(About the day porn is outlawed in CA)

Her Mystery is so Fascinating

Iliyid was sleeping on the couch, his pot belly sticking out and he had obviously fallen asleep with too much fruit keiopecktate in his mouth because the man was foaming. I was so angry that I just pulled his blanket and told him: GET UP! The world is ending.

Not really.

California had simply outlawed nudity by electronics as a way to control young men into dating more. The problem was that we had to download and catalogue all the statues, paintings, and sockpuppets, which might become accidentally enmeshed in this new law. We had to preserve the art for the next generation who might learn and enjoy the art after they were finally married.

Consider the Statue of David and people always trying to get him to wear his sling around the waist to cover the male parts with a Swedish-style bikini. People fear the David because they are all Philistines in their hearts. I make coffee/yogurt/kale/pills and put them into a blender and get Iliyid back to downloading and organizing. They can stop the Public transference, but they cannot stop people from accidentally sharing pictures of their grandparents. I already used the genealogical information to find 10 relatives of David still living. We were going to win.

I can’t stand the smell of his morning vitamin cocktail and went to the Starbucks where young people stand around and wait for a drink that will make them feel more attractive. The girls were told marriage was imprisonment and the boys were told they would lose half their toys. No one wants to get married anymore if they can give up their bodies so freely.

Sacramento has designed that the ‘mysteries’ of human romance will continue until the birth-to-death ratio changes by 3 percent. We have so many people taking early retirement with the Death Parties now that these kids cannot possibly keep up. The idea that we would just send them to college for a Viking wedding like the Benjamites has not worked out. They study too much and will not drink the beers provided. Our local UC Santa Cruz has even allowed small refrigerators to return to the dorms and the redwood benches have been replaced by love swings, but nothing works.

“Hey…”

I motion to a young man who is waiting for his triple latte Kombucha to cool down. There’s a gorgeous girl next to him in a church dress with pink hair, and he hasn’t even noticed her. These boys are not remotely attracted unless the women wear their tights and bras on top of their church clothes.

“Why don’t you say ‘Hi’ to her?”

He’s going to lose his visuals on June 1st, which is just a few days away. I can’t believe that this kid isn’t viewing internet nudes to memory, he’s not even trying to project his ideals on this lovely girl who looks like she doesn’t care if college starts again. They are both just so numb.

I ignore this boy and go around and sit next to the pink-haired girl. “Can I interview you for my sociological studies?” I show her my Press Pass, which is just a yellow ribbon that has my name imprinted. We used to use badges but found out that some people hate Americans going over-seas so now the freelancers just use these ribbons.

These young women cannot be bribed. We used to carry around a handful of twenties to get an interview and pretend they were going to become doctors in Beaverton, Oregon, after they reach expert level at pole dancing. She blinks like she doesn’t care if the strawberry macchiato has no real fruit. People haven’t cared about real fruit in years.

I begin:

“Now that Bonnie Blue has the world record for 1100 lovers in 12 hours – how do you think you can compete in this world before June?”

She puts her drink down. A long look like she is in disbelief and I am asking about a religion she has never heard of.

“I don’t think they loved her.”

(Everyone has seen the World Record made by Bonnie Blue because Facebook called it real news.)

“But these young guys traveled 6 hours in one direction just to be with her. “ [I put the phone closer to her face because I don’t carry one of those Bluetooth microphones around.] That’s how the terrorists kill reporters in Canada.

“She had to go to the hospital because it was all too much. I can’t do that.”

“So what are you going to do? If you can’t choose a husband in 1100 tries, is there any hope?”

She stopped sipping and stared at me like a person possessed, her hair tied in a bun with a chopstick. It was like a real cranky senior citizen was in her soul and she wanted to throw her hot drink in my face for asking the question. The obvious question.

“With only three days left before the state turns the porn tap off… what will you do?“

I could tell the boy next to me was listening, though like most young people, he pretended the answer didn’t concern him. History is always someone else’s business until it happens to you.

There was a small gold cross just barely sticking out of her buttoned-up blouse, and I asked if the cross meant something or was it like a Madonna situation, just a piece of jewelry?

She seemed groggy and sad. We really should rotate crops more. And then she took the cross in her hands and remembered. She seemed to have an inner controversy with herself and finally said, “We used to be told to have faith… right? Then our parents and grandparents got all divorced and nothing stayed the same. “

“... I guess I’m tired of waking up and seeing strange men in my mother’s house making coffee.”

Doctor Laura used to tell her audience to never date until the kids were out of the home, but this is obviously asking too much.

“So what is your ideal?”

She didn’t hear me.

“How do you think it _should_ be?”

This little college girl perked up because she had a notion, but it was so fantastic that it had not been proven in many years. Many faiths suggest that it's not what you say it's what you do.

I had to look at my watch because even with a Press Pass ribbon, talking to a young person for too long could get me thrown in Jail, or worse, a byline on the digital database of perverts and creepers. Even though the state promises to refine Meghan’s Law after the nudes are separated from our internet, I still fear that people are looking for trouble. We can no longer trust the heart of man. Diddy didn’t hold parties to get married.

I turned to the young man because Iliyad should not be interrupted once he is awake and being useful. “What will you do next week? Are you going to quit college so you can afford to date?”

That was the truth of it all – the average reproductive age found by genetics is 27.5 between generations, because the male still has a duty to pay for a woman in labor. Young guys who can do basic math often turn to free/cheap nude options to avoid getting second jobs. Some have to even give up their pot habits because they want to appear like they spend their money on stock certificates and life insurance.

“I …I was hoping to get a Pell Grant.”

“To date?”

“There’s a kiosk in the quad that says people can get a loan to start dating, otherwise, you might become an engineer, and everyone fights for the same woman at a 10 to 1.”

“Or you can meet your future wife in a bar?”

“That’s gross. I got signed up with City Bank, which is probably not a grant but we are told that the spending will probably be wiped away the next time we get a Democratic President. “

I put the phone closer to the young man.

“So City Bank wants you to categorize your spending, like a business?”

He nodded and then showed me the app.

It was a black screen with a gold border, and each time he spent on Family Planning a large buzzer would go off, a chime really, which sounded very much like winning a slot machine. I asked him to buy the pink-haired girl a cookie and I would pay him back.”

She waved her hands and said she needed soy or tofu only, “Please.”

I couldn’t say what happens when chocolate is replaced by chocolate bi-products. It’s a mystery. The young man bought a soy lecithin, double hydrogenated ‘slockate’ cookie, and the clerk asked if he wanted it warmed up. We turned around to look at the girl. She made the motion in the air “No.” Then she came up to the counter and explained that it was like heating food in plastic. Soy cookies are completely safe for women as long as they are not reheated.

That made sense.

As soon as he scanned his phone, and maxed out the gratuity, the phone began to vibrate and sound like he had hit the largest prize at the Indian Casino. This young man, whose name is Hunter, seemed accidentally happy. So I asked him, “Do you feel better?”

“What?”

“Do you feel better, now, more than five minutes ago?”

He thought about it as I took out ten dollars to pay him back.

“I guess so. Why is that?”

There wasn’t enough time to explain my entire article, how the state was in collusion with the credit card companies, and was taking away reward systems to falsify the social economy. They needed young people to pay for the old people and could no longer rely on immigration alone because so many people wanted to return to the place where they were born. Salmon.

The new flavors at Starbucks included Rhino Horn, Oolong Tea, Espagnol Myiasis and Ectasy. I took a quick picture because there was disbelief that a corporation was using real Rhino Horn instead of the lab-grown variety.

I thanked the young people and walked across the other street to where our Town Council puts up the minutes of their last meeting.

:::: PUBLIC NOTICE ::::

In addition to the reversal on porn beach semi-nudity and surrogate pregnancy – our small California Town was offering thirty percent discount on houses for couples who could stay together for 30 years.

Wow.

(I mean Japan was giving them away for free as well as 3 cities in Greece and Italy) but a million dollar house at $3600/month was pretty decent for a California beach town. We had no jobs outside of bartending, but that wasn’t important.

I looked at the fine print to see if there was a mandatory number of children who must be born? What was the balloon payment? Usually, there is a condition that the house cannot be sold for a profit but must revert to the original price no matter what happens with inflation. This is why we have generations of people still over in Schooner Park who keep taking a class at CSUMB just for the housing option.

Wow.

It was time to get married.

With the new expansion of Accessory Dwelling Units (that is to make your garage into a rental or throw a 10x12 shack in the backyard), I was going to get to stay home and save money. The new computer lines which slept in the household electric network could assign cost to each user, the price of water could be marked by ultraviolet lights (Winchell’s Donuts has been doing it for 30 years), and if a tenant couple was poor enough, there were still some housing vouchers to guarantee a profit.

I immediately put an ad in Craigslist for a wife and soon got back many foreign Letters of Intent. Apparently, California women were still not ready for commitments. Probably take a few weeks after the porn restriction….

[Remember to take a picture if you see this public notice.]

Iliyid wasn’t marriage material because he probably took too many covers, and regulators were on the watch for same-sex marriages ever since that movie Chuck & Larry [spoiler: it was about health insurance]. For me, I chose a marriage partner from a war-torn country, in this case Palestine, so they would not leave me for 30 years because I had no faith in Russia or the Congo being consistent. The most consistently war-raged country is historically Palestine. You want a spouse from a war-torn country so that when they see you left the toilet seat up, they will be happy and think, “It’s better than being bombed at the market.”

Next, I told my new bride that we were going to share the same room because I wanted the other 2 bedrooms to rent along with the garage and the yardspace. As Amira was beyond the age of child-making, she was perfectly fine with a roomshare, and then I filled the house with the most marvelous collection of cooks. Like an international festival every night.

And then I went all Blackrock and used private equity to borrow against the commercial value of the house (which allows an entity to self-sabotage; just a new spin on Gordon Gekko raiding from the 1980s). This means I could make the banks pay me while I lived there, not repay them, abandon the house, divorce Amira by a no-fault 170$ divorce, and start over every 3 months to 3 years. It is best to obtain your State Credits before the next guy finds out how to game the system. Tesla takes all the Canadian Credits because they sold the most cars.

After 7 marriages, usually Palestinians, I had amassed so much offshore, fairly liquid money that I could now enjoy a life of peace and tranquility.

There was no more nude art in California, and the 7 wives didn’t have to consummate anything because California law states that you both have to sign Notices of Intention before touching anyone. This is the reason that divorces are basically the secular way of getting annulled.

It seemed to me that I should be very happy, but instead I found myself following a woman with a large bulbous cyst on her shoulder. She bought a crêpe from the warf and I wanted so much to see what made that marvelous bump.

We are sitting together at the El Torrito, and I can’t even keep the salsa sauce on the chip to bring it to my mouth. Her mystery is so fascinating.