NEW YORK CITY TRILOGY: Part I

In Love

It all started in a chatroom. I decided to try the popular IRC channel #Rulers-Of-Ancient-Mesopotamia. One of the channel ops, @evilmero, whispered me eight times just to tell me his actual name was Evil-merodach and he was the third ruler of the New Babylonian Empire. When I wasn't overly impressed, he asked if I would join him in New York City for dinner. I said yes.

"Let's eat at Bertrand Tapestry's Beefy Tango Pizzeria," Evil-merodach offered, "they have the best beefy tango pizza in town." My mouth was watering; I grabbed my wallet, stuffed two days worth of clothes in a duffel bag, and hopped on the first available bus to New York.

When Evil-merodach didn't show up, I was more than a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong. The beefy tango pizza was great, and it was nice to finally meet Bertrand Tapestry and the whole gang, but no one likes to be kept waiting. After three hours, I headed back to the train station, dejected... until I saw this sign. I took out my cell phone and dialed the number. Sandra and I hit it off right away. The chemistry between us was so strong, I quit my job and stopped making car and house payments. My cat eventually turned feral from the lack of food and attacked the neighborhood kids, but it didn't bother me too much... little things like that can't get you down when you're in love. We went for long walks together. I would hold Sandra's hand and tell her how "convincing" an actress she was in Forces of Nature, Demolition Man, and Divine Sisters of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. She would gaze into my eyes and apologize, between tears, for The Net, Two If by Sea, and Speed 2: Cruise Control. We were very close.

In Trouble

One day, Sandra introduced me to Lester P. Popularvote, who was Mayor at the time. I told him how I left my hometown to find a better life for myself, and how successful I'd been at leaching off a multimillionaire celebrity. Mayor Popularvote was so moved by my story, he named a day in my honor and crowned me Emperor of New York City.

It was my shining hour, but it was short lived. Evil-merodach (who as it turns out was a cocaine-runner for some drug lord in Arkansas) happened to be passing by, and recognized my face from the ASCII representation I drew of myself in the IRC channel. The next few moments are fuzzy, but I distinctly recall being knocked unconscious and mailed in a shipping crate along with 20 kilos of coke to a police station in Little Rock.

In Jail Prison definitely sucks. Why is Martha Stewart in my cellblock? No seriously, why? She is easily the most sour human being I have ever met. Martha (or "Stewy", as she's called behind her back) looks different than you may remember. She's grown seven additional heads and hands, plus a pair of wings. And she flies. And she saves the world. From prison. You'd think all those mutations would make her a nicer person, but just the opposite has happened. She refuses to shake my hand, even though she has nine of her own to choose from. And she always cuts in front me in the cafeteria. Once, the cooks served beefy tango pizza, which Martha knows is my favorite. She shoved her way to the front of the line and ate the entire pizza in front of everyone. Then, while all the inmates were watching her, disgusted, she high-fived herself for close to an hour.

Stewy's not all bad, though. To her credit, she is a woman who "knows how to get things." I traded her five cigarettes, a deck of cards, and a rock hammer for this inspirational poster. Most of the time, Jude's cocky, arrogant face is the only thing that gets me through the day.

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