The Garab Chronicles

The Near Disappearance and Triumphant Return of Remy, The Blood Soaked Hemy

   I should have had the little fucker whacked when I had the chance. Now he's gone and procreated, and I have to contend with the next generation of terror that he's unleashed. Remy's children are even more entrenched, more persistent, more infuriating than their once ailing father. There on his death bed, he swore an oath. Had I but spared his miserable life, allowed him to expire in peace, he would vanish and trouble me no more. I kissed his forehead and held his hand. He cried.
   Crocodile tear faced bastard! Remy lay on no death bed. He lured me to the land of false hope, then ran for the door and barred it shut before unleashing his minions to feast on my flesh. I survived, vowed revenge. Now I walk alone, hunting down the demon that tried to destroy me; The demon I let slip through my fingers when mercy won the day. Mercy, my bloody undoing.
   Remy was my child, an internal hemorrhoid I carried to term despite my initial jitters over unexpected fatherhood. Shortly after I received the news from Dr. Within Running Distance, I informed my parents of their impending grandchild. We named the new arrival after a seedy boss I had at the age of 19, when I was an aspiring international male model. My mother prepared a guest room for the little tike, buying up half of the local Toys-R-Us plush section while my father hung wall paper adorned with images of the Charmin grizzly bear. I bore my pregnancy with poise and dutiful grace. "I'm about to become a single dad," I told myself. "Courage, man. Courage."
   But then there were complications. Remy screamed every time I went to the bathroom. He itched incessantly when I sat for long periods in front of the computer. He became a giant pain in the ass.
   "What does your heart tell you?" asked my mother when I first broached the subject of terminating the thing that lived inside me.
   "I don't know, mom. You know how much I love children. I feel like he's a piece of me now. How do I give up a piece of myself and stay whole?"
   "Chin up," chimed my father. "You'll do the right thing. You're my son."
   Dr. Within Running Distance wasn't so sure. After an excruciating bout with the contractions associated with a growing roid, I'd gone to see him about a remedy for the pain. The mere sight of a porcelain throne, any porcelain throne, had become enough to give me pause. Something had to be done.
   "Kill the boy. Kill him now, or he will be the end of your end," prescribed the good doctor. He reached into his apothecary and retrieved the poison I was to use to destroy my little baby. One by one, I was to feed Remy the little hydro-cortisone bullets that would dissolve and rob him of the precious air that sustained his still forming lungs. His little body would deflate within the walls of my birth canal, and he would be no more.
   "But he's a part of me, doc."
   Dr. Within Running Distance put his hand on my shoulder. "I know how difficult this must be for you. But it's the only way, and you have to do it on your own because your insurance won't cover any more visits this quarter."
   I called my mother that night, right after I sang Remy to sleep and fed him the first bullet. He inhaled it right out of my hand, even though he was unaccustomed to receiving sustenance from that angle.  He made a cute little smacking noise as he chewed on his deadly treat that made my heart sink.
   "That's so awful," my mother managed through heavy sobs. "You mean I won't be a grandmother anymore?"
   I said nothing.
   "Your father just finished putting up the Northern Tissue wet wipes corner in the nursery. His heart's just gonna go to pieces."
   "Mom..."
   "I have to go. The surprise shower was this weekend, and I have to call the florist to cancel."
   "The surprise...?" I cried myself to sleep watching Lifetime Television that night, and for the next twelve nights as I went through the contents of the suppositories the doctor gave me.
   Remy had stopped keeping me up at night by the time I went submerge my bare bottom in an online hemy remedy consisting of a  bucket of warm water and crushed geranium root. This was a Googled homeopathic concoction in the Eastern tradition - something to match the expediency of Western medicine and banish little Remy once and for all. As I settled in, careful not to let the reddish brown liquid spill out onto the bathroom floor as I reached for a copy of Entertainment Weekly, my baby boy called my name.
   "Please don't kill me, dad." His voice was weak, and he struggled for breath. He'd lost so much weight in the last few days that he was barely even there anymore. His voice may have even been a figment of my imagination at that point. But then it came again.  
   "Dad, please. At least let me die on my own."
   My eyes welled up with tears. How could I deny him?
   "Dad, I swear," he said with all the crushing desperation of an injured child."Let me slip peacefully from this world and I'll trouble you no more."
   I let my child drift into darkness, the sound of his shallow breaths fading to a low rattle. Then, to nothing at all. He was gone.
   Dr. Within Running Distance confirmed Remy's passing during my out-of-pocket follow up visit the next week. "No more inflammation," he said as he removed his examination gloves and tossed them in the bio-hazard bin. The last trace of my baby hem-hem discarded like so much garbage left a heavy feeling in my gut that Dr. Within Running Distance attributed to gas and a lack of fiber in my diet. I slouched home with a freshly purchased bag of ground flax seed, and drowned my sorrow at the bottom of a tall glass of blended ruffage.
   That night, I awoke with a slight tickle in my go-go area. Phantom pain, perhaps? Was the recent loss so unbearable to my fragile psyche that it had to recreate an imaginary version of a lost hemorrhoid to cope with the trauma? I scratched at Remy's vacant receptacle and let exhaustion carry me off to a deep slumber...that would have been deeper had the phantom pain not itched me back to consciousness moments later.
   "Remy, is that you?" I whispered in the dark.
   Thunder clapped and the lights changed. Disco balls descended from the ceiling and male strippers slid  into view wearing nothing but 2xist g-strings. Loud, angry techno music blared through unseen speakers with a thumpety thump that threatened to wake the neighbors.
   "Im here, Daddy!"
   "Remy, baby, I didn't mean--"
   "Silence!" came the loud and earth shattering voice of my first born son, full of scorn and hell bent on rebellious murder. "You were supposed to love me, to protect me!"
   "I did, honey, but you just hurt so goddamn much. You'd even started to bleed a little. Do you remember that?"
   "I remember your treachery, father. And now it's time for the reckoning!" And with that - and a flash of bright light - he vanished.  
   I bolted up in bed, panting in a cold sweat. My eyes darted from one side of my dim bedroom to the other, but there was no sign of my resurrected dead child. It was all a dream...until it wasn't. The fiber rich smoothie I'd blended up earlier was screaming for evacuation, and I ran for the commode to accommodate the order. There was pain like no other I'd experience during my pregnancy, and when I looked down to assess the deed - blood. Remy had returned.
   Doctor Full Body Armor entered the room dressed for battle. Sensing the danger of an Oedipal son coming home to roost, I'd recruited a knight from the local plastic surgery building -in Beverly Hills- to aid me in the destruction of the child I had been too weak to eliminate on my own. Doctor Full Body Armor closed the clear plastic visor over his face as he approached the examination table. There I lay, bare assed and on my side, the rest of me covered with the frail paper gown the assistant had supplied half an hour before. The Doctor went to his table, and selected a large plastic problem-inator, then informed that he was ready to lube me up.
   "Lube away" I said. "Destroy my bastard son before he does any more harm!"
   Dr. Full Body Armor backed away. Clearly, he'd seen something that had given him pause. As he reached for a more suitable instrument to confront a more formidable enemy, he pronounced with some caution, "You're having triplets."
   "No I'm not, Doc. My petulant son has gone and raised an army against me. Destroy him... No, destroy his youngest recruit. Make him pay!"
   Doctor Full Body Armor reached deep inside the lubricated battlefield, and with his patented suction device he grabbed hold of the tiniest of Remy's child soldiers.
   "Father, no!" said Remy, dropping his own body armor as he raced across the field to the smallest, most fragile of his spawn.
   "Too late, my son. Do him, Doc!"
   Doctor Full Body Armor slipped the tine rubber band around Remy Jr.'s neck and pulled hard. Nothing like a little public execution to deflate enemy morale. I laughed as Remy wailed.
   "I'll be back in two weeks when my no good insurance will cover another procedure, bastard boy. And then, you'll be the next to go."
   "Father! I will have vengeance. I will...make...you...pay," he blubbered.
   "You already have, child. You already have."

Primary Season Is Over...

And I'll be voting for this guy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, MR. SAM SPARROW!!!!!!

   Mark my words, people, if you're not already singing Black and Gold in the shower, you will be very soon. And then you'll catch yourself mouthing the words in your rear view mirror during rush hour traffic on the Cahuenga Pass, miss your left turn, and get screamed at by the old lady in the vintage Mustang who's been riding your bumper for three and a half blocks.
   And when she marches up to your driver's side and taps on the glass, you'll be able to roll down your window and say:
    "If you're not really here,
     Then I don't wanna be either.
     I wanna be next to you.
     Black and Gold,
     Black and Gold,
     Black and Gold!"
   And when her hips shimmy to the left, then the right, you'll be able to say "Rock on, Grandma!", as you watch her unattended car roll down the hill behind you...and crash into a group of Bike Out cyclists who've been holding  the motorists below hostage for 20 minutes.
   You and Grandma will look at each other, shrug, and laugh at the carnage before you run over her foot and flee the scene to avoid filling out that pesky police report. Just make sure that as you drive off, leaving gimpy Grandma in your dust, you remind her to buy the single(now available on iTunes and KCRW.com).
  

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull(UNabridged)

Eh...

Ooo...

Yay...

Oh...

Wow...

Nifty...

Wait, really?

Oh, cool...

Ewwww!

No...

NO!

Hm...

For serious?

Dude...

Jesus...

Eh.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull(abridged)

Eh...

My Hemy, My Roid

    Last month, I decided to stop living on the edge of calamity and pony up for some out of pocket health insurance. So one morning, after a healthy, fiber rich breakfast, a really nice lady-we’ll call her Swoozie- came over to my house, towing a laptop and a big leather satchel on wheels, out of which she produced enough paperwork to account for half of last year’s decimated Amazon Rainforest. Since we have the mighty wireless internet at my house, Swoozie was able to punch the magical keys on her magical health insurance laptop and summon a plethora of policy options for my ready to purchase, consumer ass.

“How much can your consumer ass afford to spend?” asked Swoozie.

“Nothing!” said my ready to purchase ass, “but I am ready to give you a credit card number, thus completing the testicle set I’m gifting Visa and Master Card this Christmas.”

“Excellent,” said Swoozie, “would you like me to gift wrap them first?”
   I thought about it for a moment, and quickly decided that I wasn’t quite ready to part with my baby makers, even if I didn’t plan on using them to make no babies anytime soon.

“Swoozie, do you have an Oh Shit, I’ve hurt myself and I’m out of Band-aids policy?”
  
   Swoozie consulted her magical laptop. The bright red background with twirling healthy gym bunny graphics that had been on her screen suddenly vanished, replaced by a grimy brown one with dead puppies and burning baby kittens. Swoozie looked up from her magical laptop and smiled.

“Well,” said Swoozie, “I do have an Eat Shit and Die policy here, but we usually reserve those for destitute ethnic minorities struggling with sub prime mortgages and currently facing foreclosure.”

“Will it cover me if I have to be rushed to the hospital with a hemorrhaging placenta?” I queried.

“You’ll be laughed out of the emergency room and stabbed in the throat by a crazy homeless person after they drop you off on Skid Row if you ever work up the balls to show anyone this insurance card!” laughed Swoozie.

“Good thing I don’t really own those balls in the first place. Sign me up, Swooz!”
  
   And so it was that I came to have health insurance. Monthly premiums doled out for the equivalent of a car radiator strapped around your neck, and almost as useful.  I gave Swoozie two checks- one to initiate Eat Shit and Die, and the second to cover the first month of my dead weight policy- and off she bounced on her broomstick, back to the land of healthy insured illusion.
  
   Freshly raped, I began to feel a slight itch in my indebted consumer ass. I scratched myself and made a mental note to pre-lubricate the next time I sat down with an insurance agent. After all, nobody likes a bloody sphincter.
  
   I went about my day, much as any other. I went to work, where I served noodles to the masses. Unfortunately, the masses hadn’t yet received their “Economic Stimulus Act of 2008” checks, so they were still tipping like they suffered from fiscal amnesia that prevented them from remembering that they live in Southern California, own multi-million dollar homes, and have jobs unaffected by the closure of all those steel mills in Ohio. The pain in my derriere intensified with each chaffing moment at the restaurant that afternoon, but I took comfort in the knowledge that my earnings would, at the very least, afford me some aloe vera baby wipes on the way home – after a trip to the gym.
  
   Excitement coursed through every fiber of my being as I pulled up to the golden gymnasium I frequent to sculpt my perfect bubble butt while cruising the latest in rubber mat chic-ness. Having been away for a couple of weeks while my shoulder healed itself from an excruciating injury that made moving my neck without screaming gangsta rap expletives a bit of an art form, I had a lot of catch up cruising to do.
“Health insurance!” I thought, but too late. The little pain I had left wasn’t enough to squander one of the precious allotted doctor’s visits on my freshly purchased plan. Besides, I was too busy thinking about the lingering irritation in my posterior, and there were still weights to be lifted.
  
   By the time I got home in the early evening, the early morning fiber I’d consumed with glee before the arrival of Swoozie had kicked in. Nature called. She was pissed tonight, and she would not be put on hold. I answered.
  
   I dropped trou, barely fast enough to pick up the latest issue of GQ- the one with the riveting article about the upcoming elections in Pakistan- and settled upon my private throne. What came next warrants an R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America for extreme violence and realistic gore. Sordid story short, my down there hurt like a mother-fucker when I went #2.
  
   “HEALTH INSURANCE!”  I thought, just in the nick of time, though I waited a few days til Swoozie cashed my checks and the group plan faeries sent me the appropriate cards in the mail. Being laughed out of a doctor’s office and stabbed in the neck by a crazy homeless person was nothing compared to the test of human endurance I was now enduring twice a day, thanks to all that fiber I kept shoveling down like a starved rabbit.

“What seems to be the problem?” said the nice receptionist on the phone at the first doctor’s office I could find within running distance.

“Ain’t nothing seeming like a problem, lady. This bloody shit’s for real!”

“So, you’ll be wanting to see the doctor-“

“Before my next bowel movement, yes.” I said, with all the dignity available to a dying man.
  
   The next day, I marched – nay, limped, to Dr. Within Running Distance’s office. The nice receptionist gave me a stack of more, dead Amazon Rainforest to fill out, took my Eat Shit and Die insurance card, then directed me to an examination room.

“Dr. Within Running Distance will be with you shortly,” she said.
  
   Three years and two People magazines later, the doctor arrived.

“What seems to be…”

“Pain. Itchy Ow-Ow in my Golden Compass. #2. Blood. Limp.”

“Bend over and say AH.”

“AHHHHHH.”

“Internal hemorrhoid.  12 Suppositories. Draw blood. Constipation. Bearing down too hard. You’re so not
covered for this.”

 “Will it go away, doctor?”

“Um, no…you okay? You look like you’re going to throw up?”
  
   Remy, my internal hemy, was apparently here to stay. I made a follow-up appointment for the following week, picked up $4.35 worth of up my ass hydrocortisone healing at the pharmacy downstairs, and I limped home, where I broke the news to my roommate that our little family had just grown by one.

“I’m pregnant,” I wept. “It’s a boy, and he’s a bastard, and he’s never going to come out of my perfectly sculpted bubble butt!”

“That seems a little odd,” said my wise, sage, future movie star roommate who was no doubt wary of the unexpected addition to her entourage. “Maybe you should Google that.”
 
    And Google I did. I Googled “Remy”, “Roid”, “pain in ass-internal”, “pain in ass-general”, and “most embarrassing thing that could ever happen to me in my entire life!” Instant Eureka - All the answers to my dilemma came back written in Chinese. The People’s Revolution made more sense to me in that moment in front of my computer screen than at any other point in my academic history. Dr. Within Running Distance lied to me. All I had to do was purchase Communist herbs online and sit in a bucket of warm water with dissolved Geranium root to terminate my pregnancy in the first trimester. Who knew that sticking a bouquet of flowers up your ass could provide such sweet relief?
  
   Unfortunately, Communist herbs take 7-10 business days to arrive in the mail, even if they’re being shipped from some tree-hugging collective in Reseda. That means I spell bedtime, “hydrocortisone bullet up the butt” every night in the meantime. Thankfully, Remy’s stopped kicking these last few days. Maybe he’s figured out that I already decided to have him strangled with a rubber band by the specialist in Beverly Hills I can’t afford, should the Communist herbs fail to snuff out his short little life. Maybe the thought of the cattle prod anal probe laser I keep promising to have used on him every time I sit down to finish that GQ article was enough to stunt his emotional growth, which in turn collapsed his little hemorrhoid lungs.
  
   Whatever the case, if Remy wasn't already dead, he was definitely lying low, plotting his next petulant child move against me, the benevolent parent that’s been feeding his ungrateful still-born leeching fetus ass these last couple of weeks. Die, Remy, Die!
  
   I decided to telephone my mother, to inform her of the imminent arrival of my firstborn…and, because I was completely freaking out. I’d read somewhere that down there inflammation could be genetic, and I thought that in sharing my good news, I might also find the camaraderie of a fellow sufferer, toiling in silence.

“Congratulations, Grandma!” I beamed. “Have I got a surprise for you.”
  
   Confused silence on the other line. Warranted, since I’ve spent the better part of the last 11 years trying to convince my parents that my I like boys phase was not a phase. My mother had finally gotten to the point of not flinching when I talked about burning man on man love – especially my own- and here I was changing the rules and pulling the rug right out from under her. Not only was I suddenly straight, I was with grand-baby!

“I thought you liked throbbing man cock,” said my mother.

“I do. It’s not a baby. I have an internal hemorrhoid.”

“What’s that?”
  
   My genetic investigation was dashed in an instant. How could my mother have passed roidal tendencies down if she didn’t even know what a roid was in the first place? How could I, in good faith, blame her for this and other ailments the next time I beat the therapy pillow? And what of our secret society – the one we’d charter and never speak of in mixed company, save an intricate system of hand signals all pertaining to Preparation H? How could she do this to me?!

“What’s going on?” My father was on the line.

“Hey dad, I was just telling mom about my internal hemorrhoid.”

“Oh.” My father apparently knew all about the roids.

   “AHA!” I thought. My family’s medical history, revealed. My therapist was going need a new set of cushions after my next appointment. Hell, he might need a whole new couch by the time I was done.
  
   But I’d AHA’d too soon. My father knew about the rectal vein inflammation I suffered from, not due to personal experience, but thanks to the valuable education made possible by late night television commercials for Tucks’ Medicated Pads. Which is to say that he knew I suffered from a pain in the ass.

“Take care of yourself,” he said. Which is code for “Don’t be gay so that the Almighty stops raining down His wrath on your nether regions.”

“But, Dad, that's a little slow for wrath, and I was constipated!”

“Just, take care of yourself. That’s all I’m going to say. Take care of yourself”

“Just, don’t be gay. That’s all I’m going to say. Don’t be gay.”
   
   Tomorrow, I walk back into Dr. Within Running Distance’s office, where he will once again violate me with gloved fingers. I only hope that when he looks up at me, 2 knuckles deep, he tells me that he did everything he could, but my ugly child Remy is dead.

And In Medical News...

Today, I received the gift of diagnosis. At last, a life experience too embarrassing to write about. But in the spirit of my favorite gossip rag, Us Weekly, I now open the floor to speculation, and add fuel to the interactive fire sure to ensue by initiating the first ever, online Garab Chronicles contest: "What's Moe Got?"

And no, it's not the clap, but the winner does get to pick up the tab at my doctor's office. Good luck!

The Assassination of Jesse James BY the Cow-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

BRILLIANT! SNORE! FEST!

Though it does get good two hours in, after you've yanked your own eyeballs out staring at the "brilliant" cinematography. Brad Pitt is pretty, as always. There are plenty of really long shots of him sitting in chairs...

And long shots of him eating from a tin bowl...

And long shots of him sleeping. Yes, sleeping. There are even long shots of Casey Affleck looking longingly into long shots of Brad Pitt's eyes.

   Oh, and then there's the "brilliant" music- long, drawn out wails on some string instrument that's sure to induce a suicide attempt. Had this movie been available five years ago, CIA interrogators would never have had to stoop to water boarding.

Grade: Waste of film, waste of milk...but almost worth it for Casey Affleck.

Holy Frakkin' Stark, Iron Man, It's John Adams!

   There are reasons for one to temporarily abandon one's routine, one's hygiene, even one's blog. I, my friends, have endured three such distractions of late, and let's just say that the dental insurance I recently picked up will be put to very good use now that I've returned from the couch potato dead. Having been to the other side, however, I feel it is my profound and tantamount duty to lead the rest of you, loyal readers, to the promised land...prepare to bid your precious free time goodbye.
   First things first, clocking in at 2 hours and 15 minutes, Iron Man promises to be the quickest fix for

those of you seeking immediate gratification for your entertainment dollar. I won't waste anybody's time going on about how brilliant the thing is; How perfect Robert Downey Jr. is, how the visuals and the story  are enough to put Michael "Hacky Sack" Bay and his laughably(though admittedly lucrative) inept Transformers to head hanging shame. And all this from the guy that brought  us all Swingers, aka the greatest movie of 1996. If I vanish from the blogosphere anytime soon, it'll only be to erect a statue of Jon Favreau, above a golden plaque etched with "You're so money and you don't even know it." I can only hope that those of you who wisely venture out to your local multiplex to see this gem of a super hero movie get to experience something like the "oh my god, they killed Dick Cheney" moment I was treated to last night in a packed theatre. I almost wet myself with joy.
   And speaking of wetting yourself, might I recommend HBO's John Adams, or "Laura Linney had better get an Emmy nomination or there's no justice left in the world", as we refer to it at my house. Mind you, to get the full weepy effect that found my reduced to a snot drenched puddle on my living room floor this afternoon, you may have to log in the 8 hours necessary to see every gorgeous minute of the mini-series that somehow manages to

make the goings on of the Continental Congress of the late 1700's  some of the most compelling television in recent memory.  Get your hands on a copy of this thing any way you legally can(On Demand is a pretty good way to go if you missed the original telecast).
   When you're done with the past, take a joyful trip into the post-Apocalyptic distant future, where mankind's happy struggle for survival against super model robots rages on in the final season of Battlestar Galactica. And though there be die hard Trekkies in the world who still cling to the idea that Captain James Kirk commandeered the greatest science fiction enterprise ever broadcast on national television, I humbly point out that they are Trekkies...and are therefore wrong by default.

The Blow Job(Part 2)

   It was late summer.  MJ, The Bastard King, was all but a distant memory.  Instead of dialing  *67, then his number 7 times a day, I’d reduced my stalking itinerary to a single anonymous attempt in any given 24 hour period. It was me, and not some desperate telemarketing house-wife in Bombay that dialed his home number from a blocked ID several countless times every afternoon when he might be home since his blue hussy-mobile Honda Accord with the driver’s side dent was clearly parked in front of his Eastern exposure Studio City apartment. But he didn’t need to know that. By not picking up the telephone, Ass Face unwittingly preserved my memory as the non-needy, non-clingy, non-psycho that he agreed to go on that ill-fated first date in the first place.
   But I wanted closure, dammit! The first season of Sex and the City that I’d started watching to get over my last stalkee was all about closure – at least that’s what I told myself as I sought that magical moment when MJ and I would sit across from one another and he’d say the magic words that would allow me to release him into my sordid past and advance to my next hapless victim. This was well before the questionably fucked “He’s Just Not That Into You” philosophy that would appear somewhere in season 3 or 4 in the TV show I’d substituted for the trained psychologist I needed but couldn’t afford, and I just wasn’t there yet. Closure was what I needed, and by God I was gonna get some fucking closure, even if my impending phone bill threatened to kill me.
   One warm afternoon, I succeeded. MJ, the illusive white elk, picked up his phone.
“Hello?” he crooned, as if he were some innocent virgin who didn’t deserve the guillotine for severing the strings to my still beating heart.
“Hi,” I generously offered…”it’s Moe.”
“Moe…?....Moe…? Oh, hey!”  The nerve of almost earnest enthusiasm was too much to bear. I wanted to scream, to bleat like a lamb sheered too close and too young.  A homo scorned, hell and fury, rage and bile - if MJ had been vaporized right then and there it wouldn’t have been enough because I wouldn’t have been present to see it. My heart yearned for a web cam…
“Where’d you go?” I asked.
   MJ just wasn’t that into me. He felt no spark, no umph, no je ne sais quoi. He didn’t want to do me in a utility closet at the airport. He – gasp – felt no attraction to me. Not only that, but the jaded pessimist destroyer of love said he was leaving for graduate school in less than a month and didn’t want to date me, get engaged, and have a shotgun wedding in Vegas before he left.  Dear sweet baby Jesus, would there be enough cake to heal this wound? Was there enough gateau on the planet that I could rub all over my body and make the pain go away?! I set about to find out.
   First I marched to my car, and then I drove it over the hill. I fought traffic all the way up and over, before circling 4 blocks 7 times for a parking spot, and then I found an expired meter. I jay walked across the street and heaved my exhausted, humiliated body through the front door to the café of drowning sorrow. I stepped up to the counter- the same counter I’d made googly eyes at MJ over- and I settled into my perch atop the uncomfortable high chair by the cash register. This place was mine. It was mine before MJ, and it would be mine long after he left for grad school to study psychology and go on to help the rich and mentally disturbed.
   MJ wasn’t there. Content with giving me the fucking closure he had no idea I sought like a detoxing heroine addict, he’d cut his shifts back to prepare for his impending move across state lines. I’m still convinced he was fulfilling a parole requirement that he was too embarrassed to talk about.  Either way, he was gone, and there were sweet cakes to be had.
   BJ greeted me, as he usually did these afternoons.
“Sup?” he said, as he placed the largest broken and therefore unsellable piece of apple pie I’d seen in my life in front of me. An intimidating tower of apples and cinnamon goo stood before me, sandwiched between thick dripping layers of baked buttery crust. Something was off today. My best new straight friend BJ never gave me this much pie – not even when I’d come in near tears after one of my shifts at the infamous deli. Ours had been a friendship in name only, and even that was purely in my own lonely head. I was the guy that came in with a sketch pad and tipped 300% on cake and coffee, and BJ was the cute straight guy behind the counter that took my money and spoke to me in 2 word grunts. And he had always, always given me the standard portion. This mountain of pie was a statement, a turning point. Dare I say it – it was flirting!
   I sat there, stuffing bite after ever loving bite of straight to your hips goodness into my mouth. Every consecutive morsel sliding into the abyss of my gullet brought me a little closer to closure-apparently deeper and more cavernous pit than I’d first anticipated.  Half chewed apple bits said he didn’t love me. Spiced sugar tingled on my tongue that he probably didn’t even like me, and butter dissolved into tiny bits of “what the hell were you thinking, you idiot?” I was felling ten times better, and the pie was almost gone when BJ shoved a mound of molten lava cake before me. Steam billowed from the top, and liquefied chocolate oozed between the crevices of solid cocoa walls under the weight of half a can of whipped cream.
   “Eat,” he said.
   I obeyed, though I had to request a spoon for the undertaking when my fork proved too porous and too apple slimed for this new endeavor. Whatever my emotional state, I had standards, and the purity of the chocolate had to be preserved. That, and it’s easier to shovel lava cake into your mouth that way. I took a breath, said three Hail Mary’s, and took the plunge.
   Three minutes in, and I’d numbed the pain. Though something altogether new was moving into that hollow space in my chest- Intrigue, and the tiniest bit of ill-advised lust bathed in chocolate. A couple more bites in, and that tiny spec of lust had turned into half chub. I was grateful for the high counter top at that moment, shielding my excitable nether region from prying eyes and unfortunate commentary. I clung to calm dignity with a facial expression that betrayed little, if any of the circuit party that commenced in my pants while I chewed, and watched straight, T & A loving BJ working across the counter.
   I finished off the pile of chocolate death as slowly as I could, savoring every moment its presence afforded me with my new BFF and caloric enabler, BJ. When I finally remembered the ill-used sketch pad I carried in as camouflage, it was already dark outside.  I’d pissed my muse off enough by ignoring her for three hours while I gorged myself on sugar and dirty thoughts. The effort that should have gone into creating an immortal masterpiece in blue ink was instead spent mentally undressing BJ’s sweet Adonis body.  I traced the muscles I knew lurked under his bulky t-shirt with my eyes. I imagined him with a better hair cut and three day scruff that would have taken him a solid month to grow had he the taste or the inclination. I put him in designer jeans with the top band of 2xist briefs showing above the low rise belt loops. 
     Panic set in. I had to stop eating lava cake immediately if I had any hope of retaining the waist line that might confuse him after the 6 pack of beer I’d use to lure him over the short fence to the land of happy homo bliss. Sure, I’d sworn off conversion therapy after those three guys in our college theatre department that never saw the light and left me sexually frustrated, but this time would be different. I was now armed with years of self-knowledge and Carrie Bradshaw wisdom. This time, I would succeed. This time, my wounded heart would heal. This time, the straight boy would go gay…