Chapter 1
I Make Millions Selling Sweaters Knit From Madonna’s Pit Hair
It seems I have the luck of bumping into celebrities often, and one such star was Madonna.
One day, at a local arena, I walked backstage before her headline act. It was a strange sight. There was a huge pile of hair, about seven feet high, with a bit of movement coming from within it. I could hear the whirring sound of shearers, and finally, a woman popped her head out to draw a breath. It was Madonna’s assistant, and she was shearing her pits.
“I wish I had someone to clean up this mess before the show starts,” she said woefully. “She’s already late!”
“Miss, say no more!” I cried, a bright idea coming to me. “I will sweep that hair up for you, and roll the bales of hair to transport said item away from here. All I need is an endorsement from Madonna that this is her actual pit hair.”
Then I heard it, her beautiful voice with the fake English accent. (This was back in the days she called herself Madge).
“Done!” said Madonna from inside the pile of pit hair. “But I want the majority share. How’s 80-20 sound?”
Madonna read my mind, and realized I was already thinking of ways to sell that pit hair to her fans. But alas, I was too star-struck to realize it was a lopsided deal given I’d be doing all the work to monetize something that was never monetized before, and in fact, cost money to do.
By the next week, Madonna would pull up at the plant each day in her limo. Her pit hair was shaved daily, and then swept up with a street sweeper. Hundreds of men would then set to the task of rolling this hair into bales and then shipping them to the yarn factory at the other end of the complex.
I remember those long, endless days at the plant. An assembly line was built where the hair was sorted on one end, then sprayed with a row of massive, 50 ft. deodorant cans on the other. From here, after bundling, they would be transformed into yarn and dyed.
It was not all smooth sailing. One day we had a crisis that had us stumped and since Madonna was out on tour and very, very busy, she could not be reached. It was up to me to fix this.
“Boss, this pit hair still smells like B.O. We can’t remove the Madonna funk. The giant deodorant sprayers are broken and there is no possibility of repair for at least a week,” said one new worker at the plant.
“Wait, what did you say?”’
“I uh, I uh…” he answered nervously, misunderstanding the nature of my query.
I rubbed my chin. “I have an idea. Look, we’ll just have to ship it out like that,” I said after giving it much thought and crossing my fingers. I anticipated a lot of angry customers and returns.
As it turned out, these unscented lots of “natural” Madonna Funk Sweaters were even more popular, so we dispensed with the deodorant altogether and ended up selling even more containers.
One day, during a board meeting in Los Angeles, Madonna had a flash of inspiration.
“We can’t just sell my sweaters or Madonna Wear anywhere. I don’t want to see them at Walmart or Target, I have to protect my brand! We have to create exclusive high end shops.”
She grinned widely. Her teeth had the widest gap I had ever seen (a 747 could fly through it and not touch either side) and since I’m a sucker for such things, I was instantly smitten.
“I think that is a fabulous idea, Madonna. Your brand is important, it cannot be sullied!” said one board member earnestly, with the others quickly nodding in unanimous approval. Earlier, Madonna and I had discussed this idea briefly and I didn’t think she took it too seriously, but she did.
“I’ve already purchased the land for the first boutique. I believe John has already created a name for the first one, and I approve.”
We broke ground on The Pit Stop in Beverly Hills only a month later. We sold only sweaters made from Madonna’s pit hair and also sold scarves made from her shaved leg hair. Her fans are the most loyal you could ever see and they camped out the first store two days early. The summer heat wave had already arrived, but they just had to have their $5,000 sweaters, and gleefully walked out in the heat.
Man, despite my shitty cut, I made millions.
Some people say I hallucinated all this, but some people are stupid.
Chapter 2
I Disembowel Myself and Skip Rope With My Intestines
“He’s gonna get the booty juice! He’s getting the booty juice!” jeered the guys in the hall as I was dragged kicking and screaming to another room. It was all because I wanted to stay a little longer in the gym, you see, rather than attend the “strongly suggested activity” that day. Back then, my early twenties, I was really into working out.
The hotel staff was very rude, so I declined tipping them, especially since they dragged me into a different room than the one I checked into. This one looked nothing like my room, it had padded walls. The decor was, needless to say, hideous and unimaginative.
Exercise is important it dawned on me as I was there, and I found myself getting depressed without it. Running and weights were ok, but I really liked to skip rope from back in my boxing days. Unfortunately, my rope was taken away from me when I arrived; along with my phone, shoelaces and belt. I thought it was an odd hotel courtesy. It was a strange resort you couldn’t ever leave, and as far as vacations go, it honestly wasn’t very pleasant. It was an awful place, and nothing like my friend described it when he dragged me there and mysteriously left. The place was very smothering, to be honest. Staff continually hovered over you, gave you pills, drew your blood, and checked in on you every 15 minutes to see if you were okay. We also had to wear gowns and booties. I am soooo gonna nail them on Yelp.
“Your hotel fucking sucks, man,” I cried before the first injection, struggling with the staff.
“Please be quiet,” said what I presumed to be a junkie because she had a syringe and liked to inject people in the ass. And by people, I mean mostly me.
I was finally strapped down in bed by the burliest of the hotel staff and given the booty juice. In minutes I was soon asleep. I mean, I didn’t even get high. Another fail for Bellevue Resort.
Worst of all, there was nothing to do but read old magazines.
One day, in the lounge area, I read in an old April 1955 issue of Reader’s Digest that human intestines are about 25 feet long. Suddenly I realized something very profound.
“Dude, the answer is within you,” I thought. “It was in you all along.”
Thus, with a plastic spork I kept from lunch I disemboweled myself and like a boxer, started skipping rope with my guts; singing:
Down by the river, down by the sea,
Johnny broke a bottle and blamed it on me.
I told ma, ma told pa,
Johnny got a spanking so ha ha ha.
How many spankings did Johnny get?
1, 2, 3, 4….
Johnny’s mammy
was a big fat ho!
The depression was soon gone and I was ecstatic, but a lot of my blood was gone too, and I soon passed out.
“Could you help me with the gurney please?” I heard someone say as I made myself comfortable as I could on a strange metal hammock.
“I love this hammock, dudes! I just wish you had it near a beach somewhere,” I said.
But then they ruined it by strapping me down as I tried to swing side to side.
My roommate at the time was very supportive, and said “you have a lot of intestinal fortitude.” I preferred the less pretentious “you have a lot of guts” but there you go.
As I lay in bed there was a knock at the door and the maid let herself in.
“Would you mind if we brought in a roommate? There are two beds here,” she said.
“Yes, I would mind.”
“Well tough shit, haha!”
“Then why did you ask? I demand to see the hotel manager.”
“Well, now that you put it that way, I will bring him immediately, sir.”
I waited for hours, but I think she played me. I tried to go to the lobby to see the manager but the doors were locked. They were always locked. The manager had a funny name. It was Dr. Wilson, I think.
Speaking of my roommate, he was an interesting fellow. The police escorted him from Skid Row to the resort and oddly claimed he was indigent, which he hotly denied. He was an African-American gentleman, missing most of his teeth and very thin.
Some insist I was at a psychiatric ward and a little unstable at the time, but some people are stupid. Plus, my behavior was perfectly normal behavior and my roommate could attest to that, as he said he studied psychiatry at Yale. I’m not one to question a professional and self-vetted opinion.
Now George, my roommate, had a tendency to steal my clothes. My dear mom would bring me a change of clothes, and had just bought me new underwear. I wanted to keep these safe so rather than putting it in the shared closet, I put them in my night stand. Surely I would know then if he was stealing my clothes. That night, I hear the slow creak of a drawer opening. I wake up. It’s him. He has my new underwear on, up to his knees, and to make matters worse, he has a 30 inch penis that was about, say, twice as long as my anaconda-like ambassador of vaginal good cheer. He thinks I’m still asleep, it seems, and he does a Jedi mind trick.
“You’re dreaming this. Go back to sleep. This isn’t happening.”
That fucker. It almost worked.
This is why, to this day, I don’t trust psychiatrists with my underwear.