM would go for a limpdick like Stolz in the first place..hello, 'Mask'?) It was then that I saw my future from such a perfect angle and my artistic side emerged once again.
"This isn't going to show up on e-Bay, is it?" Carson whined.
I sighed. Carson had asked this question five times already. Despite the fact that I probably *could* make a shitload of cash for a .jpg of this, I had bigger plans for my art.
Much bigger plans.
"Hold still, baby...every time you talk, it blurs the picture. Could you spread a little wider?"
Now, some people might consider what we're doing porn. Sure, Carson Wilds was buck naked and her snatch was displayed across my Queens apartment wall on a gigantic
85-inch-surround- sound-MegaTube-PanasonicViewtronic big screen. Oh, this wasn't porn though...no, this was Art with a capital "A" and a lowercase "r" and "t". I not only saw Carson's perfect Chia-do, but the key to my vindication and redemption (not to mention an all-expense paid trip to the Poconos and one of those heart-shaped beds).
But to really understand my artistic motivation, you need to know what was done in the past, what was left undone, and who did all that doing. Here's the deal:
For ten years, the art world has been a battlefield and my arch-rival and nemesis was none other than an evil bitch I had come to alternately hate and love, not unlike tequila. Plus, she thought I owed her after that whole suspicious studio fire of which I surely know nothing about.
Her name? Taura Hymen. Her medium? Ice sculptures.
Now, Taura was as cold as her "art", as blonde as Carson wasn't, and as persistent as a 95-mile- an-hour-through-Memphis-high-speed-chase on Cops. That skinny, slutty, evil ice cube never stopped gunning for me and we fought in the press and at all the exhibits. Every art event was a show down between her and I, every show was a fight for wall and space. She won some, I won some, but we always fought dirty: One time, at a coffeehouse display, she replaced my paint with hydrochloric acid and I lost seven precious Arabian horsehair brushes and three works of art from my "Ode to Delta Burke" trilogy; once, I surreptitiously provided the audience with cigars and handy mini-blow- torches to light them. Her "Atomic Popsicles on Ice" melted all over Gia's Galleria in Soho and she was banned from all shows in which parquet figured prominently in the floor plan. Point is, Taura Hymen and I were like the Eisner and Katzenberg of the artworld, only without that fucking mouse.
"Earth to Stash? You gonna answer my question?" Carson was clearly getting restless.
Distractedly, I zoomed in, checked the image on the wall and clicked before I answered, "What's that, baby?"
My sweet inspiration sighed, "Stashy, what's this all about? What's up with the coochie-cam?"
If only LiLi, my mentor and art school teacher, could see me now. She always said, 'Stash, all art is filled with desire, naked and blind. In order to create art, you must first serve art.' No mistaking it, I had served this piece of art. For 36 hours straight. Naked and blindfolded. And in a variety of positions.
"Hoboken." I murmured as I stood back and admired my wall of Carson and envisioned what would become my next Big Thing and what would finally put to rest any doubts about who was tops in the artworld.
"Hoboken?" Carson asked as she got up and stood next to me, looking at herself as if she'd never seen something quite like it, which to be honest, who *has* seen one's own magnified 85 times?
My eyes glazed over, my voice deepened, and I told Carson Wilds of my plans, "I shall use this image as an outline in which I will construct a three-dimensional life-like recreation of your beauty and I shall use paper mache' to mold and form every fold and curve and I shall create the world's largest Chia-Carson and it shall be 85 inches of pure perfection and my Master Piece shall be the finest ever to be entered in the Eighth Annual Hoboken Arts and Crafts Expo and I shall once and for all defeat that blond ice bitch."
*****************************************
I love Hoboken in the springtime. I love Hoboken in the fall. I love Hoboken in the winter. When it drizzles. I love Hoboken in the summer. When it sizzles. I love Hoboken every moment. Every moment of the day. I love Hoboken! Why do I love Hoboken? Because my Stash is there!
"Carson, will you shut the fuck up?" Paolo moaned, cradling his hungover head.
Apparently I was singing aloud. Such is the joy of a well-schupped woman.
Dear reader, are you hungover too? Am I giving you a headache, much as I'm doing to my beloved friend? Do I talk too much? What do you really think of stretch fabrics?
What about wide-wale corduroys? And finally, the question that makes my overloved snatch ache even more: Was it wrong of me to let the incredibly fuckable Stash Maleski use me to settle a score with some blond psychobitch?
Paolo and I were on the road, heading to Hoboken, where my Stash would unveil my Chia Snatch. We were stuck in the Holland Tunnel, where traffic was a huge, aching pimple, waiting to explode. Our vehicle--which I was driving because Paolo's license had been revoked years ago after he tried to do a "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" pose from the sunroof of his ex-boyfriend's BMW after putting the car on autodrive and I really don't know why the cops were so upset, traffic on 9th Avenue is *nothing* at 3 am--was a turquoise blue Firebird kindly lent to us by Paolo's mami.
"Take good care of my baby!" she had cried, as Paolo--limp as a spineless cat--slithered in the car. (I had told him how passe ecstasy was, but noooooo....)
"Mrs. Torquemada!" I had cried, aghast. "You know I always put Paolo before myself." Especially while walking through certain sections of the East Village late at night.
"I mean the car, gringa!" she spat, shaking a fist at me.
Paolo was now setting up the glove compartment as a mini bar. He pulled out the martini pitcher and poured himself one. "No drinks until you hit Jersey," he said to me. He sucked the olive right off the plastic sword that had been moored in the drink.
I pouted, but Paolo handed me an h'or d'oeuvre from the glove compartment. It was a little shrimp puff on a map of Connecticut.
"This whole thing is like that Friends episode," Paolo was saying. He shook the little sword at me (and no, that wasn't a euphemism for anything).
"WHAT Friends episode?" I moaned.
"You know, the one where Ross is gonna marry the English bitch but then at the altar he says Rachel's name instead of the bitch's name. You dig?"
"Paolo, you overgrown man-child, I am not marrying Stash Maleski. For your information, I don't even have a china pattern picked out yet." I tried to give him a cool, Emma Thompson like appraisal. Nonetheless, there was a good reason for that: I thought Stash might want to design a china pattern of our own!
Traffic finally moved, and we were out of the tunnel.
"No, Carson. You said that after you guys did the nasty and you creamed all over your cell phone, you said, 'I love you, Snatch.' See, that's the problem. That's your true love, not Stash. You love pussy too much to ever settle down with just one."
There was some truth in that. After all, Who Can Eat Just One? But wait! That was just a potato chip commercial! Damn capitalist society. But Stash was different. I knew it. It wasn't just the way she purred my name...or screamed it at the top of her lungs while riding me like Debra Winger on the mechanical bull (no, not John Travolta) in Urban Cowboy...it wasn't the way she made me bend over the couch and eased a dildo in my ass while singing "Have You Ever Been Mellow" (and she was right, that song is so relaxing!)...it wasn't even the way she ate licorice twists out of my cunt.
All right, I don't know what the hell it was about Stash Maleski.
Whatever it was, it compelled me to borrow an ugly car and enter New Jersey armed with nothing but shrimp puffs, alcohol, and the cuban heels of Paolo's boots.
"Chica, I don't remember Hoboken looking like this," Paolo was saying, peering around the small town we were in. It was scarily idyllic: there were lots of trees and nice houses. And the people walking around were smiling! Suddenly Paolo's well-manicured nails were digging into my thigh. "Everybody here is WHITE. And they all look like pod people!" He started shrieking in an annoying kind of way (well, I guess no type of shrieking is pleasant unless it's Stash begging you to do that to her one more time, 'cause once is never enough with a hair consultant like you...) and sounding precisely like Estelle Parsons in "Bonnie and Clyde" after Gene Hackman gets his head blown off.
"Don't make me slap you, Paolo," I growled.
"But Carson," he screeched, pointing at rather annoyingly accurate signage (it was Jersey--who would've guessed?) on a street corner, "we're in PRINCETON!"
*****************************************
As I made my way through the Gene "Matchgame" Rayburn Memorial Arts Centre in Hoboken, I felt like I was in some fucking Martha Stewart nightmare. Only this Martha Stewart lived in New Jersey. You ever try carrying a 6-foot paper mache' snatch through booths and booths of hand-tatted pillows, macrame'd purses and plant holders, hook rugs, cutesy wooden mice dressed in country colors (blue and mauve!), those annoying lawn ornaments of cut-out silhouettes of fat ladies bending over, ceramic gnomes, and yes, even shrink art? There is no God.
I fought my way through the crowd, looking for my assigned exhibit space (or as they called it, 'craft booth'). I've gone through a lot of shit for my art and this was a prime example. Of course, my 'performance art' period was pretty fucking embarrassing now that I think about it, but somehow Hoboken always seemed worse than anything you could do with a banana and some chocolate syrup while "Knights in White Satin" played in the background. However, this was the one art competition I knew my nemesis, ice-sculptor Taura Hymen, held most dear. She was from Hackensack afterall.
"Hey, watch it, bitch!" This was yelled at me from a little old lady sitting at her woven string pot-holders booth. The edge of my Chia-Snatch had knocked off a set of matching hot-pink and yellow oven mitts and she was pissed. But this was New Jersey and this was the East Coast so I was forced to respond in kind.
"Shove it up your ass," I muttered as I pressed onward. Fucking Jersey girls.
Actually, come to think of it, I could have literally shoved her up Chia-Carson's ass. In a moment of brilliance, my sexy little hair consultant lover had suggested I add a sphincter to her Snatch-art since I had spent a considerable amount of time getting to know the real one. Creating such a thing was another story, but I think it turned out inspiring.
Speaking of my new hottie, Carson Wilds was a dynamo in the sack. I have never known someone who was able to drink a Bahama Mama while simultaneously riding my thigh and singing "Rhinestone Cowboy" without spilling a drop. It kind of reminded me of that scene in 'Sixteen Candles' where Long Duck Dong rides his sexy girlfriend while she peddles that exercise bike at that party where you're like, someone please kick that prom queen's ass because she trashed Jake's house but in the end you're like, she's really just misunderstood and does have a heart underneath it all because she really kisses Anthony Michael Hall in the end and you're like, maybe there's hope for geeks like him afterall and then you're like, whatever happened to Molly Ringwald anyway?
"Nice try, Stash, but you'll never win with that," purred the voice of someone I knew well.
"Ice bitch," I sneered.
Standing in craft booth #85, right next to mine, was Taura Hymen. Her exhibit was decorated to the nines and a chilling blue spotlight lit up the centerpiece: a sculpted impressionistic replica of New Jersey's governor (and future EPA Administrator), Christine Todd Whitman. Oh, that ice whore was playing up the Jersey vote for all it was worth.
"What's that supposed to be, Stash, your face?" she cackled with derision as she pointed at the snatch I was carrying.
There are very few people in this world who force me into childish retorts, but Ice Ass here was one of them. "No, it's yours, only with less hair," I smiled, knowing what few people knew: Taura Hymen had been a man just five years ago and still bore the signs of too much testosterone, namely a full beard that needed to be shaved and waxed daily, despite her platinum blond hair and big tits. When she smiled even further, I knew my barb had hit a nerve. This would be an all-out war in Hoboken.
"Oh, you clever girl, Stash. Tell me, how is it you plan to win when your..." Here, Taura used her fingers to wave at my Chia-Snatch. I had set it down in my exhibit space and propped it up, using the kick-stand I had fashioned on the back from an old broom handle, "..little piece of pornography there doesn't even have a clitoris?"
I glanced back quickly and was stunned by the sight. Sure enough, there was a gaping hole (so to speak) in the upper center of my Chia-Snatch. Carson's clit! Fuck! I had forgotten the hand-thrown, fire-kilned glossed golden ceramic globe back in Queens! Carson had insisted on bringing it to bed with us last night with a 'Stash, baby, let's just rub this for good luck' and damn if I hadn't forgotten it this morning in bed where it was being spooned lovingly by a sleeping Carson. Fuck! Where was Carson!??
*****************************************************
The Princeton policeman stared at the car's registration papers, then he stared at me. He had been doing this for the past five minutes and I was now thoroughly convinced that Dan Quayle could read faster than this and without his lips moving as much.
"So," the cop finally said, "you are Mrs. Imelda Yvonne Dominguez Riveria Goldfarb Fitzgerald Torquemada?
I cleared my throat. "Si!" I enunciated in my perfect high school Spanish.
Paolo leaned toward the open window and chimed in, while batting his enviable eyelashes, "Officer, honey, my cousin's English is not very good..."
"License?" muttered the policeman.
"Officer, honey, my cousin doesn't have a license. You see, in Puerto Rico, they let us drive without licenses just as long as you have a relative and a Virgin Mary in the car." He pointed to the little plastic VM that swung in a slow, tantalizing bellydance from the rear view mirror.
"Uh-huh. Ma'am, I'm gonna have to ask you to step out of the car."
Paolo lunged across me and I could inhale, deeply, the rich scent of his Paco Rabanne aftershave, and I could feel his package pressing against my thigh. I knew it was not close contact with my thighs that gave him a boner, but this square-headed bland blond man in a uniform. "To each his own!" has always been part of my personal philosophy (as is "As God is my witness, may an FM station never play an Emerson, Lake and Palmer song again"), and if Paolo wanted to play hide-the- salami with this slab of American manhood...and get us out of being arrested, well, damn it, that was hunky-dory with moi. "Officer, honey," he purred deliciously, just like Tina Louise, "may I speak with you alone? Behind that lovely bit of shrubbery over there?"
"Uh. Okay." Before I could say "Outback Steakhouse" Paolo and the local gendarme were behind a bush, and Paolo was making some sort of noise like Julie Newmar as the Cat Woman in the Batman TV series, and while I did appreciate Michelle Pfeiffer in the movie role, Miss Newmar's performance was, doubtless, the definitive one. While waiting for my colleague, I cut my nails, finished reading "The Brothers Karamazov," and practiced saying "I love you, Stash," in the rear view mirror. I actually got it right a couple of times! I smiled. I looked sincere. I was a sexy bitch, baby! Then I heard someone crooning "Sweet Mystery of Life" just like Madeline Kahn in "Bride of Frankenstein" and I knew it was over, 'cause the skinny Puerto Rican boy was singing.
Paolo emerged from the bush, smoking a cigarette and wearing a badge. He sighed as he slid in the passenger seat beside me. He stroked the badge lovingly. "He gave it to me. I think it means we're going steady." Tears welled in his eyes. "Oh God, Carson, I love him! I hate to leave him like this...with his pants down and unconscious in a bush."
I wanted to say something about a bush being the safest place a girl can be, but didn't. "What's his name?"
Paolo stared at me, dazed. "Huh? Oh." Then he looked at the badge. "Officer Reilly."
"Paolo, darling, I'm sure Officer Reilly knows how much you care. He'll be fine, unless it rains."
Just then, several specks of that cosmic dandruff known as snow fell listlessly against the windshield. "Or snows," I added.
Paolo spewed smoke and tossed the spent cigarette out the window. "Floor it, chica."
With the help of Officer Reilly's walkie-talkie (another love memento which I used to contact HQ and, using my butchest tones, asked for directions to Hoboken), we arrived at the Gene Rayburn Memorial Arts Centre. As I parked the car, I felt giddy like a schoolgirl. Rather, more like a pot-smoking schoolgirl who hadn't been laid by her big strapping artiste noir in almost 8 hours.
My head was in the clouds (or up my ass, depending on how unsympathetic you might be to my cause) when I stepped out of the car, stared in the back seat, and realized my fatal error. "Shit, Paolo, where's my clit?" I blurted in sheer panic.
My companion made a face. "You don't know where your clit is? What kinda fucked-up dyke are you, Carson?"
"No, not that clit. I mean the hand-thrown, fire-kilned glossed golden ceramic globe that Stash made for her exhibit!"
A very strange look crossed Paolo's face. "Oh. You mean that thing, it was kinda hollowed out like a bowl?"
"Yes."
"It was sitting in the back seat before we left Queens?"
"Yes."
"And it kinda looked a first-grader's ceramic toy boat?"
"Yessss," I hissed dangerously.
"Oh." Paolo toyed nervously with an earring. "I gave it to Mami as a serving bowl for her Midnight Mass party. She needed something for her special onion dip."
Paolo may run like a girl, but he is faster than an Alabama virgin runnin' from her brothers (another one of Momma's sayings). Nonetheless, I followed him relentlessly, screaming his name, as he foolishly sought the shelter of the Gene Rayburn Memorial Arts Centre, unaware that my dark, brooding Stash lay in wait in that dark brooding building, anticipating my clits, and would kill him dead once she found out what happened and got her very talented hands on him. She wasn't known as the Destroyer of Multimedia for nothing.
All the while, I was wondering whatever happened to Brett Somers.
***************************************
I don't know about you, but I get nervous when I see Charo. There is just something unsettling about that woman. What the fuck is up with her? I mean, really, just what exactly does she *do* besides say "coochie-coochie-coo"? Did you know her real name is Maria Rosario Pilar Martinez Molina Baeza? I think she is a spy. And I think she is here to sabotage me: She is one of the judges in this year's Hoboken Arts and Crafts Expo 2000.
And here I am, Carson-clit-less. "Fuck!"
Okay, so I kind of like to think of myself as the McGyver of the art world. I can make anything out of a few paperclips and some twine. One time, I got stuck at this boring fucking art thing at MOMA. "50 Years of Neo-Postmodernistic Surrealism and Its Impact on Textures and Colors: Why Florida Embraced Pink Stucco and Flamingos" and they served virgin Pina Coladas. No booze. NO BOOZE. You tell me that you wouldn't be trying to chew off your own leg to get out of that beartrap my friends and I'd call you a fucking liar. So, I crafted this simple chute from a cocktail napkin and a tampon string and jumped out of the hole in the air vent I cut using a dime in the ladies room on the first floor. It might not have been pretty, but I was free. If I was going to salvage my snatch-art, I would have to be creative and find a replacement clit before the judges came by my booth. Charo, you are my enemy.
"Oh, Stash, Stash dear..." Taura Hymen was waving at me and smiling while she passed out Little Debbie brownies to passers-by. She's such an art whore! Buying votes and influencing with chocolate. I hate her!
"Fuck you!" I yelled as I jogged past, more determined than ever to win this fucking art show and the Poconos vacation that was the grand prize. Why oh why had I made my precious hand-thrown, fire-kilned glossed golden ceramic globe removable in the first place?
So I sprinted past the stencils and the cross-stitches and the paint-by-numbers and the claymation trolls and the flower arrangements with eucalyptus and the quilts and the woven with loom rugs and the glitter and glue and string and fabric and paint and every other fucking type of art and craft thing until I saw *It*. I had found the perfect thing to substitute for the Carson-clit. I stealthily and literally snatched my new snatch-pea out from under the nose of a mother and daughter craft team from Trenton who were none the wiser.
Serendipity, I am now your faithful devotee! Your follower! Your fan! Your worshiper! Your cultist! Your concubine! Your courtesan! Your cu...well, you get the picture.
I almost didn't see the little pixie shagged one until I nearly plowed over Carson on my way back to my booth with my prize.
"Stash!" Carson threw her arms and legs around me like a vise grip, "I'm so sorry, Stash! Paolo gave away my clit to his mom and then we got pulled over by the cops in Princeton and then Paolo had sex and then I had to stop at Wendy's for a junior bacon cheeseburger and then Paolo made more martinis and then I realized we were going to be late for the show and then Paolo told me not to worry so much because when I worry like that I sometimes get sick to my stomach like that one time, at bandcamp, when I had to do everyone's hair for the variety skit and I didn't have any hotrollers and oh God, Stash! Oh, Stash, Stash, Stash, Stash, Snatch, Stash!"
I kept walking, especially when I saw that the judges were rounding the corner and were only three booths away from mine.
"There's no time, Carson...hey, did you call me 'Snatch' again?" I looked down at her and growled. While it was true that I didn't mind so much about the name thing, especially when my little hair consultant murmured it over and over again deliriously while deeply ensconced between my legs, I was a little perturbed by it.
"Oh, Stash, no no no...you're my one and only Stash, my muStashy, my Stashagogo, my little Snatchypoo" Carson covered my lips with hers before I could say anything else and I had the distinct impression that she was trying to get my mind off the fact that she had spooned her own 6-inch diameter clit the night before and thus, here we were.
I tore my lips away and vaulted us over my exhibition table, landing next to a 6-foot muff sans clit, "Look, Carson, we don't have much time left! Look!"
Carson disentangled herself and looked to where I was pointing. Sure enough, the judges were making their way towards us, Charo in the lead wearing sequins and coochie-cooing all over the place.
"Hey, look, it's Charo! Cool!" Carson smiled and I just gave her the look of death, "Um, I mean, Charo, that evil Spanish spy."
"Quick, see who the other judges are while I get this ready. I found something I could use as your clit." I got to work, using my bare hands, a jigsaw I stole from some dumbass at the wood cut booth, and some lipstick. Don't ask me why I had lipstick, it's a long story.
Carson stood up on her tiptoes and peered at the end of the row. Over her shoulder, she spoke, "Okay, well, there's Charo and oh, hey, that's Corey Feldman. Wow, he hasn't changed a bit. Scary. There's one more, but I can't see...wait....well, now we know what happened to Brett Somers. She's the other judge, Stash."
I narrowed my eyes and kept working, "Must. Build. Clit."
"Oh, Stash, you're never going to win this," That damn bitch Hymen was sing-songing from her booth and I wanted to kill her. "Did you know that Corey's favorite food was Little Debbie brownies? Isn't that a coincidence?"
"Fuck you! Your ice sculpture sucks ass!" I turned to see Carson flip her off and stick out her tongue. My little hero.
"Bite me, shag-queen," Taura hissed and went back to giving out brownies.
"Okay, what do you think?" I asked while I held up the item for inspection. It was round and smooth on one side and I thought, given the flesh-tone it already had, it would easily pass as a Carson-clit.
Carson made the strangest face and looked at the object I held in my hand. With a tilt of her head, my beauty consultant warily asked, "Stash, what, exactly, is that?"
I smiled and raised an eyebrow, turn the object around for her to see. I thought for a minute, my lover Carson Wilds was going to pass out. Her face went pale for a brief moment but then she recovered quickly, being the trooper that she is. When she saw the pile of long golden faux curled hair I had ripped off and tossed on the floor, she whispered.
"My God Stash, please don't tell me that's the head of a JonBenet Ramsey doll."
Turning it back around to the clit side, I grinned proudly and shoved it in the Carson-snatch, where it fit snugly and looked perfect before I wiped off my hands, "I'll just take a lie detector test and deny everything."
*************************************
It seems everyone has a theory about Charo, except me. Paolo, for example, believes that Charo is singlehandedly responsible for Al Pacino's accent in Scarface. And that, if this secret were brought to the forefront of American consciousness, Hollywood would crumble to dust. I kinda think that would be groovy, but Paolo, in a rare moment of clarity, thought that we should just let it be--because something worse would surely spring up in its place. So I think it's enough that Brian DePalma has been punished by directing "Mission to Mars."
And then I once had an affair with this Cuban chick named Fidelia. Well, when I brought up "Scarface," man, did she go off! she went on about how Pacino's accent was the lousiest damn Cuban accent she'd ever heard in her life, and she'd never heard *anyone*--Cuban or Puerto Rican or Mexican or Panamanian or Dominican or Spanish--ever talk like that, and this movie just reinforced all negative stereotypes of Latinos...yadda yadda yadda, I was getting bored when suddenly she blurted out that Charo was responsible for the whole mess of a movie.
When I pressed her about the Charo matter, she grew silent and fearful. That affirmed my suspicions. And when I pressed her about another matter, lower, and with my thumb, she started screaming my name. But she never said another word about....
Charo. You know, Maria Rosario Pilar Martinez Molina Baeza. Former spouse of Xavier Cugat. Fluent in five languages. Winner of "Guitar Player" magazine's reader's poll as best flamenco guitarist.
Hell, Pacino should be glad--he got off lucky, only having to star in that movie with Keanu Reeves where he plays the devil or whatever. Not to mention the Oscar. Who would've thought he'd win a fucking award for just saying "HOO-HAH" every five fucking minutes?
Back to Charo.
There she was, coochie-cooing her way toward us. Stash was twitching like a spastic threatened with a cattle prod, just like I was a few minutes ago when she more or less admitted that the chia clit was the head of a...well, I just can't say it. Not right now. Let me just say, THE PARENTS ARE GUILTY. THEY DID IT.
Where was I? Yeah, Charo.
So even though Charo legally changed her date of birth--which, by the way, would have made her 11 when she married Xavier Cugat in 1963--she is, nonetheless, running along the Mother Teresa side of the age continuum these days. Yet she was wearing a peach-colored halter top, which barely covered her sagging melons. Evil Ice Bitch Taura Hymen was still plying Corey Feldman with brownies and Brett Somers, God bless her, asked Taura, "Honey, these are hash brownies, aren't they?"
But Charo was not interested in Taura's blatant suck-up attempts; we must at least give her credit for that. No, her gaze wandered over to Stash's booth. Her eyes bugged comically, just like they always did whenever she guested on the Merv Griffith show, when she saw the Chia Snatch. Her gaze lingered on the piece of a piece for but a moment--and then she laid her evil Spanish stare on Stash.
While it's true that I can be fascinated with a snow globe for hours, I never imagined that Charo could apply so many inflections, so many interpretations, flavors, and nuances, to the phrase "coochie-coochie." Of course, Charo's had a lot of years to work with that phrase, hasn't she? So many years of perfecting it, honing it...
...we're now in Monte Carlo. It is 1965 and Charo and Xavier are on a yacht with John Huston and the girl who played Miss Moneypenny in "Casino Royale." They are sunning themselves.
Charo: Xavier, my audition for "Persona" is next week. I'm very nervous, Bergman is so tough on actresses. He made Liv Ullman cry.
Xavier: *grunts, is fantasizing about Miss Moneypenny*
Charo: Listen carefully. This is the climactic scene, where I tell Liv Ullman about my failed marriage, my abortion, and my dead cat.
Xavier: *grunts encouragingly*
Charo: Coochie. *beat* Coochie. *another beat* Coo. *a long pause* Well?
Xavier: *grunts approvingly*
...so let's say I was impressed when the Spanish harridan and Stash locked eyes and Charo hissed, "Staaaaaaaaaaaaash" followed by the most evil, most venom-dripping, foulest "coochie coochie!" I had ever heard.
I was so terrified I hid behind my magnificent pillar of dark artistry and grabbed her firm ass. Which got me kind of aroused. I was trying to discreetly hump her when Stash retorted brilliantly, "Coochie coochie to you too, Spanish spy!" resplendent with her trademark sneer. (It's true, there is now a StashSneer(tm), and you can end up doing community services for 48 hours in certain states if you misuse the StashSneer(tm).)
Charo raised a claw-like hand, like a witch, looking as if she were about to put a curse on my Stashcake. I gasped with fear and clutched Stash closer to me, rubbing my breasts against her powerful back. "God, Stash, I'm so frightened!" I said breathlessly, just like Lt. Uhura on the old Star Trek used to say to Capt. Kirk all the time.
"And God, Carson, I'm all wet! Will you keep it in your pants for five minutes, baby?" implored Stash.
"Staaaaaaash," said Charo, "you are the evil one, coochie coochie! You have corrupted yet another woman with your feeelthy waaaaaays. I know now that was your plan, that was how you had me dismissed from teeeeeeaching at Our Lady of Lockjaw."
"Stash?" I asked apprehensively, fumbling with her button-fly jeans.
She swatted my hands away. "Don't listen to her, Carson! She's evil! Pure evil!"
"But tell me, tell me what she's talking about!"
"Go on, Staaaaaaaaash, tell your leeetle friend," Charo said. Then she suddenly spat "coochie coochie!" and this one was staccato, like a gun firing, or an outburst of flamenco dancing.
Stash spoke quickly, like Sal Mineo on uppers. "In 1984 I was a senior at Our Lady of Lockjaw. Charo was the music teacher. She tried to get me kicked out of school because I was sleeping my way through the lacrosse team--"
"I was their coach, damn you!" Charo shouted. "You ruined their focus!"
"--but she was really trying to get rid of me because she knew I knew her secret--she is a Basque separatist! She was spying on us!"
Why a Basque separatist would be interested in a Catholic girls' school in Bison Chip, Kansas, was a little beyond me. Perhaps it was time for me to pass on that therapist's number to Stash.
"Liar!" Charo hissed. She looked at me. "Do you know what the girls used to call this sex monster?" Her sinister eyes glinted and she pointed at my Stasharama. "Stash *Molesty*! That's what! Coochie coochie!" This coochie-coochie possessed the power, the rage, the fury, of a good "So there!"
"You Spanish skank, you're just jealous! You're pissed as hell that I slept with your lacrosse team, and the English teacher, and the home ec teacher, and the social studies teacher, and the remainder of the senior class!"
Charo screeched in disbelief. Obviously she had not known about the others.
"That's right, Charo! I was the McDonald's of cunnilingus that year! 132 SERVED!" screamed Stash.
And this, more than the tongue-curling exercises that she did every morning, explained why Stash is a Muff Diver among muff divers.
Taura Hymen, her frighteningly Martha Stewart instincts on full tilt, approached us. "Well, I think we could all use a brownie after that distasteful little revelation," she sniffed.
At this moment came Paolo, who had been at the snack stand. "Carson, there were no giant corn dogs, so I just got you the curly fries--" He stopped dramatically and dropped the fries. "MIA MADRE!" he squealed.
I had expected this reaction the moment he laid eyes on Charo. But he wasn't looking at Charo. He was looking at the Ice Bitch!
"Paolo!" blurted Taura Hymen.
"Why, why are you here? Oh...how could you!" wailed my best friend.
Charo and Stash were eating brownies and watching.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"Taura, as 'she' is called now, used to be...my...my...MY BOYFRIEND!" Gotta hand it to Paolo, he delivered the line just like Cloris Leachman did in "Young Frankenstein." Then he half-turned, ducked his head, and burst into tears before running from the room, all very much like Sandra Dee in "Peyton Place."
"Christ, I need a drink," said Brett Somers.
So did I.
*************************************
It's hard to be glamorous in the ladies room of the Gene "Matchgame" Rayburn Memorial Arts Centre, but somehow Paolo had managed. He is nothing if not resourceful. My friend had set up shop on a short low couch, complete with a fine silk duvet cover and had hung several tasteful Japanese wall prints. He had removed most of the high-glare fluorescent lights and replaced them with soft pink bulbs. In one of the sinks, he had placed a handful of polished black stones and turned on the faucet slightly, creating the tinkling sounds of an oriental rock fountain. On the counter next to him, he had set up a mini-bar (complete with chartreuse no less) and had a mountain of soft embroidered handkerchiefs available for his use. And he was using one now to daintily dab the tears from his eyes as I walked in.
I looked around the room and shook my head. Paolo was in mourning and this was his traditional method of receiving visitors. I had seen it a million times before. After every breakup, the routine was the same. I did have to hand it to him though, he rarely mourned twice for the same man..er, woman in this case I suppose.
"Oh Carson! My life is over", Paolo wailed, making a grand gesture to put his hand over his eyes and reach for his martini at the same time, "there is no point in going on."
I knew what this meant. I'd have to make myself a drink just to get through his soliloquy. One time, back in 1991, Paolo was so distraught over this actor, Grant Alexsander, who played Philip Spaulding on Guiding Light, he prattled on for hours, crying in his drink and reciting dialog from A Love Story and Terms of Endearment.
Naturally, when I pointed out that neither of those movies had anything to do with the fact that Grant had simply changed hairdressers, Paolo threw his martini glass against the wall and fell to the couch, inconsolable for hours. Only a suggestion to go for sushi and saki roused him into full recovery.
"Carson, he was the love of my life, how could he do this to me! Steve was so cute too!" Paolo let out another loud sob and hid his face in the sleeve of his red kimono.
Trying to be helpful, I sat down next to him and put my arm around his shoulder. Of course, he had done the same for me many times. I'll always be thankful for the time when he helped me get over Greta, this German exchange student at NYU studying hotel management. He told me I'd feel ever so much better if I simply got drunk on cheap American beer (German beer would simply not do) and crashed the gates of the German Embassy, shouting, "guten Tag and place aux dames! Sauerkraut is for wussies! Take your nasty cabbage back and shove it up your ass!" Needless to say, the plan worked because I soon forgot Greta in the holding tank of the 54th precinct, charged with trespassing and libel. It was there I met Lizzie, a Bronx waitress, in for possession and we bonded, both figuratively and literally. There's nothing like a post- incarceration doobie to help you forget about a lady.
"Aye, Carson, I was so in love with him. I remember San Trope, Tahiti, Bali, not to mention South Beach. Oh, the places we went! He, on his motorcycle, me in the sidecar. He was an Adonis to me, darling, an Adonis! God, I think I still love him! Steve, mi amor!" And with that, Paolo flung himself face down into his duvet cover and cried like a baby, shaking and gurgling.
Of course, the doobie I had concealed in bra wasn't going to help in Paolo's case, because his ‘Steve' was actually a woman named Taura and she was now an ice sculptor with a huge rack and a stack of brownies to ply the judges at the annual Hoboken Arts and Crafts Expo 2000. This called for desperate measures. I needed to think of a way to help both my friend, Paolo, and my lover, Stash who, afraid that her precious giant snatch would somehow be sabotaged, refused to accompany me into the bathroom.
It was at this moment that I had one of those light-bulb epiphanies, thanks in part to the second gin and tonic Paolo had poured me while he cried in my lap. I had a plan!
"Listen, Paolo, I need to leave you for a minute," I tried to sit up and was held in the clutches of a Puerto Rican queen in the middle of a drunken crying jag. It took all my willpower to free myself and the look on Paolo's face told me I would need to hurry. It was the look Sally Field got on her face in Steal Magnolias, right before she goes into that crazy grief scene at Shelby's funeral, whirling around and alternately crying and yelling at Olympia Dukakis and Dolly Parton and Darryl Hannah and Shirley Maclaine. I put a finger to his lips and shook my head while I whispered, "Shhh, Paolo, hold that act. Save your energy, I've got a plan."
And with that, I left him alone in his sitting room, not only impressed by his ability to hold it together, but to also produce a tray of hors d'oeuvres from his bag. On my way out, there was a line of visitors calling on Paolo in his moment of grief that stretched down the hall past the water fountain: two men from the macrame' booth, a tall matronly woman from cross-stitching, a man who designed floral wreaths, several ladies from the applique and iron-on display, and Brett Somers, no doubt having heard of the open bar inside. I took it the rest of those in line simply needed to pee.
With a determined, if slightly intoxicated walk, I went in search of three people: my lover Stash Maleski, that ice bitch Taura Hymen, and the whole key to my plan, Charo.
--------------------------------------------
My God, sweetie, we left this story at a cliffhanger! I remember that you told me you were going to write the next part right after you came back from hitchhiking into Saratoga for smokes and a bottle of bourbon. I received your postcard from Promises eight months later and the collection bill for your lost weekend in Albany a few days after that. You still owe me!