FIRST, LET ME JUST SAY-
Hmm? What's that?
You find the shouting obnoxious?
WELL, FUCK YOU, BUDDY!!!
Ha, ha, just kidding, I don't have to shout this time around.
What was I saying?
Oh, yeah, right . . . first off . . .
Pats himself down looking for something.
Where the Christ did I put my goddamn shit . . . ?
The self-patting becomes a full-on bit, way more sleazy and suggestive than it should be-truly, a disgrace!
Oh, yes, okay, all right, ha, ha, haaa . . .
William stops feeling himself up, stares hard into the middle distance, and then abruptly marches offstage with a great sense of purpose. He's got that confidence. You can't resist that, why would you want to, eh? An uncomfortably long pause ensues, into which we all project our fears and anxieties: will he come back? Have we given some offense? Maybe we didn't deserve William, and now we have to face that harsh truth! Just when all hope is lost, William re-enters the stage with a Pizza Hut branded fanny pack. William is having some trouble with the zipper, though.
Just a . . . okay . . . it's not . . . what the goddamn is even . . .
William ceases struggling with the zipper. He breathes in, holds it, exhales, nods to himself.
Okay. There's a sequence to this. Follow the sequence.
William puts on the fanny pack, positions it just where it needs to be, then attempts to unzip it while looking down at it. The fanny pack refuses to unzip. William struggles mightily. William starts growling and clawing furiously at the impenetrably zippered barrier. Nothing doing. William has the claws. William has the rage. But he lacks the sharpness in this moment. He ceases useless struggling. He breathes in, breathes out, and just allows time to extend, to expand, to slip through his claws, even . . . projections of seasons passing, the cycles of nature, wars raging out of control, cataclysmic storms, soul-shaking earthquakes, levy failures, governments in freefall, humans oppressing and slaughtering each other . . . William stands tall and calm at the True Center of All Things . . .
Okay. I can finally admit it to myself. I require assistance.
From all the shadowed corners of the Cosmic Theater emerge scientists and engineers and soldiers and spies and theoreticians and defense intellectuals and philosophers and thought leaders-all converging upon the impenetrable Pizza Hut branded fanny pack. All schools of knowledge are drawn into the Grand Endeavor. Even the realms of myth, legend, fable, superstition, popular misconceptions, idle pornographic fantasies, unproduced screenplays available on the Internet, lost demo tapes, leaked builds of unreleased video games, state secrets are collated and analyzed and synthesized into a new baseline of True and False-but soon enough even this Great Edifice is brought low by relentless progress. The zippered barrier becomes a terrible unknown which all dash themselves against in violent pursuit of the means to unzip it. Those assembled by William's Admission soon enough fall into factions which destroy each other with intrigues and brutalities over their competitive efforts to pierce the Mystery. Much of this is rendered by an artful combination of militarized bloodletting and modern dance motifs. William is buffeted this way and that as all Cosmos becomes entangled and embroiled within the Grand Endeavor. Evolution accelerates beyond all evidence based paradigms. Dark matter itself manifests consciousness. All is thought. William howls as he becomes the Secret Nightmare at the heart of all things, furiously clawing at perpetually mutable forms of Enemy in a kind of eternal shadowplay for the ages. Soon, strange torture-beings whip him mercilessly with lashes that embody purest Platonically ideal forms of lashiness. William's body erupts into geysers of blood, twisting and writhing this way and that, until he falls dead upon the stage. A thousand ages pass into oblivion. And, finally, in the fullness of time . . . the Pizza Hut branded fanny pack unzips itself . . . and out crawls an action figure version of William who moves to center stage. New William holds his right thumb to his lips and blows real hard, causing himself to rapidly grow to human size. Old William's corpse flickers and fades away like a vanquished enemy in a sidescrolling beat 'em up. New William looks out upon the audience with the sheen and confidence of a TEDTalk hustler. He finds his center, and he speaks.
Hello. My name is New William. And I want to tell all here assembled about what I really like on this here humpday. Which is the following: I really like sitting in the chain bookstore and reading the comics and manga without paying for them. I don't even buy a coffee or a soda or a snack. Sometimes I bring in outside food from Kentucky Fried Chicken or Taco Bell or a bandolier filled with a variety of candy bars. I drink coffee from my long haul trucker-sized coffee thermos. Sure, I make a production of it. Sometimes I'll even smoke a fragrant clove indoors. You think the employees are getting paid enough to mess with a real menace like me? Think again. I'll even organize Pokemon-esque battles among all the assholes who've brought their phony "comfort animals" inside the store. And in the end, I put the comics and the manga back on the shelves, and then I teleport outta there in a sparkling swirl of gears and blood and battlezone hex maps and Neapolitan ice cream. Oh, they'll remember me.
In the background, a looming, terrible statue of oppressive proportions manifests to look down upon the audience in every sense. This is an award to reward the newness of New William.
And they'll do me honor.
Blackout. A strange, desolate wind howls as the audience struggles and stumbles to find their various ways home.
