Thursday, January 29, 2004

Jessica Goodbye Day!

It woulda been awesome:

The Small Time Cross-Country Bandit Lovers On The Run who perform oral sex on each other across the front seat of a moving convertible zipping down the highway. Occasionally, money flitters out from the paper bag the last small town shopkeeper used to empty his register drawer while averting his eyes from the barrel of your pretty baby's handgun. A hundred or two you can bear to lose. It's tribute to the wind. You break up when Jessica gets shot dead and you veer out shooting from behind the train car, drawing fire from the waiting police barricade.

The Hospital Lovers who get married on the oncology floor. You were lucky because you booked the Justice of the Peace in advance and it turned out that Jessica wasn't quite so weak that day. She spoke her vows from bed, you stood beside her, your hand in hers. Your parents were there (hers are dead). When you kissed her, her breath was wrong as black licorice. Jessica dies. You move on.

Lawyers who met as prosecution and defense in a well-publicized murder trial. Jessica got your client the chair. You asked Jessica to dinner. Seven years (three married) later, Jessica dies. Someone got a gun into a courtroom.

The Telekinetic And The Girl Who's Trying To Be Supportive but when word gets out to the press, your previously quiet little love affair is suddenly put under a microscope for all of America to dissect with prejudice. Jessica can't take it and moves back to Santa Clara. But when you're abducted by the government so that they can exploit your powers for military might, Jessica returns to fight for your release. She promises to fight until you come home to her and start floating shit around the house again. You're freed when World Peace happens, and you and Jessica are happy for a while. But when a roof is about to collapse on a school, you use your mind to lift the roof off the building and you save the children, but you accidentally fling the roof onto Jessica. She doesn't die right away. You get to hover over her for a minute or two while she says she loves you and asks if the children are safe. Even though she got hit by the roof of a school, the only visible blemish to her beauty is a small trickle of blood connecting her nostril to her upper lip.

The Widow Who Marries The Guy Who Killed Her Husband but doesn't know it. Or does she? Twenty two years in, postcards arrive at the house. They cryptically intimate the truth. Jessica asks about them. You say, "Beats me." She goes stiff for a few years, then warms to you again. Jessica dies first, at the age of 83, in her sleep. You wake up beside her corpse and think, "Holy shit, this is what it's like to be an old man whose wife just died."

It's not:

The Girl In The Coat Who's Standing Between Two Packed Suitcases Waiting For The Guy In The Kitchen Chair To Say Anything. Anything At All. Even A Sneeze Might Make Her Stay. Anything. Anything. Anything At All. Anything. Jessica leaves.

Happy Jessica Goodbye Day!