"You've got to be the worst minimalist I've ever seen," Mark Maddow exclaimed as we circumnavigated my claustrophobic condo, conscious not to kick or knock any of the knick knacks paddy whack give a dog a bone that have been pre-packed in a stuff sack and carefully stacked from floor to ceiling and back as I prepare to pare down because I write best when I write free, just like Pre - RIP.
"Ah, but you have seen me," I reply in a wry/dry rye-drunk pirate style.
"That doesn't make any sense... what the fuck is this?!" He said surveying the scattered scraps of stationary spread scattershot across Aidan's floor which were covered with scribbles & sketches of flying & time machines & magic beans that Aidan had been frantically fixated on working & writing & rewriting in hopes of filling the recently vacated vocation of horoscope writer for the local daily - EVEN THOUGH he already has a 9-5 that I've yet to fully explain, is training for his triumphant return to the ring, & this new job paid peanuts - (Arachis hypogen if you prefer Latin) - which he was okay with because he desperately wanted to overcome his peanut allergy & thought that overexposure was the best way to overcome such an obstacle and instead he ended up having a horrible allergic reaction & if it hadn't been for my speedy actions he likely woulda died or been turned to a legume [you're a vegetable] why
you wanna be startin something? RIP MJ.
[2Paragraphs in and He's ended both with RIP - can He keep this up? Or will he abandon it for some other trite literary device? You won't believe what happens next - after these adz]
***
"Hi, have YOU ever thought about what lies ahead of YOU?" Aidan queried standing between 2Ferns and staring straight into the public access channels' camera lens with all the wit and charm of a serial mass murderer or one of those Jehovah's witnesses. "Would you like to know YOUR future? Well, if YOU're like any normal or crazy or barely conscious human being YOU've had these thoughts before. If YOU haven't, YOU're probably a nihilist, in which case churn the f** channel because I don't want YOUR business." Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, but at least it's an ethos...
"My name is Senor Aidan & I want to help YOU see YOUR future! If YOU're interested send YOUR contact information to the address below," he sez as he pulls out a sheet of college ruled paper that he'd been holding behind his back & holds it in front of his genitals, "and include YOUR date of birth, sex - male/female/transgender/furry/however YOU identify, the 3rd consonant of YOUR middle name, & the city in which YOU were born. In return, I will produce for YOU a very accurate horoscope for the next month of YOUR life. If YOU like it very much, send a check for $9.95 each month & I will continue to provide YOU personalized hand typed glimpses into YOUR," 'YOUR' accompanied with a cheesy smile & and finger pointing to the camera which caused him to drop his hand made sign & have to bend down to pick it up & stand back up & point & smile again, "YOUR Future. Thank YOU."
***
"Obviously Mark, those stacks of paper are the horoscopes' that Aidan has been working on so he can get a job writing scopes for the local daily," I explained in a dissonant dismissive demeanor. As I said those words, Aidan sprung up out of a pile of papers that I had assumed was just a pile of clothes or a dead body or the sex doll I saw Aidan running down the hall with the other day when his cell phone & more impotently- er, importantly, his tindr app disappeared & he couldn't find any strange for almost 3 hole- er, I mean whole, days & went to the sex shop down the way to satisfy his insatiable sexual salacity; but the lump was none of those things - it was Aidan Fucking Ca$h.
"Aidan, da fuck were you doing under there?" I ejaculated with a mixture of shock AND awe.
"Ah yass mah boy, I was gettin intimate like with my horoscopes. Keep yer friends close and yer enemies closer, ya dig?"
I didn't, but I nodded yes anyway because I was quite certain I didn't actually want to know what he was attempting to say.
"Marky, good to see ya - what's YOUR DOB, the third consonant in YOUR middle name, & the city in which YOU were born? Imma bout to blow YOUR fucking mind." Aidan inquired while beginning to sift through the scraps looking for his magic decoder ring that would translate those three bits of info into YOUR life story just as he so boldly decreed from 3-5am on the local public access tele channel.
"Aidz, you know you're still sayin YOU like in that creepy infomercial you spent your life's fortune of 237 dollars and 44 cents on."
"Ahhh yass. MY bad. Good CALL by you, Peazy. Is that better?"
"It is." It actually wasn't.
"Aidan, to answer your query 7/11/82, Y, Denver."
"Why what?"
"Y is the 3rd consonant in my middle name."
"Why do I need the 3rd consonant of YOUR, er, your middle name? It's all apart of my secret formula. So, what is the third consonant of your middle name?"
"Y."
"God damnit Mark, I just explained that to you."
"No, it is Y. The letter. Like the place the village people sang about."
"That's antihelpful. Village people are typically weird and will sing about anywhere or anything. What's your middle name?"
"Aloysius."
"Excuse me?"
"Alo-WISH-us," Mark said slower this time.
"Sounds like a W."
"It isn't."
"Oh, wait! Is that the shit I smear on my dong after I forget to the set the timer and end up falling asleep in the tanning bed?"
"Nope, that's aloe."
"Can I hear it in a sentence?"
"My middle name is Aloysius."
"Language of origin?"
"German."
"Part of speech?"
"Uhh... a name? How long is this going to go on?" Mark asked me. What he, and most everyone didn't know, is that Aidan was quite the accomplished speller growing up and competed in many spelling contests throughout the Midwest, West, Pacific Northwest, South by South West, and the West Wing. He never finished higher than 7th - and that came in a contest with 10 people - but he swore to me that once you got into the high school level competitions that those girls were freaks and, because of their scopious & multifarious lexicon they could & would do things that most girls couldn't even cogitate.
"Definition?"
"It's German for fame & war."
"Damn, that's kinda badass. Anyone else ever had it as their name?"
"St. Aloysius."
"Never heard of him."
"James Joyce, it was his middle name."
"Who?"
"Patrick Ewing's middle name."
"The cartoonist?"
"What?! No. How have you not heard of any of those..."
"Don't bother," I interjects, "you're probably not gonna wanna hear the explanation." Aidan nods in agreement. "Just keep rollin till he gets one or you run out of names."
"O-kay... Louis Van Gaal's real first name."
"I don't even like soccer..."
"Hey! We actually got one!"
"Huh?" Aidan turned around with his phone in his hand. Guess he found it. "No no no, my sweet Markus, I was responding to this real swell blonde honey on tindr who's tryin to get me to go to a Crew SC game. Yuck."
"Possum Aloysius Jenkins?"
"You can call him Andre 3000 for short."
"Fuck my stars, we've got a winner!"
We celebrated the victory by spraying champagne everywhere and then we went to Disney. After we got back from riding Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Mountain Mountain, and hung out with Figment, we returned to Aidan's room so he could figure out Mark's horoscope.
"Aloe-WISH-us, sounds more like a W. How bout I give you your horoscope with a Y and a W... and an S, one of those should hit it right like a right from Rowdy Ronda, RIP Roddy Piper," Aidan said as he crossed twice and took three swigs of scotch for the Canadian who claimed to be a Scotsman and recently succumbed to the steely grip of eternal sleep. And with that Aidan passed the bottle to Mark and Mark to me and we each did our own little ritual to pay respects to the man who made it cool to be bad, cuz right when they think they I have the answers, I change the questions.
Aidan turned around and began to sift and sort thru the scraps of scribbles and squiggles and I furrowed my brow as my nostrils sniffed something that stunk, I mean stinks. So I thinks to myself [who da fuck else are you gonna think to?] You? [Fair...] So I thinks to myself, "Hey Peazy, that which doesn't asphyxiate you only makes you stranger, right David Caradine?" And I laugh and scan the room to for the root of the rot with nary a tell - my train of thought aborted by Aidan trying to debate the spelling of Aloysius with Mark prompting Mark to whip out his ID for Aidan's careful consideration. Now sidetracked, I start to think about whether or not I should create a character named "St. Vicious" Aloysius Amadeus. For his theme song I would have to resurrect Sid Vicious and Falco to play a new version of "Rock Me Amadeus" with St. Vincent, whose wizardry with her Music Man Albert Lee 6-string is somehow both refreshingly clean and disturbingly haunting and has me wanting and yearning to hear this collaboration because just like no one else could write about Aidan Ca$h like I can, no one else thinks and plays like she does. I think about making Mark go by St Vicious Aloysius Amadeus but you and I both know that he wouldn't be on board with it and if the glove don't fit you must acquit, RIP JC.
[What a tweest! I betcha thought He forgot about that trope since He flipped the script on it with the Piper comment!]
***
"While I was daydreaming about doing delightful sexual deeds with St Vincent and Aidan was preoccupied pounding away at his typewriter to produce the prose that was set to expose the future for Mark (& if it hits the mark I'll mark out & probably pitch in 10 bones a month of my own hard earned money to find out who's gonna come after ol Peazy next though if he just wrote 'James King' every month he'd probably be right every month. Hey James did you get those tee shirts Aidan sent you? Prince of Peas... How's Eve? Better yet, how's Christian?)
"Then I had some time to myself and I was contemplating why we call it a squared circle I had a vision - all my attempts at calculating the square of the second derivative of any point along a circle to prove that a square can be a circle that's when it hit me. A ring is shaped like a circle. Olympic wrestling takes place in a circle. But our 'ring' is shaped like a square. So our ring is a squared circle or at least that's how I like to think of it - but anyway all that deep thinking lead me to a deep vision a vision of rings & gold & all that glitters is gold & all that shivers is cold and I let out a shiver & all that wrinkles is old & I stared with my minds eye at the wrinkles in my smile & I felt the shivers but I'm not physically cold just mentally & emotionally cold from the lack of gold in my life that's causing me to age at a faster rate than I can masturbate & I start to worry if I'll ever be truly great - when I felt a cold hand slap me across my face - my own old hand had rose up by surprise & opened my eyes and I saw the sign it's a poster of me representing iWs with the Universe title wrapped about my waist showing the world, NAY Universe what I've become.
"This thought of winning the Universe title brought me back to circles. It all comes full circle," I say drawing a circle with my index fingers. "Rebirth is to be born again; born anew; to begin a new circle & it ties in with my circle, my rebirth which happed at Rebirth 2011 when I made my iWs debut and shocked the world. Circles. Back then I showed up, won a battle royal, then a handicap match, almost won a second battle royal against the best wrestlers in the Universe for the Universe title. Circles. At Rebirth 2014, Aidan & I pulled the wool over everyone's eyes when I pretended to be him and then he showed up like an RKO outta nowhere to steal the Universe Title from out of Ryan Sharpe's hands. A match I almost won pretending to be him. Circles. Just like the Marie Antoinette - a front flip - circles - followed by a guillotine leg drop - circles. What goes around comes back around," I say with a bit of twirl or twist if that's a word you prefer, I prefer reefer like Bill Shakespeare, RIP.
"And at Rebirth 2015, Imma satiate that missing link, circle, that should be around my waist. If James King thinks that he or anyone else is going to stop me, I will not let that happen. Not this year. Not even if that is your sole reason for entering this match. Do you know what time it is? It's Paroxysm's time. The high flyin, death defyin, masked SUPER luchadore! And that's the way the cookie crumbles!"
***
After leaving to get a work out in, Mark & I return a few hours later to see if Aidan has finished laboring on Mark's personalized horoscope. When we walked in the door, there he was, standing in the center of the living room butt naked shouting Yes! Yes! while Carin (pronounced cah-rin) going to town on lil Aidan.
"Hey guys," I casually comment while grabbing a beer and turning on the tele to watch Ultima Lucha that I dvr'd the night prior. If Aidan wasn't quite a full staff before, I bet seeing Sexy Star will finish the job.
"Mark," Aidan began to say. Mark was frozen. He didn't wanna come any closer or look at what was going on because he didn't want to be exposed as the pervert he is who likes looking at peoples exposed genitalia so instead he chose to stand in the corner by the door trying to occasionally & discreetly cop a peek from time to time.
"Mark - YOUR, er, your horoscoOOO God Yes! Your hororscope is on the table right there. Oh... fuck... my... stars that feels sooooo good Carin. Really good job by yooooou..."
Mark reluctantly ambled over to the table while keeping one eye on Aidan & Carin. I've seen Aidan do this enough that I'm able to focus easily on Pentagon Jr & Vampiro. Aidan starts to question why I don't have a mask as sweet as Pentagon's & how Pentagon and I have the same birthday & then Aidan let out a bloodcurdling scream which sent Mark ducking for cover & I remained un-phased at Aidan's peculiar proclamation to the universe of his achieving an orgasm. Aidan collapses in a heap while Carin dutifully keeps doing work till Aidan's dry. Mark finally makes his way to the table to read his horoscope.
"What the fuck is this?" Mark ejaculated.
"Your hororscope."
"Say that again."
"It's your hororscope."
"Well I guess that makes more sense..." he trailed off as he handed the paper over to me. After all of Aidan's furious typing, there was only one sentence on the page.
"Your car will be paint-balled by a pack of rogue renegade clowns," I read aloud.
"Ahh yass, it's my coup de grace! Definitely my best work to date."
"What the fuck was all that typing for," I ejaculated. We were all spent now, well all of us but Carin. She'll get hers here in a few.
"Oh that was for the telenovella pilot I'm writing that features Sexy Star as the lead."
"And what the fuck is this?" Mark questioned while holding up the paper.
"That's your hororscope."
"You weren't saying it like that earlier."
"I've heard it both ways," I said. I used that correctly finally.
"Well I'll be damned," Aidan said with a sigh of euphoria. " It's my whole business model - prey on human beings easily manipulated fears & insecurities. Basically I'm the Fox News of horoscopes."
THWACK! THWACK! POP-POP-POP!! Mark & I run over to the window in time to see 5 clowns shoot up Marks' car and leave a balloon animal giraffe on the hood. My jaw drops. Mark turns a particularly unsettling shade of crimson. His hands turn into tightly wound fists.
"How the FUCK did you now that was going to happen?"
"Wha...?" Aidan had passed out from bliss. Not from Alexa Bliss - though if I ever made Maddy a manager or wrestler, she'd be Alexa Bliss.
"The clowns just paint balled my car. How the fuck did you guess that?" Mark said through clenched teeth.
"Guess?" Aidan said while sitting up. He went to kiss Carin when he thought better of it and gave her a peck on the forehead and made the universal motion for I'm not kissing you till you brush my cum out of your mouth.
"I didn't guess shit,"
"Right, you're psychic. How did you
divine this?"
"Didn't do that either."
"Well what the fuck did you do?"
"Listened."
"And what does that mean?"
"It means to hear something or someone. In this case I heard someones, clowns to be pacific, say that they were going to paint ball your car."
"You KNEW this was going to happen?!"
"Wait just a minute," Aidan said as he composed himself & started to stand up & put on his underwear - not out of modesty but out of a potential need for something to contain his extra-sensitive just came dongle in case Mark actually does attack him.
"Well, did you or did you NOT know this was going to happen?"
"Maybe. I mean, yeah, I heard it, but I couldn't be certain it was gonna happen. You know how clowns are, always clowning around, doing clown things..."
"AND WHY DIDN'T YOU DO OR SAY SOMETHING?!" I got up & made some popcorn & assuaged Carin's concerns that there was not going to be a fight even though I was pretty sure there was gonna be a fight in my living room & grabbed another beer to get ready for the Prince Puma Mil Muertes fight and the Mark Maddow Aidan Cash fight that was about to take place.
"Whoa there Mark. How can you expect me to say anything? Those clowns were TERRIFYING!"
"You're afraid of clowns?!"
"I am when they have semi-automatic paint ball guns pointed at my naked body."
I continued to munch away at the popcorn. Thought about taking this opportunity to try and munch away at Carin, but decided it probably wasn't the best time.
"I cannot fucking believe you Aidan!" With that Mark turned & stomped out the door slamming it behind him with the intent of chasing down the clowns.
He would be unsuccessful.
***