In my sweats, bottle of Evian by my side, yo. Chill.”
“Yeah…”
He was shooting me a certain look now where I couldn’t tell if he was bored or about to say something plain rude. Teenagers. Or wait...how old was he?
“Didn’t you bite the head off of a bat once?” He suddenly asked.
“That was Ozzy Osbourne,” I dryly responded.
“Oh yeah yeah yeah, sorry, bro.” Then he anxiously pressed the button again on his phone.
“Yo Annie, how does gettin’ fired sound?”
Then he leaned back and gave me a smile that was almost provocative and pointed a finger at me like he knew everything.
“You’ve seen my penis,” he said, very matter-of-fact.
“Yes, you were walking around naked so people could take pictures.”
“No, nawe, that’s not it. I just happen to let the guy out, you know, for a minute, it was so nice, I was like hey, guy, you should see this.” He actually giggled. Then I giggled. Then I blushed. Me, God of Fuck, blushed. WHAT WAS GOING ON HERE. “So I wanna walk around naked, DUDE!” He kept pulling on his jacket and moving around in his chair and he had this crazy laugh all of the sudden. “Ha-Ha-Ha!!!” He chuckled. It was a sharp laugh that bounced off the walls and went everywhere. “Ha-Ha-ha!!!” I couldn’t stop laughing. He was ADORABLE.
A woman, I assumed was Annie, rushed into the room. Apparently she did not want to get fired.
Justin flashed me a little smile that made him look a little embarrassed while she got some kind of pill and drink combo ready for him.
“Did you ever find me a leather bathmat?” I heard him ask the lady.
“No, still looking, sorry,” her words were rushed before she turned and walked off.
“Little Dizzy’s,” I said after a long silence.
“Huh bro?” He asked after tossing the pill down and looked at me with a very disinterested gaze. WAS I BORING?
“That’s where you can get leather goods, like bathmats.”
“Oh yeah?” His eyes widened like a kid’s on Christmas morning and he reached for his phone and spoke as he typed, “Little...Dizzy’s.”
He placed his phone back down and gave me a blank stare like we’d just met and hadn’t said a word to each other. I looked out at his swimming pool.
“Do you like my serenity fountain?” He asked in a way that almost sounded perverted.
“Uh...uh yeah.”
Then he suddenly smiled, and that smile did things to me I wished it didn’t.
“You’re the guy that fucked that chick with that shark,” he pointed at me and winked, very cocksure.
“That’s Led Zeppelin.” I felt like a teacher giving a lesson on the grotesque doings of rock stars.
“Oh...so what did you do?” He looked very puzzled as to how I became famous.
“Well I...made some songs…”
“You wiped your ass with the American flag, that’s it! Now I remember.”
“That too.”
“And you don’t have any ribs! So, like, what does that mean, you don’t have abs either?”
HUH.
“Yes,” I just said.
“Whoa. Weird,” he gasped. “You still have it?”
“Abs?”
“The flag,” he said.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Yeah bro.” He smiled in a way that seemed indecent. “Where? I want it.”
“I think...somewhere in storage.”
“We should put it up in the izzz-owwwse!”
“Sure...well,” I didn’t know what else to say here so I stood up. “I guess we’re gonna do the show.”
“Look man, since I never got that wave, how about we hug it out?”
“Oh sure…”
I leaned in and it was awkward because he only came up to about my waist. I felt like I was trying to hug a puppy without picking it up. And then something very embarrassing happened and I turned and fled before he could find out about it.
6
I got home later that night, after a very long talk with The Biebs, and couldn’t believe my eyes. First, I called my assistant and then ALL of my girlfriends. But no one had the answer I was seeking.
WHO CLEANED MY FUCKING HOUSE. I stared at the clean floor, where the blood from the fetus jar had been. It was gone now - along with the fetus.
I walked around my house, which seemed a lot roomier without those vinyl shelves, which had been pushed aside in a pile of wreckage by an old convertible sofa given to me by my great-grandmother. YEAH I DON’T KNOW WHY I HAD IT EITHER.
“Hello Josephine?” I barked into the phone as soon as she answered.
Once again, she remained impossibly calm towards me. “How did the meeting go?”
“SOMEONE BROKE INTO MY HOUSE AND CLEANED IT UP.”
“What?” She was actually laughing at me!!!
I tried to calm down. I still had a half chub from hugging that little squirrel squirt.
“My shelves...collapsed...and my fetus jar broke...and I was going to clean it up...but then I had to have this moronic meeting with MTV...AND MTV WASN’T EVEN THERE BY THE WAY JUST THAT LITTLE GERBIL ON ADDERALL so I did that first...then I come home and SOMEONE CLEANED MY HOUSE.”
“Well I don’t think this is anything to be mad about.” RIGHT BECAUSE YOU NEVER GET MAD ABOUT ANYTHING.
“BUT WHO DID IT!”
“Maybe one of those doped up model girlfriends you are always giving your keys to…?” She calmly guessed. “Maybe they got desperate and wanted some drugs and decided the only way to find some in your house was to clean it.” SHE SOUNDED LIKE SHE WAS GOING TO LAUGH AT ME AGAIN.
“The fetus is missing.” I was very creeped out about that. I walked around the house, I LOOKED EVERYWHERE FOR IT.
“Maybe a dog ate it.”
“I DON’T HAVE A DOG.”
“A coyote? How’s your cat?”
I hung up. She was no help. Women.
I spent the next hour looking around the house for my kitten and the fetus. I found neither. At least the beer was still in the fridge. I took a cold one out to the backyard, completely spooked by what occurred. I contacted everyone in my phone, asking the same thing YOU COME INTO MY HOUSE AND CLEAN IT UP?
Most people responded with letters like WTF and HUH and NO. And some lame insensitive idiots only replied with a LOL.
I couldn’t spend the night here after this happened, so I went to the twenty year old model girlfriend’s house, Sally, and it turned out that her cousin was LITERALLY RETARDED.
I know that’s not PC, he was mentally challenged, but when she said he was retarded I just thought she was being mean BECAUSE SHE WAS A VERY MEAN PERSON.
“Can I spend the night here?” I just asked, I didn’t have any pride left tonight. “We don’t have to have sex.”
“He’s the goat fucker,” her cousin abruptly called me as he pointed at me and laughed. He had popcorn kernels stuck to his Nine Inch Nails t-shirt WHICH I GAVE TO HER WHICH SHE OBVIOUSLY PASSED DOWN TO HIM. I peeled my eyes away from him, bit my tongue and tried to remain civil.
“Albert,” she calmly sighed her cousin’s name before looking at me with a cold expression. “Why can’t you sleep at your place?” She asked.
“Someone broke in...I think…”
“They didn’t take my jewelry did they?!” She freaked.
“Uh...no.” That must have been someone else, because that disappeared weeks ago, but I wasn’t about to tell her that right now.
“You have a guesthouse,” I pointed out. That was it - I’M COMING IN. After all, I forked over a lot of money to her before her modeling career ever really took off, so she owed me.
“Albert’s sleeping in the guesthouse,” she said, of her special cousin, who was actually quite good looking. He sort of looked like a young Marlon Brando. I stared at the giant aquarium built into the wall big enough to house mermaids. I GUESS INSTEAD OF PAYING ME BACK SHE BOUGHT THAT.
r />
“I’ll sleep on the couch - I don’t care,” I declared.
I just wanted to be left alone.
I made myself comfortable on Sally’s grey sofa, which was nice and soft. I was about to drift off to sleep when I felt a presence hovering over me.
“You ever eat at In and Out?” Albert wanted to know.
“Sure,” I said, not bothering to open my eyes. WHAT A LONG DAY.
“Which do you like better, In or Out?”
WHAT.
“Go to bed, kid. Or I’m taking the guesthouse,” I warned in my best Antichrist Superstar tone of voice.
“You like penises?” He just went on. “I heard you liked penises.”
I turned over so my back was to him, the rudest gesture I could think of at the time without getting kicked out.
7
The next day I didn’t waste any time. I made fliers first thing in the morning: MISSING FETUS LOOKS LIKE A BRAIN WITH A TAIL LAST SEEN AT HOUSE ON CORNER OF DAWN PINES AND SOFTCAVE
I left Sally’s phone number on them and proceeded to my next meeting about the show but Squirrel Squirt was late so I spent the next several minutes texting my old friend Josh Devin to see if I could crash at his house. I wasn’t exactly expecting him to text back - as The Mystery of Josh Devin was still a thing in L.A. He’d vanished a long time ago, after some friends said he decided to drive to out beyond Devil’s Button - a beach where the California sun avoided - a place darker and more mysterious than yours truly. And no one ever heard from him again.
IF YOU’RE ALIVE PLEASE CAN I STAY AT YOUR HOUSE TONIGHT, I texted him anyway.
Just then the door flew open and a temperamental Justin Bieber walked in. He was dressed like (or undressed like) he’d just stepped out of a Calvin Klein ad - which was quite possible since he modeled for them now, and sulked as he sat in a recliner, not