John must be feeling rather in his element at the moment as the owners of The Woodstock Museum came over to talk with him and record their conversation. It’s been three hours since they arrived and their Prius is still parked in his driveway. That’s a lot of talking, even for John. Even with his vast catalogue of impressive stories, he must be running out of by now. I fear he may now be at the meat discussion phase as he has probably worked up an appetite with all that mandibular activity. I can imagine this poor couple wondering how to extricate themselves from a situation in which John is endlessly discussing stuffed pork roasts and Adam’s chicken sausage. Of course, I have no proof they are truly the owners of The Woodstock Museum. They could be part of the cannibalistic cabal that is running the country. If I were to walk over there right now, John’s head may very well be baking in an oven. That would be terrible. I don’t know how to use the cappuccino machine. I hope these people at least had the decency to pull his arm out of its socket before butchering him.

As a note of explanation, if you don’t know him, John has several ailments he claims would be remedied by having his arm pulled out of its socket. He has consulted doctors and, I believe, chiropractors, none of whom will do this for him. I often offer to tie a boulder to his arm and throw it off the porch but he refuses to let me help him in this manner.

So this horrible thing happened the other night. You know how you are watching Seinfeld or old Law and Orders or something good and, just as your xanax vodka cocktail kicks in, something awful comes on? And the remote control is like a whole foot away on the coffee table and there is no way you can reach it? That’s how I ended up seeing The Help, one of the worst movies ever created. Like, Get Out is supposed to make white liberals squeamish but nothing in that movie could compare to the horror of The Help. I was never so embarrassed to be a white liberal in my life. I wanted to rip up my college entrance essay and pretty much every Sociology paper, too. Anyway, that was last year but it happened again. This time, I was totally minding my own business, doing some Ken Ken and watching the Ass Man episode of Seinfeld when it happened. Just as my eyes started to roll around and I felt the left side of my face spank the glossy page of the NY Times Magazine, a movie called, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days came on. If you have ever seen it, you can imagine the horror. There I was trapped watching Kate Hudson playing some plucky writer for some stupid womens’ magazine and Matthew Mcconaughy playing some douchebag. I’m sure it was a big reach for him. Anyway, She’s trying to do all the wrong things women do while dating a douchebag that gets them dumped and he is trying to do all the right things a guy can do and you really just hope a sharknado will come tearing their bodies apart and splattering their remains all over Manhattan. I kind of doubt it but maybe that is, in fact, how it ended because, although I wasn’t smart enough to leave the remote control within reach, I did have the bottle of xanax right in front of me on the crossword puzzle next to the Ken Ken. I managed to get one out with my right hand which, luckily, wasn’t stuck under my hip like the other one. I stuck it in my mouth but had no liquid to swallow it with so I just sucked it like a lozenge. It was bitter as hell but I just swallowed the bitterness. Anything to get away from Kate Hudson secretly and enthusiastically catching the game with the kitchen crew while Matthew Mcdouchahay tried to be Prince Charming. Finally, I drifted off. These people have plenty of money. Why do they need to make us suffer?

Anastasia just passed and nobody knows why yet. I had just been chatting with her. It was like we saw each other just last week, though , in fact, the last time I saw her was in San Francisco 29 years ago. She was leaving on the back of some guy’s motorcycle.
I had been meaning to tell her that all the joking about L being gay and in love with F was actually true. I was going to dm her after wishing her a happy birthday. I had just decided which photo to post on her page for the occasion when I read she was gone.
I met her 30 years ago when she was dating my friend and roommate and she discovered a hidden stone staircase leading to our apartment on Barracks street in the quarter which she told us she had dreamt about. She was charming and beautiful and somewhat crazy, I thought.
A year later, when I was tending bar at The Abbey, I started dating a handsome but boring guy named F with magnificent hair who I was surprised to learn was already dating another bartender at the Abbey. We both dropped him and I began seeing his less attractive but much more interesting roommate, L. Shortly after, Anastasia began dating F. L was obsessed with the whereabouts of his roommate and Anastasia and F both complained it was hard to be alone together. I also thought it was odd that L seemed uninterested in spending time with me without F. People at the Abbey joked about L being in love with F. They called him “Latent”. Nobody took it seriously. L couldn’t be gay. He wore flannel shirts and had bad skin and messy hair. Finally, I broke up with L and moved to San Francisco and Anastasia broke up with F and followed me out there.
Over 20 years later, the bartender who had been dating F when I went out with him told me L had finally come out and was living with his Native American lover on a reservation. She had dated him after me which seemed appropriate. Anastasia would have appreciated that piece of gossip. No word on what happened to F or his beautiful hair.