Bathroom Monologue: Lance Armstrong, first man on the moon?

Yes, Lance Armstrong was the first man on the moon. He rode his Apollo Schwinn up a moon beam, something that was not thought possible previously, but only French cyclists and astronauts and tried it before. While beloved in America for this achievement, he is loathed in the French quarter of the Lake of Tranquility. Tragedy nearly struck on his return journey as he came down with cancer of the appendix, which is why all astronauts have to have that removed now. He inspired us to continue visiting space with his famous phrase, “It’s one small step for man, but you never forget how.”

Bathroom Monologue: With that Fish

"Terrifying incident today as both the Jesus Fish and the Darwin Fish were eaten by the Ursa Minor constellation. Onlookers said it was a case of annoying symbolism gone too far. Hindus upgrade to the Gandhi Whale for safety purposes."

R.A.Q. 2

It's that time of year when I have the excuse to ask,

"Have you seen my rack?"

It's actually "RAQ." I pronounce it that way because people make amusing faces.

Rarely Asked Questions is my birthday tradition at the Bathroom Monologues. Until September 2nd, I'm requesting all readers leave questions they dont normally ask anyone. Particle physics? 17th century politics? Why your mom snores? Why I write so many things about the end of the world? What your questions are, and whether they have anything to do with me, is up to you. I'll compile them and answer them all on September 4th - my birthday. That's how I celebrate. With my big RAQ.

Please leave your mysteries and queries in the Comments section of this post.

Bathroom Monologue: The Fox’s Dilemma

"I just heard of a famous essay about how everyone is either a hedgehog or a fox. It turned out the hedgehog is the creature with one all-consuming idea, while the fox has many little ideas. It was disappointing, as I thought hedgehogs were those folk whose needles drive everyone away, and foxes were those who sought out people every day to kill and eat. I longed to read this academic argument that the world consisted of shut-ins and serial killers. I longed for a theatrical adaptation, or better, a sports adaptation where each would wear team jerseys. You know, for the Foxes and the Hedgehogs. At the Superbowl of misanthropy, those who want everyone to go away and those who want everyone to die would line up and compete for yardage. A Buddhist monk emerges from his cave after seven weeks of meditation, and is promptly tackled by Fox linebacker Ed Gein. Though I guess hermits would really be more of a AA-league where you went to train for the Hedgehogs’ starting roster. If only that essay had been by a sports fan."

Bathroom Monologue: “What's your gay fantasy?” –Somebody on the TV as I was walking out of the room

I sit back on my vibrating chair.

Eventually a guy comes in and hands me a Coke. Is he gay? I don’t know. He doesn’t say, and this fantasy society is so ambivalent about it that neither of us know the ticks or “tells” that would suggest an answer. Being my fantasy, regardless of whether or not he is gay, he leaves. That’s the duration of his existence in the fantasy, beyond possibly leaving some flattering comments about those Bathroom Monologues I wasn’t sure were good. He’s a great guy.

I set the vibrating chair up to MEDIUM and sip the Coke. The kinkiest details of the fantasy have to do with a short glass of shaved ice and the beverage never losing its carbonation.

Eventually a couple of centerfold-worthy lesbians wander in and make out in front of me for a while. Because even my fantasies are a little rational, I get bored a couple of minutes in and send them away. I tip well. They did it for free, and so there is some humor to do with the tip. My fantasies tend to have jokes in them.

On the way out, the pink-haired one asks what my straight fantasy is like.

I sip the Coke and reply, “Pretty similar to this, honestly."

Bathroom Monologue: This Was How He Said Goodbye

Grandfather wanted him to be a Baptist, but the boy was one of experiences and emotions, not study, and certainly not pews. Grandfather threw the book at him, he ran from reading, and the two didn’t speak until the old man only had a few months left.

Their only conversation ran short, even though the boy said he’d recently started reading and liked Huck Finn. The dying old man barked that he needed a Bible, and Shakespeare, and Hemingway, and more and more until the boy simply walked out in tears.

Upon returning home, Grandfather disappeared into his basement, hunched over in pain, hunched over a plane, to produce an inheritance. It arrived at the boy’s apartment without explanation, a bookshelf with no books on it.

Bathroom Monologue: Six Sentence Haiku

She flees. He follows.
Hook swings, snags her neck. He yanks.
She falls. Roll credits.

Bathroom Monologue: Earth Squared

Planets are square. Spaceships take photos of them with round lenses, so of course they look spherical, but if you notice there's black space around the edges of any picture, forming a square, or at least a rectangle. Even the round lens can't suppress angular planets. It's black there because that's where it's night on Mars. Even the sun is a cube. Our circular pupils can’t handle it, and deceive us to compensate.

Handy eyes-free MP3 edition: http://www.sendspace.com/file/6e5651

Bathroom Monologue: 6 Questions Again (challenge to write six cohesive questions)

Why?

Why not?

Wait, what were we talking about?

Are you trying to change the subject?

Are we the same speaker?

Why not?

Bathroom Monologue: Edward Brownie

Edward had earned many brownie points in his life, but never learned where to exchange them. Inquiring about prizes or monetary equivalence earned him nothing more than quizzical stares. When he attempted to redeem them at the school cafeteria he was sent to the dean’s office for “shoplifting.” As though redeeming three brownie points for three brownies were theft! But by fifth grade he learned about exchange rates, and came to understand that perhaps many brownie points were necessary for one brownie. That had to be the way of it, because applying for honorary merit badges from his sister’s Brownies troop certainly wasn’t working.

Bathroom Monologue: WILL SHOOT YOU IN THE HEAD, 2 FOR $1

I took a year off from college to open a business. It was a social experiment in capitalism with no actual store name, just a sign reading: “WILL SHOOT YOU IN THE HEAD, 2 FOR $1.”

The whole point was to see who would walk in. Didn’t matter if they needed the bathroom or wanted to know if we were open on Sundays, because that’s usually a front for curiosity.

So, I soon concluded, are protests, and we got a lot of those, even after we let them inside to show we didn’t have any guns. I swore I’d close if anyone ever came in actually demanding our services, and that’s why I’m back at CalTech now, with two photographs, a Better Business Bureau complaint, and a dollar to put towards my student loans.

Handy eyes-free audio edition on free MP3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/mpbith

Six Sentence Week 5

You guessed it. Six Sentence Week returns with an August Edition. This week I've got a store that will shoot two people in the head for a dollar, a boy who doesn't know where to redeem his brownie points, a six sentence haiku, and more. A poll should pop up around Tuesday asking for your favorite. Please vote on it, and leave comments for what's stupid and what's interesting. I'm still curious what people think of my work in this particular constraint, particularly since I can't seem to stop writing in it.

#classicsontwitter 2

Once again, a bonus post with classics adapted to Twitter.

Don Quixote: Demented romantic goes on adventures that are all delusion. Twice. Sidekick becomes a governor.

The Crucible: Some girls accuse another of being a witch. Adults are also accused, and all their lives are ruined.

Arabian Nights: Girl tells a new story each night to keep her husband from killing her. He is hooked. She lives.

Canterbury Tales: Pilgrims have a storytelling contest to entertain themselves and bother each other. No one wins.

Three Musketeers: Four men with no muskets foil a plot against France.

Gone with the Wind: Privileged Southerner lives out the civil war in surprising comfort. Everybody but her leaves or dies.

Tale of Genji: The son of the emperor has lots of sex. Slowly, his friends and family die. He is sad.

Les Miserables: Jean leaves prison, steals silverware, and runs for mayor under a fake identity. He dies of old age.

Gilgamesh: The king was too cool, so the gods sent a wildman to humble him. They hang out. Wildman dies. King is sad.

Catch-22: Guy can’t stop fighting in the war unless he’s crazy, and isn’t crazy if he wants to stop. He runs away.

Lord of the Rings: Little guy has to destroy a magic ring. Everyone else fights the bad guys. Little guy destroys ring.

The Odyssey: Hero fights monsters on his long voyage home. Once home, he kills his guests.

Pride and Prejudice: Attractive people like other attractive people but don’t marry them fast enough. Hijinx ensue.

Frankenstein: Doctor sews together bodies to make a new guy. Body-Guy kills people. Body-Guy and Doctor die in the Arctic.

Lord of the Flies: Some boys are shipwrecked and become increasingly tribal and violent. Adults show up. The end.

Things Fall Apart: Europeans slowly take over an African village. Town leader hangs himself in defeat.

One Hundred Years of Solitude: Several generations struggle with the history of their town. Naturally, most die.

To Kill a Mockingbird: Children grow up with a quiet father who defends a black man against racist judiciary. He wins.

Bathroom Monologue: What would I do…?, OR, Recently unearthed, one of the original Bathroom Monologues was a mental comic strip

[Panel 1]
-Jesus walks up to the edge of the land. Beyond him is lava, completely blocking his passage.

[Panel 2]
-Jesus looks down to his WWJD charm bracelet.
Jesus: What would I do…?

[Panel 3]
-Jesus looks happy.
Jesus: Oh, right!

[Panel 4]
-Jesus looks up at the sky, shouting.
Jesus: Daaaad!

Bathroom Monologue: Ms. Logic

“Don’t bring logic into this! She was doing fine minding her own business outdoors. Now she’s going to tango in and start cleaning. You know, she never lets me leave anything where I put it down, even though that’s exactly where I wanted my points and suppositions! And let me tell you, when it turns out everything I want is irrational and I kick your ass, she isn’t going to lift a finger to help you. I will put a severe ass-whipping on you, too. I’m bigger and get mad when people talk smartly down to me. Here comes logic now, through the door – you better tell her we didn’t really need her in this conversation if you know what’s good for… Hi, logic! How are you today? That’s a nice dress. Very mathematical.”

Bathroom Monologue: Magic Carpet Dried

“All the attention goes to the jackass who sells magic carpets at the bazaar. None goes to the industry that produces those carpets! Do you know how difficult it is to sheer a flying sheep? To embroider a decent pattern on a rug that’s flying fifty miles an hour underneath you, often heading straight at brick walls? How about just dyeing anti-gravity cotton? Normal cotton is easily dipped into dye. Lose your grip on anti-gravity cotton and suddenly there’s a bright red splotch on your wife’s ceiling, and she’s already pissed at you because you haven’t made the rent on account of the slow sales in flying furniture.”

Bathroom Monologue: “Uh, I dropped your piano.” a non-teacher to a teacher in Chalk

The music teacher perked. The two gym teachers were immediately ready to bark, but she raised her hands like the conductor she’d wanted to be as a child, and silenced them.

She fixed her eyes on the husky piano dropper. “You know why you dropped my piano?”

“Well, we were horsing around…”

“You dropped it because it wasn’t built to be lifted. It was built to be played delicately and passionately. To be tuned and polished. Actually it was built far more with polish in mind than lifting in mind.”

The gym teachers looked as baffled as the boy piano dropper.

“Yes ma’am,” he said, unable to look her in the eyes. “Are you going to kill me over this?”

She rose and swept the triscuit crumbs from her skirt. “No, I’m not going to kill you. You are a teenager, and a big one, but not big enough to lift a piano by yourself. You came here alone. That means you’re the only one who’s responsible who came to fess up, and before we even knew something was wrong. Now, come on. Show me where you dropped it.”

Bathroom Monologue: Misreading Abbreviations in the Bathroom, OR, “Wall St. Fraud Leaves Charities Reeling” –Stephanie Strom, New York Times

The Wall Saint shrugged.

“Not my fault.”

The nuns rang their hands.

“But we donated bricks for a hospital!”

“You didn’t read the fine print. The contract clearly expressed that I would build hospital walls. These are clearly walls fit for a hospital. I even put a chart on that one. But nowhere in the contract does it say the hospital walls have to be in a hospital. In this case I’ve made a very nice house for myself out of hospital walls. And you’re trespassing. Shoo.”

Bathroom Monologue: "Drop 47 pounds!" -Some magazine at the checkout counter

First you pick up two twenty-pound dumb bells. Take one in each hand, that gets you up to forty. Then you get one five-pounder, and put these two little one-pounders to top it all off. Now walk to the edge of the apartment building. Wait for it... Wait for it... See that guy who just came out? Yeah, that's my ex. Cheated on me with my sister. That pip. Anyway, hold out your weights and release! Phew, listen to him scream. Who knew losing weight could be so satisfying?

Bathroom Monologue: C.C.C.

Charles Cameron Cullen was a rogue. He was a rogue political surveyor, which was not in vogue in his day. Indeed, even today to claim to be a rogue political surveyor means men ignoring you and women closing their legs to you. But in his time Cullen was an inspired political warrior, traveling the budding country to re-survey the property of wealthy landed elite and disqualify them from voting in a particular district. If you crossed a man like Cullen you were likely to find the government auditing you for extra real estate tax.

His greatest feat was in Rhode Island, where he so thoroughly redistricted it that even today people mistake it for the smallest state in the union. Cullen knew better; even now it actually contains more land than the entire Louisiana Purchase, but only Cullen could show you the math to understand it. Small minds and political liberation have since eradicated his craft, and he has taken his geomancy to the grave.

#classicsontwitter

A Sunday bonus, the transcript of last night's #classicsontwitter from www.twitter.com/Wiswell. The game was to adapt classics of literature onto Twitter. It's very similar to a project I did in college, "ObLiteration," which may have to come back.

Tonight we remake classics of literature for Twitter!

Moby Dick: Crew and crazy captain look for a white whale. And look. And look. And look. Then it kills them.

Grapes of Wrath: Family is poor, needs work. Travels west. Everybody is poor. No jobs in the west.

Great Gatsby: Rich guy is sad his girlfriend married another. Misses her. Hooks up with her and is shot by her husband.

The Iliad: Greeks can't get into Troy. Achilles won't help. His buddy dies. He helps. Greeks still outside.

Huckleberry Finn: Boy flees father, slave flees master. Hijinx ensue until dad is dead and slave is emancipated. Whoops!

Catcher in the Rye: Boy leaves school to whine at hookers and family. Winds up crazy, apparently.

Hamlet: Prince feigns insanity to cover up king's ghost told him to kill people. Everyone dies.

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest: Sane man in an insane asylum. Hates nurse. Hijinx ensue. Gets lobotomized.

The Metamorphosis: Man turns into a giant bug. He dies.

The Scarlet Letter: Hester has a child out of wedlock. She is ostracized. She dies.

Crime and Pushiment: Poor guy kills rich woman. Gets sick, gets caught, goes to jail in Siberia.

War and Peace: Several aristocratic families rise and fall during the Napoleanic conquest. Most fall.

Gulliver's Travels: Man visits and island of tiny people, then giants, then talking horses, then goes crazy.

1984: A man has sex with an insurgent. The government brainwashes him.

Romeo & Juliet: Two teens are in love. The parents disapprove. She fakes dying. He kills himself. She kills herself.

Cyrano de Bergerac: An ugly but brilliant man uses another guy as a puppet to tell a pretty girl how he feels. He dies.

The Aeneid: A soldier without a country woos a queen, ditches her, fights monsters and founds Rome.

Bathroom Monologue: Missed the deadline for Field & Stream's six-word story contest

Webbed foot cocks rifle, preparing revenge.

Spotlight on Me?

Angel Zapata wrote an article spotlighting my stories over on his blog, A Rage of Angel. He took excerpts from a few of the Bathroom Monologues that circled the internet to illustrate that I'm apparently a versatile writer. That is a relief, given I just wrote a week of the same stuff. You can check out his blog and the spotlight article here: http://arageofangel.blogspot.com/2009/08/john-wiswell-writer-spotlight.html

Bathroom Monologue: Acedia

Come, shrug off the smoke of that place. Let’s be off to the last sight to see. Nicer in this house. No one smokes. The father fought hard to quit, but we’re not here for him. We’re here for what’s melting over him, and his boy.

Every big economy needs its waste adjustors. The ones who come in and turn useless assets lucrative. Acedia really should be on par with busty Luxuria and pot-bellied Gula, but he doesn’t care for reputation. Too much work. She doesn’t do work, allowing clients to come to her. They always will. They cannot help it. They can diet and exercise, keep their energy up, meditate to focus, but eventually everyone becomes tired. How easy is it for Gula to goad you into eating another a bite or a little dessert? How hard is it to fight Superbia’s fingers around your heart when you’ve done something you know as good? Now triple that feeling, and know how hard it is not to lie a little longer when your muscles ache and your dreams are so much more pleasant than the work that waits in the world of the standing.

Alas, it’s Sunday morning and the vices are melting from our eyes. Their bodies, that is. I cannot show you Acedia: The Woman Incarnate. Already she melts into two. Soon she will be all. What is she this second? Look closer.

See that. A father’s brown eye through a crack in the white-painted door, and the fraction of his smile visible over a boy asleep at noon. How could this be vile? How could this be vice? The old one deeply proud, the young one indulging in long slumber. It’s sweet. It’s love incarnate, which we did not plan her to be a part of the tour. Love could not be a vice. Not one of the seven, at least.

And with the sun, here melts the truth of all vices, dear tourist. That none are pure evil. The boy is earnestly tired from last night’s high school football. That game where adrenaline, colorful sports drinks, the budding chests of cheerleaders and vicarious parents made every vice rich again. Was any of it pure evil? Not a drop of it, for that which is pure evil rots and crumbles from the whole. The vices abandon such investments.

They are humanitarians. You can say they write off some of their crueler work like this. Superbia can invest in parents proud of their children, and Acedia here rewards a child after long work. What romantic story does not dip its brush in Luxuria’s wells? You can say they write off their worst work in accenting the best of yours. You could also say they justify their accounts this way. Perhaps they began as good. Perhaps, frightening as it may be, they are always good, in a little way, somewhere. Humanitarians, insofar as vegetarians love vegetables.

But now Acedia has melted from the father and the son. The boy stirs, face rubbing in his pillow. Somewhere, someone sleeps. Look as we like, though, we cannot see Acedia in any of them. Gone are Luxuria in the low and Gula in the high. Gone are Avaritia, Ira and Superbia. Is that Invidia still in the corner? No, it is a doll with a dumb expression. Art imitates them all, and fools us so often. My mistake, not ours. I apologize. It’s Sunday morning, and a tour guide makes mistakes. But do you still see them? Our eyes diverge, but yours are surely still open.

Bathroom Monologue: Invidia

In the corner. When bored, she always drifts into a corner. She’s the one with the flat, amorphous features. Luxuria purposefully switches genders, changing them to hurt. Not this one. Invidia has not the features necessary to attain a gender, and resents all those that do. The more you have, the more she wants them. A flower is more of a woman than she. Her hair can never be too short or long, always cutting it to match someone else’s style, chasing originality by imitation.

The corner is the safe place to find her. When she moves into the room, she’ll disappear into another vice. Can’t actually have anything, that pauper sin. We don’t know why, but the room always seems a little smokier when you notice she’s an occupant. Even now, who has a cigarette lit? Despite No Smoking signs, she touches one man on the shoulder and there’s a haze that burns the nostrils.

A turn of the head later, and she has invested herself in them. That’s why she’s a pauper – she wants not only to be other vices, but to be full people, and she can never be either. She’s constantly watching or giving in – she can be no more. When she gets what she wants, her mortals no longer recognize what they have. When they can no longer recognize it, they search the horizon for another to resent. That toe-headed boy who returns her gaze right now? He’ll leave with nothing, unless…

Oh, she’s ostentatious tonight. Climbing into his lap and blowing on his dice? How cute, already turning her account over to Luxuria. She’s invited a few people to her room tonight, and he’ll think he’ll be the only one to accept. Tomorrow, he’ll stare like she does, staring at everyone who declined.

Bathroom Monologue: Superbia

Ira’s fight in the alley was not his idea. Up there, just one flight of stairs instead of a hundred. Near the window and the mirror. Such an immaculate man you would think he was Luxuria. Hair combed, suit pressed, muscles refined. Yet Luxuria doesn’t need so many reflective surfaces around. Even now, as Ira commits violence in this vice’s name, Superbia is watching himself.

That’s him. A little above, always near enough to see the thing done, always readily bored by that which does not reflect himself. You need to be good to be that disinterested and last in their business.

You rut and there’s a baby that grows up to rut. You murder and there will be grievance. Easy turnovers. Yet Superbia? The soundest portfolio, constantly refining self-image. Those who enroll in his plan feel him more and more. When that sense is challenged? Bare-chested Ira is there. A history with Luxuria will validate him. Or he will sidestep, let them blame it all on grubby Avaritia, and in giving up some possessions? In seeming selfless they invest in another of Superbia’s stocks. Righteousness and Avaritia alike can serve the vice in love with his own mirror.

Sunday is nearing, dear tourist. Come quickly. It will banish them from our sight, and we would not have you lose out on the last visions.

Bathroom Monologue: Ira

You muttered earlier, asking who Ira was. Perk up your ears, and surely you can hear him bellowing. Let us follow it down the street, and there in the alley beside the homeless shelter. There is Ira. Don’t think he’s always there – he’s worked much finer venues. Burned down churches and art galleries. The last time he was visible to mortal eyes, he was watching people drown from the deck of a yacht.

You’re surprised he’s scrawny? Looks mighty thin when unclothed, we’ll all agree. Shirtless, as usual. Always takes his shirt off, never knows why. You’d think him huge, but he has not the attention span to build himself up. Ira goes from thing to thing, hating whatever he can in the moment. The poor planner, this one. Every vice gets opportunities, yet he sees so little of them coming. He finds them and acts out. An improvisational economist. He lucks into his windfalls, and you can tell by how he wrings every last cent out of his accounts. Not by intelligence, but by sheer tenacity he forces Christians to blame Jews for an execution thousands of years after their man’s demise.

Religion is an easy account, like race and nationality. He needs those, and needs them as dumbed down as possible. If he has to think it through, there’s a good chance he’ll go bankrupt. No, he needs these accounts, the ones that sustain themselves, that turn even geniuses into bickering idiots. Then Ira gathers them up and makes indignation burn as bright and as quickly as possible, caring not when the sun of hate collapses into a cold, black hole.

He can’t handle the more complex accounts, and another vice is happy to pick those from his pockets. They placate him by leaving angry disenfranchised in their wake, and he is so busy jumping on those that he is none the wiser. There are always enough unhappy for him to find clients.

Now you say that shirtless thing can’t be responsible for all the violent evils. Too many are thought out. There are calculative monsters among us, it’s true. Yet those are not his designs. It’s people who shape Ira into lasting grudges and long-term dissent. Even now you can see how blunt is his nature, how ignorant of anything but the man whose hair is in his hands. What good will dashing his head against the floor do? The dead man can yield him no more profit. Ira cares not.

Bathroom Monologue: Avaritia

Down. Much further down. Street level and a little lower, Avaritia is shaking hands and swapping grins with his clients. He’s one of the few who will get in with the cattle. Do you see him, fork and knife in hand, offering as he asks if that soul couldn’t use a little more? So plump, pig-nosed and easy to mistake for Gula. Yet pot-bellied Gula loathes him, which is why you’ll never find Avaritia sitting on high. He can’t sit up there and make eye contact with his fellow vice, or he’d have to share.

Avaritia steals, you see. He takes hunger’s work and claims it for his own, and does so with any instinct he can subvert. Arousal. Fatigue. Most often he’ll sneak into Ira’s profession, as that one is the least witted of vices.

Fooling others into handing over their earnings never gets old and never yields enough, as Avaritia is neither envious of their hauls nor proud of his accomplishments. He’s never sated, not with billboards, web ads, radio jingles, television commercials, movie trailers, logos on t-shirts and Buy It Now on eBay. Merchandising is easy and you cannot want enough. That’s why he’s down there, shoving forkfuls of ham at people who are full. He’d take all of the vices into himself, if he could truly have anything to start with.

Bathroom Monologue: Gula

See that man up there? No, not in the window. The men in that window are serving Luxuria, even though they think to serve themselves.

No. A hundred flights up, standing in the room with all the windows blown out. Gula doesn’t like windows. Like pants, he finds them constraining. All he wears is that sheer robe, fallen open so you can see whatever disgusts you. Ironic that he’s got only a bit of a pot belly, no? If you’re looking for symbolism in his form, see the wind go through his greasy hair. Though his hair flutters, it’s the wind that leaves moved. Breathe deeply and you can smell him from down here.

Luxuria has it easy, but this one? This one has it like you wouldn’t believe. For while mankind must rut every generation if the game of life is to continue, they have to eat every day. In the worst corners of the world they will mix a little grain with mud merely to have something to fill their bellies. How can one compete with him in such a market?

He began with red berries, so long ago that there wasn’t a word for them yet. Then sweet berries. Tart and tangy berries. Berries with noticeable seeds that crunched, and softer, plump grapes. They stained his lips so deeply those thousands of years ago that you can still see juice at the corners of his mouth. Women invented bags to carry them home. He could take credit for consumer culture, if he cared.

Eat to comfort. Eat to commune. At the very height of blasphemy, he made them eat and drink their savior, though in turn that savior scorned him by making them take it in moderation. Just a sip and a single wafer of salvation per piece. It is one of the few investments Gula lost. Some vices gossip that he’s been compensating ever since, getting people to gorge after bloody battles to celebrate the carnage, and gorge on drive-thru in their cars, not even having to stand up to order sandwiches that come with complimentary fried goods. He’s managed a portfolio of increasing obesity against dozens of diet fads. In an environment where militant vegans measure their vitamin intake and show slaughterhouse photos to children, he’s got the average body fatter than ever. Nor is he threatened by the thin and healthy, for fetishizing diet is as gluttonous as the obese pounding Big Macs. He’s been into alternative forms of worship since people divided into hunters and gatherers. A varied portfolio is tucked under that left arm there, stained with fetid sweat, built on a habit second only to breathing in its popularity.

Bathroom Monologue: Luxuria

What a week to visit, good tourist. There are fifty-two weeks in a year, so it’s easy to toss one away for the next as soon as it’s over. But there are fifty-two cards in a deck and we all respect aces. This is a joker of a week, good tourist.

All seven vices are walking the earth for seven days. Not men stuffing their faces and bank accounts. No mere metaphors. The very vices themselves. Touch my shoulder and we will see them, these gods. Be they gods to you? Demons? Leaches on the back of greatness? To my eyes they are investors. Insecurities Brokers, if you will.

Whatever they are, we must not name them directly. Tread lightly and speak them not, for to speak a vice’s trade when beholding her will alert them all. Silence is the wisest course, as the focus of a vice is untenable.

Look now. Grip my shoulder and see her. You would know her in a crowd of a hundred harlots, though she’s the only one at this dinner. Nearest the host’s seat, hoping to occupy it with him. Let not her modern name fly. This week, let her be Luxuria.

Doesn’t it seem to always begin with her? Easiest to spot in a culture of plunging necklines and micro-skirts. Except she’s not a “her.” She comes off that way because most of her artists are men. Her slaves see the master they want, but her practitioners straddle genders. In truth she’s androgynous, slipping into your bed, getting your toes to curl, and only then becoming what you didn’t want. That’s the trick with Luxuria, making you beg for what you’ll regret. She’ll enjoy it enough for the both of you, and make you mistake being enraptured in her for the actual joy of anything.

What is sexy about her bare midriff? No mortal in the parlor can take his eyes from it. Barely any meat on her flank and they’re licking their chops. What would that bank manager do if he got his hands on it? Copulate with her belly button?

This absurdity is nothing new. Before naked bellies, it was fat butts. Before fat butts, flat ones. And always with the tits. What exactly are a pair of milk-secreting glands going to do for you during sex? They don’t serve as useful handholds. They’re erotic garnish she passes off as steak dinners. But fraud has always helped investors. That’s Luxuria’s business, turning a necessary act and a grand pastime into an industry of insecurity and embarrassment. Hers is an insured portfolio, for if the game of life is to continue, everyone must succumb at least once a generation. In the game, Luxuria can safely tithe life itself.