The Comedienne: Part Deux

Apparently I've been sleepwalking.

One of my roommates caught me the other night. Standing in her room, stuffing towels and tissues and her dirty panties into a dresser. I was muttering "it's not my fault, I just rented the shirt" over and over again. Mom was pretty freaked out (that's "Her" name by the way).

The next night, my other roommate ("Dad") had an early shift and was taking a shower. He was all dried off, doing the towel around the waist thing and opened the door-- a small grey and blue spotted snake was coiled up outside the door! There on the second floor, in America no less! In a paniky animal sort of mindset he mashed it to death barefoot. Mashed it! Barefoot! Right into the stained hardwood floors! Can you believe it? Well, that's how it happened. So me and "Dad" buried it in the sleepy morning haze (so the dog wouldn't get it). That would be a mess. We had to scrape up the wet snake bits and stuffed them into a plastic grocery bag-- as we carried it outside a clear-reddish mucus dripped off the bag's corner onto my foot. I have to assume that all of this is correlated somehow. The sleepwalking, the bloody snake oil dripping onto my foot, the drunken sleep apnea, the Civil War in Ukraine, the Gaza strip. Ferguson, Missouri. In America no less!

You sir, you know what I mean right? Of course you do, you got the professionally medicated eyes of a 30-something with a "bowel movement journal." You see it clear as anyone, but hard to recognize aint it? That vague rocky coast lurking through the fog? Eh?

And you, hello Sister. Out alone tonight? Be honest, is tonight any exception? Replacement blew, cant remember original. Well, that's fine. I got the look too. We need to stick together, build a formal sisterhood. A coven, or something like that.

I've been looking into buying cemetery plots online. I think it's important to always have enough cash in the bank to cover, you know, "The End": all the boxes and hinges and nails and after the fact landscaping. Eternal candles. Roadside crosses. I have $12.50-- that's enough for a cab from here to the east river, right? That's my price horizon these days. I mean, I could afford that much.

'Cause here's the thing-- (house, I'm gonna need another drink up here)-- I think organ donor's are idiots. And I mean that as kindly as possible people, they've been cornered by this shame-mafia into giving their future dead bits away-- for FREE! Can you believe that? They hack and pack your kidneys, heart, lungs and skin and bones and Young Jewish Craigslist Eggs or whatever into coolers and then insurance agencies trade $100,000s of dollars back and forth with hospitals over who "gets" stuffed full of your bits. And they charge, and they itemize the bill.

I thought about it a lot and for the kind of cash they pull over organs-- after "aquisition fees", transportation, administrative costs and before-death risk of damage-- I think $2000 is what it's worth. I'd sell my future dead organs, now (I'm saying, as in Today), for $2000. I could afford a little burial-at-East-river for that. I'd lie in a second hand dingy, pulled behind a trash barge. As we passed by Williamsburg, my friends would half-assedly toss sun-bleached wreathes stolen off the graves of 1990s gang-shooting victims. As we passed the Statue of Liberty they'd cut my dingy loose-- to lazily drift down the orange gold of that Atlantic sunrise (or to sink and resurface off a Jersey City shipping dock)-- the Staten Island Longshoremen would all be in a row along the beach, weeping. One of 'em that looks a lot like Artie Lang would shake his head and, wiping a tear, say: In America. No less.

**The Comedienne Bows**

G'night folks, you've been a great crowd!