If, years ago, you had told me that I, a mild-mannered bro, would someday become a minor celebrity for my star-making, Three’s Company-esque turn as the unemployed stoner housemate of Gary Sinise in the Kevin Costner witchcraft trials and then, later, for being tased by security guards at a forum with John Kerry at the University of Florida, I would have said, “You’re crazy,” and “Who’s John Kerry?” Yet I swear, everything I have written here is 100% true, except for this sentence.
I had just come off a widely praised Broadway revival of The Importance of Being Ernest, having been singled out for my “transformational*” (*Nathan Lane) performance as Bunbury. Also I was making beaucoup bucks selling the cars I got when people just handed me their keys as I stood outside Sardi’s every evening in a red vest. But what I really wanted to do was write, because I had heard it involved serifs, of which I was a big fan. So I went to a party in Hollywood—hoping to network with some bros who might be able to tell me what order the letters of the alphabet go in—when this girl walked in and it was like the universe was sending me a message: the good kind, not the kind where you end up playing Tigger in an open-air, all-nude adaptation of The House at Pooh Corner in South Central L.A.
Coolly, I approached her, handed her a rose, and launched a droll conversational gambit: “Y’know, studies show more Americans watch TV than fuck raccoons.” She was intrigued, I could tell. She asked what I did for a living, and even though at that point all I had written were some random letters in a crossword puzzle on the back of a box of Count Chocula, I confidently announced, “I’m a writer.”
She said, “Have you written anything I might have heard of?”
“Have you heard of the New York Times?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I wrote that.”
“Really.”
“Oh yeah. Didn’t even take too long either.”
Needless to say, after that we were inseparable for nearly thirty seconds, and after I was released from prison (muchas gracias to all the bros at Cell Block D for such a lovely send-off, that chocolate mousse went straight to my thighs; p.s., I’m sending you the bill for the dry cleaning—j/k, love ya!) I knew I had to do something to get her attention besides dressing as Optimus Prime, something that would identify me as a special bro with ideas and ambitions and all his teeth. I followed her to somewhere in Florida where a certain “John Kerry” was interacting with the great unwashed, and when it was my turn to ask a question (“Why,” I would have asked, “in Back to the Future Part 3, did Doc and Marty ever think that two horses pulling an automobile over rough ground could possibly reach 88 miles per hour?”) but they were all like, “Time’s up,” and I was like, “Bro, that is so not cool. A bro would let a bro ask a question.” So the security guards came and that’s when I delivered my immortal catchphrase: “Don’t tase me, bro!” But, alas, they did tase me. They tased me hardcore. All the tasing must have kicked in the Florence Nightingale syndrome, because she came over and tried to stop them. So they tased her too. Then me again. Then both of us at once, plus they put fake fuzzy “antlers” on our heads. But before they put me in the squad car I held out a diamond ring and said, “I gotta say, I could see us being bros.” To make a long story short, she accepted and made me the happiest bro in the world except for people with Velcro shoes. When I get out of prison she promises to tell me her name.