Save The Last Hiatus For Me

Here I sit, my heart filled with pride that I endured so much and survived. If anyone has a right to shake his fist triumphantly and shout the words "I did it," any fair gauging of the issue would have to reveal that that person would have to be me.

But while my heart has that pride, I need to confess that I'm also suffering a little bit of lethargy, the feeling I get when something is finished. So I essentially staggered out of bed, stumbled going to the bathroom, and slipped when I sat down to write this. I've had numerous false starts. Abraham Lincoln never had a worse day.

But ending something's like in the movies, the last night at Porky's, the end of the American Graffiti gang, Curly's last film as one of the Three Stooges. You sit and run the film back and forth and say "That's it." There might be a reason to go on, but you need serious counseling and a prayer retreat with a houseful of sincere monks to figure out what it is.

I was going to use this last day of July for last minute chronicling of my hiatus. But really there's not much left to say. It was a run. Now I'm taking my final bow. I'm looking straight ahead, not expecting a lot of pats on the back. But it would be gratifying if the others -- here they come! -- came from the wings to lift hands with me in a solid row and do a few Rockette kicks. There's a little girl and an enormous armload of roses coming down the center aisle.

In my Mind's Eye, I'm here at the house, my hiatus ended. And I'm standing on a little stage. There's a few of my closest friends off to my left. An unseen orchestra starts playing something softly with feeling, which swells, and I sing of the things I've come to realize. There's no place like home.

But just as I end the song, from the back of the room, Garrett Al breaks through with a big laser gun, and, with him, my sexy cousin Jill Bob has her hair done up like the Bride of Frankenstein. (Picture this. It's a lot like the ending of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show.") Geritol sings in this weird, wavery metallic voice, "D.B. Kundalini! The party is all over. Your hiatus was a failure, your lifestyle too extreme. I'm your new commander, you now are my prisoner. We return to Transylvania and Grandma will be mine!"

I struggle to retreat but Geritol is on me. I'm climbing the curtains in our living room when he zaps me from behind with the laser. This is a cue for Cousin Roto to come out of our freezer on a motorcycle. Grandma screams, "Roto!"

We all join for an incredible '50s dance, kicking out the jams. Then we're in a pool singing, "Don't be it, dream it." Then we're on the stage again, me singing happily, "My, my, my, my, my, my, my hiatus was a wild and an untamed thing..."

Finally, a terrific red/pink slimy blob crawls in from the North, envelopes the house, everything crashes around us, the house is lifted off its foundation, and I see it all flying toward space. I am left writhing in a big hole with my sexy cousin Jill Bob. Proudly writhing, crawling, pusillanimous creatures, she and I will inhabit a new Eden. Which will mean us being occasionally nude and partaking of forbidden fruit.

A puppet master, an criminologist kind of guy, shakes his head and leaves the room.