Look, it wasn’t my fault.
…I mean it was my fault, but I didn’t do it on purpose, okay?
Moving into our final weekend of shows, there are all of I think three people in the cast now who don’t have a cold. And I started it. So I’m the giant asshole. But not on purpose. I didn’t mean to do it.
…I swear.
“Oh, sure,” they say sarcastically, while sucking on Halls drops and grimacing through cup after cup of hot Gollum Piss…their insides curdling and pickling and poaching while their outsides rain sweat and snot.
I am now to be surrounded by cold-zombies of my own making.
This is how the Apocalypse really happens, people.
Another plague.
Just one.
…We keep waiting for these giant earth-shattering asteroids, or for a sudden gravity shift to fling us accidentally into the sun…but what is really gonna happen, has already begun.
A tiny viral death.
…Roasting in clammy costumes…
…In a dusty theatre…
…Then picked up and sweated onto others, in humid backstage non-ventilation, and spread like evil air-born spores of awful.
…And we aren’t the only ones. The audience, living in it all night long, will bring it home with them. And the unsuspecting Ushers. And the Box Office Staff. Carrying it to school and work and home, to follow. Hell, we already infected five schools of children, on Tuesday alone! And they, in turn, will mack on each other in hallways and at football games and sweat all over one another in P.E. to continue the chain moving forward.
…Which, when given the doomsday end date of December 21st, makes total and complete sense.
Ask any Mom of a kid with chicken pox or head lice: that shit is potent and immediate!
Not to freak you all out or anything, but it is entirely mathematically possible, that THIS is the very last cold we will ever have…as like an entire human race, and things.
…Which, to my mind, makes daring to experiment with seven kind of cold meds simultaneously, (in hopes of gaining SOME phantom of relief at SOME point), not only permissible, but almost a requirement in the name of mankind. In order to extend our nature of function as long as possible…until the end finally comes.
One by one, we will eventually drop to the ground like discarded marionettes, overcome with fever-comas…only to rise again the next day, as freak zombie spawn, off to infect and induct more of our kind.
…Which means, back in the good old days when Bible-thumpers were damning prostitutes and actors with the same breath, calling theatre’s the deepest cankers of disease and damnation in all of humanity…apparently they were right.
…But listen: we were all gonna go someday, anyhow. At least this way, you’ll go out entertained, laughing, while pissed out of your mind on good drugs and alcohol, with your best friends by your side. Not taken down in a burst of fire and brimstone, hollering screams of agony.
So: You’re welcome for that.
…Now, don’t you think you should show your appreciation to us while you still can, and come on down to see the show? Cuz I think it’s the least you could do.
The last three performances of “Twelfth Night” (quite probably, EVER.)
…Don’t be the one poor sunofabitch who missed out.
~D
