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#Gonna block fast and loose on this one catholics
homoqueerjewhobbit · 2 years
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||OOC: Not me over here trying to piece out the timeline of QOTS again to get a better perspective on how old Tere is. Gonna put it here cause I do this all the time on paper w/pen and always loose the info. So...
This is long, so putting under a read more:
Teresa is 8 years old when her parents are killed by the cartel. As someone raised Catholic, I would bet that was a First Communion ceremony going down when the cartel hit. Babies are baptized and then children go through First Communion at 7-10 years old.
At 15 she begins changing money in Sinaloa. At 16 she is running her own block on Calle Juarez in Culiacán, Sin. She does this for work for an undetermined amount of time later until Guero finds her. I've seen something saying she was 20 when they met, but I don't remember for sure. I think it was Jenny Lin - Alice's makeup artist on QOTS, maybe it's a detail from the book, idk. But we will say 20. Sure.
This is where things begin to get wonky. Because everything I've read says she is in her late 20s when the series ends, but hear me out, or rather just let me ramble cause no one's gonna read this probably. But her being late 20s isn't possible.
She's 20 when Guero finds her, we already discussed this. Brenda is there, they meet and become fast friends. Brenda talks about possibly being pregnant again. Okay, fine. There's a baby shower, again, sure. Fine, nothing to see here. Nothing odd yet.
Teresa remembers Brenda giving birth to Tony. She was there for that. She'd agreed to be Tony's Godmother at the baby shower. Again, nothing odd here. Except the fact that Tony was a 10-12 year old little boy when Guero was "killed" by Epifanio. So at the point of going on the run from Epifanio and meeting Camila, she is already 30. If she met Guero at 20, which I don't want to think about her meeting him much younger. Even at 18, she'd be in her mid-late 20s when she meets Camila.
But then! Fast forward some more. We find out that Tony is now 15. He's getting his learner's permit. That means that he's at least 15 and 6 months - At least that's the law in my state. That means that about 16 years have passed since the beginning of the series's timeline (her meeting Guero), which means Teresa is roughly 35/36 years old in New Orleans.
The show's timeline has always confused me though. Like it felt like she'd only been with Guero for a couple years at most, not nearly a decade, before Guero fucked everything up by stealing from Epi. I feel like the baby shower scene and the birth scene were added in after Tony's death to make it that much more emotional - also to make the she's his Godmother plot work better - she couldn't be his Godmother if she wasn't there when he was baptized as a baby. But I don't think Teresa was originally supposed to have been there for all that. I almost remember Brenda mentioning possibly being pregnant again, but I haven't watched Piloto recently. This would make more sense, for Tony to have already been born. But I just don't know.
I'm gonna go with the timeline of her having been there when Tony was born because I like that emotional connection. So by the time she fakes her death, she is in her late 30s. Which also matches more with Alice's age while playing Teresa - she did turn 40 this year.
Anywho, if you made it this far in my near-Midnight ramblings, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. XD ||
ETA: Also, the fact she went from morra to drug mule to international drug queenpin in the matter of 4-6 years when Camila said it had taken her and Epi 20 years..... nuts. Of course she had Camila's and James's help with learning the ropes and making connections, but still...
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band-of-bitches · 3 years
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Band of Brothers week - Day Four
Prompt - Favorite Replacement/Favorite Dynamic
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BabeRoe if you squint lmao
Babe considered himself lucky. Somehow he managed to befriend the Toccoa man all the others seemed to look up to and admire, only to find out they were from the same town and grew up a few blocks away from each other.
Babe likes to think it was his spectacular personality, but earning the respect and likeness from the men who jumped into Normandy was probably heavily due to the fact that Guarnere had taken Babe under his wing immediately.
Before they were to jump again, Babe managed to get to know the other men of Easy, and despite being a replacement he already felt like he was welcomed.
“Babe? How does someone get the nickname Babe?”
The question came from a man called Toye. He leaned back on his chair in the bar, voice low as he asked. It wasn’t harsh, but Babe could hear that his nickname seemed funny to the guy.
“Don’t really know,” Babe admitted. “My ma just called me that growing up, and it stuck.”
“Eh, I’d go by ‘Babe’ too if my ma named me Edward,” said Bill, laughing as he whacked Babe’s shoulder from where he leaned against a bar post.
Babe shook him off but smiled all the same. He knew it was in good fun, and oddly enough Babe appreciated the teasing. Hearing Bill kid him made him think of back home, when his brothers and the other boys would rib each other, making fun of pretty much whatever they could.
“Leave the kid alone, Gonorrhea,” said another voice. Babe turned, recognizing the shorter man as Martin. Beside him stood the other Joe, the taller one with the long face.
Babe stifled a laugh at the nickname, knowing if he was any other replacement then that would have earned him a glare from the other Toccoa men. It’s wild how being buddy-buddy with Bill had already elevated Babe’s status among them all.
“What are you laughing at, huh?” Bill said, making Babe raise his hands in defense.
“Nothin’ Bill.”
“Uh-huh,” Bill said, crossing his arms in a way that made Babe think about the big guys back home. Bill had the face of one of the fellows who may have beaten Babe up for running into them and being too stubborn to apologize.
“You gonna beat up a replacement, Bill?” asked Luz, placing a large glass of beer in Toye’s hand as he came up to the group, one equally large glass in his other hand. “Should I call Doc?”
Bill snorted. “Nah. I’d rather deal with a Kraut than the Doc when he’s angry.”
“For someone so quiet he’s got a tempter,” replied Liebgott, taking a sip of his glass of whisky. “When Floyd god stabbed, I was in his way or something. I’d never had anyone yell at me to ‘move my ass outta the way' then go back to being all nice and second later so fast.”
Toye hummed. “Sounds like Doc.”
“Doc?” Babe questioned, raising an eyebrow as he tried to think about which medic they were speaking of. “Spina? The one from Philly?”
“Nah,” replied Bill. “Other other Doc. Impossible to miss. Pale as snow but hair is darker than damn tar.”
Babe thought back to all the medics he’s met so far. The one he befriended was Spina, and probably only because he recognized his accent and locked in on him as a Philly native almost immediately. He’s seen some here and there, but hasn’t spoken to any others, and not the one they were describing.
“Don’t know him,” Babe said.
“You will,” Martin replied. Babe looked at him with raised eyebrows. Martin chuckled. “Doc is always there. If you ever get hit, you can always rely on Roe to show up.”
Babe hummed. Roe.
“Ah, speak of the Devil!”
It was Luz who’d exclaimed, cigarette hanging loosely in his mouth as he raised his arms. Babe followed the direction of where he was looking. Babe spotted a man at the bar and was confident he was the Doc the second he saw him.
Bill wasn’t exaggerating. The guy was pale, maybe paler than Babe, which was a feat of its own since Babe was as Irish as they came. His hair was also practically pitch black, which only emphasized his pale complexion.
And Babe didn’t know how to explain it, but he looked like a medic. Babe could imagine him running to men in the heat of battle, ready with morphine and sulfur.
“Ay Doc! Get over here!” Luz exclaimed.
The doc, or Roe, gave them a small smile at the corner of his lips as he pushed himself off the bar and walked over to the group. Immediately, Liebgott clasped an arm on his opposite shoulder, shaking it as he welcomed him. A chorus of greetings erupted from the small group as Roe made his way up, clear booze starting to take its effects as the men all seemed to be unaware of their volume. Babe noticed how Roe grinned at the men, obviously one of the only men in the bar who had seemed to maintain all his sobriety.
“Hey Gene, have you met Babe yet?” asked Guarnere, gesturing towards Babe. “Heffron’s from Philly, and only grew up a few blocks down from my place believe it or not.”
Gene’s eye met Babe’s. He had kind eyes, Babe noticed.
“That's your given name, Heffron?” Roe asked, holding out a hand. Babe looked at it, a little surprised, but shook nonetheless.
“Nah. Edward, but no one’s called me that since Catholic elementary school.”
“Alright,” Roe replied, taking his hand back. “Good to meet you, Heffron.”
Babe avoided making a face but noticed the avoidance of his nickname. He wasn’t necessarily surprised by it since most people had questions when he introduced himself as ‘Babe’, but still. It seemed odd to him.
“You too, Doc. Hear you’re the guy to come too if I get the flu.”
Eugene chuckled, looking away as he wiped his nose with his finger. “Hardly. These guys just don’t know the first thing about not being clumsy idiots.”
Simultaneously, the men all erupted in protest as they defended themselves. Doc grinned as they did, finally laughing when Luz put on a hurt expression, grasping at his chest dramatically.
“Well, I’ll see you around fellas,” Roe said, nodding at the group.
“Leaving already, Doc?” asked Toye from his chair.
“No, but Shifty over there looks like he’s had a few too many.”
Babe glanced to where Roe gestured, noticing the way their resident sharpshooter swayed into another, obviously at a complete loss of balance. Babe chuckled at the image.
“Well, see you around, Doc,” Lieb said, clapping him on the shoulder again.
Roe nodded at the group, then caught Babe’s eye. “Good meeting you, Heffron.”
Again, Babe avoided making a face, and instead nodded at Roe as he walked away and towards Shifty’s side, putting a hand on his elbow to help with his balance. Babe looked away, unable to stop thinking about the interaction.
“Don’t take it personally, Babe,” Bill said, slapping his back harder than he probably thought he was. “He don’t call anyone by their nicknames.”
Babe gave him a confused look. “Why not?”
Bill shrugged, as did the rest of the men surrounding them.
“That’s just the way he is,” Liebgott said, taking another sip of his drink. He suddenly laughed into his glass. “I heard him call Popeye ‘Robert’ once and I swear I’ve never seen so many confused faces in my life.”
“Wait, his name’s Robert?” asked Luz, emphasizing the name.
Immediately, a now standing Toye slapped the back of Luz’s head, making him yelp out unexpectedly.
“Yeah, dumbass.”
“Shut yer trap, Toye,” Luz replied, rubbing the back of his head.
The men continued to talk, all of them joking with each other here and now. Babe was mostly silent but was content with simply watching. Now and then he’d spare a glance at Roe, unconsciously finding himself seeking him out in the crowded room. Bill was right; he wasn’t hard to miss.
Babe liked Roe enough, even just from their small interaction. He was the type of guy Babe would want to talk to, and he had a kind face.
At some point in the night, both Roe and Babe caught each other’s eye, Babe nodding his head in a silent hello as Roe smiled back. Then and there, Babe made a decision.
He’ll get Eugene Roe to call him ‘Babe’ someday, whenever that was.
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galadrieljones · 4 years
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As You Were (Chapter 6)
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Fandom: The Last of Us | Pairing: Joel x OC | Content: Fix-it | Rating: Mature
Masterpost
When Joel and Ellie take a wrong turn on their journey from Pittsburgh to Wyoming, they find themselves lost in what feels at first like a time warp: a beautiful place with a dark and dangerous secret. While there, they meet Cici and Noah, a mother and son fighting tirelessly for survival, and who have recently endured a terrible tragedy on their family farm. Amidst their joint desire to find hope for the future, the two groups decide to set out west together, changing the course of the story (as we know it), and the very course of their lives.
This is an AU, starting after the events of the Summer chapter in the first game, and extending into the timeline of the second game. Joel lives.
Chapter 6: La Crosse (Pt. 1) / The Lapp Farm (Pt. 1)
“Well, is that everything you hoped for?”
They found the church in a valley surrounded by dead trees. The main road was blocked and they’d had to hike for a long while off of Highway 61 to find it—through an elementary school campus, an old cemetery, which had been flooded so many times it seemed that certain of bones had begun to rise to the surface of the soil. The church was huge, thought Joel, much bigger than he had expected, with a rotunda and several wings extending in multiple directions. The building was old and made of stone, so much of it still stood, aside from the many rooftops. All was blackened and charred. It was clearly a Catholic church, but there were no indications left as to what it was called.
Noah stood out front, holding his shotgun. Joel stood a little ways behind him, unsure of what was going to happen, or how he should proceed. There were no signs of Infected on the way into the church grounds. The whole valley was wiped. They had only encountered a few signs, which looked old. They were makeshift, slabs of wood with black spray paint. They had said, simply: COTHS. most with directional arrows pointing them toward the city. Some had what looked to be flowers, painted hastily around the letters. Noah had no idea what they meant, but he said they were there last time, too. 
“The horde ambushed us by the side of the road,” he said, switching his shotgun from one hand to the other. “We had stopped to figure out where we were. The signs and the blockades got us confused.”
The sounds of nature, as usual, were deafening all around them. Noah began his story.
“We came up around the opposite side,” he said. “From behind the church. The cemetery and the elementary school, those were all full of Infected when I was here last. There was a big like, storm drain, on the other side of that hill over there. It seemed designed to trap the Infected. They would slide in, and then they couldn’t climb back out again. We tried luring some, but the horde was dozens deep.”
Joel just listened.
“When we got to this church, we barricaded ourselves inside these doors, and then we went down to the basement,” said Noah, “but some more were in there with us. My mom rigged up a couple explosives that killed a few. A bunch of them followed us up the stairs though and we locked ourselves in the rotunda, but they were coming. When they came through the door, my dad and my Uncle Nick hit them repeatedly with Molotovs and that’s what started the fire. It went up really fast, because there were gasoline stores, up above us, in a kind of balcony. A stash that we didn’t notice right away. The rotunda blew. We had to run, so we did. All of us. But when me and my mom got outside, we looked back and we were alone. My dad and my Uncle Nick never made it out. I don’t know if they stayed behind to buy us time, or they got tripped up or crushed, or what. I mean, the ceiling was falling. My mom wanted to go back in but I stopped her. We hid in one of the outer buildings till night, but the fire was still burning, and nobody came out. There were more Infected in the woods. It was spreading. I drove us home.”
Before Joel could say anything then, Noah had begun to make his way up to the church doors. He felt along the hinges, and then he tried slamming one of the doors open with his shoulder. It budged, but it was clearly blocked. He took a step back and looked up as if to try and assess another way in.
“That's a lot of bad stuff,” said Joel. “But I can assure you, there ain’t nobody left inside.”
“No shit,” said Noah. He put the shotgun strap over his shoulder. “I wanna get in to find that gasoline stash.”
“You said it got blown up.”
“Yeah,” said Noah, “but maybe there’s like a clue or something, about whose it was.”
“I doubt anything is left behind, after what you described, and the looks of this place. This—I don’t think we should go in. It’s too dangerous.”
“When we came through these doors last time,” he said, “there was a big tarp, hung like a banner from the wall. It was the same letters as on those signs you see coming in.”
“COTHS?” said Joel.
“Yeah,” said Noah. “It said, Welcome Home, COTHS. Maybe if we can get in, there will be more information about what that means. Maybe something survived the fire.”
“Why do we need to know what that means?”
“Because maybe, if we can find them, they can tell us what’s been happening to the river.”
Joel took a deep breath. He ran his hand along the heavy door, which was singed along the outsides and on all the corners. The smell of burning was long gone, he thought, and replaced with the ambient smells of nature and you could hear birds and the cicadas rip-roaring through the trees. He dropped his hand to his side. “You wanna find out what’s been going on pretty bad, don't you?”
“Yes,” said Noah. “I need to know.”
Joel turned around, looking back out toward the road, where they’d left the truck. Readying himself for the consequences that most likely lie ahead of them, he said, “Why don’t we just follow the signs then?”
Noah was thinking on it. It was a warm day, and humid, and he had his sleeves cut off on his tee-shirt. His sunburn from the day before had turned into a very deep tan. He said, “Do you think it could be that simple?”
“Ain’t nothing that simple,” said Joel. “But it’s a start.”
“Then let’s go.”
“Hang on.” Joel clasped him on the shoulder. “You gotta know, Noah. I been down these kinds of roads before. It ain’t never easy.”
“What kind of roads?” said Noah.
“It’s been a lot of years, since the Outbreak,” said Joel. “Things changed. Rebel armies rose up, people gave up hope in a lot of places—It don’t look like the military has been through here in a very long time, but this here is a city, with enough people to cause problems. There is no telling what we are walking into.”
Noah was staring straight at him, but then he was looking down at his boots, seemed to be calculating something in his mind.
“Now I ain’t trying to deter you,” said Joel, “from finding out what went wrong here, because it destroyed your home. I said I'd help, and I will. I’m just warning you. And I’m saying, if we are gonna walk into a potential enemy territory, we need a plan.”
Noah nodded. He unzipped his backpack. He unfolded a map from the front pocket. It was a map of the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. He showed it to Joel. “The travelers who came through,” he said, “the ones I mentioned yesterday at the trench, they gave this to my dad before we came up here. They had marked this building, where they said they saw some gnarly shit going down.”
“What kind of gnarly shit?” said Joel.
“They didn’t get into specifics,” said Noah. “Or, if they did, nobody told me. Maybe the signs lead here.”
Noah handed Joel the map, and Joel was trying to understand exactly what it was he was seeing. “Looks like the building you’re talking about is something called Centennial Hall.”
“Centennial Hall,” said Noah. "Good. Let's do it."
Joel studied the map, and then he studied Noah. He had not seen such fire inside a person, not in a long while. “Okay,” he said. He folded up the map, shoved it in his back pocket. “Let’s get a couple things straight first.”
“Fine,” said Noah.
“If we’re gonna do this,” said Joel, “I need you to listen to me. Okay? Take my lead, do exactly as I say. I understand that you seem know what you’re doing, and I trust you to hold your own, but trust me when I say that I got a lot more experience with navigating occupied urban areas than you do. Can we agree on that?”
Noah processed, and then he nodded sternly. “Okay,” he said.
“Good,” said Joel. He looked around, took a deep breath and ignored the nagging impulse to ponder his dumbass, impending mortality, yet again. “Let’s head back to the road,” he continued. “We’re gonna get in the truck, drive as close to the city as we can. Then we’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”
Cici and Ellie had to take Cici’s truck that day, over the hill and to the Lapp's scrapyard, to get more fuel for the generator. To trade they had forty one-gallon bottles of fresh water in the bed of the truck, sourced from the Fox River to the east.
“So what’s the rest of the state like?” said Ellie. She had her arm hanging out the window, watching the trees fly by. They were on a shady dirt road that ran alongside the river. “Joel said he expected it to be flatter.”
“Wisconsin is very green,” she said. “And very flat. It is mostly forests and farmland, to be honest. But there are some bad places. Cities. Just like anywhere.”
“Like what cities?”
“Like Milwaukee,” she said. “Kenosha. Racine.”
“I've heard of Milwaukee," said Ellie. "Were there really no QZs in Wisconsin?"
“Not really,” said Cici. She had her blond hair tied back, loose, and pieces of it were falling into her face as she drove. “Those all used to be port towns in the old days, and then they were factory towns, before the Outbreak. I had only been to Milwaukee twice. My husband had some family there. It was big enough, and it should have had an actual QZ.”
“Why didn't it?” said Ellie.
“I don't know why. My dad used to say they didn't have the manpower, but some people said that the infection rates weren't high enough in Wisconsin yet to warrant it. All I know is FEDRA evacuated people from those areas down to the Chicago QZ,” she said. “When they got to the gates, though, the QZ was already too full. A lot were turned away and had nowhere to go.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“No,” said Cici. “It was messed up. I remember seeing it on the news, that they finally tried to outfit a small QZ in Milwaukee to house the overflow, but it was too late. A lot of those people got sick, or they armed up and resisted. The Fireflies—I hear you know about them?”
“Yeah,” said Ellie. “I know about the Fireflies.”
“Well, they started giving them weapons, but it backfired. I think the military abandoned the area, including the Chicago QZ, maybe five or six years ago? The Milwaukee QZ never even got off the ground. It was totally shuttered." She looked down at her knuckles where she held onto the steering wheel. Ellie could tell that Cici was worked up about it, that maybe it had something to do with her husband. "You guys were right to try and avoid that part of the country. It’s bad.”
“Jesus,” said Ellie. “In Boston, we still had soldiers. I mean, I heard they were trying to leave? But the military was like, a basic part of life. It's basically what I was training for.”
“Did you feel safer?” said Cici. “Having soldiers around?”
Ellie watched her hand, resisting the wind as they drove down the dirt road. It was hot out. She wore a tee-shirt and had bandaged up her arm to hide the bite marks. “At first, I thought so. I thought, you’d have to be crazy to wanna kill soldiers. But when I was with Joel and Tess, trying to get out of the city, they were trying to kill us, and like, it was scary. I mean it didn’t help that they were constantly at war with the Fireflies either. Nobody could trust anybody else. I guess that’s why we left in the first place.”
“Joel and Tess?” said Cici. She looked at Ellie, away from the road.
“Oh,” said Ellie. “Yeah, Tess. I—wait. What the hell is that?”
Cici slammed on the breaks. There was a figure, a girl, coming toward them, walking right down the middle of the road. To Ellie, she looked like some kind of nun.
“Oh my god,” said Cici. She got out of the truck right away, left it on to idle. “Ellie, stay here.”
“Wait, what’s wrong?”
“Just stay here.”
Cici got out of the truck slowly. She had her hand on her side-arm. Ellie opened the door and stood up on the running board, to try and see what the hell was going to happen. As the girl got closer, Ellie could see now that there was blood on her hands and on her plain blue dress. She wore something like a little white bonnet over her mussed hair. She was not a nun. She had to be one of the Amish.
As Cici approached, she held out one hand, as if coaxing a small animal. “Danielle?” she said. “Danielle, are you okay?”
The girl stopped when she saw Cici and looked like she’d been crying. Her hands were bloody, she was getting blood on her face and in her dirty blond hair. Ellie could barely make out what they were saying, but she could catch a little.
“Are you bitten?” said Cici. She held the girl by the shoulder, to steady her.
“No,” said the girl. “I don’t—I don’t think so.”
“What happened?”
“I was just in the barn.”
“Who’s blood is this?”
She said nothing.
“What happened?”
“I was in the barn,” she said. “Gathering eggs. One of them was in there. It is locked inside. I was coming to find you and Noah.”
“Where are Zach, and your dad? Where’s Becky?”
“Zach and my dad are out hunting,” she said. “They’ll be back tomorrow. Becky is at the house. She fell asleep on the day bed. She is safe.”
“Come with us,” said Cici. “I’ll drive you home.”
“I—Thank you. Who is she?” said the girl—Danielle. She had a slight accent, Ellie thought, but there was no way to know what it was. She was staring and pointing at Ellie. She had to be at least Ellie’s age, maybe a little older.
“That’s Ellie,” said Cici. “She’s a friend. Come on.”          
They drove silently, about another mile or so, up a hill. Ellie stared outside at the grass. You could see a very long, green lawn with many tall trees now, including a weeping willow, and nested behind them a white house, which was very simple, with gray shutters and a pair of wooden rocking chairs on the porch. Danielle, the Amish girl, stared down at her hands the entire ride. They were bloodied, and this seemed to really disturb her. Ellie could tell. She sat in between Ellie and Cici on the bench in the cab of the truck.
“I’m Ellie,” said Ellie, awkwardly. Even though she had already been introduced, she felt like she needed to fill the silence with something. She was trying to play it cool, but she didn’t hold out her hand, because she didn’t really know the rules.
Danielle smiled at her, demurely. “It’s nice to meet you, Ellie. I’m Danielle. I’m sorry about this.”
“Pretty freaky, huh?” said Ellie. “I’ve had those things sneak up on me before, too. It’s not fun.”
A little surprised, Danielle had very bright blue eyes, like swimming pools. “No, it is not fun at all,” she said. “I had to push it away. This is…this is its blood. Not mine. It did not bite me, or get is nails in me. I don’t know why it was bleeding, from its face and neck and shirt. I don’t understand. They are so sick, the Infected. It’s so sad.”
Ellie thought this was a strange point of view, but she listened. “Have you guys, uh, been getting a lot of them, too? Wandering on your property?”
“More lately,” said Danielle. She was scrubbing her hands with her skirt now, trying to get the blood out the crevices. “Cici, we heard explosions again yesterday. Is everything all right?”
“Not really,” said Cici. “But we’re okay. Ellie and I were just driving over to the scrapyard for fuel. We need to keep the electric fence running.”
“Is Noah home?”
“No,” said Cici. “He’s on a supply run.”
Danielle nodded. She turned to Ellie then. She had a wide, warm face, like the sun, and a soft voice. She said, “Are you new on the farm?”
“Me?” said Ellie. “Uh, yes.”
“How did you find this place?”
“My friend and me—his name is Joel—we got lost, coming out of Chicago. We ended up here. He’s actually with Noah now. Helping, get the supplies.”
“You must have gotten very lost if you found yourselves here.”
“That’s what they tell me,” said Ellie.
“I see,” said Danielle. “Cici, did you tell them not to drink the water?”
“We did,” said Cici.
“Good.”
They arrived at a large wooden fence with a tall white gate, and they parked. Around the back of the house, as they had come around the bend, you could see a flower garden, and a clothesline, as well as a wooden swing set, and a tire swing, hanging from an old oak tree. You could not see any scrapyard. But you could see the red barn with the doors chained shut. There were also several acres of corn. The property was empty out front, but if you looked closely upon parking on the drive, you could see fine barbed wire, laid down like a grid across huge swaths of the lawn. It was sneaky and unexpected, and it scared the shit out of Ellie, because she had legitimately not seen it there at first.
“Holy shit,” said Ellie. “What’s this for? More traps?”
“Yes,” said Danielle, as she got down from the truck. “Cici and Noah laid it for us earlier this year.”
“That’s crazy. You ever catch anything in all that?”
“You’re funny,” said Danielle. When she laughed, she sounded like a mouse. Ellie did not feel funny, but it was nice to hear her laugh. “Please come inside, just for a moment. while I clean up. Then I’ll show you where I locked it.”
The inside of the house was plain but, Ellie thought, lovely. All of the furniture was simple and sturdy, carved from wood, and there was a basin but no faucet, a propane stove, and all of the light fixtures were oil-burning. Ellie saw what she was pretty sure was a loom, and many quilts with beautifully bold geometric patterns. They looked similar to the quilts on her and Joel’s beds back at the farmhouse, and Ellie wondered if this might be where they’d come from. In the kitchen, there was a bowl full of brown eggs and a pie cooling on the windowsill. The house was warm and a little stuffy, and the floors creaked beneath their footsteps. Danielle took off her bonnet and set it on the kitchen table beside a terra cotta pot of purple flowers. Danielle scrubbed her hands in the basin, and then her face, until the blood was gone. She was sure to check her arms and hands for bite marks, though she swore she was not bitten, and there was nothing. She was clean, just a little worse for the ware.
“Becky should be here somewhere,” said Danielle. “Becky?” She called out, but the house felt empty. “Where could she be.”
“What kinds of flowers are these?” said Ellie about the pot on the table.
“They’re wood violets.”
“They smell really good.”
Danielle smiled. She looked around again, standing plainly in the kitchen with her hands folded in front of her. She said, “Becky?”
“I will take care of the Infected in the barn,” said Cici. She had not really left the doorway. She didn’t seem uncomfortable, but Ellie could tell that she had not spent much time inside the house, despite having known the Lapps for many years. “Ellie, why don’t you come along.”
“Okay,” said Ellie.
“Becky?”
“Is everything okay?” said Cici.
“I’m not sure,” said Danielle. “Becky was asleep right here, on the day bed, by the window.”
“Is Becky your sister?” said Ellie.
“Yes,” said Danielle. “She is my brother Zachary’s wife. She is pregnant, so she sleeps often.”
“How long has she known?” said Cici.
“A few months.”
“That's a blessing. Best wishes to you all.”
“Thank you.”
“Could she be upstairs?” said Ellie. “I thought I heard something, just now.”
“She must be. Becky?”
Joel and Noah drove until they hit what looked to be the town. They parked at an O’Reilly’s Auto Parts, hauled their backpacks onto their backs, and loaded their guns. The signs continued, most of them nailed to other kinds of signs: COTHS, they read. C.O.T.H.S.
C O T H S
La Crosse had never been a big city. Joel didn’t know a lot, but he could gather as much. It wasn’t big, but it was a college town, and that college was big enough to have a football team. It would have been home to a lot of people during the initial Outbreak, probably forty or fifty thousand, and it was probably a metro-hub for these little Driftless, farming towns, too, with a good hospital, warehouses, factories, and some semblance of a retail industry. It would have been a lot of meth, he thought. Maybe not so much in the city proper, but in the outskirts, in the tin cans and the trailer parks. As a city on the banks of the Mississippi, it would have pretty pockets but mostly, it was just franchises and mini-malls, like anything else.
But this was strange, thought Joel. The goddam of it was, it seemed empty. Really empty. Like, god no longer smiled upon this place, as if something evil had given up on this place, gone on its way. There was nothing. Nothing bad, nothing good. Just the trees, and the nature noises, the grasses, which had grown so tall, they engulfed the cars abandoned at the side of the road. There was a McDonalds sign, growing out of a massive, twisted heap of vines and bramble and it made Joel think of small things that still broke his heart from childhood. He pushed it down.
“This is fucking weird,” said Noah. The air smelled ripe in some places. Rotten. Like an overgrowth of mold in the washing machine. “What the fuck is that smell?”
“Something bad happened here,” said Joel.
“Hey, look,” said Noah. He was headed toward another one of the signs. It said: COTHS.      
“Yep, another sign,” said Joel.
“No, look,” said Noah. He got closer. He had to snap a couple saplings to get to it. This sign was on the ground, leaning against a tree. He pushed back the tall grass, and the milkweed to reveal the rest.
Joel squinted at the words, more paintings of flowers. “Circle of the Holy Signal,” he read, “Welcome all ye who seek submission in its eyes.”
“Circle of the Holy Signal," said Noah. "COTHS. Sounds like a religion or something. Is that good?"
Joel looked around, listening to the cicadas. There were zero recent signs of human life. “Not always," said Joel, suddenly feeling watched, or left behind. "Let's get a move on."
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sophiepowers · 4 years
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since @petrlosingwendy is mad about me talking about jordan here’s my anger in an essay under the cut
All right, Petunia. Wish me luck out there. You will die on August 7th, 2037. That’s pretty good. All right. Hello. Hello, Chicago. Nice to see you again. Thank you. That was very nice. Thank you. Look, now, you’re a wonderful crowd, but I need you to keep your energy up the entire show, okay? Because… No, no, no. Thank you. Some crowds… some crowds, they have big energy in the beginning and then they run out of places to go. So… I don’t judge those crowds, by the way, okay? We’ve all gone too big too fast and then run out of room. We’ve all made a “Happy Birthday” sign… Wait. You get that poster board up, and you’re like, “I don’t need to trace it. I know how big letters should be. To begin with, a big-ass ‘H’. Followed by a big-ass ‘A’ and… Oh, no! Oh, God! Okay, all right. Real skinny ‘P’ with a high hump, and then we’ll put the second ‘P’ below the hump of that first ‘P’, sort of like a motorcycle sidecar situation. And now I have no room for the ‘Y’, so I’ll do a kind of curled-up noodle ‘Y’. Block letters and cursive look good together.” And then you go to write “Birthday” and you totally forget the lesson you just learned with “Happy.” You’re like, “Yeah, but the past is the past. Big-ass ‘B’. Surely more letters will fit in the same space.”You’re very friendly here in Chicago. I mean, we’re all violent here, but you’re very friendly. No, really. And I don’t like confrontation, ’cause I’ve never been in a fight before. Though, maybe you could tell that from the first moment I walked out on stage. I don’t give off that vibe. Some people give off a vibe of… Right away, they’re like, “Do not fuck with me.” My vibe is more like, “Hey, you could pour soup in my lap and I’ll probably apologize to you.” When I walk, for real, my feet go out like this. I’m so open and vulnerable. I look like a doll that you point out molestation on. “Show us on this white comedian where the man touched you.”It’s been a while since I’ve been home to Chicago. I got married since then. Thank you. I married my wife. I love saying “my wife.” It sounds so adult. “That’s my wife.” It’s great, you sound like a person. I said it even before we were married. We were just dating, and we were once getting on an airplane, and Anna’s ticket didn’t say anything and my ticket said “priority access.” It doesn’t matter why. But we were getting on and I said, “Uh, can my wife board with me?” And they were like, “Yes, of course. Right this way.” And I was like, “Oh, that is so much better than all those times I was like, ‘Can my girlfriend come?'” And, yeah, I shouldn’t have said it that way, but still. “My wife” just has some kick-ass to it, you know? “Get away from my wife! No one talk to my wife!” Marriage is gonna be very magical. “I didn’t kill my wife!” That’s like, “Ooh, who’s that fella? I bet he did kill his wife.” Being married is so nice. I never knew relationships were supposed to make you feel better about yourself. That’s not really a joke, that’s just a little sweet thing I like to say. ‘Cause I’d been in relationships where I got cheated on, like, long ones. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a long relationship where you got cheated on, but it changes your whole worldview. ‘Cause when I was a kid, I used to watch America’s Most Wanted. You know how kids do. And I would always think to myself, “How could another person kill someone? How could a human being kill another human being?” And then I got cheated on, and I was like, “Oh, okay.” “I’m not gonna do it, but I totally get it.” And I don’t mean in that way of, like, “No one else can have you.” I don’t care about that. It’s just creepy to have an ex out there after things have ended badly. They have a lot of information. Anyone who’s seen my dick and met my parents needs to die. I can’t have them roaming around.I talked to a lot of people before I got engaged, you know. And I heard this expression about whether or not you should get married. This is an old expression. People say this. They say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” You ever heard that before? It’s a bananas insulting expression… to an entire gender. But also, it makes no sense. “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” You’re not allowed to milk a cow that you don’t own. That’s not even a situation. Was that a problem at one point? Like, in the dairy community? Was that happening a hundred years ago in some village? Some Dutch prick was sneaking in at night being like, “Ah-ha-ha, I take your milk.” And the farmer was like, “Well, then, this is your cow now.” And he was like, “No, no proof of purchase.” And he ran off into the night. That sounded Dutch, right? You know what that… you know what that expression means? It means, “Why would you marry a woman if she’s already having sex with you?” Which has nothing to do with what relationships are even like anymore. Now, it’s like, “Why buy the cow?” Uh, maybe because, every day, the cow asks you when you’re gonna buy it. And… … you live in a really small apartment with the cow, so you can’t avoid that question at all. And also, the cow is way better at arguing than you are. And the cow grew up in a family that knows how to argue. “Why buy the cow?” Uh, maybe because every time another cow gets bought, you have to go to the sale and you have to sit next to your cow at the sale, and your cow looks over at you the entire time like… And does not enjoy the sale at all… even though she’s the one that wanted to go to the sale. And she’s especially mad because that farmer and cow met, like, eight months after you guys met. “Why buy the cow?” Well, let’s be real here. You’re very lucky to have the cow that you do have. “Roping in cows and getting milk out of them was never anything you were known for, John.” By the most liberal of estimates, there have been about eight cows total, several unmilked, and… a lot of people think that you like bulls, and if you just bought… They assume it. When you search your name, the third thing to come up is like, “John Mulaney bull?” And if you just bought the cow, nobody would say that anymore. They’ll still say it. ‘Cause there are those guys who, they buy a cow, and then on the side, total matador, but… But, for real, Chicago, why buy the cow? Let’s be real. Why buy the cow? Because you love her. You really do. And, yeah, yeah… Sure, she’s a bossy little Jew, but… … she takes care of you. And you don’t wanna be some old man stumbling around, like, “Hey, you seen any loose milk?”My wife is Jewish. She’s a New York Jew. I did it! Now, I was raised Catholic. I don’t know if you can tell that from the everything about me. My wife is Jewish, I grew up Catholic, so we got married by a friend. Being married by a friend is a beautiful ceremony that alienates both families’ religions, while confusing the elderly people at the wedding. “What’s the name of the bishop?” “That’s actually stand-up comedian Dan Levy. He was the host of MTV’s Your Face or Mine?” I saw a lot of Catholic weddings, though, because I was an altar boy… And a hush falls over the room. Isn’t it weird how that became a scandalous thing? That was just some boring shit I had to do on weekends. But now, it’s like saying, “I was a French maid for a period of time. I was treated well in my day. I worked for a variety of sirs.” No, being an altar boy was just a boring gig, you know? You’d serve Mass and then you’d serve weddings sometimes. My brother was once an altar boy at a wedding, and he was standing there with another altar boy in this big, packed church in Chicago where we grew up. And the bride was coming down the aisle, and the organ was playing, and all the pews were filled, and the bride got all the way to the altar, and the groom lifted the veil off of the bride, and right at that moment the other altar boy said, “Aw, she’s ugly.” And then they looked, and they were right next to the video camera. And I know that’s awful, but wouldn’t you give a million dollars to see that wedding video? It was the best moment of this stupid woman’s life, and she’s walking down the aisle, and the organ’s like… And she gets all the way to the altar to her betrothed, and he unveils her to the world and to the eyes of God. And right at that second, for no reason at all, some Cheeto-fingered, rat-mustached, 13-year-old prick decides to go, “Aw, she’s ugly!” Hopefully the videographer knew some sound editing so he could fix it to be like, “Aw, she’s beautiful. She’s enchanting.”I grew up Catholic. I don’t go to church anymore. But I went on Christmas Eve with my parents, ’cause you know how you lie to your parents. So… we go into the church and I was like, “I got this under control.” And then I got schooled because they introduced a bunch of new shit. No, I was going through Mass and I was batting, like, .400. And then in the middle of Mass, the priest said, “Peace be with you.” And everyone said, “And with your spirit.” And I was the one pre-Y2K asshole going, “And also with you. What? Huh? What? Huh? What? When? When?” For those of you that aren’t Catholic, I don’t mean to exclude you, even though we love to exclude you, but… There’s a part in church where the priest says, “Peace be with you.” And for many, many years, we all said… – “And also with you.” – Very good. But they changed it to “And with your spirit.” Because that’s what needed revamping in the Catholic Church. That was the squeaky wheel that needed the grease. In Rome, they were like, “Let’s see. What problems can we solve? Problem one. No.” I’m actually glad they changed that, though. I never liked “And also with you.” I always found that clunky. “And also with you.” That’s not how you talk. – “Have a nice day.” – “And also you having one.” It’s just a little bit wrong, isn’t it? It’s just a little off. Like, when someone’s like, “How are you?” And you’re like, “Nothing much.” And it sort of makes sense. Never begin a sentence with “And also.” You just immediately sound caught off-guard. It sounds like if at the first church ever, like, they weren’t expecting it. Like, the priest was like, “Hey, this is the first time we’ve ever had church. I just wanna say, ‘Peace be with you.'” And they were like… “What? Oh. Uh, yeah. And also you should have some.” “Hey, that’s good. Let’s keep that for 2,000 years. And then change it to trick John.”My wife and I don’t have any children, we have a dog. We have a little puppy named Petunia. She’s a tiny little French bulldog puppy. I like having a puppy that’s a bulldog, ’cause it’s like having a baby that is also a grandma. Her body is young, her face is as old as time. She definitely saw the Nazis march into Paris. She always gives me this look of like, “Oh, the things I have seen, you cocksucker. You have no idea. The Gestapo threw my printing press into a river. But, go, tell your fucking jokes. Bring me my dish.” She said that. Petunia… Petunia is my best friend in the world. I give her a million kisses a day. She does not like me, and barks at me and bites me all day long. We had to get a dog trainer into the apartment because Petunia is a bad dog. We tell her that every day. We go, “Hey, you’re bad at being a dog.” So, the trainer came into the apartment. Sorry, didn’t even walk into the apartment, walked into the threshold and went, “Oh, okay.” Like she was an exorcist or something. She said, “I see what the problem is.” She said, “Petunia has become the alpha of the house.” And then she pointed at me, she said, “You are no longer the alpha of the house.” And in the back of my head, I was like, “I was never the alpha of the house.” I turned to my wife, I was like, “Let’s pretend. It’ll be fun. Yes… My title of alpha, which I once had, how can I reclaim it? Because that was a thing that existed at one time.” She said, “You need to show dominance over your puppy.” These are things people say to me. I said, “How do I do that?” She said, “Well, let me ask you this. Who eats dinner first, you or Petunia?” I was like, “Petunia eats dinner first. She eats dinner at 5:00 p.m., ’cause she’s a foot long and two years old.” She said, “No, you need to eat dinner first. Because the king eats before anyone else eats.” Oh, yes, and what a mighty king I will be, eating dinner at 4:45 in the afternoon. “Look upon your sovereign, Petunia, and tremble. My lands stretch across this entire one bedroom, and I eat dinner whenever I choose, as long as it works for the schedule of a dog.” She said, “Now, you don’t actually have to eat dinner before Petunia. You just have to convince Petunia that you’ve already eaten.” So… for the past month, I shit you not… before my wife and I give Petunia her dish, we take down empty bowls and spoons, and in front of her, we go, “Mmm, dinner. Mmm, good dinner.” Like we’re space aliens in a play about human beings that they wrote, but they didn’t work that hard on. “Mmm, we’re eating dinner.” Meanwhile, Petunia’s just staring at us with her Paul Giamatti face, like… “You’re not eating dinner, cocksucker. Dish, now.”I have a wife and a dog, and we just bought a house. We have a new house. It was built in the ’20s, but it was flipped in 2014. Which means it’s haunted, but it has a lovely kitchen backsplash. Actually, we didn’t buy a house. A bank bought a house, and I’m allowed to keep my shirts and pants there while I pay it off for 30 years. The woman from the bank came over and she showed me my mortgage broken down month by month for 30 years. And she said, “So, for instance, this is what you’ll pay in July of 2029.” And I burst out laughing. I was like, “2029? That’s not a real year. By 2029, I’ll be drinking moon juice with President Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I’m not gonna be writing you a paper check.” I like having a house, but I loved looking for a house, ’cause I love real estate agents. I mean, they are the true heroes. They really are. Have you ever watched HGTV? Real estate agents have to deal with the dumbest people in the world making the biggest decisions of their lives. Every episode of HGTV is like, “Craig and Stacia are looking for a two-story A-frame that’s near Craig’s job in the downtown, but also satisfies Stacia’s need to be near the beach which is nowhere near Craig’s job. With three children and nine on the way, and a max budget of $7… let’s see what Lori Jo can do on this week’s episode of You Don’t Deserve A Beach House.”I loved our real estate agent. It was so fun to hang out with her. It was like hanging out with my mom. ‘Cause, you know, real estate agents always look like your mom. And they have various Chico’s accoutrements. They always have kind of fun mom energy. And they’re always, “So excited to see you two.” We would have little conferences before we walked into a house. She’d go, “Let’s talk. Let’s talk before we go in.” We’re, like, two feet from the door. “So, there’s no toilets. And I know that was on your list. But I think I can get him to budge. Let’s go.” So, we’d have a real estate agent, and then, like, the house would have a real estate agent who’s just some guy sitting in a big chair. And these two always hated each other. They’d be like, “Hi, Tony.” “Hi, Kim.” It’s like, “Jesus Christ! What, were you two in the Eagles together? What is the animosity about?” Our real estate agent wanted us to have a baby more than anyone else in our lives, more than anyone in our family. She hinted about it constantly. Every room she walked into, she’d be like, “So, this could be an office.” “Or maybe a nursery.” “Yeah. No, like we said, we don’t know if we’re gonna have… ” “No, no. I know, I know, you know. You don’t know if you’re gonna have ’em, but you know. You know, you never know. Sometimes you don’t know what’s gonna happen, and then… you know, something happens.” “Well, yeah, that’s how all of life works.” “Okay, all right. Okay. Uh-huh. Mmm. This is an on-fire garbage can. Could be a nursery.” She showed me a backyard once. She goes, “I don’t even like this backyard for you.” I was like, “Oh, do tell.” She said, “It’s all pavement. I think you should have some grass out there. You know, in case you have a couple… little guys… running around in the grass.” And I got offended on behalf of my imaginary kids. I was like, “Hey, lady. I went outside about as much as Powder from the movie Powder. My children are not gonna be playing out on grass. They will be up in their rooms playing violent video games and catfishing pedophiles. These are my children. And that’s my wife!”I didn’t mean to make it sound like we don’t want children. We don’t, but I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. See, I just don’t think babies like me very much. Sometimes babies will point at me, and I don’t care for that shit at all. Like, I’ll be on an elevator, and a baby will be there in its big, like, stroller activity tray, just, like, working on one Cheerio with Bobby Fischer-like intensity. And it’ll look up at me and go… I like to lean in and go, “Stop snitchin’, motherfucker.” And then walk off. ‘Cause you’re never too young to learn our national no-snitching policy. My friends have babies and I don’t do so well with them. I had a run-in with a two-year-old girl. I know there are better ways to start that story, but… My friend, Jeremy, has this two-year-old girl, and I really like her. She’s a sweet kid. I really like his daughter a lot. But I was over at his family’s house for the Fourth of July, and he had his daughter on his knee. And it was a very lovely day. His whole extended family was there. And he was bouncing his two-year-old up and down, and he pointed at me and he said to his two-year-old, “Do you know who that is? That’s your Uncle John.” And I was like, “Oh, my God. That’s so sweet. I’m her Uncle John.” And then the baby pointed at me and said, “Uncle John has a penis.” I thank you for laughing, because no one did that day! Fell deadly silent, is what they all did. Hey, do you know what you’re supposed to say when a baby points at you and knowingly says, “He has a penis”? No, I’m asking, ’cause I don’t know what to say in that situation. Here’s what I went with that day. I said, “Oh, come on!” I don’t know. I thought that’d be good. But then it just made it worse, ’cause it sounded like the baby and I had an arrangement not to talk about it, and she had violated my trust. Like, the baby had been like, “Do you have a penis?” And I was like, “Yes, I do, but you’re a baby, so discretion is key.” And then the next day she goes, “He has a penis,” and I go, “Oh, come on! Someone can’t keep a secret!” Luckily, Jeremy’s wife saved the day. The baby’s mom saved the day. She came in and she picked up the baby, and she was like, “It’s okay. She’s just going through that phase where she says penis and vagina a lot.” Aren’t we all? And, by the way, it would’ve been a totally different situation if the baby had said vagina. Like, if a grown woman had walked in the room, and the baby had been like, “She has a vagina,” the woman could be like, “Yes, I do, and it’s magnificent.” And we would all be like, “Hooray! You are brave!” No one wants to applaud the penis of a 32-year-old weirdo.It’s fun to be married. I’ve never been supervised before. I’m supervised. She studies what I do. Like an anthropologist. She’ll be like, “Sometimes, he will watch a movie on TV even though he already owns that movie on DVD. Pointing this out to him confuses and upsets him.” I had no supervision when I was a kid. We were free to do what we wanted. But also, with that, no one cared about kids. I grew up before children were special. I did. Very early ’80s, right before children became special. Like, I remember when milk carton kids became a thing. When they were like, “Hey, we should start looking for some of these guys. I don’t think they’re just blowing off steam.” No one cared about my opinion when I was a little kid. No one cared what I thought. Sometimes, people would say, “What do you think you’re doing?” But that just meant “Stop.” They didn’t actually wanna know my thought process. They didn’t want me to be like, “Well, I was gonna put this bottle rocket into this carton of eggs, so that when I lit off the bottle rocket, the eggs would explode everywhere.” “Oh, well, that’s very interesting. And what brought you to this experiment?” “Oh, well, thank you for asking. Well… you know how I’m filled with rage? I’m so horny and angry all the time… and I have no outlet for it. So… eggs.” Your opinion doesn’t matter in elementary school either. It matters in college. College is just your opinion. Just you raising your hand and being like, “I think Emily Dickinson’s a lesbian.” And they’re like, “Partial credit.” And that’s a whole thing. But in elementary school, it doesn’t matter what you think, it just matters what you know. You have to have answers to questions. And if you say, “I don’t know,” you get an X on your test, and you get it wrong and that’s not fair, ’cause your brain has never been smaller. Also, that’s not how life works. I’m in my 30s now. If you came to me now and you were like, “Hey, John, name three things that the Stamp Act of 1775 accomplished.” I’d go, “I don’t know. Get out of my apartment,” you know? But when you’re a little kid, you can’t say, “I don’t know.” You should be able to. That should be an acceptable answer on a test. You should be able to write in, “I don’t know. I know you told me. But I have had a very long day. I am very small. And I have no money. So you can imagine the kind of stress that I am under.” Or if it’s one of those true or false questions, you should be able to add a third option which is, “Who’s to say?” Kids are much more supervised now, but also, they have a lot of rights. Like, that’s the biggest civil rights increase I’ve seen in my lifetime. The rights of children have gone through the roof. I had no rights when I was a little kid. I remember, one time, I walked into a supermarket by myself, and I walked in through the double doors, and the woman behind the register just looked at me and she went, “No!” And I went, “All right.” And I turned around and left. That’s how broken I was.And there weren’t special things for kids the way there are now. Like, we would just go see movies. Any movie. Like Back to the Future. That was a movie everyone could see. Kids could kinda see it. Great movie, right? I rewatched it recently. It’s a very weird movie. Marty McFly is a 17-year-old high school student whose best friend is a disgraced nuclear physicist. And, I shit you not, they never explain how they became friends. They never explain it. Not even in a lazy way, like, “Hey, remember when we met in the science building?” They don’t even do that. And we were all fine with it. We were just like, “What, who’s his best friend? A disgraced nuclear physicist? All right, proceed.” What a strange movie to sell to be a family movie. Two guys had to go in and do that. They had to be like, “Okay… we got an idea… for the next big family-action-comedy. All right, it’s about a guy named Marty, and he’s very lazy. He’s always sleeping late.” “Okay. Is he cool like Ferris Bueller?” “No. But he does have this best friend who’s, you know, a disgraced… nuclear physicist.” “I’m confused here. This best friend, this is another student?” “No, no, no. No, this guy’s either, like, 40 or 80. Even we don’t know how old this guy’s supposed to be. But one day, the boy and the scientist, they go back in time and they build a time machine. Whoa!” “Okay. I think I see where you’re going here. They build a time machine, and they go back in time, and they stop the Kennedy assassination.” “Ah! Oh, wow, that’s a really good idea, I mean, we didn’t even think of that.” “All right, well, what do they do with the time machine?” “Well, now I’m embarrassed to say. Ah, well, all right, all right, all right. We thought… We thought it would be funny, you know, if the boy, if he went back in time and, you know, he tried to fuck his mom.” “I don’t know. We thought that’d be fun for people. But, no, good point. No, he doesn’t get to, he doesn’t get to. ‘Cause this family friend named Biff, he comes in and he tries to rape the mom in front of the son. The dad’s gotta beat the rapist off of her. And also, we’re gonna imply that a white man wrote ‘Johnny B. Goode.’ So, we’re gonna take that away from ’em.” “Well, this is the best movie idea I have ever heard in my life. We’re gonna make three of them. Now, you say they go to the past. How about we call it Back to the Past?” “No, no, no. Back to the Future.” “Right, but they go to the past.” “Yeah.”Kids have it very good now. My friend’s a teacher. She told me that, uh… the parents will take the kids’ side over the teacher now. That’s insane. That never happened. My parents trusted every grown-up… more than they trusted me. I don’t mean coaches and teachers. Any human adult’s word… was better than mine. Any hobo or drifter could have taken me by the ear up to my front door and been like, “Excuse me! Your kid bit my dick.” And my mom would be like, “John Edmund Mulaney, did you bite this nice man’s dick?” And I would be the only one who’s like, “Hey, doesn’t anyone wanna know why… his dick was near my biters… in the first place? Isn’t anyone curious… as to how I had access?” Don’t get me wrong, my parents love us. They just didn’t like us. We weren’t friends. People are now like, “My mom’s my best friend.” I was like, “Oh, is she a super bad mom?” My parents didn’t trust us, and they shouldn’t have trusted us. We were little goblins. We were terrible. I remember, one time, we were going to this resort for a vacation when we were little kids. Three weeks before we went to the resort, my dad sat us down and he said, “All right, we’re going to a resort, and I’ve just been informed that the man who owns the resort only has one arm.” And we were like, “Oh, yes! Yay! Yes!” “Now, I’m telling you three weeks in advance, so that you will not freak out when you see that he only has one arm.” “Oh, we’re gonna freak out so bad!” “Yes, John, you have a question?” “How did he lose his arm?” “That’s exactly what you won’t ask.” And then I did ask. I went into the kitchen one day, and I was like, “So, how’d you lose your arm?” And he was like, “Well, I was born with only one arm.” And I was like, “Nah.”No, my parents loved us. It’s just, like, they were the cops, you know? And we were criminals. So, we didn’t get along. We only got along in that way that, like, cops will sometimes be chummy with criminals. Like, when my dad and I would talk, it was like that scene in the movie Heat, when Robert De Niro and Al Pacino sit down in that diner. We kind of had that rapport of, like, “Hmm, we’re not so different, you and I. You have your law practice, and me, I have all these fucking markers.” “I guess we both have responsibilities when you look at it that way.” My dad would respect it if I could get away with breaking a rule. We had a rule in our house, you were not allowed to watch TV on a school night. So, every school night, I would 100% be watching TV. And I would hear my dad coming, I would immediately turn the TV off and grab any book, magazine, periodical, anything. And I’d open it and pretend to be doing homework. My dad would walk in the room and he would go, “What are you doing? Are you watching TV?” And I’d go, “No, man. I’m not watching TV.” And the TV wouldn’t even be dark yet. It would still have, like, a neon green halo around it. It’d be sizzling like a glass of Pepsi. And I would look my dad in the eyes and go, “No, I’m just reading this Yellow Pages.”My dad loved us. He just didn’t care about our general happiness or self-esteem. I remember, one time, we were really little kids. I have two sisters and a brother, and all four of us were in our family car ride for three hours going to Wisconsin. My dad was driving, going down the highway in our white van with wood around the side. ‘Cause you remember when you wanted your car to be made of wood? You remember that era? Where we were like, “How much wood can we get on this car… without it catching on fire?” But then the big announcement. “We here at Plymouth-Chrysler can put a saucy stripe of wood safely on the outside of your car, for all those times you’ve looked at your minivan and thought, ‘Huh! It needs a belt.'” So, we’re going on the highway. We’ve been on the road for three hours. And in the distance, we see a McDonald’s. We see the golden arches. And we got so excited. We started chanting, “McDonald’s! McDonald’s! McDonald’s! McDonald’s!” And my dad pulled into the drive-thru, and we started cheering. And then, he ordered one black coffee for himself. And kept driving. And, you know, as mad as that made me as a little kid, in retrospect, that is the funniest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. How perfect is that? He had a vanload of little kids, and he got black coffee. The one thing from McDonald’s no child could enjoy. My dad is cold-blooded. He once shushed a kid during Lion King on Broadway. That actually happened. We were at Lion King on Broadway, and there was a five-year-old behind us going, “Look, it’s Pumbaa! Look, it’s Timon!” And my dad turned around and said, “Are you going to talk the entire time?” He’s my hero.The weirdest thing when I was a kid was how much they scared us about smoking weed. They scared us about it constantly. And I’ve been on tour this year… Marijuana is legal in 18 or 19 states in some form or another. It’s insane. Yeah, well… All right, don’t “whoo” if you’re white. It’s always been legal for us. Come on, sir. We don’t go to jail for marijuana, you silly billy. When I was arrested with a one-hitter at a Rusted Root concert, I did not serve hard time. I think I got an award. Eighteen or 19 states. And, by the way, I agree, it’s a very good thing. But it’s also a really weird thing, because this is the first time I’ve ever seen a law change because the government is just like, “Fine.” You know? I’ve never seen it before. Like, gay marriage and healthcare, we have to battle it out in the Supreme Court, and be like, “Gay people are humans.” And they’re like, “We’ll think about it.” But with weed, it was just something we wanted really badly, and we kept asking them for 40 years, like, “Excuse me.” And then suddenly the government became like cool parents, and they’re just like, “Okay, here. Take a little. We’d rather you do it in the house than go somewhere else… blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Those stupid parents. And that’s a big deal because they scared us about weed constantly. It would be on our sitcoms. We’d be watching Saved by the Bell, we’d be having a great old time. And then, suddenly, a character we had not seen before would show up with some weed and the episode would stop cold in its tracks. And they’d always hold the joint… The bad guy would hold the joint in a villainous way. They’d always offer the joint in a way that no one ever holds a joint. Like it’s a skull in a Shakespeare play. And now it’s legal, and that is great news. Unless you’re a weed dealer, and then it is terrible news. And I don’t just mean because they’re about to lose out to Amazon.com. I more feel bad for weed dealers ’cause they’re about to find out that we only showed them a certain amount of politeness because they had an illegal product. And we don’t show that same politeness to people who deliver legal products. Like, when the Chinese food delivery guy comes, we don’t let him hang out after he’s delivered the Chinese food. And we don’t look the other way when he says weird shit to the girls we’re hanging out with… to try to preserve the relationship. And we definitely don’t give him some of the Chinese food. He’s never like, “Hey, can I get in on those dumplings?” And we’re like, “Yeah, we’re all friends.”What are you, on your phone? Hey, V-neck. Hey! – What’s your name? – Sam. Sam? Cool! What do you do to afford V-necks, Sam? Typing numbers. Ah… numbers, the letters of math. I’m sorry to bother you. I don’t mean to single you out. I hate when people get pulled out of the audience. Like, are you familiar with the Cirque du Soleil, Sam? They’re a group of French assholes that are slowly taking over America by humiliating audience members one by one. We once went to see Cirque du Soleil at Navy Pier when I was a kid, and my brother came, and he was 12 years old. You remember being 12, when you’re like, “No one look at me or I’ll kill myself.” And these French bastards come into the crowd, being like, “Le volunteer!” And they pulled my brother up on stage, and I was like, “No!” And they brought him up, and they reached into his sweatshirt, and they were like… And they had planted a bra, and they pulled out a bra and they were like… And everyone at Navy Pier was like “Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha!” And my brother was like, “That’s great!” I have had other jobs besides comedy.I was an office temp for a while. I really miss that. I loved being a temp, because I would just go from office to office and be terrible at a different job for a week. And then you just get to retire like Lou Gehrig. You’re like, “Thank you. No one will ever see me again.” And they’re like, “Goodbye!” I worked at an office once on 57th Street in New York City. I was there for a couple weeks. I was in a cubicle next to this other cubicle. This woman named Mischa sat in the other cubicle. I want to get the number right. I think Mischa had… about 900,000 photos of her daughter up in her cubicle. Almost like she was trying to solve a conspiracy about her daughter, A Beautiful Mind-style. I think about Mischa two times a week… because of a phone call she had next to me one day. It was one of my first days, and I was sitting next to her. And her phone rang, and this was her call, and I’m quoting. Her phone rang and she said, “Hello? Hush!” And then she hung up. Think about that two times a week. And I didn’t know her well enough by then to be like, “Hey, what kind of a person are you?” You know? Who could she have been talking to? “Hello? Hush!” This was a place of business. My only thought was that it was the CEO of the company being like, “Mischa, help. I’m doing a crossword puzzle. I need a four-letter word for ‘be quiet’ right now.” – “Hush!” – “You’re promoted.”I temped at a little web company on 25th Street in New York City. It was a small web company owned by this old man who was old, old, old money New York. His name was Henry J. Finch IV. Like old, old, old money. Like, his money was in molasses or something. He owned this web company. I have no idea why he owned this web company. I think he won it in a rich man’s game of dice and small binoculars, or something. Mr. Finch wore linen suits. He had suspenders, he had a bow tie, he had a hat, he had a cane with an ivory handle. I’m giving you more description than you need, ’cause I need you to believe me. This was a real person I knew in the 21st century. Mr. Finch was in his 70s. He had an assistant named Mary. She was in her 50s, she was Korean. I don’t know why he had an assistant. He did not need one. Unless he needed someone to be like, “Remember, Mr. Finch, at five o’clock, you need to keep looking like a hard-boiled egg.” One day, Mr. Finch came into the office. It had been raining. Everything I’m about to say to you was said in front of me on that afternoon. Mr. Finch walked into the office, and he was wearing a raincoat, he was wearing a rain hat, and he had his cane. And he walked in and he said, and I’m quoting, “Ah! One feels like a duck splashing around in all this wet! And when one feels like a duck, one is happy!” And then Mary yelled, “Ooh, ducklings!” To which Mr. Finch replied, “Too old to be a duckling. Quack, quack.” And then walked into his office. I think about that every goddamn day. I mean, imagine you’re me. You’re a 22-year-old temp, and you’re so hungover, and you just wanna die every day. And then that happens in front of you, and I don’t know, gives you hope? And I did that a little fast. Let me break that conversation down for you. Mr. Finch walked in, and he began a conversation the way anyone would. “Ah!” “One feels like a duck splashing around in all this wet!” The rain. “And when one feels like a duck, one is happy!” Now, that’s debatable. But rather than debate that point, Mary brought up a new, separate, but interesting point… which was, “Ducklings!” But Mr. Finch, ever the realist about his own age and mortality… said, “Ah, too old to be a duckling!” As if to say, “My duckling days are behind me. Mary, don’t you see? I’m a duck now. And to prove it… Well, I’ll say just about the most famous catchphrase a duck has… ‘Quack, quack.'” And I knew right at that moment, by the way, that it meant nothing to Mr. Finch, what he had said. Crazy people are like that. They have unlimited crazy currency. Like, if I had gone into his office a couple weeks later and been like, “Hey, Finch, you remember that time you were like, ‘Too old to be a duckling. Quack, quack’?” He would just be like, “Ah, perhaps I did quack! But such is life for an old knickerbocker like me.” Like, he’d say something else crazy.That’s the wonderful thing about crazy people, you know? Is that they just have unlimited currency. The things they say mean nothing to them, but they mean everything to me. I was once walking into Penn Station in New York. I was walking down 31st Street towards Eighth Avenue. I’m walking down 31st, there’s this woman standing at Eighth and 31st. I have my little roller suitcase. You can all imagine. I’m walking towards her. She’s smoking a cigarette that is not lit anymore. She’s watching me walk, kind of scanning me up and down, as if she had Terminator vision… where she could see little bits of data, like, “Little honky ass,” and could read information. As I walked past her, she said this to me. I walked past her and she said, and I’m quoting, “Eat ass, suck a dick and sell drugs.” Very dirty, yes? A very upsetting thing to hear, yes? I’m sorry you all had to hear that, but at least you all got to hear it as a group. I was alone out there that afternoon. And she said this totally unprompted. “Eat ass, suck a dick and sell drugs.” It wasn’t like I had paused in front of her and been like, “What should I do with my life?” So, I walk away from her with this to-do list. And I like structure, I like a to-do list. It did dawn on me that that list of things does get better as it goes along, when you really think about it. ‘Cause it starts in a pretty rough place. It starts with just about the worst task a to-do list can start with. But by the end, you have your own small business. And isn’t that the American dream when all’s said and done? That if you eat enough ass and suck enough dick, one day you can sell drugs. Imagine you did all that to sell drugs and then they legalize drugs, and you were like, “But I…” This has been a real thrill to perform here, by the way. I just wanna say that in all sincerity. Thanks for coming to this. Really, really appreciate it.I wanna tell you one more story before I get out of here, about the night I met a guy named Bill Clinton. Now, I don’t… Some of you know who that is? For those of you that don’t, he was President of the United States from 1993 until 2001, and he is a smooth and fantastic hillbilly who should be declared Emperor of the United States of America. Now, I know you know who Bill Clinton is. But I was doing a show at a college, and I mentioned Bill Clinton, and, like, they kind of didn’t know who he was. Like, sorry, they knew the name, right? But they only knew this 2015 Bill Clinton, who’s a very different Bill Clinton. Have you seen his ass lately? What the hell is he trying to pull? He’s all thin now, and he wears these little tight suits, and he’s got these grandpa reading glasses, like, “Hey, I can’t do nothing to nobody no more.” “Oh, me? I’m just an old, old man. I don’t have the appetites.” You know? And he’s always flying around the world with Bill Gates trying to cure AIDS.That is not the Bill Clinton that we all signed up for 20 years ago. Our Bill Clinton was like a big, fat Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights-looking guy, who played the saxophone on Arsenio, and his work in the STD community was not in curing anything at that time. That was the man we all elected president. That was the Bill Clinton that I met. I got to meet Bill Clinton when he was Governor Clinton in 1992, when he was first running for president.And I got to meet Bill Clinton because my parents had gone to the same college as Bill Clinton. They’re a little younger, but they went to the same college. So, when he was first running for president, he would have all these big, like, alumni fundraisers, and everyone who went was invited to go. Now, this was really cool for a couple reasons. One, I got to meet Bill Clinton. But two, I got to watch my parents watch someone they went to school with become the president. And that is super funny to see, ’cause think about some of the people you went to school with. Now imagine they’re becoming the president. Imagine Sam was becoming the president. It would stir up strong emotions. And my parents had very different opinions on Bill Clinton.My mom loved Bill Clinton, ’cause Bill Clinton was always a really charismatic, handsome guy. I mean, think about how many women he got in the 1990s when he looked like Frank Caliendo doing John Madden. Now… imagine him as a college student. And my mom tells me that there was this sort of chivalrous policy on campus back then, where, late at night, if female students were leaving the library unaccompanied, male students were encouraged to wait out in front and offer to walk them home. That sounds good, right? So, my mom tells me that Bill Clinton would be out in front of the library every single night… just being like, “Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home?” And one night, my mom was leaving the library, and Bill Clinton was like, “Hey, can I walk ya home?” And my mom was like, “Hell, yes.” So… This is absolutely true. My mom, little Ellen Stanton, walked arm-in-arm with Bill Clinton to her dorm. And she was like, “You know, I wanted to invite him up for a beer.” And I was like, “Thanks, I’m nine.” But… her roommate was upstairs, so she lost her chance with Bill Clinton.Now, my dad, on the other hand, hated Bill Clinton, because my parents were dating during this time. And also, my dad’s a much more morally-upright, conservative kind of guy. He always told me that he hated it in college that Bill Clinton could, quote, “Get away with anything.” Can you imagine how he felt later?So, one day, this invitation arrives for a fundraiser where you could meet Bill Clinton. My mom opens it first and she goes, “Oh, we have to go. We have to go see Bill.” And without looking up at her, my dad just says, “Why? It’s not like he’s gonna remember you.” One black coffee. Same motherfucker. So, my mom says, “Fine! I’ll go and I’ll take John.” And I was like, “Hell, yeah.” And I slid in the room in my First Communion suit, ready to go. ‘Cause I loved Bill Clinton. I was ten years old. If you were a kid when Bill Clinton was first released, it was the most exciting thing ever. We’d never seen a cool politician before. And he would go on MTV, and he’d have cool answers to kids’ questions. They’d be like, “Governor, what’s your favorite food?” And he’d be like, “I don’t know, fries?” And we’d be like, “Yay, we eat fries!”I learned to play his campaign song on the piano. It was “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac… from Rumours, an album written by and for people cheating on each other. He let us know who he was right away. So, I went with my mom, as her date… to reconnect with Governor Bill Clinton. We walked into the ballroom. It was a big hotel ballroom. It was the Palmer House Hilton, big Hilton hotel ballroom. Walked into the ballroom, it was packed with people. It’s actually the ballroom from the end of the movie The Fugitive, remember? So, that ballroom. So, my mom and I walk in, it’s packed with people, the… Sorry, the end where Harrison Ford, as Dr. Richard Kimble, bursts in to confront Dr. Charles Nichols, right? Okay. So, that ballroom. So, my mom and I walk in, it’s packed with people. Why does Kimble confront Nichols? Well, I know we all know this, but… No, no. But, but, but… Kimble, he found out that Nichols, along with Devlin MacGregor and Lentz, who has mysteriously died, they had hired Frederick Sykes, the one-armed man, to kill Kimble. Kimble’s wife wasn’t even the target. I know we all know this. But they were gonna kill Kimble because he wasn’t gonna approve certain liver samples to pass RUD-90. So, Kimble finds out about all of this, and, of course, he’s furious. And he bursts into the ballroom and he goes, “You switched the samples!” And Dr. Nichols is like, “Ladies and gentlemen, my friend, Dr. Richard Kimble.” What accent did that guy have, by the way? He goes, “You switched the samples! And you doctored your research! So that you could have Provasic!”Anyway, so it’s that ballroom. So, we walk into that ballroom. It was packed with people. It was packed with people. A real Who’s Not of Chicago celebrities. Walter Jacobson was there. Walter Jacobson was the local Fox anchor. He’d do fun things where he’d go undercover as a homeless person. And he’d be like, “Oh, what time is the soup?” And they’d be like, “Man, you’re Walter Jacobson.” He was there. Everybody. And on the far side of the ballroom, under a spotlight, we saw a little bit of silver hair. And it was him… Bill Clinton. The Comeback Kid. But he was surrounded by reporters, and photographers, and Secret Service. So, what are you gonna do? Well, if you’re my mom, you ball up the back of my sport coat, and you push me forward like a human shield. And then you start jogging while yelling, “This ten-year-old boy has to meet the next president of the United States!” Kind of implying that I might be dying. My feet were not on the ground. She was swinging me like a snowplow. I was just mowing down fat Chicago Democrats. I pushed past all the reporters, I pushed past all the photographers. We pushed past all the Secret Service.We land at Bill Clinton’s feet. Bill Clinton turns, looks at my mom and says, “Hey, Ellen,” ’cause he never forgets a bitch, ever. My mom melts. She goes, “Hi, Bill.” Then it is revealed that she has no plan. So… she pushes me towards Clinton and she goes, “This is my son, John, and he’s also going to be president.” And I was like, “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not gonna be president.” And I know now that I’m definitely never gonna be president. Not unless everyone gets real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly. Based on my ten-year-old memory, Bill Clinton is about 13 feet tall. And he leaned down, because, well, I was wearing this button that I bought outside the fundraiser. It was a cartoon button of George H. W. Bush, and it had a quail flying over his head, and it was shitting on his head. And it said, “Bird-brained.” And I thought it was very funny. And Bill Clinton leaned down so that only I could hear and he said, “Hey, man, I like your button.” And I said, “You can do whatever you want forever.” And he took my advice. And… it was the best night of my entire life.And I got home that night… I got home that night, and my dad was still awake, like, reading angry under one lamp, just like… And I went up to him and I went, “Hey! I’m gonna be a Democrat.” “And I’m gonna vote for Bill Clinton.” And without looking up at me, my dad just said, “You have the moral backbone of a chocolate éclair.” You know, how you talk to a child. So, here’s the end of that story. That was 1992.Let’s flash forward five years to 1997. It is now 1997. I am a sophomore in high school, Bill Clinton is in his second term as president. And on the morning that the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaks on the cover of The New York Times. It had been on the Drudge Report, and then it was on the cover of The New York Times. That morning, I wake up to the newspaper hitting me in the face. I am a teenager asleep in bed, and the newspaper hits me in the face and falls open on my stomach. And I open my eyes to see my dad standing there dressed for work, and he says, “The other shoe just dropped.” And then my dad went in to work to find out that his law firm had been hired to defend Bill Clinton.Good night, Chicago. and thats mulaney for ya
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bexlynne · 5 years
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Time To Go Slumming (Chapter 1)
(A/N): Hey!  I’m finally writing again, after over a year of not!  I’m very happy to be doing what I love again.  I’ve been working on this story for close to a year, and I’ve finally written enough of it that I’m ready to start posting!  Let me know what you think of the story and my OC’s, and let me know if you want to be tagged in future updates of this story! Trigger warnings for this chapter: use of the word ‘whore,’ sexual harassment, violence, mentions of death.
Spot paced back and forth along the roof, fingering the gold finial on his cane. Every so often he stole a glance at the street down below, keeping an eye on his boys. They were just starting to get home, trickling into the lodging house in twos and threes as the sun started to go down. He kept a mental tally, swearing under his breath when he came up two short. The two he was looking for, of course.
"Extra, extra!" Riddle shouted. Her voice carried even to Spot's ears, a block down and two stories up. "Maniac on the loose in 'Hattan! Hundreds flee the city!"
Hot Shot grinned, cupping his hands around his mouth to bellow his own headline. "Unda'paid milkman drives truck through factory! Death count high!"
"Mayor falls in love with seagull!"
"Drunk jockey at Sheepshead runs race without a horse!"
"Drunk vaudeville singer falls off stage mid-song!"
Spot shook his head in disgust, watching as a man stopped them a few feet from the lodging house. He took the pape from Riddle and handed a coin to Hot Shot, touching his cap to both of them before he left. I didn't think it was possible. These two is worse than Kelly.
Pushing himself up from the railing, Spot brought his fingers up to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. Both newsies looked startled, and he pointed at them with his cane. "Both of ya!" he called. "Get up here." Hot Shot let Riddle slide to the ground, leading the way to the fire escape ladder. Spot could hear them bickering even from where he stood.
"Ladies first," Hot Shot said with a bow.
Riddle took a step back with a shake of her head. "Not a chance. I ain't gonna have ya checkin' me out as I climb the ladder."
"I had ya on my shoulders all day and didn't try nothin' once, what are ya talkin' about?" Hot Shot said indignantly.
"Ya can neva' be too careful," Riddle said in a singsong voice.
"Yeah, since ya care so much 'bout bein' careful," Hot Shot teased.
Riddle parked her hands on her hips with a scowl, like the older boy didn't have a good six inches on her. "Says the fella who let me fall."
"It was an accident!" Hot Shot protested.
"Twice?" Riddle scoffed.
Spot rolled his eyes. "Would you two cut it out an' just get up here?" he yelled down the ladder. He resumed his agitated pacing, muttering to himself. "Why can't ya just act your age?" he said under his breath, casting a baleful glare in their direction.
Hot Shot pulled himself up onto the roof, giving Spot a nod and pausing for a second to give Riddle a hand. She sat down right where she was, leaning her back against the railing and stretching her legs out in front of her. "I wanna sleep," she said with a yawn. "Is it time for bed yet?"
"Quit your gripin', I did all the walkin'," Hot Shot said good-naturedly, nudging her leg with his foot. He reached into his shirt pocket, taking out a slightly squashed hunk of bread and tearing it in half. "Ya eat yet today?"
Riddle sat up straighter, reaching out for it. "No," she said, a note of bitterness in her voice. "Those old bats don't give me a second glance. Judgmental old hags."
Both boys' heads whipped in her direction. "Riddle!" they said at the same time. Spot's tone was scolding, and Hot Shot sounded horrified.
"Ya can't just insult nuns!" the Italian said, his dark eyes wide. He performed the sign of the Blessed Cross, making Riddle -the only one of them who wasn't raised Catholic- roll her eyes.
"Whateva' ya say," she said drily. "My point is, they won't give me food. They think I's some kind a' whore."
Spot grunted. "Ya are a whore."
Riddle opened her mouth to protest, then she changed her mind. "Fair enough." She sat back against the railing, chewing her bread, and Hot Shot dropped down beside her to count out the days' earnings, dividing the coins into two neat piles. Spot waited impatiently for them to finish, tapping out a beat with his cane on the ground.
Most people had a way of getting on his nerves, these two only slightly less than others. They could be irritating enough most days, but these two -the cool-headed Italian and the fiery, flirty gypsy girl- were part of his inner circle, somewhere between allies and friends. Hot Shot was the same age as Spot, fifteen, and the two of them had been fast friends since they were eleven. The other boy had Spot's level head for leadership, but without the quick temper that so often got Spot into trouble. His easy-going nature and the way he kept his temper under control made him a valuable second-in-command to have.
Riddle was a year younger, and the only girl living at the Poplar Street lodging house. She had been only ten years old when she had somehow charmed her way past house manager Mr. Crawley and into the ranks of the Brooklyn newsies, and she hadn't lost any of her skill since then. Then again, she was a lot less trouble back then, and old Mr. Crawley's heart was a lot softer. Either way, her quick thinking and out-of-the-box ideas had earned her a place close to Spot... in more ways than one. She had a few other attributes he was fond of, too.
Finally, Riddle swallowed the last of her bread and looked up, her violet-blue eyes meeting Spot's. "What'd ya need us for?" she asked, starting to untie the length of twine securing one of her braids.
Spot rolled a cigarette between his fingers before striking a match against the concrete and lighting it. He didn't miss Hot Shot's flinch as he did so, or the way he tugged his shirtsleeves down further and wrapped his arms around his torso. Spot saw it all -he saw everything- but he ignored it, blowing out a breath of smoke. "I's been hearin' things from me boids," he said. "There's whispers of a turf war brewin', ova' in Queens."
The other two exchanged glances. "So?" Riddle said cautiously. "Queens always fights ova' boundaries. Stretch is a good enough leada', he keeps 'em in check."
"He did," Spot corrected with a grim smile. "'Til they found 'im in the river."
He kept that eerie smile on his face as Riddle let out a gasp and Hot Shot muttered a curse in Italian. "A'right," Hot Shot said after a moment. "So they's without a leada', and they's fightin' with themselves. What's that gotta do with us?"
Spot rolled his eyes, running his fingers down the length of his cane. "'S only a matta' a' time 'fore a new leada' rises ta the top. New leada's is full a' bluff an' bluster. First thing he'll wanna do is try ta prove himself by takin' Brooklyn."
"Ya don't know that," Hot Shot said with a slight frown.
Spot took a seat, propping his feet up and letting his cigarette dangle from his fingers. "Ya wanna bet? I'se been around long enough ta see three guys take ova' Queens. Neither a' you was here, but Jumper always stomped 'em out quick 'fore they could do any damage." He noticed Riddle stiffen at the mention of the old leader's name, and he was curious as to why. Carefully, he filed that information away before finishing his thought. "We's got a chain goin', and I ain't lettin' myself be the weak link. Brooklyn don't fall, not on my watch."
Riddle rearranged her features carefully, building up her mask of indifference before she spoke again. "That why we ain't allies with them like we are with 'Hattan?"
Spot studied her appraisingly. "More or less," he said finally. "If me boids is right, they'll have a new leada' come summa'. We's'll hafta be on our guard 'til then, make sure they don't try nothin' while it's still every man for hisself. I want ya ta stay away from the borda', Riddle."
"I don't go there, anyways," the girl said, shaking out her hair and stuffing the twine in her pocket. "Too close ta Blade's territory."
"Don't talk about him," Spot snapped. "I ain't in the mood."
Riddle frowned. "I ain't talkin' bout nothin'," she said. "You's the one who brought it up."
"I didn't bring nothin' up," Spot countered. "I just told ya-"
"As entertainin' as this is," Hot Shot cut in. "I'm out. It's too late for sparks ta be flyin' between you two. I's headed ta bed."
Spot glanced up, surprised to see the moon high in the sky. "Yeah, that's prob'ly a good idea," he agreed. "Whaddaya say, Rid? Let's save the sparks flyin' for the bedroom."
Riddle shifted her position to sit by Spot. "Sounds good by me," she said, her hands traveling up his suspender straps to rest behind his neck. Her slender fingers tangled themselves in his hair, and a playful smirk crossed her face. "Let's save the real fun for lata'."
"Yeah, I didn't need ta hear that," Hot Shot stated, scooping up his coins and getting to his feet. "'Night, sorella," he added to Riddle, handing her her share.
Riddle slipped the coins into her pocket and gave him a little wave. "'Night, Hot Shot," she said, laying her head back on Spot's chest. It was only a few moments before his restless energy was back, and he pushed Riddle off of him and crossed over to the railing.
The gypsy girl stood up with a sigh. "I should head down, too," she said. Spot didn't turn, didn't even seem to hear her. "Are ya comin'?" she pressed, wrapping her arms around her waist.
He glanced back at her. "Nah, I'm good up here," he said. "G'night."
Riddle waited a moment, but he was apparently done talking to her. "Night," she said, turning to find the ladder.
"Up and at 'em, boys!" Crawley yelled through the open doorway. He heard a few muffled groans from inside and rolled his eyes, stepping through the doorway and into the darkened room. He was instantly hit with the smell of unwashed socks, teenage boys, and wool clothes drying on the radiator. "C'mon, get up, get up," he scolded, crossing to the first bed he saw and giving the boy in it a shake.
The boy -Tracks, judging by the shock of red hair poking out from under his blanket- swatted Crawley's hand away. "Lea'e me 'lone," he mumbled, curling up tighter.
The house manager shook his head in response, a grin spreading across his face. "C'mon, boys! Up and at 'em!" he ordered, flicking on the lights. He opened the windows for good measure, shivering slightly at the draft. With a glance at Spot's empty bed, he ducked out of the room and took the attic stairs two at a time to wake Riddle. "You up, girlie?" he asked, rapping on the wooden door.
"Yeah, I's gettin' there," the girl called from inside.
"Spot better not be in there with ya," he warned, not budging an inch.
He heard a pause, a snap of suspenders, and then- "oh, Mr. Crawley, we would neva'."
"Don't you try that on me," Crawley retorted, rolling his eyes. "Ya may have those boys all wrapped up in those pretty little fingers a' yours, Miss Ridley, but not me. Where's Conlon?"
The thin door couldn't muffle her laughter, prompting him to roll his eyes again. "No idea. He was up on the roof all night, came down the fire escape. He passed my winda' on by. It was about four, I think. Ain't seen him since then."
Crawley shook his head, turning back to head down the stairs. That boy. Pausing outside the bunk room door to yell a few early morning encouragements to the boys -"Hurry up, ya lazy bums! My ol' granny moves faster than all y'all, God rest her soul!"- he strode into the front room and dropped into his desk chair.
"Mornin'," a voice said, causing the man to jump a foot into the air. Spot stood in the doorway to the kitchen, leaning against the jamb with a smirk on his face.
"Land sakes, boy!" Crawley sputtered, his southern drawl coming out thicker than usual. "Scarin' me nigh ta death like that."
"Calm down, old man," Spot said, leaning lazily against the desk.
"Old," Crawley muttered indignantly. "Ya better watch that mouth a' yours, boy. I'm twenty-five, and ya know it."
"The boys givin' ya trouble?" Spot asked knowingly, ignoring the threat.
Crawley waved a hand dismissively, sitting back down. "Boys'll be boys."
"Not on my watch," Spot said darkly, pushing up from the desk and heading up the stairs.
Riddle passed him on her way down, dressed in a green-and-blue checked shirt and gray trousers, her cap stuck in her back pocket and her hair tied up in braids. "Mornin', Crawley," she said sweetly.
The Texan softened some, sending the girl a fond smile. "Good mornin', darlin'."
Spot rolled his eyes. "Suck up," he hissed to Riddle as he breezed past.
Riddle grinned, flipping him off behind Crawley's back.
"Hey, that ain't very ladylike," a voice drawled from the top of the stairs. Sting sauntered down to stand next to Riddle, his hands in his pockets as he leaned against the wall, just a little too close for her liking. "What about me? Don't I get a good mornin'?"
Riddle crossed her arms over her chest, sliding back a step out of the older boy's reach. Sting- seventeen, always pushing the envelope and a constant thorn in Spot's side. And, by extension, Riddle's. "Good mornin'," she said stiffly.
"Not good enough," Sting said, snatching up one of her suspenders and tugging her towards him. His tone was joking, but his eyes were cold as ice.
"Let go," Riddle said irritably, yanking the strap out of his hands and snapping them up on her shoulders.
"Ohh, I see how it is," Sting said with a grin. "You's Spot Conlon's whore, but when it comes ta the rest of us you's man-shy."
Crawley got to his feet, but Spot beat him to it. "Sting," he said brusquely from the landing. Crawley felt a smile spread slowly across his face. For all his faults, Spot had a radar when it came to Riddle. It made Crawley's job that much easier.
Spot moved down to the bottom step, folding his arms and gripping his cane tightly. "Ya got somethin' ta say ta Riddle?"
Even on the step Spot was about two inches shorter, but Sting's resolve wavered. "No," he muttered.
Sting shifted uncomfortably as Spot's gaze burned into him. "Somethin' ya got ta say ta me? Thoughts on how I run the place?" When he didn't get an answer, Spot's arm jerked up without warning, clipping the bigger boy's jaw with the head of his cane. "Get outta my sight," he ordered. One hand flying up to cradle his chin, Sting fled without a word.
Riddle bit her lip, smiling slightly. "My hero," she teased, wrapping her arms around Spot's neck. She pressed a quick kiss to the side of his neck, right below his ear.
Instead of grabbing her waist and pulling her closer, like he usually did, Spot batted her off. "I's gotta get the boys," he said, sliding his cane through his belt loop without looking at her. "They take too long." He spun on his heel and headed for the staircase.
Crawley hesitated, still standing behind his desk. "You okay, girlie?" he asked, giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
Riddle glared at Spot's retreating back. "I's fine," she said shortly. "Tell Hot Shot ta hurry it up, will ya?" Shrugging out from under Crawley's hand, she pushed through the front door and let it close with a bang.
Crawley sighed, leaning back against the desk. "It's too early for them to start with this," he muttered.
Riddle was leaning against the red brick wall of the distribution center when the boys got there, poring over a copy of the day's paper. "We get paid ta hawk the papes, not read 'em," Hot Shot said, snatching it out of her hands and examining the headline.
Riddle bumped against him with all her weight, but the Italian boy barely wobbled. "Gotta check out the merchandise," she said. "Figure out the angle for the day."
"Fair enough," Hot Shot said with a shrug, handing the paper back. "Why'd ya skip out on us?" he inquired.
Riddle fiddled with the chain around her neck, sinking down to sit cross-legged with her back to the wall. "Don't see no point in waitin' 'round for the nuns, not when I don't get nothin' outta it," she said finally, spreading the paper out in front of her. "Figured I's'd get here early, beat the crowd."
"Good plan," Hot Shot agreed. "'Cept I don't have my papes yet, so you's still gotta wait."
Riddle threw a bundle of papers at his chest, a smirk spreading across her face. "Ya owe me forty-five cents," she said.
Hot Shot dug around in his pocket and flipped her a fifty-cent piece, deftly catching the nickel she tossed his way with the other hand. "Let's get movin' then, whaddaya waitin' for? We's wastin' daylight and losin' customers." He let his bundle of papes rest on his shoulder, pushing his long dark bangs out of his eyes. "Usual spots. Yell if ya get inta trouble, 'kay Rid?" When a moment or two went by without an answer he tried again. "Rid. Ridley," he said in a singsong voice. "Riddle!"
His selling partner flinched, her violet-blue eyes snapping into focus. "What? Jeez, Hot Shot."
"Bad mornin'?" he asked, the corner of his mouth lifting in a grin. "You was blankin' out."
"Shuddup," Riddle said, ducking away from him. "I don't blank out. I was plottin' out my sellin' patterns for the day," she added primly.
"Sure," Hot Shot said knowingly. "Flirt with anythin' that moves and beg for money. Takes a lotta thought ta plan that one."
"Didn't I tell ya ta shut up?" Riddle protested, dodging the hand that reached out to ruffle her hair. "Get out there, we's got papes ta sell. I ain't buyin' your dinner for ya tonight."
"Yes, ma'am," the older boy said with mock severity. "Ya won't see me again today." Shaking his head with a smirk, he headed off towards Prospect Park. "I'll take the south side a' the park, you take the north."
"No... Hot Shot!" Riddle yelled after him. "Wind's comin' from off the bay. You'll sell more on the east side."
He grinned, halting in his tracks. "Grazie per il consiglio, sorella," he called back, not bothering to turn around. "Stai attento." He knew she most likely didn't know that phrase, but he also knew that he was confused practically every time she tried to give him advice, so he figured they were even. Taking a deep breath, he set out to face the day. Take it one thing at a time, Hot Shot. For now just work on sellin' your first pape.
"Ma'am!" he said, falling into step beside a woman pushing a pram. "Have ya read today's paper? There's some kind a' maniac loose in the park, ya might wanna find a different route for your walk. A penny'll buy ya all the details."
I can do this. Today's gonna be a good day.
Italian translations:
Sorella - sister
Grazie per il consiglio, sorella. - Thanks for the advice, sister.
Stai attento. - Be careful
13 notes · View notes
twodaysintojune · 5 years
Text
I’m Not Jesus
Supernatural, Debriel, Warnings: Issues with catholic religion, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture. There’s nothing explicit but it’s definitely there.
Finde me at AO3
Loosely based on the song I'm not Jesus by Apocalyptica ft. Corey Taylor. I've always had an issue when certain people don't get the punishment they deserve and I always have wanted to see justice happen. Fast forward to today and when I happened to stumble on the song once more after such a long time I immediately knew Gabriel would definitely give their just desserts to these kind of disgraceful bastards and not hold back on the punishment. This is still darker than the things I've written so far so please tread lightly. The Debriel at the end was just me indulging in my ship.
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“SON OF A BITCH!”
A notebook and some pens flew across the motel room. Dean had had enough composure to not throw the laptop away along the other stuff.
“Dean, calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down!? This bastard could be doing something to any of those kids RIGHT NOW and we don’t have a way to get anywhere near them or get them out!”
Sam sighed while Dean dragged his hands through his hair in desperation.
“We can’t help it, after those kids tried to escape two days ago security has been reinforced…”
“Maybe we should just shoot the bastard down.”
“Dean, we don’t have actual proof that he is doing anything to them...”
“Sam, that kid Jason was trembling, TREMBLING when the cops told him they had to take him away from me and towards that bastard! You saw him crying for god’s sake!”
“...And it would be really bad if we caught the attention of the police if we suddenly disappear after the deed is done.”
Dean just glared at his brother. He was obviously right but it still sucked to be placed in this situation. They had come because they had read the corpse of a kid had been found in a riverbank nearby, the odd thing was that the kid had been at an orphanage run by a local church that according to rumours had apparently been missing children throughout the years that the church said they had transferred but never arrived to their destination.
After Jason and the other kid Rhys escaped, Dean was dreading that it had actually been the absolutely not supernatural but just as monstrous priest the one that had killed these kids. The worse was that now that the priest knew their faces they were unable to even walk two blocks near the building before any of the people at his congregation pointed them out and shooed them off. What could he actually do to gather proof that these kids needed to be rescued? He started to pace around the room trying to think of something.
“We need to think this out.”
“A fucking miracle, that’s what we need...” Suddenly, Dean stopped in his tracks. “Of course!”
Sam watched his brother sit at the edge of the bed and join his hands in prayer.
“Uh, maybe it would be easier to just use the phone, Cas can’t answer back with a prayer.”
“Shhh, dammit I’m trying to concentrate”
“Well maybe you could try harder, your prayers are the most laughable thing I’ve ever heard.”
Sam turned towards the newcomer’s voice, gun in hand before realising who it was.
“Gabriel!?”
“The One and Only” Gabriel winked at Sam “So—oomph!” Gabriel had been almost tackled by Dean with how hard the hunter had thrown himself to hug him.
“Man! I’m so glad you came! We need your help so bad! You’re my only hope.”
“Wow, I.. I’m happy to see you too...”
Sam looked at Gabriel with suspicion, he wasn’t sure if he had just seen the archangel blush for a fraction of a second. Quickly, Dean filled him in on the situation at hand. It was frightening to see how his usual aloof stance slowly turned into a mask shadowed by something terrible.
“...That’s why I called you, I want you to fly yourself in there and find proof against that bastard.”
“Oh, I’ll find proof alright.”
“...Gabe?”
After a snap of his fingers, Gabriel delighted himself with the look of shock both hunters gave him. In front of them, instead of the usual archangel, a fourteen or something year old version of Gabriel stood back at them. A thinner, more delicate frame than what was expected of him, soft locks of brown blondish hair curled over his blushed face, fairer skin that enhanced his rosy pouted lips. An evil grin that reflected the sparkle in his huge whiskey coloured eyes was the only thing that broke the angelical image he was giving out right now.
“Well, how do I look?”
Dean gulped down dryly.
“I mean this in the best worst possible way given the situation Gabe but… Man, you look like you’re literally asking for a banging from that son of a bitch.”
Sam snapped his head towards Dean with a glare of disapproval. It was true that right now Gabriel looked like a… depraved man’s wettest dream with such angelic looks but surely there was some sort of punishment for saying something like THAT to the face of a friggin’ actual archangel!
Surprisingly for Sam, this actually made Gabriel smile more. He snapped his fingers once more and surely a lightning came out of nowhere outside and rain started to fall, a minute later it was literally a downpour. Taking off his jacket and giving it to Dean he messed his hair more, undid the laces of his boots and a wave of his hand made him look like he had not been able to sleep under a roof for a week. He went to open the door.
“Well, I’m off.”
Before he stepped out, he felt someone holding his arm for a second. Gabriel turned to look at Dean.
“Gabe… be careful.”
Gabriel laughed. It was obvious the only person who would have to be careful was that bastard priest, he didn’t understand the reason Dean looked so concerned.
“Sure Dean-o, don’t worry about it.”
Confidently, he stepped outside and made a run towards the church five blocks away because of-fucking-course he had to be that extra with the scenario. Dean stood at the door until he could no longer see Gabriel before closing it back, went for a beer and sat down on the edge of the bed once more.
“Do you think he’ll gather enough proof to get that bastard in jail in just a night?”
Dean turned at his brother with an odd look.
“Sammy... If he gets proof that he’s doing something, anything, to those children; he’s not gonna let that bastard rot in jail.”
It took Sam a couple of seconds to realize that they had literally unleashed the wrath of heavens against the fucker, he was not going to survive the night. His concept of right and wrong told him that letting Gabriel kill that man was almost as bad as shooting him in the face but still, it was Gabriel the Archangel the one delivering judgement. That had to count for something, right? Sam grabbed a beer and sat by Dean’s side.
“Well then I guess that’ll serve him right.”
“Just desserts alright...”
They drank their beer in awkward silence, getting ready to wait for Gabriel to show up once more. This was going to be a long night.
---
It took Father Roland almost an hour more than usual to bid goodbye to everyone that night because of the sudden downpour and he was already getting on edge having to smile so much at Mrs. Rowan’s stupid idle remarks on yesterday’s tv show. He had to do something about this frustration soon, little Rhys still had to pay some punishment for trying to escape like that. He had just closed the door when a sudden movement at the nearest corner called his attention, looking closely in the dimmed lights it looked like a person.
Father Roland neared them cautiously until he was upfront. “Who are you?”
The crouching figure jumped scared and turned towards the priest taking his breath away. Behind layers of sticky and wet dirt beautiful melted golden eyes and features that could put all the angels in heaven to shame were staring at him in fright.
“Please don’t sack me. I… I won’t do anything bad.”
Father Roland gave him the disgustingly sweet smile he gave to his favorite boys.
“Dear me boy, I would never think of sacking you. My god you’re drenched, let’s get you dry. Come on over this way, you can clean up at the house.”
Listening at the man’s thoughts disgusted him. Images of bruised flesh and screams of innocent children filled his brain. So Gabriel focused on the charade of pretending to be a sad little runaway runt that was being picked up by the (overly) caring priest. He had promised Dean he would get enough proof first so he just had to wait a little more and stoically stand the bastard’s hands holding him up with a bit too more strength than what should be normal. He expected it wouldn’t take long, the first point of alarm had been triggered when he clearly read how Father Roland was rejoicing on the fact he had in his hands a boy that apparently no one would miss.
So you’re already sinning in mind eh, Father Roland?
He was led to a bathroom in a small apartment adjacent to the church and was told to wash himself. Sighing, Gabriel made a go to undress. He was disappointed when the priest didn’t actually attack him while taking his bath but that obviously was because he preferred to be a voyeur, otherwise there was no reason for the shower not having any curtains. Gabriel took some time to finish his shower considering that a boy that hadn’t taken a bath in such a long time wouldn’t really rush. In the middle of it the priest arrived with a towel and some clothes. Gabriel covered himself in apparent shame while the priest laughed it off telling him it was perfectly alright and not to feel ashamed.
“Don’t feel ashamed my ass, you obviously scanned me over entirely in the process.” mumbled Gabriel after the priest had left him once more. Second point of alarm triggered.
Finishing the shower, he dried himself and cursed under his breath. A deteriorated large t-shirt and some old tight shorts. For someone dealing with an orphanage it didn't look like he cared much about the things he had for the children. Third point.
“Well look at that! You look like a completely different boy now! Come, have a seat, let's have dinner.”
Gabriel sat in front of him mumbling something he hoped passed as ‘thank you’. Taking a bite of the mashed potatoes he groaned in pleasure he didn’t expect.
“You like it?”
“Yes… did you do this?”
He leaned forward a bit and winked at the boy. “One needs to find joy in the simple daily tasks.”
Well fuck it thought Gabriel, this is why this world seems so unfair most of the time. Here I am, sitting in front of a child abuser that prepares mashed potatoes worth of a showdown against Dean’s. If it weren’t for how he’s looking at me right now I wouldn’t suspect a thing, heck, he could be poisoning me right now and… Gabriel stopped his train of thought and carefully began to disentangle the molecules that formed the mashed potatoes.
(C6H10O5)n
That was starch, definitely from the potatoes, and over there were the fat molecules and further more salt and testing a little bit more water and lactose and...
C16H12FN3O3
Oh.
Oh.
There it was. Roofies.
It was so obvious, crush the bitches and mix them in the mashed potatoes. Not a single kid would find out. Well, too bad for you Father Roland, I’m not a normal kid at all.
So far all evidence had been circumstantial, Dean’s telling of the events, sinning in mind was still not an action so he could easily make the priest repent on that, even being a disgusting voyeuristic pervert could be forgiven to a point if he didn’t do anything else, he would eventually land in Hell when he died but that wouldn’t be Gabriel’s problem. But things had changed now that he was actively trying to drug him.
“What’s your name kid?”
Gabriel turned to look at the man, if he was going to do this then it was going to be all tricks out and for a man that falsely professed upon religion, a religious styled punishment was the most fitting things of all.
He left his fork down at the plate and gave him a smile.
“Gabriel. They call me Gabriel.”
“Gabriel eh? That’s a very nice name, did you know that your name is the name of an angel?”
“An angel?” Gabriel went forward to drink a bit of the adulterated soda.
“An Archangel actually. They hold the highest of ranks in Heaven just below God.”
“Who else holds that rank?”
“Well, there’s Michael and Raphael.”
Gabriel frowned a little.
“What about Lucifer?”
“What about him?”
“He’s an Archangel too.”
“No he’s not.”
“Why not?”
“Because he has fallen. He cannot hold the title of Archangel because he refused of it when he fought against God’s will.”
“How do you know? Where is that written in the Bible?”
Father Roland stammered for a second.
“That’s just the way it is kid.”
“Just like that? Shouldn’t we like, reeeally check the book? Or maybe ask Lucifer about it?”
The priest snorted, he was obviously getting frustrated. Figures, thought Gabriel, a person that preaches religion but doesn’t believe in God wouldn’t really spend much time actually reading his books.
“You cannot ask anything to the Devil boy, if you mess with him, you’ll end up in Hell.”
“Have you even tried?”
“Are you asking me to give up my faith?”
“I’m just telling you to fact-check your statements, it wouldn’t do good if a priest was unable to talk about the most basic of things with his congregation.”
Father Roland stood up livid and moved towards Gabriel’s seat with a forced smile.
“You’re getting a little snappy, maybe we should rest and keep with this very interesting talk tomorrow.”
“Oh I think not. I like myself snappy, thank you.” Gabriel smirked at him.
The priest slapped Gabriel with so much force that any normal kid would have literally been thrown off the chair. Gabriel just turned his head a little.
“Don’t be disrespectful to me!”
It took the priest a couple of seconds to perceive the unnatural pain in his hand, when he turned to look at it it was already turning red and swelling a bit.
“Is everything alright Father Roland?”
Gabriel could practically see the cogs in his brain turning at full speed trying to understand how on earth this kid was unfaced and unblemished despite how hard he had hit him. A second later the man was picking Gabriel up from the shirt with evident anger. He obviously had to be more thorough with this little brat. Gabriel wanted to see what his plan of action was so he allowed the priest to manhandle him.
Father Roland dragged Gabriel to a tiny room at the end of a stretch hallway and threw him on a bed. Gabriel perceived the acrid undertones of sweat drenched with fear and other less graceful fluids. It apparently was the same room where the priest sleeped. This was beyond disgusting, he acted like an animal, revolving over his past victories and dragging them on, only to increase the fear of the next child. He was visually frantic, his orderly plan of drugging the kid was not working at all but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t get away with what he wanted. He always got away with what he wanted.
And he wanted Gabriel.
The priest placed himself on top of Gabriel while turning him around, holding his hands backwards, tying him up with a rope he naturally had at hand.
“We’ll have to give you some lessons on how to respect your elders you little piece of shit.”
“What are you gonna do?” Muffled Gabriel through the sheets.
“Wait and see.”
A moment later, the man was pulling Gabriel’s shorts down and the next one he was thrown against the wall by an unknown force. The priest had a grunt forced out of him with the impact, it had been so hard that he temporarily lost his sight, almost fainting.
“Aaaaand... That’s it.”
The priest looked upwards and looked at Gabriel disoriented. Instead of the old clothes he had given him, he was wearing the clothes he had before, only now they were clean and nice.
“What the hell!? What’s going on!? Put me down you little bitch!”
Gabriel magicked himself a chair and sat down to properly look at the man. It was funny to see how out of his element he was right now. This was his space, this was his room and in just a flash Gabriel had turned it all over and made him feel defenseless. He radiated hate towards the archangel. Gabriel laughed in mirth. It was a laugh that would have been labeled as beautiful if the situation had been a completely different one.
“Are you sure you should be using that kind of language with me? Right now I’m the one holding you at will.”
“I don’t know how you’re doing this but once I find out...”
“What? You’ll make me pay for it? Oh man, don’t be an idiot. You’ve been beating and raping kids for years and you managed to keep yourself out of punishment until now. Too bad for you the Winchesters found you along the way… Long story short Roland, you picked the short end of the straw this time and I’m here to pass on some good ol’ Judgement. But not before you tell me what you did with the rest of the kids.”
Father Roland laughed, he was desperately trying to hold onto some sort of power.
“Good luck with that, I’ll die first before telling you a thing.”
Gabriel smirked “You just don’t know how happy I am to hear those words Roland, there’s no other way I’d prefer to go around this.”
With a movement of his hand Gabriel brought Roland back down and on his knees and stood up in front of him.
“But first, maybe a demonstration of what will come to you if you don’t start talking.”
With a snap, Gabriel turned the floor below the priest’s knees into heated coal. Immediately burning his flesh. The man wailed in pain throughout the long 15 seconds the torture lasted. He was sweating already when the lumps of coal disappeared once more. Threads of burnt polyester fabric from his pants adhering painfully to the raw flesh.
“So, Roland. Feeling up for a confession?”
Four hours later, the priest’s entire body was covered in burnt flesh and blisters. And it hadn’t been the man’s fault, with the type of torture he had received he would have confessed everything in less than 20 minutes if Gabriel hadn’t taken his voice away every time he was about to talk.
“What did you say? I can’t hear you Roland! Are you sure you’re trying enough??”
Eventually, Gabriel allowed him to talk. Moments after Roland would have collapsed if it weren’t for the fact that Gabriel was keeping him awake.
“No can’t do Roland, these are your last moments alive, you should treasure them instead of letting them go by.”
Roland started to cry, he couldn’t keep the farce of strength any more.
“Wh… What are... Are you a demon?”
Gabriel turned to look at him like he had grown a second head, sitting sideways on his chair.
“You didn’t listen to me well when I told you my name did you?”
Gabriel loved it, that moment of realization hitting a person’s eyes. The myriad of questions flowing at once. How? Why? All followed by denial.
“You can’t be Gabriel...” His voice was fading away.
“How come?”
“Gabriel is… an archangel… from Heaven… He wouldn’t…”
“You know Roland, I think you’re forgetting a very important thing.”
Roland looked at him, expecting his words, it wasn’t like he could do much anymore.
“All angels are soldiers, and I am a High Commander of My Father’s legions.”
Eyes flashed bright blue and wings spanned behind him in light while he stood up with pride. He could literally feel how Roland paralyzed in fear, tears streaming down his wrecked features while his lips mumbled the first words of the Lord’s Prayer.
Sam and Dean woke up startled by the sound of a Fire truck siren and police cars passing by the road next to the motel. After a couple of hours waiting for Gabriel, they had eventually fallen to a light sleep on the same bed watching tv. Looking at each other, they strode outside the room and ran outside, a dark cloud of smoke rising up from the place they knew the church was.
They ran towards the church, a group of kids were already herded two blocks away from the commotion, the two kids Dean had found broke into a run towards him when they saw him and held themselves to him despite the efforts of the policeman. Dean calmed the man down and moved with the kids closer to their group so that he wouldn’t make a fuzz.
“Are you alright kids? What happened?”
“The church’s on fire.”
“I woke up to go to the bathroom and I smelled the smoke, I made the call.”
“That was very brave of you.”
The kid smiled, it was the very first smile Dean had seen on him. He left them to approach his brother.
“The fire started on the priest’s house, it’s apparently been controlled at the moment without danger of it reaching other buildings but they’re still on hold...”
“And what about the priest?”
Sam looked at Dean with a look that showed him he was unwilling to say more about it with the kids so close.
“Pretty sure he’s well past the Reception Committee downstairs by now. Thanks for bringing my jacket by the way.”
Both men got startled when the currently teen Gabriel talked behind them and grabbed the piece of clothing Dean had under his arm. The man looked at him trying to assess his expression.
“Are you okay Gabe?”
Gabriel stared at Dean with a funny look.
“Of course I’m okay, why wouldn’t I?”
“I’m sorry but with the way you look right now I...”
“...You were actually worried about me? Like, for real?”
“It’s not like I don’t understand you’re still an archangel, I just—”
Dean was cut short when Gabriel gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks.”
Sam felt just as shocked as his brother but just as him tried to ignore what had just happened to keep his own sanity if for nothing else.
Two weeks later Dean was still following up the news on the priest case despite being five states away at the bunker. When the flames of the priest’s home had been finally doused, they discovered all the evidence of the child abuse in his bedroom which had been miraculously untouched by the fire and the investigation began. Just that morning the police had discovered the remains of a third child, probably the last they would find considering the time that had passed from their disappearances until now. All the children at the orphanage had been moved to different places. Rhys and Jason had called Dean twice already, once to tell him where they were going to land and then when they arrived, he had given them his phone in case they needed him for anything, at all. Someone reached over his shoulder to look at the screen of his laptop.
“Still looking at that?”
Dean turned to look back at Gabriel, he was back to being the man he had always known. It was the first time he had seen him after the events of that night, the archangel had excused himself by stating that there were some things in heaven that needed to be addressed. He looked at him for a second before starting to quote a part of the article.
“It has been a miracle that all the evidence of the whereabouts of these poor children was intact after the fire. Even when there is nothing we can do to help them now, at least they can be given proper burial, their memory shall remain.”
Gabriel looked at the screen while taking a seat by Dean’s side, he was unfazed by the text.
“Is there anything funny ‘bout that?”
“...You made up some of that evidence to lead the police, didn’t you?”
“Hmm, maybe?”
Dean looked at the archangel profoundly and nodded gravely.
“... Thanks Gabe.”
Gabriel just arched up his eyebrows in surprise. He actually expected Dean to tell him off for making up evidence after he had answered so nonchalantly. Not for him to give him that look of… of… of what?
“Uh… You know it’s not like I care much about this but… are you alright Dean?”
Dean tore his eyes once more from the screen towards Gabriel.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.. I mean… it’s just… you… you should already be lashing back at me for something… anything” Gabriel waved his hands like he couldn’t get anything around him. “Heck, you didn’t even complain about the beer I got from your stash!” Now he waved his hand in front of him where he was indeed holding out a beer from the dark ale six pack Dean had bought for a special dinner a week ago.
“What are you talking about? What you did was amazing! You helped so many children to escape an awful fate with that bastard! Why would I scream at you for that?”
“Because I don’t know you anymore! I can’t handle you this way!”
Dean was taken aback for a moment, Gabriel was upset now and it was obvious he didn’t understand what the problem about Dean being grateful towards him made him panic like that. But Dean got it. He understood that feeling of helplessness when the world around you turned in a way you never expected better than anyone else. And he also understood another thing, it was true that he liked the archangel enough to trust him like family despite all of their differences or probably because of all of them.
“Then you’ll have to learn how to handle me again.” He looked at Gabriel with a look that said ‘Come at me’.
Gabriel blushed and looked away, was there anything he could say to banter against him now?
“But I am kind of angry about the beer. I hope you know how to make it up to me before I fry your wings in holy oil.”
Gabriel turned back to him, the tone of his voice was definitely not even close to upset. It was soft and warm and… and what?
“Well, good luck making me do that, I could make some killer burgers but I have nothing to work with here.”
Dean smirked.
“I think that can be arranged.”
He stood up and began moving towards the kitchen, stopping just a moment to wait for Gabriel. Cautiously, the archangel stood up and went to follow Dean. Other times the hunter would have already been kicking him out but to be honest Gabriel didn’t really mind having a Dean that looked forward to something he had cooked.
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beyondcuckoo · 3 years
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1964 Public School 149 -- Memories best forgotten. has been published on Elaine Webster - http://elainewebster.com/1964-public-school-149-memories-best-forgotten/
New Post has been published on http://elainewebster.com/1964-public-school-149-memories-best-forgotten/
1964 Public School 149 -- Memories best forgotten.
1964 Public School 149
Elaine inched her hand up to get Mr. Kozinski’s attention at the blackboard.
“Yes?
“I forgot my glasses. Can I move up closer?”
With a nod from the teacher, Elaine grabbed her book bag and bee-lined to an empty desk next to Bernard. As school busing loomed over the Jackson Heights and Corona school districts, there were five black kids in the predominantly Jewish sixth-grade classroom. Elaine, one of the few Catholic students, had a crush on Bernard—tall, slim, dark brown skin— a troublemaker, which made him all that more interesting. Too young for any serious romance, they teased and cajoled each other whenever the opportunity arose.
“You gonna sit there?” Bernard whispered.
Elaine smiled, shrugged, and purposely brushed her friend’s shoulder as she maneuvered in place. Bernard crumpled a piece of loose-leaf paper into a ball and tossed it at Elaine’s head. She ducked it before Mr. Kozinski turned from the blackboard where several math problems now presented themselves.
“Okay, you two, settle down,” he said with a slight grin. He kept a vigilant eye on the two students, not out of disfavor, but concern for their welfare—worried that their innocence may get them in trouble as the civil rights movement escalated. If only they were the same color, they may stand a chance.
*   *   *
As the school year ended, the hotter weather called out for ice cream. The local soda fountain had the best chocolate chip, scooped into sweet, waffled sugar cones. Elaine and Bernard joked about the chocolate blended into the vanilla flavor as if at some point they might melt into one shade. With cones in hand, the two youngsters perched themselves on the two horses of a coin operated merry-go-round outside the store. Neither had ever seen anyone put money into the thing, but it had an umbrella and the shade felt good.
“So, what are you doing this summer?” Bernard asked between licks.
“Not much. Probably knock around the schoolyard. I’m getting pretty good at handball, although my mother says that it will give me arthritis in my old age,” Elaine replied.
“What a weird thing to say. How does she know? Is she a doctor?”
Elaine shrugged, “No matter what I do or say, it’s wrong and there’s some reason that I shouldn’t do it. Anyway, she doesn’t know what I do all day while she’s at work. Last week I took the train out to Coney Island and got back in time for dinner. They never knew that I wasn’t around the neighborhood.”
“Well, maybe we could meet up and go to the World’s Fair. I know how to sneak in by climbing over the back fence”
“Hmmm, maybe. Been there so much already, it’s getting kinda boring.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Elaine thought she saw a black Ford Impala sedan cruise slowly by; the same model her dad, Teddy, drove. “I better get home. I think that was my dad’s car. Usually he’s home from work earlier than this.”
“Okay, well, I’ll see you around,” Bernard said as he tossed his napkin in the nearby trash can.
Despite the heat, a shiver ran up and down Elaine’s spine as she watched Bernard saunter away. It probably wasn’t her father in the car.
*   *   *
Elaine fumbled for her house-key and was surprised to find the door to her family’s second story apartment unlocked. She hoped that her sister might be home, but as she climbed the long staircase and walked by the living room into the dining room, she was confronted by Teddy.
“I saw you with that nigger,” he started. “I told you, to stay away from those people, they’re not like us and if I see you with him again, you’ll be sorry.”
Elaine knew she should keep quiet but decided to try and reason with him. “He’s just a friend. We hang out sometimes. Today we stopped for ice cream. There’s nothing going on.”
“I don’t care, he’s a black and you’re white, so stay away from him. I had Mike in the car with me and he couldn’t believe that I let you hang out with niggers. I’ll never hear the end of it if he tells the other guys at work.”
“But,  you work with black men. Why would anyone care?”
With Elaine’s last statement, Teddy’s face turned red and she knew she went too far. She needed to learn to keep her mouth shut. Then she smelled the alcohol on her father’s breath and looked around for an escape route. Teddy blocked her path as she tried to slip past him. If she could get to her bedroom, he might leave her alone.
“Smack!” Elaine caught the open-handed slap towards the back of her head. There would be more—she had to think fast. Her bedroom door didn’t lock, so she made a run to the bathroom, pushed the door shut and turned the bolt.
“Come outta there, now!”
“No,” was all she could get out between shivers.  She prayed that the door would hold up to the banging. She glanced at her watch—5:30, her mom should be home from work soon.
“Teddy!” she heard her mother, Alice’s voice—thank God. “What’s going on in here?”
“She won’t come out of the bathroom.”
“What? What’s she doing in there?”
“Me and Mike saw her with that black boy again and I’ve told her before to stay away from him.”
Alice, set her purse on the dining room table. “Have you been drinking with your buddies again after work? You’re supposed to be making dinner, not fighting with Elaine.”
Teddy cowered and plopped down in one of the chairs near the table. He had promised to give up the weekday drinking—always got him in trouble with the wife. Alice jiggled the handle on the bathroom door. “Elaine? Come out of there, now.”
Elaine cautiously opened the door. Her mother’s frown said it all. She imagined the conversation they would have later. She’d be pissed, he would grumble—in the end they’d agree that the black boy was bad news, but that he shouldn’t hit the kids. Elaine slipped by and collapsed on her bed. Dinner would be late and with any luck Teddy would skip it and sleep off the booze.
*   *   *
Elaine jumped when Bernard’s voice came from behind. “So, why haven’t I seen you lately?” he asked. It was halfway through the summer and Elaine had been avoiding her friend. She had no idea what to do about anything.
“Oh. Dunno. Been busy.”
“Doing what? I’ve been checking the handball courts. You haven’t been anywhere I’ve looked.”
“My parents won’t let me see you.”
“Why?”
“You’re black.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. I’ll get in trouble.”
“So, what. We’ll meet up someplace else. Maybe Astoria pool?”
“I can’t. I’m afraid.”
“What can they do to you?”
“Hit me.”
“Your father hits you?”
“Only when he’s drunk—which is more now. And my mother backs him up on the black thing and she’s not always around when he’s mean.”
“So that’s it? We can’t hang out anymore?’
“I’m sorry, maybe someday.”
*   *   *
That someday never came. Elaine became braver and argued with her parents. She became expert in doing what she wanted and lying. Verbal abuse escalated and her mother, to regain control, manipulated her husband into more violence. Nothing made sense. One month after Elaine’s eighteenth birthday, she left home and moved 3000 miles away—the family never recovered.
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kittymiauuniverse · 7 years
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Ocean City - The Best Night of My Life
This is gonna take a while. So I was just in Ocean City, New Jersey from Sunday to Friday, and I had the absolute time of my life. After nearly a 10 hour drive, we finally arrived in the late evening of Sunday. My family and I pretty much just unpacked that night and we did go down to the boardwalk, our hotel was less than a block away, but for the most part we just looked around and were too tired to do much. I've got 2 brothers and I didn't know anyone there, so I kinda felt like a weenie, walking around with my parents and such, I could've walked around alone but that would've gotten very boring very fast. Luckily, sometime around midday Monday my mom asked me how I'd feel if one of my friends and her family came down and met up with us in O. C., her step dad couldn't get off work but her mom did, and with a lack of plans, meeting up with us was totally an option. So after driving 10 hours thru the night as well, they got there early Wednesday morning. LEMME TELL YOU I COULDN'T HAVE EVER IMAGINED HOW AMAZING IT COULD'VE BEEN WITH MY GURL ALEXIS WITH ME. Of course, they had to get oriented to everything here, but having the whole day to get used to it, it was good by night. We went to the beach with them and built a pretty sweet sandcastle. Later that night we went to the boardwalk but again, just kinda walked around and didn't get too into things. We did go mini-golfing though, and that was fun. Thursday night, we had finally gotten together the confidence, Alexis and I, to hit the town ~alone~. We didn't exactly plan on spending a ton of money, so we didn't have to worry about going back to our parents with puppy eyes, begging for a few extra bucks. The first thing we did was go to a coffee shop where I got some coffee and Alexis got hot chocolate. We left after sundown, and with the ocean breeze it was chilly, we later got pizza too, it all warmed us up nicely. I was interested in meeting people, preferably for a one night fling, considering it was our last night there, but by midnight and having met no one, I had accepted the fact that although it was really my only goal in coming here, it had not happened. So Alexis and I walked up the boardwalk one last time, looking at the few places that were still open, and we came across and ice cream place. We both got chocolate-vanilla swirl in a waffle cone. And wandered back towards our hotel. I just didn't want to go back, maybe I had accepted they fate of not meeting anyone, but this night just had something about it that I could not and would not walk away from. We got to our hotel, but I suggested we sit outside on the benches to finish off our ice cream. By this time it was about quarter after 12, and we just kinda talked about what it was like here, and a guy was walking towards the boardwalk. Ocean City being a dry place (no alcohol), meant there weren't any drunkards causing a ruckus, nor were there really and creepy people at all. The guys looked to be early twenties, late teens at the youngest, it was dark with simply a blinking hotel light and dim street lamps. As he breezily walked past, he asked how we were doing, we responded with something along the lines of "just fine, thanks, how are you?" And we responded with something similar to our statement. He took a few more steps and turned back around on a dime. He introduced himself as "Christian, well my name's not Christian, I AM a Cristian, my name's John Michael." And thus begun one of the most intimate and soul touching conversations I've ever had. With Alexis and I being Catholic, we strongly related to everything John was saying. He described his journey to an extremely strong faith from just last summer, and I nearly cried when he prayed with us. we talked for about a half hour, praying lots and having excellent talks of faith and spirituality. He wasn't like the kind of preacher person who won't listen to you, I've known a few of those who try to teach me my own faith, but this guy, he just gave you the confidence that God IS with you, and that you can always call out to him. It was incredibly powerful to be there with that guy, at 12:30 am sitting outside a hotel. He was so kind, so giving, so positive, I really wished we could've talked to him again. As we said our good-byes and shared a hug or two, we went our separate as we waltzed into the hotel, light as air, but heavy as bricks having to end the night. We greeted the woman at the front desk, a kind old lady who asked no questions. As we got into the elevator, I just let the door close and didn't hit any of the buttons to go up, which of course Alexis questioned, but I just said I wasn't ready to go back and that I need to process what on earth just happened. Alexis slid down to the ground and agreed. Eventually I hit the button for the 9th floor, our floor, the top floor. I mentioned to Alexis that I regretted not asking for his number, and she agreed again. I'm not positive what exactly transpired in that hotel elevator in those few seconds, but what I recall is that Alexis said "should we go back?" Without missing a beat, I said yes, punched the button for floor number 5, the nearest floor, and we came flying out of those doors faster than I knew we could, we scrambled around trying to find the stairs without waking up any guests, and we eventually found them. We crashed down those stairs, knowing time was precious and we were losing it. We caught our breath and walked through to lobby, giving the front desks lady some relief by telling her I had forgotten something outside. As soon as we got out the doors, the engines came roaring back in our legs as we sprinted to the boardwalk. I thought he went one way, I don't recall if Alexis disagreed or if we were just looking at the addresses, but we went the opposite was in which I thought he was going. Feeling defeated after getting to the end of the walk, we started back towards the hotel, our heads hung in shame. There were a few people out, mostly older couples, but there were a group of 3 guys who had tried to talk to us I suppose earlier in the night. I thought it was them, but again, darkness covered their identity. As we passed them, they used the same line they had earlier and I knew it was them. Alexis got made and told them to fight her, and I got scared cause in our hometown people get killed for those kind of words exchanged, but they just yelled back petty responses ("you got no ass in them jeans" "glasses wearin' something"). I was still scared out of my mind tho, but then 2 other guys came walking past us and were yelling at them to chill. They asked if we were ok and I said yeah just a little spooked. But then we saw other people down the other way of the boardwalk and decided we better at least try to see if any of them are him than not. So we ran and ran down and again, found mostly couples. This time, TRULY defeated, we started out walk of shame back to the hotel. Now we get to the good part. As we were waking, we re-passed some of the same people, but we just smiled at them, they probably thought we were nuts, as none of them really smiled back. As we were walking, some guy, looking relatively attractive, rode past on a bike and I yelled hey to him, I have no idea why, it was completely impulse, it should've made me even more nervous, him being attractive in the low lighting too. But I guess I just wanted to see if he was hostile or anything, but he was friendly enough to say hi back. I can't remember if he rode past us once or twice, I think just once before he came back riding right next to Alexis. We had a nice bit of small talk, him explaining he thought it'd have been creepy had he continued riding past us after saying hi without talking to us. We eventually stopped right at the corner where we would've turned to go back to our hotel, but we just kept talking to him. He told us he was 16 and was renting a house pretty close to the shore with some friends, and continued saying most of them are 19, as well as his brother. He told us about his interest in trucks and how he wants to get one when he turns 17 and starts driving. We checked out his bike, which wasn't really his, but tried to figure the many features it had. By this time it was about ten til 2 (am), and we started talking about Wawa, which I really wanted to go to, but hadn't had the chance to. He totally was like you have to go, and I said we should go right now. Alexis started getting a little nervous at this point, concerned as to what our parents would think of us being out this late. I asked OH I FORGOT TO SAY HIS NAME WAS MATT so I asked Matt how long it'd take to get to the nearest Wawa and he said on bike, one minute, walking, he wasn't sure. I said screw it, texted my mom we'd be no longer than 10 minutes, and we headed off to Wawa. On our way there, Alexis and I tried to think of what we'd tell our parents. We DEFINITELY couldn't let them know we left the boardwalk and went to a Wawa, so we got that far, THEN I REALIZED THIS WAS THE IDEAL TIME TO PUT MY MOVES ON HIM. So I said "well, I'll just tell my mom we met this super cute guy..." and of course Matt was all like "oh really?? Cute??" And it was so perfect. We got to the Wawa and this Matt character was REALLY cute in better lighting. He followed me around, smiling at my fascination of just a regular convenience store he goes to "at least 4 times a week". We left without getting anything, and on our way back I said something about how I thought he looked to be about 21-22 years old, to which he laughed at saying just yesterday he looked 12, cause he had just gotten his braces off that day. I wanted to say something to him about his teeth cause they looked so perfect and that explained it. It was amazing, but then Alexis' and my mom came out from the hotel and we thought all hell would break loose. Not so much. Matt said he'd go introduce himself and IT WAS SO SMOOTH i even asked if he talked to parents a lot it went so well (out moms went back inside and told us to say our goodbyes). So we had to say goodbye and we hugged and HE SMELLED SO GOOD. I was so sad we had to leave but at least we had his number, we weren't so foolish this time, and off he rode into the night. Both of our moms accused me of kissing him WHICH I WISH I HAD, I bet I could've, but I didn't. So I guess I did meet someone, and maybe we wouldn't have met Matt had we found John, it all kinda worked out. I was on the verge of tears as we left the heavenly place, and now here I am, ready to cry again, I hate my town, I want to get out, not to get all Brucey on ya but I've never missed a vacation so much. I want to go back so bad. By the way, could it have been possible for me to fall in love in one night? @divine-wolf-rose luv ya
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candyredterezii · 7 years
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rnagyars submitted:
All right, Petunia. Wish me luck out there. You will die on August 7th, 2037. That’s pretty good. All right. Hello. Hello, Chicago. Nice to see you again. Thank you. That was very nice. Thank you. Look, now, you’re a wonderful crowd, but I need you to keep your energy up the entire show, okay? Because… No, no, no. Thank you. Some crowds… some crowds, they have big energy in the beginning and then they run out of places to go. So… I don’t judge those crowds, by the way, okay? We’ve all gone too big too fast and then run out of room. We’ve all made a “Happy Birthday” sign… Wait. You get that poster board up, and you’re like, “I don’t need to trace it. I know how big letters should be. To begin with, a big-ass ‘H’. Followed by a big-ass 'A’ and… Oh, no! Oh, God! Okay, all right. Real skinny 'P’ with a high hump, and then we’ll put the second 'P’ below the hump of that first 'P’, sort of like a motorcycle sidecar situation. And now I have no room for the 'Y’, so I’ll do a kind of curled-up noodle 'Y’. Block letters and cursive look good together.” And then you go to write “Birthday” and you totally forget the lesson you just learned with “Happy.” You’re like, “Yeah, but the past is the past. Big-ass 'B’. Surely more letters will fit in the same space.” You’re very friendly here in Chicago. I mean, we’re all violent here, but you’re very friendly. No, really. And I don’t like confrontation, 'cause I’ve never been in a fight before. Though, maybe you could tell that from the first moment I walked out on stage. I don’t give off that vibe. Some people give off a vibe of… Right away, they’re like, “Do not fuck with me.” My vibe is more like, “Hey, you could pour soup in my lap and I’ll probably apologize to you.” When I walk, for real, my feet go out like this. I’m so open and vulnerable. I look like a doll that you point out molestation on. “Show us on this white comedian where the man touched you.” It’s been a while since I’ve been home to Chicago. I got married since then. Thank you. I married my wife. I love saying “my wife.” It sounds so adult. “That’s my wife.” It’s great, you sound like a person. I said it even before we were married. We were just dating, and we were once getting on an airplane, and Anna’s ticket didn’t say anything and my ticket said “priority access.” It doesn’t matter why. But we were getting on and I said, “Uh, can my wife board with me?” And they were like, “Yes, of course. Right this way.” And I was like, “Oh, that is so much better than all those times I was like, 'Can my girlfriend come?’” And, yeah, I shouldn’t have said it that way, but still. “My wife” just has some kick-ass to it, you know? “Get away from my wife! No one talk to my wife!” Marriage is gonna be very magical. “I didn’t kill my wife!” That’s like, “Ooh, who’s that fella? I bet he did kill his wife.” Being married is so nice. I never knew relationships were supposed to make you feel better about yourself. That’s not really a joke, that’s just a little sweet thing I like to say. 'Cause I’d been in relationships where I got cheated on, like, long ones. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a long relationship where you got cheated on, but it changes your whole worldview. 'Cause when I was a kid, I used to watch America’s Most Wanted. You know how kids do. And I would always think to myself, “How could another person kill someone? How could a human being kill another human being?” And then I got cheated on, and I was like, “Oh, okay.” “I’m not gonna do it, but I totally get it.” And I don’t mean in that way of, like, “No one else can have you.” I don’t care about that. It’s just creepy to have an ex out there after things have ended badly. They have a lot of information. Anyone who’s seen my dick and met my parents needs to die. I can’t have them roaming around. I talked to a lot of people before I got engaged, you know. And I heard this expression about whether or not you should get married. This is an old expression. People say this. They say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” You ever heard that before? It’s a bananas insulting expression… to an entire gender. But also, it makes no sense. “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” You’re not allowed to milk a cow that you don’t own. That’s not even a situation. Was that a problem at one point? Like, in the dairy community? Was that happening a hundred years ago in some village? Some Dutch prick was sneaking in at night being like, “Ah-ha-ha, I take your milk.” And the farmer was like, “Well, then, this is your cow now.” And he was like, “No, no proof of purchase.” And he ran off into the night. That sounded Dutch, right? You know what that… you know what that expression means? It means, “Why would you marry a woman if she’s already having sex with you?” Which has nothing to do with what relationships are even like anymore. Now, it’s like, “Why buy the cow?” Uh, maybe because, every day, the cow asks you when you’re gonna buy it. And… … you live in a really small apartment with the cow, so you can’t avoid that question at all. And also, the cow is way better at arguing than you are. And the cow grew up in a family that knows how to argue. “Why buy the cow?” Uh, maybe because every time another cow gets bought, you have to go to the sale and you have to sit next to your cow at the sale, and your cow looks over at you the entire time like… And does not enjoy the sale at all… even though she’s the one that wanted to go to the sale. And she’s especially mad because that farmer and cow met, like, eight months after you guys met. “Why buy the cow?” Well, let’s be real here. You’re very lucky to have the cow that you do have. “Roping in cows and getting milk out of them was never anything you were known for, John.” By the most liberal of estimates, there have been about eight cows total, several unmilked, and… a lot of people think that you like bulls, and if you just bought… They assume it. When you search your name, the third thing to come up is like, “John Mulaney bull?” And if you just bought the cow, nobody would say that anymore. They’ll still say it. 'Cause there are those guys who, they buy a cow, and then on the side, total matador, but… But, for real, Chicago, why buy the cow? Let’s be real. Why buy the cow? Because you love her. You really do. And, yeah, yeah… Sure, she’s a bossy little Jew, but… … she takes care of you. And you don’t wanna be some old man stumbling around, like, “Hey, you seen any loose milk?” My wife is Jewish. She’s a New York Jew. I did it! Now, I was raised Catholic. I don’t know if you can tell that from the everything about me. My wife is Jewish, I grew up Catholic, so we got married by a friend. Being married by a friend is a beautiful ceremony that alienates both families’ religions, while confusing the elderly people at the wedding. “What’s the name of the bishop?” “That’s actually stand-up comedian Dan Levy. He was the host of MTV’s Your Face or Mine?” I saw a lot of Catholic weddings, though, because I was an altar boy… And a hush falls over the room. Isn’t it weird how that became a scandalous thing? That was just some boring shit I had to do on weekends. But now, it’s like saying, “I was a French maid for a period of time. I was treated well in my day. I worked for a variety of sirs.” No, being an altar boy was just a boring gig, you know? You’d serve Mass and then you’d serve weddings sometimes. My brother was once an altar boy at a wedding, and he was standing there with another altar boy in this big, packed church in Chicago where we grew up. And the bride was coming down the aisle, and the organ was playing, and all the pews were filled, and the bride got all the way to the altar, and the groom lifted the veil off of the bride, and right at that moment the other altar boy said, “Aw, she’s ugly.” And then they looked, and they were right next to the video camera. And I know that’s awful, but wouldn’t you give a million dollars to see that wedding video? It was the best moment of this stupid woman’s life, and she’s walking down the aisle, and the organ’s like… And she gets all the way to the altar to her betrothed, and he unveils her to the world and to the eyes of God. And right at that second, for no reason at all, some Cheeto-fingered, rat-mustached, 13-year-old prick decides to go, “Aw, she’s ugly!” Hopefully the videographer knew some sound editing so he could fix it to be like, “Aw, she’s beautiful. She’s enchanting.” I grew up Catholic. I don’t go to church anymore. But I went on Christmas Eve with my parents, 'cause you know how you lie to your parents. So… we go into the church and I was like, “I got this under control.” And then I got schooled because they introduced a bunch of new shit. No, I was going through Mass and I was batting, like, .400. And then in the middle of Mass, the priest said, “Peace be with you.” And everyone said, “And with your spirit.” And I was the one pre-Y2K asshole going, “And also with you. What? Huh? What? Huh? What? When? When?” For those of you that aren’t Catholic, I don’t mean to exclude you, even though we love to exclude you, but… There’s a part in church where the priest says, “Peace be with you.” And for many, many years, we all said… - “And also with you.” - Very good. But they changed it to “And with your spirit.” Because that’s what needed revamping in the Catholic Church. That was the squeaky wheel that needed the grease. In Rome, they were like, “Let’s see. What problems can we solve? Problem one. No.” I’m actually glad they changed that, though. I never liked “And also with you.” I always found that clunky. “And also with you.” That’s not how you talk. - “Have a nice day.” - “And also you having one.” It’s just a little bit wrong, isn’t it? It’s just a little off. Like, when someone’s like, “How are you?” And you’re like, “Nothing much.” And it sort of makes sense. Never begin a sentence with “And also.” You just immediately sound caught off-guard. It sounds like if at the first church ever, like, they weren’t expecting it. Like, the priest was like, “Hey, this is the first time we’ve ever had church. I just wanna say, 'Peace be with you.’” And they were like… “What? Oh. Uh, yeah. And also you should have some.” “Hey, that’s good. Let’s keep that for 2,000 years. And then change it to trick John.” My wife and I don’t have any children, we have a dog. We have a little puppy named Petunia. She’s a tiny little French bulldog puppy. I like having a puppy that’s a bulldog, 'cause it’s like having a baby that is also a grandma. Her body is young, her face is as old as time. She definitely saw the Nazis march into Paris. She always gives me this look of like, “Oh, the things I have seen, you cocksucker. You have no idea. The Gestapo threw my printing press into a river. But, go, tell your fucking jokes. Bring me my dish.” She said that. Petunia… Petunia is my best friend in the world. I give her a million kisses a day. She does not like me, and barks at me and bites me all day long. We had to get a dog trainer into the apartment because Petunia is a bad dog. We tell her that every day. We go, “Hey, you’re bad at being a dog.” So, the trainer came into the apartment. Sorry, didn’t even walk into the apartment, walked into the threshold and went, “Oh, okay.” Like she was an exorcist or something. She said, “I see what the problem is.” She said, “Petunia has become the alpha of the house.” And then she pointed at me, she said, “You are no longer the alpha of the house.” And in the back of my head, I was like, “I was never the alpha of the house.” I turned to my wife, I was like, “Let’s pretend. It’ll be fun. Yes… My title of alpha, which I once had, how can I reclaim it? Because that was a thing that existed at one time.” She said, “You need to show dominance over your puppy.” These are things people say to me. I said, “How do I do that?” She said, “Well, let me ask you this. Who eats dinner first, you or Petunia?” I was like, “Petunia eats dinner first. She eats dinner at 5:00 p.m., 'cause she’s a foot long and two years old.” She said, “No, you need to eat dinner first. Because the king eats before anyone else eats.” Oh, yes, and what a mighty king I will be, eating dinner at 4:45 in the afternoon. “Look upon your sovereign, Petunia, and tremble. My lands stretch across this entire one bedroom, and I eat dinner whenever I choose, as long as it works for the schedule of a dog.” She said, “Now, you don’t actually have to eat dinner before Petunia. You just have to convince Petunia that you’ve already eaten.” So… for the past month, I shit you not… before my wife and I give Petunia her dish, we take down empty bowls and spoons, and in front of her, we go, “Mmm, dinner. Mmm, good dinner.” Like we’re space aliens in a play about human beings that they wrote, but they didn’t work that hard on. “Mmm, we’re eating dinner.” Meanwhile, Petunia’s just staring at us with her Paul Giamatti face, like… “You’re not eating dinner, cocksucker. Dish, now.” I have a wife and a dog, and we just bought a house. We have a new house. It was built in the '20s, but it was flipped in 2014. Which means it’s haunted, but it has a lovely kitchen backsplash. Actually, we didn’t buy a house. A bank bought a house, and I’m allowed to keep my shirts and pants there while I pay it off for 30 years. The woman from the bank came over and she showed me my mortgage broken down month by month for 30 years. And she said, “So, for instance, this is what you’ll pay in July of 2029.” And I burst out laughing. I was like, “2029? That’s not a real year. By 2029, I’ll be drinking moon juice with President Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I’m not gonna be writing you a paper check.” I like having a house, but I loved looking for a house, 'cause I love real estate agents. I mean, they are the true heroes. They really are. Have you ever watched HGTV? Real estate agents have to deal with the dumbest people in the world making the biggest decisions of their lives. Every episode of HGTV is like, “Craig and Stacia are looking for a two-story A-frame that’s near Craig’s job in the downtown, but also satisfies Stacia’s need to be near the beach which is nowhere near Craig’s job. With three children and nine on the way, and a max budget of $7… let’s see what Lori Jo can do on this week’s episode of You Don’t Deserve A Beach House.” I loved our real estate agent. It was so fun to hang out with her. It was like hanging out with my mom. 'Cause, you know, real estate agents always look like your mom. And they have various Chico’s accoutrements. They always have kind of fun mom energy. And they’re always, “So excited to see you two.” We would have little conferences before we walked into a house. She’d go, “Let’s talk. Let’s talk before we go in.” We’re, like, two feet from the door. “So, there’s no toilets. And I know that was on your list. But I think I can get him to budge. Let’s go.” So, we’d have a real estate agent, and then, like, the house would have a real estate agent who’s just some guy sitting in a big chair. And these two always hated each other. They’d be like, “Hi, Tony.” “Hi, Kim.” It’s like, “Jesus Christ! What, were you two in the Eagles together? What is the animosity about?” Our real estate agent wanted us to have a baby more than anyone else in our lives, more than anyone in our family. She hinted about it constantly. Every room she walked into, she’d be like, “So, this could be an office.” “Or maybe a nursery.” “Yeah. No, like we said, we don’t know if we’re gonna have… ” “No, no. I know, I know, you know. You don’t know if you’re gonna have 'em, but you know. You know, you never know. Sometimes you don’t know what’s gonna happen, and then… you know, something happens.” “Well, yeah, that’s how all of life works.” “Okay, all right. Okay. Uh-huh. Mmm. This is an on-fire garbage can. Could be a nursery.” She showed me a backyard once. She goes, “I don’t even like this backyard for you.” I was like, “Oh, do tell.” She said, “It’s all pavement. I think you should have some grass out there. You know, in case you have a couple… little guys… running around in the grass.” And I got offended on behalf of my imaginary kids. I was like, “Hey, lady. I went outside about as much as Powder from the movie Powder. My children are not gonna be playing out on grass. They will be up in their rooms playing violent video games and catfishing pedophiles. These are my children. And that’s my wife!” I didn’t mean to make it sound like we don’t want children. We don’t, but I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. See, I just don’t think babies like me very much. Sometimes babies will point at me, and I don’t care for that shit at all. Like, I’ll be on an elevator, and a baby will be there in its big, like, stroller activity tray, just, like, working on one Cheerio with Bobby Fischer-like intensity. And it’ll look up at me and go… I like to lean in and go, “Stop snitchin’, motherfucker.” And then walk off. 'Cause you’re never too young to learn our national no-snitching policy. My friends have babies and I don’t do so well with them. I had a run-in with a two-year-old girl. I know there are better ways to start that story, but… My friend, Jeremy, has this two-year-old girl, and I really like her. She’s a sweet kid. I really like his daughter a lot. But I was over at his family’s house for the Fourth of July, and he had his daughter on his knee. And it was a very lovely day. His whole extended family was there. And he was bouncing his two-year-old up and down, and he pointed at me and he said to his two-year-old, “Do you know who that is? That’s your Uncle John.” And I was like, “Oh, my God. That’s so sweet. I’m her Uncle John.” And then the baby pointed at me and said, “Uncle John has a penis.” I thank you for laughing, because no one did that day! Fell deadly silent, is what they all did. Hey, do you know what you’re supposed to say when a baby points at you and knowingly says, “He has a penis”? No, I’m asking, 'cause I don’t know what to say in that situation. Here’s what I went with that day. I said, “Oh, come on!” I don’t know. I thought that’d be good. But then it just made it worse, 'cause it sounded like the baby and I had an arrangement not to talk about it, and she had violated my trust. Like, the baby had been like, “Do you have a penis?” And I was like, “Yes, I do, but you’re a baby, so discretion is key.” And then the next day she goes, “He has a penis,” and I go, “Oh, come on! Someone can’t keep a secret!” Luckily, Jeremy’s wife saved the day. The baby’s mom saved the day. She came in and she picked up the baby, and she was like, “It’s okay. She’s just going through that phase where she says penis and vagina a lot.” Aren’t we all? And, by the way, it would’ve been a totally different situation if the baby had said vagina. Like, if a grown woman had walked in the room, and the baby had been like, “She has a vagina,” the woman could be like, “Yes, I do, and it’s magnificent.” And we would all be like, “Hooray! You are brave!” No one wants to applaud the penis of a 32-year-old weirdo. It’s fun to be married. I’ve never been supervised before. I’m supervised. She studies what I do. Like an anthropologist. She’ll be like, “Sometimes, he will watch a movie on TV even though he already owns that movie on DVD. Pointing this out to him confuses and upsets him.” I had no supervision when I was a kid. We were free to do what we wanted. But also, with that, no one cared about kids. I grew up before children were special. I did. Very early '80s, right before children became special. Like, I remember when milk carton kids became a thing. When they were like, “Hey, we should start looking for some of these guys. I don’t think they’re just blowing off steam.” No one cared about my opinion when I was a little kid. No one cared what I thought. Sometimes, people would say, “What do you think you’re doing?” But that just meant “Stop.” They didn’t actually wanna know my thought process. They didn’t want me to be like, “Well, I was gonna put this bottle rocket into this carton of eggs, so that when I lit off the bottle rocket, the eggs would explode everywhere.” “Oh, well, that’s very interesting. And what brought you to this experiment?” “Oh, well, thank you for asking. Well… you know how I’m filled with rage? I’m so horny and angry all the time… and I have no outlet for it. So… eggs.” Your opinion doesn’t matter in elementary school either. It matters in college. College is just your opinion. Just you raising your hand and being like, “I think Emily Dickinson’s a lesbian.” And they’re like, “Partial credit.” And that’s a whole thing. But in elementary school, it doesn’t matter what you think, it just matters what you know. You have to have answers to questions. And if you say, “I don’t know,” you get an X on your test, and you get it wrong and that’s not fair, 'cause your brain has never been smaller. Also, that’s not how life works. I’m in my 30s now. If you came to me now and you were like, “Hey, John, name three things that the Stamp Act of 1775 accomplished.” I’d go, “I don’t know. Get out of my apartment,” you know? But when you’re a little kid, you can’t say, “I don’t know.” You should be able to. That should be an acceptable answer on a test. You should be able to write in, “I don’t know. I know you told me. But I have had a very long day. I am very small. And I have no money. So you can imagine the kind of stress that I am under.” Or if it’s one of those true or false questions, you should be able to add a third option which is, “Who’s to say?” Kids are much more supervised now, but also, they have a lot of rights. Like, that’s the biggest civil rights increase I’ve seen in my lifetime. The rights of children have gone through the roof. I had no rights when I was a little kid. I remember, one time, I walked into a supermarket by myself, and I walked in through the double doors, and the woman behind the register just looked at me and she went, “No!” And I went, “All right.” And I turned around and left. That’s how broken I was. And there weren’t special things for kids the way there are now. Like, we would just go see movies. Any movie. Like Back to the Future. That was a movie everyone could see. Kids could kinda see it. Great movie, right? I rewatched it recently. It’s a very weird movie. Marty McFly is a 17-year-old high school student whose best friend is a disgraced nuclear physicist. And, I shit you not, they never explain how they became friends. They never explain it. Not even in a lazy way, like, “Hey, remember when we met in the science building?” They don’t even do that. And we were all fine with it. We were just like, “What, who’s his best friend? A disgraced nuclear physicist? All right, proceed.” What a strange movie to sell to be a family movie. Two guys had to go in and do that. They had to be like, “Okay… we got an idea… for the next big family-action-comedy. All right, it’s about a guy named Marty, and he’s very lazy. He’s always sleeping late.” “Okay. Is he cool like Ferris Bueller?” “No. But he does have this best friend who’s, you know, a disgraced… nuclear physicist.” “I’m confused here. This best friend, this is another student?” “No, no, no. No, this guy’s either, like, 40 or 80. Even we don’t know how old this guy’s supposed to be. But one day, the boy and the scientist, they go back in time and they build a time machine. Whoa!” “Okay. I think I see where you’re going here. They build a time machine, and they go back in time, and they stop the Kennedy assassination.” “Ah! Oh, wow, that’s a really good idea, I mean, we didn’t even think of that.” “All right, well, what do they do with the time machine?” “Well, now I’m embarrassed to say. Ah, well, all right, all right, all right. We thought… We thought it would be funny, you know, if the boy, if he went back in time and, you know, he tried to fuck his mom.” “I don’t know. We thought that’d be fun for people. But, no, good point. No, he doesn’t get to, he doesn’t get to. 'Cause this family friend named Biff, he comes in and he tries to rape the mom in front of the son. The dad’s gotta beat the rapist off of her. And also, we’re gonna imply that a white man wrote 'Johnny B. Goode.’ So, we’re gonna take that away from 'em.” “Well, this is the best movie idea I have ever heard in my life. We’re gonna make three of them. Now, you say they go to the past. How about we call it Back to the Past?” “No, no, no. Back to the Future.” “Right, but they go to the past.” “Yeah.” Kids have it very good now. My friend’s a teacher. She told me that, uh… the parents will take the kids’ side over the teacher now. That’s insane. That never happened. My parents trusted every grown-up… more than they trusted me. I don’t mean coaches and teachers. Any human adult’s word… was better than mine. Any hobo or drifter could have taken me by the ear up to my front door and been like, “Excuse me! Your kid bit my dick.” And my mom would be like, “John Edmund Mulaney, did you bite this nice man’s dick?” And I would be the only one who’s like, “Hey, doesn’t anyone wanna know why… his dick was near my biters… in the first place? Isn’t anyone curious… as to how I had access?” Don’t get me wrong, my parents love us. They just didn’t like us. We weren’t friends. People are now like, “My mom’s my best friend.” I was like, “Oh, is she a super bad mom?” My parents didn’t trust us, and they shouldn’t have trusted us. We were little goblins. We were terrible. I remember, one time, we were going to this resort for a vacation when we were little kids. Three weeks before we went to the resort, my dad sat us down and he said, “All right, we’re going to a resort, and I’ve just been informed that the man who owns the resort only has one arm.” And we were like, “Oh, yes! Yay! Yes!” “Now, I’m telling you three weeks in advance, so that you will not freak out when you see that he only has one arm.” “Oh, we’re gonna freak out so bad!” “Yes, John, you have a question?” “How did he lose his arm?” “That’s exactly what you won’t ask.” And then I did ask. I went into the kitchen one day, and I was like, “So, how’d you lose your arm?” And he was like, “Well, I was born with only one arm.” And I was like, “Nah.” No, my parents loved us. It’s just, like, they were the cops, you know? And we were criminals. So, we didn’t get along. We only got along in that way that, like, cops will sometimes be chummy with criminals. Like, when my dad and I would talk, it was like that scene in the movie Heat, when Robert De Niro and Al Pacino sit down in that diner. We kind of had that rapport of, like, “Hmm, we’re not so different, you and I. You have your law practice, and me, I have all these fucking markers.” “I guess we both have responsibilities when you look at it that way.” My dad would respect it if I could get away with breaking a rule. We had a rule in our house, you were not allowed to watch TV on a school night. So, every school night, I would 100% be watching TV. And I would hear my dad coming, I would immediately turn the TV off and grab any book, magazine, periodical, anything. And I’d open it and pretend to be doing homework. My dad would walk in the room and he would go, “What are you doing? Are you watching TV?” And I’d go, “No, man. I’m not watching TV.” And the TV wouldn’t even be dark yet. It would still have, like, a neon green halo around it. It’d be sizzling like a glass of Pepsi. And I would look my dad in the eyes and go, “No, I’m just reading this Yellow Pages.” My dad loved us. He just didn’t care about our general happiness or self-esteem. I remember, one time, we were really little kids. I have two sisters and a brother, and all four of us were in our family car ride for three hours going to Wisconsin. My dad was driving, going down the highway in our white van with wood around the side. 'Cause you remember when you wanted your car to be made of wood? You remember that era? Where we were like, “How much wood can we get on this car… without it catching on fire?” But then the big announcement. “We here at Plymouth-Chrysler can put a saucy stripe of wood safely on the outside of your car, for all those times you’ve looked at your minivan and thought, 'Huh! It needs a belt.’” So, we’re going on the highway. We’ve been on the road for three hours. And in the distance, we see a McDonald’s. We see the golden arches. And we got so excited. We started chanting, “McDonald’s! McDonald’s! McDonald’s! McDonald’s!” And my dad pulled into the drive-thru, and we started cheering. And then, he ordered one black coffee for himself. And kept driving. And, you know, as mad as that made me as a little kid, in retrospect, that is the funniest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. How perfect is that? He had a vanload of little kids, and he got black coffee. The one thing from McDonald’s no child could enjoy. My dad is cold-blooded. He once shushed a kid during Lion King on Broadway. That actually happened. We were at Lion King on Broadway, and there was a five-year-old behind us going, “Look, it’s Pumbaa! Look, it’s Timon!” And my dad turned around and said, “Are you going to talk the entire time?” He’s my hero. The weirdest thing when I was a kid was how much they scared us about smoking weed. They scared us about it constantly. And I’ve been on tour this year… Marijuana is legal in 18 or 19 states in some form or another. It’s insane. Yeah, well… All right, don’t “whoo” if you’re white. It’s always been legal for us. Come on, sir. We don’t go to jail for marijuana, you silly billy. When I was arrested with a one-hitter at a Rusted Root concert, I did not serve hard time. I think I got an award. Eighteen or 19 states. And, by the way, I agree, it’s a very good thing. But it’s also a really weird thing, because this is the first time I’ve ever seen a law change because the government is just like, “Fine.” You know? I’ve never seen it before. Like, gay marriage and healthcare, we have to battle it out in the Supreme Court, and be like, “Gay people are humans.” And they’re like, “We’ll think about it.” But with weed, it was just something we wanted really badly, and we kept asking them for 40 years, like, “Excuse me.” And then suddenly the government became like cool parents, and they’re just like, “Okay, here. Take a little. We’d rather you do it in the house than go somewhere else… blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Those stupid parents. And that’s a big deal because they scared us about weed constantly. It would be on our sitcoms. We’d be watching Saved by the Bell, we’d be having a great old time. And then, suddenly, a character we had not seen before would show up with some weed and the episode would stop cold in its tracks. And they’d always hold the joint… The bad guy would hold the joint in a villainous way. They’d always offer the joint in a way that no one ever holds a joint. Like it’s a skull in a Shakespeare play. And now it’s legal, and that is great news. Unless you’re a weed dealer, and then it is terrible news. And I don’t just mean because they’re about to lose out to Amazon.com. I more feel bad for weed dealers 'cause they’re about to find out that we only showed them a certain amount of politeness because they had an illegal product. And we don’t show that same politeness to people who deliver legal products. Like, when the Chinese food delivery guy comes, we don’t let him hang out after he’s delivered the Chinese food. And we don’t look the other way when he says weird shit to the girls we’re hanging out with… to try to preserve the relationship. And we definitely don’t give him some of the Chinese food. He’s never like, “Hey, can I get in on those dumplings?” And we’re like, “Yeah, we’re all friends.” What are you, on your phone? Hey, V-neck. Hey! - What’s your name? - Sam. Sam? Cool! What do you do to afford V-necks, Sam? Typing numbers. Ah… numbers, the letters of math. I’m sorry to bother you. I don’t mean to single you out. I hate when people get pulled out of the audience. Like, are you familiar with the Cirque du Soleil, Sam? They’re a group of French assholes that are slowly taking over America by humiliating audience members one by one. We once went to see Cirque du Soleil at Navy Pier when I was a kid, and my brother came, and he was 12 years old. You remember being 12, when you’re like, “No one look at me or I’ll kill myself.” And these French bastards come into the crowd, being like, “Le volunteer!” And they pulled my brother up on stage, and I was like, “No!” And they brought him up, and they reached into his sweatshirt, and they were like… And they had planted a bra, and they pulled out a bra and they were like… And everyone at Navy Pier was like “Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha!” And my brother was like, “That’s great!” I have had other jobs besides comedy. I was an office temp for a while. I really miss that. I loved being a temp, because I would just go from office to office and be terrible at a different job for a week. And then you just get to retire like Lou Gehrig. You’re like, “Thank you. No one will ever see me again.” And they’re like, “Goodbye!” I worked at an office once on 57th Street in New York City. I was there for a couple weeks. I was in a cubicle next to this other cubicle. This woman named Mischa sat in the other cubicle. I want to get the number right. I think Mischa had… about 900,000 photos of her daughter up in her cubicle. Almost like she was trying to solve a conspiracy about her daughter, A Beautiful Mind-style. I think about Mischa two times a week… because of a phone call she had next to me one day. It was one of my first days, and I was sitting next to her. And her phone rang, and this was her call, and I’m quoting. Her phone rang and she said, “Hello? Hush!” And then she hung up. Think about that two times a week. And I didn’t know her well enough by then to be like, “Hey, what kind of a person are you?” You know? Who could she have been talking to? “Hello? Hush!” This was a place of business. My only thought was that it was the CEO of the company being like, “Mischa, help. I’m doing a crossword puzzle. I need a four-letter word for 'be quiet’ right now.” - “Hush!” - “You’re promoted.” I temped at a little web company on 25th Street in New York City. It was a small web company owned by this old man who was old, old, old money New York. His name was Henry J. Finch IV. Like old, old, old money. Like, his money was in molasses or something. He owned this web company. I have no idea why he owned this web company. I think he won it in a rich man’s game of dice and small binoculars, or something. Mr. Finch wore linen suits. He had suspenders, he had a bow tie, he had a hat, he had a cane with an ivory handle. I’m giving you more description than you need, 'cause I need you to believe me. This was a real person I knew in the 21st century. Mr. Finch was in his 70s. He had an assistant named Mary. She was in her 50s, she was Korean. I don’t know why he had an assistant. He did not need one. Unless he needed someone to be like, “Remember, Mr. Finch, at five o'clock, you need to keep looking like a hard-boiled egg.” One day, Mr. Finch came into the office. It had been raining. Everything I’m about to say to you was said in front of me on that afternoon. Mr. Finch walked into the office, and he was wearing a raincoat, he was wearing a rain hat, and he had his cane. And he walked in and he said, and I’m quoting, “Ah! One feels like a duck splashing around in all this wet! And when one feels like a duck, one is happy!” And then Mary yelled, “Ooh, ducklings!” To which Mr. Finch replied, “Too old to be a duckling. Quack, quack.” And then walked into his office. I think about that every goddamn day. I mean, imagine you’re me. You’re a 22-year-old temp, and you’re so hungover, and you just wanna die every day. And then that happens in front of you, and I don’t know, gives you hope? And I did that a little fast. Let me break that conversation down for you. Mr. Finch walked in, and he began a conversation the way anyone would. “Ah!” “One feels like a duck splashing around in all this wet!” The rain. “And when one feels like a duck, one is happy!” Now, that’s debatable. But rather than debate that point, Mary brought up a new, separate, but interesting point… which was, “Ducklings!” But Mr. Finch, ever the realist about his own age and mortality… said, “Ah, too old to be a duckling!” As if to say, “My duckling days are behind me. Mary, don’t you see? I’m a duck now. And to prove it… Well, I’ll say just about the most famous catchphrase a duck has… 'Quack, quack.’” And I knew right at that moment, by the way, that it meant nothing to Mr. Finch, what he had said. Crazy people are like that. They have unlimited crazy currency. Like, if I had gone into his office a couple weeks later and been like, “Hey, Finch, you remember that time you were like, 'Too old to be a duckling. Quack, quack’?” He would just be like, “Ah, perhaps I did quack! But such is life for an old knickerbocker like me.” Like, he’d say something else crazy. That’s the wonderful thing about crazy people, you know? Is that they just have unlimited currency. The things they say mean nothing to them, but they mean everything to me. I was once walking into Penn Station in New York. I was walking down 31st Street towards Eighth Avenue. I’m walking down 31st, there’s this woman standing at Eighth and 31st. I have my little roller suitcase. You can all imagine. I’m walking towards her. She’s smoking a cigarette that is not lit anymore. She’s watching me walk, kind of scanning me up and down, as if she had Terminator vision… where she could see little bits of data, like, “Little honky ass,” and could read information. As I walked past her, she said this to me. I walked past her and she said, and I’m quoting, “Eat ass, suck a dick and sell drugs.” Very dirty, yes? A very upsetting thing to hear, yes? I’m sorry you all had to hear that, but at least you all got to hear it as a group. I was alone out there that afternoon. And she said this totally unprompted. “Eat ass, suck a dick and sell drugs.” It wasn’t like I had paused in front of her and been like, “What should I do with my life?” So, I walk away from her with this to-do list. And I like structure, I like a to-do list. It did dawn on me that that list of things does get better as it goes along, when you really think about it. 'Cause it starts in a pretty rough place. It starts with just about the worst task a to-do list can start with. But by the end, you have your own small business. And isn’t that the American dream when all’s said and done? That if you eat enough ass and suck enough dick, one day you can sell drugs. Imagine you did all that to sell drugs and then they legalize drugs, and you were like, “But I…” This has been a real thrill to perform here, by the way. I just wanna say that in all sincerity. Thanks for coming to this. Really, really appreciate it. I wanna tell you one more story before I get out of here, about the night I met a guy named Bill Clinton. Now, I don’t… Some of you know who that is? For those of you that don’t, he was President of the United States from 1993 until 2001, and he is a smooth and fantastic hillbilly who should be declared Emperor of the United States of America. Now, I know you know who Bill Clinton is. But I was doing a show at a college, and I mentioned Bill Clinton, and, like, they kind of didn’t know who he was. Like, sorry, they knew the name, right? But they only knew this 2015 Bill Clinton, who’s a very different Bill Clinton. Have you seen his ass lately? What the hell is he trying to pull? He’s all thin now, and he wears these little tight suits, and he’s got these grandpa reading glasses, like, “Hey, I can’t do nothing to nobody no more.” “Oh, me? I’m just an old, old man. I don’t have the appetites.” You know? And he’s always flying around the world with Bill Gates trying to cure AIDS. That is not the Bill Clinton that we all signed up for 20 years ago. Our Bill Clinton was like a big, fat Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights-looking guy, who played the saxophone on Arsenio, and his work in the STD community was not in curing anything at that time. That was the man we all elected president. That was the Bill Clinton that I met. I got to meet Bill Clinton when he was Governor Clinton in 1992, when he was first running for president. And I got to meet Bill Clinton because my parents had gone to the same college as Bill Clinton. They’re a little younger, but they went to the same college. So, when he was first running for president, he would have all these big, like, alumni fundraisers, and everyone who went was invited to go. Now, this was really cool for a couple reasons. One, I got to meet Bill Clinton. But two, I got to watch my parents watch someone they went to school with become the president. And that is super funny to see, 'cause think about some of the people you went to school with. Now imagine they’re becoming the president. Imagine Sam was becoming the president. It would stir up strong emotions. And my parents had very different opinions on Bill Clinton. My mom loved Bill Clinton, 'cause Bill Clinton was always a really charismatic, handsome guy. I mean, think about how many women he got in the 1990s when he looked like Frank Caliendo doing John Madden. Now… imagine him as a college student. And my mom tells me that there was this sort of chivalrous policy on campus back then, where, late at night, if female students were leaving the library unaccompanied, male students were encouraged to wait out in front and offer to walk them home. That sounds good, right? So, my mom tells me that Bill Clinton would be out in front of the library every single night… just being like, “Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home?” And one night, my mom was leaving the library, and Bill Clinton was like, “Hey, can I walk ya home?” And my mom was like, “Hell, yes.” So… This is absolutely true. My mom, little Ellen Stanton, walked arm-in-arm with Bill Clinton to her dorm. And she was like, “You know, I wanted to invite him up for a beer.” And I was like, “Thanks, I’m nine.” But… her roommate was upstairs, so she lost her chance with Bill Clinton. Now, my dad, on the other hand, hated Bill Clinton, because my parents were dating during this time. And also, my dad’s a much more morally-upright, conservative kind of guy. He always told me that he hated it in college that Bill Clinton could, quote, “Get away with anything.” Can you imagine how he felt later? So, one day, this invitation arrives for a fundraiser where you could meet Bill Clinton. My mom opens it first and she goes, “Oh, we have to go. We have to go see Bill.” And without looking up at her, my dad just says, “Why? It’s not like he’s gonna remember you.” One black coffee. Same motherfucker. So, my mom says, “Fine! I’ll go and I’ll take John.” And I was like, “Hell, yeah.” And I slid in the room in my First Communion suit, ready to go. 'Cause I loved Bill Clinton. I was ten years old. If you were a kid when Bill Clinton was first released, it was the most exciting thing ever. We’d never seen a cool politician before. And he would go on MTV, and he’d have cool answers to kids’ questions. They’d be like, “Governor, what’s your favorite food?” And he’d be like, “I don’t know, fries?” And we’d be like, “Yay, we eat fries!” I learned to play his campaign song on the piano. It was “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac… from Rumours, an album written by and for people cheating on each other. He let us know who he was right away. So, I went with my mom, as her date… to reconnect with Governor Bill Clinton. We walked into the ballroom. It was a big hotel ballroom. It was the Palmer House Hilton, big Hilton hotel ballroom. Walked into the ballroom, it was packed with people. It’s actually the ballroom from the end of the movie The Fugitive, remember? So, that ballroom. So, my mom and I walk in, it’s packed with people, the… Sorry, the end where Harrison Ford, as Dr. Richard Kimble, bursts in to confront Dr. Charles Nichols, right? Okay. So, that ballroom. So, my mom and I walk in, it’s packed with people. Why does Kimble confront Nichols? Well, I know we all know this, but… No, no. But, but, but… Kimble, he found out that Nichols, along with Devlin MacGregor and Lentz, who has mysteriously died, they had hired Frederick Sykes, the one-armed man, to kill Kimble. Kimble’s wife wasn’t even the target. I know we all know this. But they were gonna kill Kimble because he wasn’t gonna approve certain liver samples to pass RUD-90. So, Kimble finds out about all of this, and, of course, he’s furious. And he bursts into the ballroom and he goes, “You switched the samples!” And Dr. Nichols is like, “Ladies and gentlemen, my friend, Dr. Richard Kimble.” What accent did that guy have, by the way? He goes, “You switched the samples! And you doctored your research! So that you could have Provasic!” Anyway, so it’s that ballroom. So, we walk into that ballroom. It was packed with people. It was packed with people. A real Who’s Not of Chicago celebrities. Walter Jacobson was there. Walter Jacobson was the local Fox anchor. He’d do fun things where he’d go undercover as a homeless person. And he’d be like, “Oh, what time is the soup?” And they’d be like, “Man, you’re Walter Jacobson.” He was there. Everybody. And on the far side of the ballroom, under a spotlight, we saw a little bit of silver hair. And it was him… Bill Clinton. The Comeback Kid. But he was surrounded by reporters, and photographers, and Secret Service. So, what are you gonna do? Well, if you’re my mom, you ball up the back of my sport coat, and you push me forward like a human shield. And then you start jogging while yelling, “This ten-year-old boy has to meet the next president of the United States!” Kind of implying that I might be dying. My feet were not on the ground. She was swinging me like a snowplow. I was just mowing down fat Chicago Democrats. I pushed past all the reporters, I pushed past all the photographers. We pushed past all the Secret Service. We land at Bill Clinton’s feet. Bill Clinton turns, looks at my mom and says, “Hey, Ellen,” 'cause he never forgets a bitch, ever. My mom melts. She goes, “Hi, Bill.” Then it is revealed that she has no plan. So… she pushes me towards Clinton and she goes, “This is my son, John, and he’s also going to be president.” And I was like, “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not gonna be president.” And I know now that I’m definitely never gonna be president. Not unless everyone gets real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly. Based on my ten-year-old memory, Bill Clinton is about 13 feet tall. And he leaned down, because, well, I was wearing this button that I bought outside the fundraiser. It was a cartoon button of George H. W. Bush, and it had a quail flying over his head, and it was shitting on his head. And it said, “Bird-brained.” And I thought it was very funny. And Bill Clinton leaned down so that only I could hear and he said, “Hey, man, I like your button.” And I said, “You can do whatever you want forever.” And he took my advice. And… it was the best night of my entire life. And I got home that night… I got home that night, and my dad was still awake, like, reading angry under one lamp, just like… And I went up to him and I went, “Hey! I’m gonna be a Democrat.” “And I’m gonna vote for Bill Clinton.” And without looking up at me, my dad just said, “You have the moral backbone of a chocolate clair.” You know, how you talk to a child. So, here’s the end of that story. That was 1992. Let’s flash forward five years to 1997. It is now 1997. I am a sophomore in high school, Bill Clinton is in his second term as president. And on the morning that the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaks on the cover of The New York Times. It had been on the Drudge Report, and then it was on the cover of The New York Times. That morning, I wake up to the newspaper hitting me in the face. I am a teenager asleep in bed, and the newspaper hits me in the face and falls open on my stomach. And I open my eyes to see my dad standing there dressed for work, and he says, “The other shoe just dropped.” And then my dad went in to work to find out that his law firm had been hired to defend Bill Clinton. Good night, Chicago.
Fuck you Maddi im posting it.
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tahanismoved · 4 years
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don’t know who needs to hear this today but
All right, Petunia. Wish me luck out there. You will die on August 7th, 2037. That’s pretty good. All right. Hello. Hello, Chicago. Nice to see you again. Thank you. That was very nice. Thank you. Look, now, you’re a wonderful crowd, but I need you to keep your energy up the entire show, okay? Because… No, no, no. Thank you. Some crowds… some crowds, they have big energy in the beginning and then they run out of places to go. So… I don’t judge those crowds, by the way, okay? We’ve all gone too big too fast and then run out of room. We’ve all made a “Happy Birthday” sign… Wait. You get that poster board up, and you’re like, “I don’t need to trace it. I know how big letters should be. To begin with, a big-ass ‘H’. Followed by a big-ass ‘A’ and… Oh, no! Oh, God! Okay, all right. Real skinny ‘P’ with a high hump, and then we’ll put the second ‘P’ below the hump of that first ‘P’, sort of like a motorcycle sidecar situation. And now I have no room for the ‘Y’, so I’ll do a kind of curled-up noodle ‘Y’. Block letters and cursive look good together.” And then you go to write “Birthday” and you totally forget the lesson you just learned with “Happy.” You’re like, “Yeah, but the past is the past. Big-ass ‘B’. Surely more letters will fit in the same space.”
You’re very friendly here in Chicago. I mean, we’re all violent here, but you’re very friendly. No, really. And I don’t like confrontation, ’cause I’ve never been in a fight before. Though, maybe you could tell that from the first moment I walked out on stage. I don’t give off that vibe. Some people give off a vibe of… Right away, they’re like, “Do not fuck with me.” My vibe is more like, “Hey, you could pour soup in my lap and I’ll probably apologize to you.” When I walk, for real, my feet go out like this. I’m so open and vulnerable. I look like a doll that you point out molestation on. “Show us on this white comedian where the man touched you.”
It’s been a while since I’ve been home to Chicago. I got married since then. Thank you. I married my wife. I love saying “my wife.” It sounds so adult. “That’s my wife.” It’s great, you sound like a person. I said it even before we were married. We were just dating, and we were once getting on an airplane, and Anna’s ticket didn’t say anything and my ticket said “priority access.” It doesn’t matter why. But we were getting on and I said, “Uh, can my wife board with me?” And they were like, “Yes, of course. Right this way.” And I was like, “Oh, that is so much better than all those times I was like, ‘Can my girlfriend come?'” And, yeah, I shouldn’t have said it that way, but still. “My wife” just has some kick-ass to it, you know? “Get away from my wife! No one talk to my wife!” Marriage is gonna be very magical. “I didn’t kill my wife!” That’s like, “Ooh, who’s that fella? I bet he did kill his wife.” Being married is so nice. I never knew relationships were supposed to make you feel better about yourself. That’s not really a joke, that’s just a little sweet thing I like to say. ‘Cause I’d been in relationships where I got cheated on, like, long ones. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a long relationship where you got cheated on, but it changes your whole worldview. ‘Cause when I was a kid, I used to watch America’s Most Wanted. You know how kids do. And I would always think to myself, “How could another person kill someone? How could a human being kill another human being?” And then I got cheated on, and I was like, “Oh, okay.” “I’m not gonna do it, but I totally get it.” And I don’t mean in that way of, like, “No one else can have you.” I don’t care about that. It’s just creepy to have an ex out there after things have ended badly. They have a lot of information. Anyone who’s seen my dick and met my parents needs to die. I can’t have them roaming around.
I talked to a lot of people before I got engaged, you know. And I heard this expression about whether or not you should get married. This is an old expression. People say this. They say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” You ever heard that before? It’s a bananas insulting expression… to an entire gender. But also, it makes no sense. “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” You’re not allowed to milk a cow that you don’t own. That’s not even a situation. Was that a problem at one point? Like, in the dairy community? Was that happening a hundred years ago in some village? Some Dutch prick was sneaking in at night being like, “Ah-ha-ha, I take your milk.” And the farmer was like, “Well, then, this is your cow now.” And he was like, “No, no proof of purchase.” And he ran off into the night. That sounded Dutch, right? You know what that… you know what that expression means? It means, “Why would you marry a woman if she’s already having sex with you?” Which has nothing to do with what relationships are even like anymore. Now, it’s like, “Why buy the cow?” Uh, maybe because, every day, the cow asks you when you’re gonna buy it. And… … you live in a really small apartment with the cow, so you can’t avoid that question at all. And also, the cow is way better at arguing than you are. And the cow grew up in a family that knows how to argue. “Why buy the cow?” Uh, maybe because every time another cow gets bought, you have to go to the sale and you have to sit next to your cow at the sale, and your cow looks over at you the entire time like… And does not enjoy the sale at all… even though she’s the one that wanted to go to the sale. And she’s especially mad because that farmer and cow met, like, eight months after you guys met. “Why buy the cow?” Well, let’s be real here. You’re very lucky to have the cow that you do have. “Roping in cows and getting milk out of them was never anything you were known for, John.” By the most liberal of estimates, there have been about eight cows total, several unmilked, and… a lot of people think that you like bulls, and if you just bought… They assume it. When you search your name, the third thing to come up is like, “John Mulaney bull?” And if you just bought the cow, nobody would say that anymore. They’ll still say it. ‘Cause there are those guys who, they buy a cow, and then on the side, total matador, but… But, for real, Chicago, why buy the cow? Let’s be real. Why buy the cow? Because you love her. You really do. And, yeah, yeah… Sure, she’s a bossy little Jew, but… … she takes care of you. And you don’t wanna be some old man stumbling around, like, “Hey, you seen any loose milk?”
My wife is Jewish. She’s a New York Jew. I did it! Now, I was raised Catholic. I don’t know if you can tell that from the everything about me. My wife is Jewish, I grew up Catholic, so we got married by a friend. Being married by a friend is a beautiful ceremony that alienates both families’ religions, while confusing the elderly people at the wedding. “What’s the name of the bishop?” “That’s actually stand-up comedian Dan Levy. He was the host of MTV’s Your Face or Mine?” I saw a lot of Catholic weddings, though, because I was an altar boy… And a hush falls over the room. Isn’t it weird how that became a scandalous thing? That was just some boring shit I had to do on weekends. But now, it’s like saying, “I was a French maid for a period of time. I was treated well in my day. I worked for a variety of sirs.” No, being an altar boy was just a boring gig, you know? You’d serve Mass and then you’d serve weddings sometimes. My brother was once an altar boy at a wedding, and he was standing there with another altar boy in this big, packed church in Chicago where we grew up. And the bride was coming down the aisle, and the organ was playing, and all the pews were filled, and the bride got all the way to the altar, and the groom lifted the veil off of the bride, and right at that moment the other altar boy said, “Aw, she’s ugly.” And then they looked, and they were right next to the video camera. And I know that’s awful, but wouldn’t you give a million dollars to see that wedding video? It was the best moment of this stupid woman’s life, and she’s walking down the aisle, and the organ’s like… And she gets all the way to the altar to her betrothed, and he unveils her to the world and to the eyes of God. And right at that second, for no reason at all, some Cheeto-fingered, rat-mustached, 13-year-old prick decides to go, “Aw, she’s ugly!” Hopefully the videographer knew some sound editing so he could fix it to be like, “Aw, she’s beautiful. She’s enchanting.”
I grew up Catholic. I don’t go to church anymore. But I went on Christmas Eve with my parents, ’cause you know how you lie to your parents. So… we go into the church and I was like, “I got this under control.” And then I got schooled because they introduced a bunch of new shit. No, I was going through Mass and I was batting, like, .400. And then in the middle of Mass, the priest said, “Peace be with you.” And everyone said, “And with your spirit.” And I was the one pre-Y2K asshole going, “And also with you. What? Huh? What? Huh? What? When? When?” For those of you that aren’t Catholic, I don’t mean to exclude you, even though we love to exclude you, but… There’s a part in church where the priest says, “Peace be with you.” And for many, many years, we all said… – “And also with you.” – Very good. But they changed it to “And with your spirit.” Because that’s what needed revamping in the Catholic Church. That was the squeaky wheel that needed the grease. In Rome, they were like, “Let’s see. What problems can we solve? Problem one. No.” I’m actually glad they changed that, though. I never liked “And also with you.” I always found that clunky. “And also with you.” That’s not how you talk. – “Have a nice day.” – “And also you having one.” It’s just a little bit wrong, isn’t it? It’s just a little off. Like, when someone’s like, “How are you?” And you’re like, “Nothing much.” And it sort of makes sense. Never begin a sentence with “And also.” You just immediately sound caught off-guard. It sounds like if at the first church ever, like, they weren’t expecting it. Like, the priest was like, “Hey, this is the first time we’ve ever had church. I just wanna say, ‘Peace be with you.'” And they were like… “What? Oh. Uh, yeah. And also you should have some.” “Hey, that’s good. Let’s keep that for 2,000 years. And then change it to trick John.”
My wife and I don’t have any children, we have a dog. We have a little puppy named Petunia. She’s a tiny little French bulldog puppy. I like having a puppy that’s a bulldog, ’cause it’s like having a baby that is also a grandma. Her body is young, her face is as old as time. She definitely saw the Nazis march into Paris. She always gives me this look of like, “Oh, the things I have seen, you cocksucker. You have no idea. The Gestapo threw my printing press into a river. But, go, tell your fucking jokes. Bring me my dish.” She said that. Petunia… Petunia is my best friend in the world. I give her a million kisses a day. She does not like me, and barks at me and bites me all day long. We had to get a dog trainer into the apartment because Petunia is a bad dog. We tell her that every day. We go, “Hey, you’re bad at being a dog.” So, the trainer came into the apartment. Sorry, didn’t even walk into the apartment, walked into the threshold and went, “Oh, okay.” Like she was an exorcist or something. She said, “I see what the problem is.” She said, “Petunia has become the alpha of the house.” And then she pointed at me, she said, “You are no longer the alpha of the house.” And in the back of my head, I was like, “I was never the alpha of the house.” I turned to my wife, I was like, “Let’s pretend. It’ll be fun. Yes… My title of alpha, which I once had, how can I reclaim it? Because that was a thing that existed at one time.” She said, “You need to show dominance over your puppy.” These are things people say to me. I said, “How do I do that?” She said, “Well, let me ask you this. Who eats dinner first, you or Petunia?” I was like, “Petunia eats dinner first. She eats dinner at 5:00 p.m., ’cause she’s a foot long and two years old.” She said, “No, you need to eat dinner first. Because the king eats before anyone else eats.” Oh, yes, and what a mighty king I will be, eating dinner at 4:45 in the afternoon. “Look upon your sovereign, Petunia, and tremble. My lands stretch across this entire one bedroom, and I eat dinner whenever I choose, as long as it works for the schedule of a dog.” She said, “Now, you don’t actually have to eat dinner before Petunia. You just have to convince Petunia that you’ve already eaten.” So… for the past month, I shit you not… before my wife and I give Petunia her dish, we take down empty bowls and spoons, and in front of her, we go, “Mmm, dinner. Mmm, good dinner.” Like we’re space aliens in a play about human beings that they wrote, but they didn’t work that hard on. “Mmm, we’re eating dinner.” Meanwhile, Petunia’s just staring at us with her Paul Giamatti face, like… “You’re not eating dinner, cocksucker. Dish, now.”
I have a wife and a dog, and we just bought a house. We have a new house. It was built in the ’20s, but it was flipped in 2014. Which means it’s haunted, but it has a lovely kitchen backsplash. Actually, we didn’t buy a house. A bank bought a house, and I’m allowed to keep my shirts and pants there while I pay it off for 30 years. The woman from the bank came over and she showed me my mortgage broken down month by month for 30 years. And she said, “So, for instance, this is what you’ll pay in July of 2029.” And I burst out laughing. I was like, “2029? That’s not a real year. By 2029, I’ll be drinking moon juice with President Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I’m not gonna be writing you a paper check.” I like having a house, but I loved looking for a house, ’cause I love real estate agents. I mean, they are the true heroes. They really are. Have you ever watched HGTV? Real estate agents have to deal with the dumbest people in the world making the biggest decisions of their lives. Every episode of HGTV is like, “Craig and Stacia are looking for a two-story A-frame that’s near Craig’s job in the downtown, but also satisfies Stacia’s need to be near the beach which is nowhere near Craig’s job. With three children and nine on the way, and a max budget of $7… let’s see what Lori Jo can do on this week’s episode of You Don’t Deserve A Beach House.”
I loved our real estate agent. It was so fun to hang out with her. It was like hanging out with my mom. ‘Cause, you know, real estate agents always look like your mom. And they have various Chico’s accoutrements. They always have kind of fun mom energy. And they’re always, “So excited to see you two.” We would have little conferences before we walked into a house. She’d go, “Let’s talk. Let’s talk before we go in.” We’re, like, two feet from the door. “So, there’s no toilets. And I know that was on your list. But I think I can get him to budge. Let’s go.” So, we’d have a real estate agent, and then, like, the house would have a real estate agent who’s just some guy sitting in a big chair. And these two always hated each other. They’d be like, “Hi, Tony.” “Hi, Kim.” It’s like, “Jesus Christ! What, were you two in the Eagles together? What is the animosity about?” Our real estate agent wanted us to have a baby more than anyone else in our lives, more than anyone in our family. She hinted about it constantly. Every room she walked into, she’d be like, “So, this could be an office.” “Or maybe a nursery.” “Yeah. No, like we said, we don’t know if we’re gonna have… ” “No, no. I know, I know, you know. You don’t know if you’re gonna have ’em, but you know. You know, you never know. Sometimes you don’t know what’s gonna happen, and then… you know, something happens.” “Well, yeah, that’s how all of life works.” “Okay, all right. Okay. Uh-huh. Mmm. This is an on-fire garbage can. Could be a nursery.” She showed me a backyard once. She goes, “I don’t even like this backyard for you.” I was like, “Oh, do tell.” She said, “It’s all pavement. I think you should have some grass out there. You know, in case you have a couple… little guys… running around in the grass.” And I got offended on behalf of my imaginary kids. I was like, “Hey, lady. I went outside about as much as Powder from the movie Powder. My children are not gonna be playing out on grass. They will be up in their rooms playing violent video games and catfishing pedophiles. These are my children. And that’s my wife!”
I didn’t mean to make it sound like we don’t want children. We don’t, but I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. See, I just don’t think babies like me very much. Sometimes babies will point at me, and I don’t care for that shit at all. Like, I’ll be on an elevator, and a baby will be there in its big, like, stroller activity tray, just, like, working on one Cheerio with Bobby Fischer-like intensity. And it’ll look up at me and go… I like to lean in and go, “Stop snitchin’, motherfucker.” And then walk off. ‘Cause you’re never too young to learn our national no-snitching policy. My friends have babies and I don’t do so well with them. I had a run-in with a two-year-old girl. I know there are better ways to start that story, but… My friend, Jeremy, has this two-year-old girl, and I really like her. She’s a sweet kid. I really like his daughter a lot. But I was over at his family’s house for the Fourth of July, and he had his daughter on his knee. And it was a very lovely day. His whole extended family was there. And he was bouncing his two-year-old up and down, and he pointed at me and he said to his two-year-old, “Do you know who that is? That’s your Uncle John.” And I was like, “Oh, my God. That’s so sweet. I’m her Uncle John.” And then the baby pointed at me and said, “Uncle John has a penis.” I thank you for laughing, because no one did that day! Fell deadly silent, is what they all did. Hey, do you know what you’re supposed to say when a baby points at you and knowingly says, “He has a penis”? No, I’m asking, ’cause I don’t know what to say in that situation. Here’s what I went with that day. I said, “Oh, come on!” I don’t know. I thought that’d be good. But then it just made it worse, ’cause it sounded like the baby and I had an arrangement not to talk about it, and she had violated my trust. Like, the baby had been like, “Do you have a penis?” And I was like, “Yes, I do, but you’re a baby, so discretion is key.” And then the next day she goes, “He has a penis,” and I go, “Oh, come on! Someone can’t keep a secret!” Luckily, Jeremy’s wife saved the day. The baby’s mom saved the day. She came in and she picked up the baby, and she was like, “It’s okay. She’s just going through that phase where she says penis and vagina a lot.” Aren’t we all? And, by the way, it would’ve been a totally different situation if the baby had said vagina. Like, if a grown woman had walked in the room, and the baby had been like, “She has a vagina,” the woman could be like, “Yes, I do, and it’s magnificent.” And we would all be like, “Hooray! You are brave!” No one wants to applaud the penis of a 32-year-old weirdo.
It’s fun to be married. I’ve never been supervised before. I’m supervised. She studies what I do. Like an anthropologist. She’ll be like, “Sometimes, he will watch a movie on TV even though he already owns that movie on DVD. Pointing this out to him confuses and upsets him.” I had no supervision when I was a kid. We were free to do what we wanted. But also, with that, no one cared about kids. I grew up before children were special. I did. Very early ’80s, right before children became special. Like, I remember when milk carton kids became a thing. When they were like, “Hey, we should start looking for some of these guys. I don’t think they’re just blowing off steam.” No one cared about my opinion when I was a little kid. No one cared what I thought. Sometimes, people would say, “What do you think you’re doing?” But that just meant “Stop.” They didn’t actually wanna know my thought process. They didn’t want me to be like, “Well, I was gonna put this bottle rocket into this carton of eggs, so that when I lit off the bottle rocket, the eggs would explode everywhere.” “Oh, well, that’s very interesting. And what brought you to this experiment?” “Oh, well, thank you for asking. Well… you know how I’m filled with rage? I’m so horny and angry all the time… and I have no outlet for it. So… eggs.” Your opinion doesn’t matter in elementary school either. It matters in college. College is just your opinion. Just you raising your hand and being like, “I think Emily Dickinson’s a lesbian.” And they’re like, “Partial credit.” And that’s a whole thing. But in elementary school, it doesn’t matter what you think, it just matters what you know. You have to have answers to questions. And if you say, “I don’t know,” you get an X on your test, and you get it wrong and that’s not fair, ’cause your brain has never been smaller. Also, that’s not how life works. I’m in my 30s now. If you came to me now and you were like, “Hey, John, name three things that the Stamp Act of 1775 accomplished.” I’d go, “I don’t know. Get out of my apartment,” you know? But when you’re a little kid, you can’t say, “I don’t know.” You should be able to. That should be an acceptable answer on a test. You should be able to write in, “I don’t know. I know you told me. But I have had a very long day. I am very small. And I have no money. So you can imagine the kind of stress that I am under.” Or if it’s one of those true or false questions, you should be able to add a third option which is, “Who’s to say?” Kids are much more supervised now, but also, they have a lot of rights. Like, that’s the biggest civil rights increase I’ve seen in my lifetime. The rights of children have gone through the roof. I had no rights when I was a little kid. I remember, one time, I walked into a supermarket by myself, and I walked in through the double doors, and the woman behind the register just looked at me and she went, “No!” And I went, “All right.” And I turned around and left. That’s how broken I was.
And there weren’t special things for kids the way there are now. Like, we would just go see movies. Any movie. Like Back to the Future. That was a movie everyone could see. Kids could kinda see it. Great movie, right? I rewatched it recently. It’s a very weird movie. Marty McFly is a 17-year-old high school student whose best friend is a disgraced nuclear physicist. And, I shit you not, they never explain how they became friends. They never explain it. Not even in a lazy way, like, “Hey, remember when we met in the science building?” They don’t even do that. And we were all fine with it. We were just like, “What, who’s his best friend? A disgraced nuclear physicist? All right, proceed.” What a strange movie to sell to be a family movie. Two guys had to go in and do that. They had to be like, “Okay… we got an idea… for the next big family-action-comedy. All right, it’s about a guy named Marty, and he’s very lazy. He’s always sleeping late.” “Okay. Is he cool like Ferris Bueller?” “No. But he does have this best friend who’s, you know, a disgraced… nuclear physicist.” “I’m confused here. This best friend, this is another student?” “No, no, no. No, this guy’s either, like, 40 or 80. Even we don’t know how old this guy’s supposed to be. But one day, the boy and the scientist, they go back in time and they build a time machine. Whoa!” “Okay. I think I see where you’re going here. They build a time machine, and they go back in time, and they stop the Kennedy assassination.” “Ah! Oh, wow, that’s a really good idea, I mean, we didn’t even think of that.” “All right, well, what do they do with the time machine?” “Well, now I’m embarrassed to say. Ah, well, all right, all right, all right. We thought… We thought it would be funny, you know, if the boy, if he went back in time and, you know, he tried to fuck his mom.” “I don’t know. We thought that’d be fun for people. But, no, good point. No, he doesn’t get to, he doesn’t get to. ‘Cause this family friend named Biff, he comes in and he tries to rape the mom in front of the son. The dad’s gotta beat the rapist off of her. And also, we’re gonna imply that a white man wrote ‘Johnny B. Goode.’ So, we’re gonna take that away from ’em.” “Well, this is the best movie idea I have ever heard in my life. We’re gonna make three of them. Now, you say they go to the past. How about we call it Back to the Past?” “No, no, no. Back to the Future.” “Right, but they go to the past.” “Yeah.”
Kids have it very good now. My friend’s a teacher. She told me that, uh… the parents will take the kids’ side over the teacher now. That’s insane. That never happened. My parents trusted every grown-up… more than they trusted me. I don’t mean coaches and teachers. Any human adult’s word… was better than mine. Any hobo or drifter could have taken me by the ear up to my front door and been like, “Excuse me! Your kid bit my dick.” And my mom would be like, “John Edmund Mulaney, did you bite this nice man’s dick?” And I would be the only one who’s like, “Hey, doesn’t anyone wanna know why… his dick was near my biters… in the first place? Isn’t anyone curious… as to how I had access?” Don’t get me wrong, my parents love us. They just didn’t like us. We weren’t friends. People are now like, “My mom’s my best friend.” I was like, “Oh, is she a super bad mom?” My parents didn’t trust us, and they shouldn’t have trusted us. We were little goblins. We were terrible. I remember, one time, we were going to this resort for a vacation when we were little kids. Three weeks before we went to the resort, my dad sat us down and he said, “All right, we’re going to a resort, and I’ve just been informed that the man who owns the resort only has one arm.” And we were like, “Oh, yes! Yay! Yes!” “Now, I’m telling you three weeks in advance, so that you will not freak out when you see that he only has one arm.” “Oh, we’re gonna freak out so bad!” “Yes, John, you have a question?” “How did he lose his arm?” “That’s exactly what you won’t ask.” And then I did ask. I went into the kitchen one day, and I was like, “So, how’d you lose your arm?” And he was like, “Well, I was born with only one arm.” And I was like, “Nah.”
No, my parents loved us. It’s just, like, they were the cops, you know? And we were criminals. So, we didn’t get along. We only got along in that way that, like, cops will sometimes be chummy with criminals. Like, when my dad and I would talk, it was like that scene in the movie Heat, when Robert De Niro and Al Pacino sit down in that diner. We kind of had that rapport of, like, “Hmm, we’re not so different, you and I. You have your law practice, and me, I have all these fucking markers.” “I guess we both have responsibilities when you look at it that way.” My dad would respect it if I could get away with breaking a rule. We had a rule in our house, you were not allowed to watch TV on a school night. So, every school night, I would 100% be watching TV. And I would hear my dad coming, I would immediately turn the TV off and grab any book, magazine, periodical, anything. And I’d open it and pretend to be doing homework. My dad would walk in the room and he would go, “What are you doing? Are you watching TV?” And I’d go, “No, man. I’m not watching TV.” And the TV wouldn’t even be dark yet. It would still have, like, a neon green halo around it. It’d be sizzling like a glass of Pepsi. And I would look my dad in the eyes and go, “No, I’m just reading this Yellow Pages.”
My dad loved us. He just didn’t care about our general happiness or self-esteem. I remember, one time, we were really little kids. I have two sisters and a brother, and all four of us were in our family car ride for three hours going to Wisconsin. My dad was driving, going down the highway in our white van with wood around the side. ‘Cause you remember when you wanted your car to be made of wood? You remember that era? Where we were like, “How much wood can we get on this car… without it catching on fire?” But then the big announcement. “We here at Plymouth-Chrysler can put a saucy stripe of wood safely on the outside of your car, for all those times you’ve looked at your minivan and thought, ‘Huh! It needs a belt.'” So, we’re going on the highway. We’ve been on the road for three hours. And in the distance, we see a McDonald’s. We see the golden arches. And we got so excited. We started chanting, “McDonald’s! McDonald’s! McDonald’s! McDonald’s!” And my dad pulled into the drive-thru, and we started cheering. And then, he ordered one black coffee for himself. And kept driving. And, you know, as mad as that made me as a little kid, in retrospect, that is the funniest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. How perfect is that? He had a vanload of little kids, and he got black coffee. The one thing from McDonald’s no child could enjoy. My dad is cold-blooded. He once shushed a kid during Lion King on Broadway. That actually happened. We were at Lion King on Broadway, and there was a five-year-old behind us going, “Look, it’s Pumbaa! Look, it’s Timon!” And my dad turned around and said, “Are you going to talk the entire time?” He’s my hero.
The weirdest thing when I was a kid was how much they scared us about smoking weed. They scared us about it constantly. And I’ve been on tour this year… Marijuana is legal in 18 or 19 states in some form or another. It’s insane. Yeah, well… All right, don’t “whoo” if you’re white. It’s always been legal for us. Come on, sir. We don’t go to jail for marijuana, you silly billy. When I was arrested with a one-hitter at a Rusted Root concert, I did not serve hard time. I think I got an award. Eighteen or 19 states. And, by the way, I agree, it’s a very good thing. But it’s also a really weird thing, because this is the first time I’ve ever seen a law change because the government is just like, “Fine.” You know? I’ve never seen it before. Like, gay marriage and healthcare, we have to battle it out in the Supreme Court, and be like, “Gay people are humans.” And they’re like, “We’ll think about it.” But with weed, it was just something we wanted really badly, and we kept asking them for 40 years, like, “Excuse me.” And then suddenly the government became like cool parents, and they’re just like, “Okay, here. Take a little. We’d rather you do it in the house than go somewhere else… blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Those stupid parents. And that’s a big deal because they scared us about weed constantly. It would be on our sitcoms. We’d be watching Saved by the Bell, we’d be having a great old time. And then, suddenly, a character we had not seen before would show up with some weed and the episode would stop cold in its tracks. And they’d always hold the joint… The bad guy would hold the joint in a villainous way. They’d always offer the joint in a way that no one ever holds a joint. Like it’s a skull in a Shakespeare play. And now it’s legal, and that is great news. Unless you’re a weed dealer, and then it is terrible news. And I don’t just mean because they’re about to lose out to Amazon.com. I more feel bad for weed dealers ’cause they’re about to find out that we only showed them a certain amount of politeness because they had an illegal product. And we don’t show that same politeness to people who deliver legal products. Like, when the Chinese food delivery guy comes, we don’t let him hang out after he’s delivered the Chinese food. And we don’t look the other way when he says weird shit to the girls we’re hanging out with… to try to preserve the relationship. And we definitely don’t give him some of the Chinese food. He’s never like, “Hey, can I get in on those dumplings?” And we’re like, “Yeah, we’re all friends.”
What are you, on your phone? Hey, V-neck. Hey! – What’s your name? – Sam. Sam? Cool! What do you do to afford V-necks, Sam? Typing numbers. Ah… numbers, the letters of math. I’m sorry to bother you. I don’t mean to single you out. I hate when people get pulled out of the audience. Like, are you familiar with the Cirque du Soleil, Sam? They’re a group of French assholes that are slowly taking over America by humiliating audience members one by one. We once went to see Cirque du Soleil at Navy Pier when I was a kid, and my brother came, and he was 12 years old. You remember being 12, when you’re like, “No one look at me or I’ll kill myself.” And these French bastards come into the crowd, being like, “Le volunteer!” And they pulled my brother up on stage, and I was like, “No!” And they brought him up, and they reached into his sweatshirt, and they were like… And they had planted a bra, and they pulled out a bra and they were like… And everyone at Navy Pier was like “Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha!” And my brother was like, “That’s great!” I have had other jobs besides comedy.
I was an office temp for a while. I really miss that. I loved being a temp, because I would just go from office to office and be terrible at a different job for a week. And then you just get to retire like Lou Gehrig. You’re like, “Thank you. No one will ever see me again.” And they’re like, “Goodbye!” I worked at an office once on 57th Street in New York City. I was there for a couple weeks. I was in a cubicle next to this other cubicle. This woman named Mischa sat in the other cubicle. I want to get the number right. I think Mischa had… about 900,000 photos of her daughter up in her cubicle. Almost like she was trying to solve a conspiracy about her daughter, A Beautiful Mind-style. I think about Mischa two times a week… because of a phone call she had next to me one day. It was one of my first days, and I was sitting next to her. And her phone rang, and this was her call, and I’m quoting. Her phone rang and she said, “Hello? Hush!” And then she hung up. Think about that two times a week. And I didn’t know her well enough by then to be like, “Hey, what kind of a person are you?” You know? Who could she have been talking to? “Hello? Hush!” This was a place of business. My only thought was that it was the CEO of the company being like, “Mischa, help. I’m doing a crossword puzzle. I need a four-letter word for ‘be quiet’ right now.” – “Hush!” – “You’re promoted.”
I temped at a little web company on 25th Street in New York City. It was a small web company owned by this old man who was old, old, old money New York. His name was Henry J. Finch IV. Like old, old, old money. Like, his money was in molasses or something. He owned this web company. I have no idea why he owned this web company. I think he won it in a rich man’s game of dice and small binoculars, or something. Mr. Finch wore linen suits. He had suspenders, he had a bow tie, he had a hat, he had a cane with an ivory handle. I’m giving you more description than you need, ’cause I need you to believe me. This was a real person I knew in the 21st century. Mr. Finch was in his 70s. He had an assistant named Mary. She was in her 50s, she was Korean. I don’t know why he had an assistant. He did not need one. Unless he needed someone to be like, “Remember, Mr. Finch, at five o’clock, you need to keep looking like a hard-boiled egg.” One day, Mr. Finch came into the office. It had been raining. Everything I’m about to say to you was said in front of me on that afternoon. Mr. Finch walked into the office, and he was wearing a raincoat, he was wearing a rain hat, and he had his cane. And he walked in and he said, and I’m quoting, “Ah! One feels like a duck splashing around in all this wet! And when one feels like a duck, one is happy!” And then Mary yelled, “Ooh, ducklings!” To which Mr. Finch replied, “Too old to be a duckling. Quack, quack.” And then walked into his office. I think about that every goddamn day. I mean, imagine you’re me. You’re a 22-year-old temp, and you’re so hungover, and you just wanna die every day. And then that happens in front of you, and I don’t know, gives you hope? And I did that a little fast. Let me break that conversation down for you. Mr. Finch walked in, and he began a conversation the way anyone would. “Ah!” “One feels like a duck splashing around in all this wet!” The rain. “And when one feels like a duck, one is happy!” Now, that’s debatable. But rather than debate that point, Mary brought up a new, separate, but interesting point… which was, “Ducklings!” But Mr. Finch, ever the realist about his own age and mortality… said, “Ah, too old to be a duckling!” As if to say, “My duckling days are behind me. Mary, don’t you see? I’m a duck now. And to prove it… Well, I’ll say just about the most famous catchphrase a duck has… ‘Quack, quack.'” And I knew right at that moment, by the way, that it meant nothing to Mr. Finch, what he had said. Crazy people are like that. They have unlimited crazy currency. Like, if I had gone into his office a couple weeks later and been like, “Hey, Finch, you remember that time you were like, ‘Too old to be a duckling. Quack, quack’?” He would just be like, “Ah, perhaps I did quack! But such is life for an old knickerbocker like me.” Like, he’d say something else crazy.
That’s the wonderful thing about crazy people, you know? Is that they just have unlimited currency. The things they say mean nothing to them, but they mean everything to me. I was once walking into Penn Station in New York. I was walking down 31st Street towards Eighth Avenue. I’m walking down 31st, there’s this woman standing at Eighth and 31st. I have my little roller suitcase. You can all imagine. I’m walking towards her. She’s smoking a cigarette that is not lit anymore. She’s watching me walk, kind of scanning me up and down, as if she had Terminator vision… where she could see little bits of data, like, “Little honky ass,” and could read information. As I walked past her, she said this to me. I walked past her and she said, and I’m quoting, “Eat ass, suck a dick and sell drugs.” Very dirty, yes? A very upsetting thing to hear, yes? I’m sorry you all had to hear that, but at least you all got to hear it as a group. I was alone out there that afternoon. And she said this totally unprompted. “Eat ass, suck a dick and sell drugs.” It wasn’t like I had paused in front of her and been like, “What should I do with my life?” So, I walk away from her with this to-do list. And I like structure, I like a to-do list. It did dawn on me that that list of things does get better as it goes along, when you really think about it. ‘Cause it starts in a pretty rough place. It starts with just about the worst task a to-do list can start with. But by the end, you have your own small business. And isn’t that the American dream when all’s said and done? That if you eat enough ass and suck enough dick, one day you can sell drugs. Imagine you did all that to sell drugs and then they legalize drugs, and you were like, “But I…” This has been a real thrill to perform here, by the way. I just wanna say that in all sincerity. Thanks for coming to this. Really, really appreciate it.
I wanna tell you one more story before I get out of here, about the night I met a guy named Bill Clinton. Now, I don’t… Some of you know who that is? For those of you that don’t, he was President of the United States from 1993 until 2001, and he is a smooth and fantastic hillbilly who should be declared Emperor of the United States of America. Now, I know you know who Bill Clinton is. But I was doing a show at a college, and I mentioned Bill Clinton, and, like, they kind of didn’t know who he was. Like, sorry, they knew the name, right? But they only knew this 2015 Bill Clinton, who’s a very different Bill Clinton. Have you seen his ass lately? What the hell is he trying to pull? He’s all thin now, and he wears these little tight suits, and he’s got these grandpa reading glasses, like, “Hey, I can’t do nothing to nobody no more.” “Oh, me? I’m just an old, old man. I don’t have the appetites.” You know? And he’s always flying around the world with Bill Gates trying to cure AIDS.
That is not the Bill Clinton that we all signed up for 20 years ago. Our Bill Clinton was like a big, fat Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights-looking guy, who played the saxophone on Arsenio, and his work in the STD community was not in curing anything at that time. That was the man we all elected president. That was the Bill Clinton that I met. I got to meet Bill Clinton when he was Governor Clinton in 1992, when he was first running for president.
And I got to meet Bill Clinton because my parents had gone to the same college as Bill Clinton. They’re a little younger, but they went to the same college. So, when he was first running for president, he would have all these big, like, alumni fundraisers, and everyone who went was invited to go. Now, this was really cool for a couple reasons. One, I got to meet Bill Clinton. But two, I got to watch my parents watch someone they went to school with become the president. And that is super funny to see, ’cause think about some of the people you went to school with. Now imagine they’re becoming the president. Imagine Sam was becoming the president. It would stir up strong emotions. And my parents had very different opinions on Bill Clinton.
My mom loved Bill Clinton, ’cause Bill Clinton was always a really charismatic, handsome guy. I mean, think about how many women he got in the 1990s when he looked like Frank Caliendo doing John Madden. Now… imagine him as a college student. And my mom tells me that there was this sort of chivalrous policy on campus back then, where, late at night, if female students were leaving the library unaccompanied, male students were encouraged to wait out in front and offer to walk them home. That sounds good, right? So, my mom tells me that Bill Clinton would be out in front of the library every single night… just being like, “Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home?” And one night, my mom was leaving the library, and Bill Clinton was like, “Hey, can I walk ya home?” And my mom was like, “Hell, yes.” So… This is absolutely true. My mom, little Ellen Stanton, walked arm-in-arm with Bill Clinton to her dorm. And she was like, “You know, I wanted to invite him up for a beer.” And I was like, “Thanks, I’m nine.” But… her roommate was upstairs, so she lost her chance with Bill Clinton.
Now, my dad, on the other hand, hated Bill Clinton, because my parents were dating during this time. And also, my dad’s a much more morally-upright, conservative kind of guy. He always told me that he hated it in college that Bill Clinton could, quote, “Get away with anything.” Can you imagine how he felt later?
So, one day, this invitation arrives for a fundraiser where you could meet Bill Clinton. My mom opens it first and she goes, “Oh, we have to go. We have to go see Bill.” And without looking up at her, my dad just says, “Why? It’s not like he’s gonna remember you.” One black coffee. Same motherfucker. So, my mom says, “Fine! I’ll go and I’ll take John.” And I was like, “Hell, yeah.” And I slid in the room in my First Communion suit, ready to go. ‘Cause I loved Bill Clinton. I was ten years old. If you were a kid when Bill Clinton was first released, it was the most exciting thing ever. We’d never seen a cool politician before. And he would go on MTV, and he’d have cool answers to kids’ questions. They’d be like, “Governor, what’s your favorite food?” And he’d be like, “I don’t know, fries?” And we’d be like, “Yay, we eat fries!”
I learned to play his campaign song on the piano. It was “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac… from Rumours, an album written by and for people cheating on each other. He let us know who he was right away. So, I went with my mom, as her date… to reconnect with Governor Bill Clinton. We walked into the ballroom. It was a big hotel ballroom. It was the Palmer House Hilton, big Hilton hotel ballroom. Walked into the ballroom, it was packed with people. It’s actually the ballroom from the end of the movie The Fugitive, remember? So, that ballroom. So, my mom and I walk in, it’s packed with people, the… Sorry, the end where Harrison Ford, as Dr. Richard Kimble, bursts in to confront Dr. Charles Nichols, right? Okay. So, that ballroom. So, my mom and I walk in, it’s packed with people. Why does Kimble confront Nichols? Well, I know we all know this, but… No, no. But, but, but… Kimble, he found out that Nichols, along with Devlin MacGregor and Lentz, who has mysteriously died, they had hired Frederick Sykes, the one-armed man, to kill Kimble. Kimble’s wife wasn’t even the target. I know we all know this. But they were gonna kill Kimble because he wasn’t gonna approve certain liver samples to pass RUD-90. So, Kimble finds out about all of this, and, of course, he’s furious. And he bursts into the ballroom and he goes, “You switched the samples!” And Dr. Nichols is like, “Ladies and gentlemen, my friend, Dr. Richard Kimble.” What accent did that guy have, by the way? He goes, “You switched the samples! And you doctored your research! So that you could have Provasic!”
Anyway, so it’s that ballroom. So, we walk into that ballroom. It was packed with people. It was packed with people. A real Who’s Not of Chicago celebrities. Walter Jacobson was there. Walter Jacobson was the local Fox anchor. He’d do fun things where he’d go undercover as a homeless person. And he’d be like, “Oh, what time is the soup?” And they’d be like, “Man, you’re Walter Jacobson.” He was there. Everybody. And on the far side of the ballroom, under a spotlight, we saw a little bit of silver hair. And it was him… Bill Clinton. The Comeback Kid. But he was surrounded by reporters, and photographers, and Secret Service. So, what are you gonna do? Well, if you’re my mom, you ball up the back of my sport coat, and you push me forward like a human shield. And then you start jogging while yelling, “This ten-year-old boy has to meet the next president of the United States!” Kind of implying that I might be dying. My feet were not on the ground. She was swinging me like a snowplow. I was just mowing down fat Chicago Democrats. I pushed past all the reporters, I pushed past all the photographers. We pushed past all the Secret Service.
We land at Bill Clinton’s feet. Bill Clinton turns, looks at my mom and says, “Hey, Ellen,” ’cause he never forgets a bitch, ever. My mom melts. She goes, “Hi, Bill.” Then it is revealed that she has no plan. So… she pushes me towards Clinton and she goes, “This is my son, John, and he’s also going to be president.” And I was like, “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not gonna be president.” And I know now that I’m definitely never gonna be president. Not unless everyone gets real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly. Based on my ten-year-old memory, Bill Clinton is about 13 feet tall. And he leaned down, because, well, I was wearing this button that I bought outside the fundraiser. It was a cartoon button of George H. W. Bush, and it had a quail flying over his head, and it was shitting on his head. And it said, “Bird-brained.” And I thought it was very funny. And Bill Clinton leaned down so that only I could hear and he said, “Hey, man, I like your button.” And I said, “You can do whatever you want forever.” And he took my advice. And… it was the best night of my entire life.
And I got home that night… I got home that night, and my dad was still awake, like, reading angry under one lamp, just like… And I went up to him and I went, “Hey! I’m gonna be a Democrat.” “And I’m gonna vote for Bill Clinton.” And without looking up at me, my dad just said, “You have the moral backbone of a chocolate éclair.” You know, how you talk to a child. So, here’s the end of that story. That was 1992. Let’s flash forward five years to 1997. It is now 1997. I am a sophomore in high school, Bill Clinton is in his second term as president. And on the morning that the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaks on the cover of The New York Times. It had been on the Drudge Report, and then it was on the cover of The New York Times. That morning, I wake up to the newspaper hitting me in the face. I am a teenager asleep in bed, and the newspaper hits me in the face and falls open on my stomach. And I open my eyes to see my dad standing there dressed for work, and he says, “The other shoe just dropped.” And then my dad went in to work to find out that his law firm had been hired to defend Bill Clinton.
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