I watched between mini-blind fingers, and my friend held the remote poised for quick channel change action on the second I should mouth 'M' for MERCY. But as he said, I'd been watching all season long. It was down to three contestants. I'd survived the horrible swimsuit competition, followed by the even more loathesome lingere competitions, all intermingled with an excrutiatiating number of evening gown changes and exaggerated silences that wept for the loosers before the finalist's names could even be muttered. I might as well pick a favorite. Predict the winning team. Well Peter, we're all winner's here tonight...
SWAN started out as an all time favorite prime time spectacle, but for all the reasons I thought it disobeyed the mainstream. Fistfulls of plain janes trying to sap up their worst features for the applications. Obnoxious husbands they couldn't stand to be around to poke the fire ("Before we got married, and before I started staying out all night with strippers and blowing our nest egg on that there Dooley, Jane used to have a real good self image. I haven't really even wanted to have sex with her now but maybe five times in the past seven years"). Dozens of family and friends able to testify for what big of loosers they always were and looks like will always be... I reveled in the disaster of it. The murder of the surgeries with them waking up sedated and screaming of how it wasn't at all worth the painful agony...then there not even a tiny pint of Ben and Jerrys to stroke them on the back, run fingers through their hair and say 'there there'. So, three months later...with the magic of television we witness the monumental unveiling of their whole new cookie cutter face, only to crush their spirit yet again in a match against opponents deamed far prettier than them still. Hell will be filled with such phsycological anguish. Sheer brilliance.
But it ends in this?
Wait...lingere competition? We're all winners here tonight bullshit? At least the 'wild card' girl they accidently messed up on didn't win or I would have really gone nuts.

Now the more anticipated expose, threatening to arrive any moment now...POST SWAN-COACHES to PUMPKINS.
mmmm...
To feature the unveiling of the tiny nubs left for teeth when the veneers rot off and the military insurance doesn't pay for replacements.
...with helpful tips devised to scam insurance for routine lasics surgery.
New moves for starter strippers at tin roofed neon signed joints to keep up the weave!(because all the beautiful confident women that men love have the same long waving locks that stretch down the back like a 70's porn star!)
Prescription drug recommendations for that peaceful easy feeling that reassures you the marital problems were always your fault...somehow...something that ankle surgery didn't quite make perfect. Your husband is still the same... but damn, your new and improved and too hot now really to still stay with that looser anyway.

Some people say that I'm a dreamer...but I'm not the only one.

It is Claudias 30th birthday, and we are none the wiser. Well, she's the home owner, with a swimming pool in the backyard. She spends her birthdays letting foundation experts give quotes, and telephone guys come in to install new phone lines. I'm the best friend with no car, no cell phone, no apartment or job that just got back from a jaunt in Mexico.
We are none the wiser.
She says, that I'm the one that leads us down the wrong path, and then she's the one that sends us on detours. She follows that with a finger at her tiny cup that tells the japaneese lady we need another round of sake while swallowing a sea urchin whole. I really missed you while you were away says again.

I had cleared out my apartment of everything except the refrigerator mold, the pubes at the toilet seat and the whimpering stray cat she'd begged me to keep a year before. I had kissed her goodbye with a shrug and then fumbled with the remains. I walked out to the car to fish out the windex in the back seat and her jeep was still in the parking lot. I found her there sitting in the parking lot slumped over the steering wheel crying. That's when we decided that we'd grow to be old best friends in stupid orchid hats tending eachothers gardens in old age.

'I can eat shit that'd make a billy goat puke'
Carl. Carlito, Peter affectionatly calls him, is as Texan a man can come. Trimmed silver mustache, belly pressing against overalls with a cell phone that he keeps in the bib, dozen war stories he ain't supposed to talk about, and twelve pension checks in the mailbox right now. His bills are neatly halved and pinned by a clip that his gold and diamond fingers have pulled out at least a dozen times tonight to buy us another round of beer, of blurberry shots, then peppermint shnapps, and then what are those called again Debbie? Deborah! Bit-o-Honeys he likes to call 'em, and it's on account of those that he got two widows both pregnant in one night he says while shakin' his head.
Peter and me, we are crazy about eachother, and the old barflys love get sentimental with their advice to us. Peter is jumpin' up and down to meet a man in here like Carl tonight, and he is runnin' in circles to the bathroom to pee from the excitment between juke box dedications for Carl. Everytime Peter steps away to the can, Carl is flashin' me his credit cards, tellin' me that they're all mine and can't ever max 'em out and that there's also 200 dollars a week in cash in case I'd want to go to the dollar store or somethin'.

I don't want the money. I just want to grow up to be a dirty old man and not a mean old woman I say. Our envys make both our eyes sparkle.

When we collect our things for the night, Carl curls those fat fingers over Peter's shoulder and leans in to whisper: 'Tonight, you go home and tackle her. Just tackle her...and lemme tell you somethin'...she may not like it at first...'