We Are All Going To Die

There is a restaurant on the ocean in Ft. Lauderdale called "The Casablanca." The Moroccan motif, the piano, the craps tables and roulette wheels where no one gambles gives the impression that Sam, Rick, Ilsa, and Captain Renault have died and only their ghosts remain. In their place, however, tourists flourish like fungi, some dressed in fancy clothes while others look as though they were washed in with the tide, sprinkling sand wherever they go from the backs of cheap sandals.

It is a busy place. There is fresh seafood, good wine and live entertainment — tonight in the statuesque form of Lillian Kush and her piano player Morty Fingers. He doesn't play the white piano where Rick hid the letters of transit, or where Sam played "As Time Goes By" for Ilsa. That sits alone by itself. There is hardly a sadder site than an abandoned piano, if you ask me. It isn't the actual piano from the movie, but it is an exact replica, a sign boasts.

Lillian Kush sounds like Celine Dion and sings many of her songs. She just finished a rendition of "My Heart Will Go On," which never fails to nauseate me. But halfway into the song I caught a glimpse of a waitress with stunning hazel eyes and long brown long hair. She was wearing a white sundress and she grinned at me as she passed by. It was a simple courtesy, I was sure, but I was enthralled nonetheless and the fact that I felt anything at all in my slough of despond was remarkable. I've lived in a state of dysthymia for quite a while and it had taken its toll. I used to be a social worker, which desensitized me to nearly everything. How long it had been since I was able to feel anything meaningful.

I didn't know what I would say to her, or if I ever would say anything at all. In a crowded restaurant of hundreds of people, it wasn't likely I'd ever get the chance to speak to her, and if I did, it would be one of those akward moments with seven people standing around assessing your words for relevance to them, or interest. Waiting for a joke so they can laugh, or some scrap of tantalizing gossip. 

She wasn't my waitress. I had a tall, young gay waiter named Alex, who was mishapened and out of shape. He was not obese, but he was lumpy. Like dumplings are lumpy. He was dressed cheaply like a gangster in a rather poor and misunderstood effort to go along with the restaurant's theme. Pinstripes and suspenders and a black derby that was only a tick above the cheap plastic ones they sell in every Halloween shop. I don't care that he is gay. It was only an observation because he was so flamboyant the observation couldn't be helped. Like that of the heterosexual lecherous man in the corner ogling the pretty waitresses and bareskinned wide-eyed tourists as they passed him, as a tiger would a passing heard of unsuspecting deer. He ogled the lounge singer, as well, despite her age, the beauty of her dwindling youth still well upon her. She posed in Playboy in 1988, she said between songs with a wry grin as though inviting everyone to scrutinize her with their curious eyes. Morty Fingers was her husband and tickled the piano keys like a baseball organist to accentuate everything she said. 

But this woman, this waitress, who floated flawlessly across the place as though she were a ghost upon a sea breeze from the obscenely large open oceanfront windows, captivated me. There is hardly a better glue at all for a broken man than the face of a pretty woman. I had never seen anyone quite like her and I was sure before the night was through that I would speak to her. I would find a way. I simply had to if only to alleviate myself of the wonder as to what her voice sounded like. Or to make myself known to her because I couldn't live in a world that she doesn't at least know that I exist. If even just to say hello that would come as quick as the goodbye that would follow. I would probably say some dumb thing that would flutter from my mouth to her ears and die there like a fly on a window sill. But something no less, I needed to say. I would propose to her the possibility of she and I as impossible as it was being that I was a tourist from Ohio and she was a local Floridian not likely to ever trade sunshine and beaches for cold and snow. I couldn't imagine myself living here. But I had no doubt looking at her that I was destined to meet her. That she was why I came, after all. How absurdly sure I was. Confident for no apparent reason. 

The circumstance around me being in Ft. Lauderdale was simply that I booked a vacation with my ex-girlfriend who left me two weeks before, and I forgot to cancel the reservations in time to get a refund. So in an effort not to waste money, or with the thought of finally drowning myself in the ocean in my shame, I came. 

Man eaten by sharks — the headline occured to me. And as I was sitting in the hotel room with the large white bed that was begging to be stained and wrinkled by two filthy tourist lovemakers, of which I was only one half, I got tired of sitting around and took a late evening stroll on the beach, passing lovers and kids chasing each other wildy. And as I was walking, probably a mile or so from the hotel, I saw the shining lights of an oceanfront restaurant from the beach and followed it. "The Casablanca," the bright lights bled out into the night and over me. It was my favorite movie. Perhaps, I thought I'd drink myself to death at the bar, or at least get drunk enough to walk into the ocean and never come back because that is what I felt like doing. 

My ex-girlfriend, Summer, told me she was in love with an obese man — which is simply an observation. It is his most notable feature and the only one worth mentioning at all because everything else about him was dull and grossly mundane. She said she felt he loved her and he was there for her when I was not. The entire thing became my fault in a matter of two sentences. The world sometimes depressed me, but overwhelmingly, I am an absurd optimist. She was natually depressed and smoked marijuana like a fiend so much so that she permanently smelled like a skunk and she dulled her senses to the level of an absolute nitwit. She had always been a notorious chubby chaser, I was simply an exception to her apparently enduring appetite for fat men. I was slim and in shape and had a significant lack of meat on my bones for that voracious man-eater. Besides, she never dated anyone past four years. It was an unofficial expiry and we had just hit the mark.

Never date anyone named after a season. That's what I learned. But this man whose name needs no mention was an inveigler of the worst sort. A sleezy slimball who despite her being in a relationship for years, weaseled his way into her life like a fat fox into the henhouse. His face burnt in effigy in my frontal cortex from when I met him at a work Christmas party the year before when I thought he was perhaps gay, or simply no threat to our relationship. And in my mind he has been drawn and quartered, hung, burned at the stake, beheaded, electrocuted, shot, tarred and feathered, but he never goes away. His fat face and goatee, which makes his mouth look like a hairy little asshole, linger there. 

The trip to Ft. Lauderdale was my way of trying to spend time with her. Salvage the irreparable relationship. Breathe life into death. How foolish we are to think we can save things when they're gone, I realize now. We had great sex, but little else, according to her. But it still, at the time, seemed salvageable and I wanted to show her I cared more for her than my business, and that despite my occasional melancholy over the state of the world, I loved her. But now that I know who she really was, the love left me, and there is a hole where it once was that I cannot possibly fill with alcohol, though I try. 

I had made a concerted effort. That much cannot be denied. But she simply did not want to admit that it was her and not me. And so it was me. Although I had not slept with anyone else as she had, over and over, it was my fault for "letting her go." There was no trial. It was determined without judge or jury or deliberations, and whether there was a verdict or not, it was rendered not in my favor. Because I didn't show her enough affection. Not enough dates. I didn't give her enough of my time. 

I sat at the bar after my dinner thinking of all these things. Imagining his sweaty ugly rumpus bobbing up and down between her mishapened hips and candlestick legs, dipping his little wick where I once pleasured. Riding her like a miniature pony. Like a doof of a walrus all over some fake zoo rock he humps and humps until he ejacualtes with a bellowing exhausted groan in front of an audience of amused children who catch whiffs of his fish breath. I harpooned him to no avail. He dove back under my subconscious to resurface later. He was still there and I was still here. 

Alex, the gay waiter, was happy I ate and paid so quickly because turnover is everything to waiters and waitresses. That's all he cared about. That and gratuity. I didn't linger and stew. One more drink and I might have told him the whole damn thing, but he didn't want to hear it and I didnt want to tell him. If they don't turn tables, they don't make money. I tipped him too well and found a spot at the bar which was adorned with ornate tiles that went well with the camel-colored stucco walls. The pretty bartender, Christine, greeted me with a smile and quickly poured my drink saying it was on the house. It was then that I caught another glimpse of the beautiful floating waitress that had caught my eye earlier. I was happy I hadn't simply imagined her. I was happy she existed. 

What a terrible name for the place, I considered. It should be called Rick's American Café, as it was in the movie. Lillian Kush sung a rendition of "Time is On My Side" by the Rolling Stones after doing "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon. Then she did "Always on My Mind" and I wanted to throw a brick at her face. She was getting kind of sloppy and appeared drunk. She nearly fell, and Morty kept playing rather than trying to catch her. He didn't seem surprised or concerned. I assume he's seen it all. 

Time, I considered. How everyone bemoans time. Cries about it like spoiled children when it's time to go home from the playground. But time is beautiful as it is. Aging is beautiful. If we didn't age, there would be nothing to appreciate. If time stood still, nothing would ever happen and life would be a vast state of nothingness. If it went slower, we wouldn't value it because we do not value anything we have in abundance or anything we have for too long. Everyone complains when things seem slow or are boring. I think of the time I had with Summer. Then Lillian Kush sang "Summer Wind" as if she knew, and I wanted to throw her into a wood chipper.

What a dope I was to believe Summer could ever be better than she was when I met her. That she would improve with age and not disintegrate further. That the thousand men she talked to on Facebook were all figments of my imagination, or would simply become ghosts. That the sugar baby website she was on was simply a mistake. The hundreds of dollars sent to her were innocent tips for nothing. That she wasn't as crazy as I thought. That all the nude photos she sent to random people meant nothing at all. But somehow it was all my fault.

How fragile and ephermal relationships are, I considered. Gone in the blink of an eye. People leave. They move on. Forget so-and-so ever existed. They leave when they get bored. Only to get bored of the next person just the same because nothing ever sticks. Then they get older and settle because the game of musical chairs catches up to them or the music stops playing as their looks fade and their options dwindle. I suppose I share some guilt. There was something I did or didn't do that I forget now which adversely affected our relationship. I never held her accountable for her indiscretions because it was foreign to me. I was forgiving her more and more with every drink. I was letting her go. It is quite remarkable how wonderful I am at letting go. Saying goodbye. I resisted the urge to text her. I deleted our conversations after I changed her contact information from Summer to Slutzilla to Skankopotamus.

I bellied up to the bar to order another drink when the TV above the bar began to squall like a boiled goose, or as though it had a mind of its own, or was hijacked by rather erudite anonymous terrorists. Then every cellphone began to cry in coordination with the TV. There was a news man on the screen, someone I've never seen before, saying that there was an emergency of the highest priority. Then he promptly introduced the President of the United States, who announced that there was an asteroid on its way to Earth at a rapid rate of speed that would make impact within two hours. He looked like hell. He encouraged everyone to keep calm and to drive inland as far as they can go because they expected there would be cataclysmic tsunamis all along the western and eastern seaboards as a result of the asteroid's impact with Earth. It was projected to hit somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, but that was simply a projection. It could land on someone's lap for all they knew.

I didn't flinch. The screams were instantaneous as people thought of loved ones at home, but mostly of themselves. I guess you never really know how you're going to act until the time comes. I've always felt like a pig going to slaughter in a world full of fat gluttonous assholes. It is all silly, really. Silly to be preoccupied with death. We are all going to die. We were born to die. It was bound to come sooner or later, I thought. I no longer felt suicidal. I was alright with how things shook out with Summer. I wasn't even drunk. 

Christine, whose beauty was worth mentioning had I ample time, jokingly called "Last call!" She rang the bell on the bar and then disappeared, not waiting for anyone to actually order anything. No one did anyway. I think she was on some sort of drugs, but she grabbed the tip jar and vanished. Everyone scrambled to get out of the restaurant leaving checks unpaid and jackets slung over the backs of chairs, that sort of thing. Alex akwardly stumbled for the door and was pushed over and trampled a bit before he finally got to his feet and slithered out, bruised and battered. Morty calmly stopped playing the piano. Lillian dropped the microphone which rolled around and was trampled and kicked so the soundtrack of people's panicked feet was amplified on the speakers until the microphone disappeared under a table, spinning like a bottle. 

There was a terrible rush to get to the door as though through that door there was hope. And so like rats through a crack in the wall of a burning building they ran, pushing and trampling one another. The president continued on TV, but no one was listening to him anymore besides me. He was telling everyone what to do. Saying they were going to attempt a one-in-a-million missile strike. Saying it has been an honor to serve. Talking about God. The usual things one might speak of when faced with unparalleled cataclysmic doom. 

I sat at the bar that was absent patrons, absent a bartender, who wouldn't go down with her bar, with the bottles of every persuasion of drink standing like beefeaters steadfast in the face of the apocolypse and listened to the president talk until people ushered him out in a chaotic scene. The camera cut its feed and the newsman came back on the screen defiantly saying he wasn't leaving. He was staying on because he wanted to be there to comfort anyone who should need it. He, in the moment, became the TV. He eclipsed every other newscaster that had ever been with this heroic gesture. He had nice teeth. He had a kind face. Not particularly handsome or special in sort of way. But pleasant. Soothing. He looked fatherly and sincere. He looked like a tray of freshly baked brownies.

Suddenly time was up. Maybe it was pissed off the way people whine about it. The way they complain that there isn't enough of it, and so it packed its fucking bags and got out. It divorced reality. It didn't seem logical to me that an asteroid as big as they said it was, the size of the state of Texas, would hit Earth and everything would be okay as long as you made it inland a few hundred miles. I believe, having heard the president nearly sobbing, that it was far worse than he claimed and that they didn't expect anyone to actually survive. He was screaming something as they dragged him away. He yelled "goddammit" followed by various first names of Secret Service agents more than once. And this brave newscaster, Paul I. Waters, if his name is worth mentioning, seemed rather grim, and the fact that he didn't flee the coastal New York studio was portentous to me, as well. He seemed like a man that was brave in the face of death. The camera man, of course, gets no credit. So it goes. 

I reached across the bar and poured myself another beer from the draft and then thought to drink something other than beer, circumstances being as they are. Something fancier. Champagne, perhaps. Why not champagne? What a grand occasion! This was the greatest thing that has ever happened to me for at least I stopped thinking about my ex-girlfriend and her whale of a boyfriend for a while. It was as though he swallowed her and I was Captain Ahab. He was probably somewhere hitting her the way the asteroid would soon hit earth. Then my phone buzzed as though I had evoked her. Skankopotamus, it read. I didn't read the mesage for while. I let it linger. 

"I love you," it read ten seconds later. 

I didn't reply. I left her on read as though that would fix her. 

Then Paul I. Waters announced NASA had named the asteroid JERR-E. It was an acronym for something. But they called it Jerry of all things. 

"Sonofabitch," I groused to myself. 

Jerry was his name. My ex-girlfriend's corpulent lover. Jerry Smallwood. 

But I could finally sleep if there was time to sleep since I felt a sense of closure. It is why people kill their exes and go to prison. So they can sleep. It would all be over soon. The anchorman wished everyone the best of luck and said something about "Godspeed" or "may God protect us all" as he cut to commercial. Just in case the asteroid hit during the commercial break. Suddenly, he and billions of other people were religious. 

I was baffled by the need for a commercial break in the moment. It is so ingrained into our vacuous brains to consume, even as the world is about to end they are still running commercials for happy pills and diapers and Wal-Mart with biracial couples and models with plotchy skin and an abundnace of adipose tissue to normalize fat and consumption and depravity. There are probably still McDonalds that are open, employers who are making people work overtime, people ordering things off Amazon, BOGO deals, and surely there is some car dealership offering discounts for their first annual "asteroid sales event."

I  am not sure how the God thing works, either. But add that to my list of confusions. Why in times of calamity do people flock to a God they've ignored or ridiculed in better times? How or why people would be praying to God was beyond me. I certainly wasn't. If God was hurling a rock the size of Texas towards Earth, it is unlikely he seeks to protect us. It seems likely he himself had thrown the rock. Probably sick of our cultural degeneration, or due to people who say "men can have babies." Maybe it is our obtuse feigned sympathy for drug addicts who overdose, or our insistence to kill babies until birth as a matter of convenience. Maybe he just doesn't like gay sex, or endless wars, or orgies, or bad pop music. I don't know. Whatever it is, he either hurled the rock or isn't doing anything to stop it. 

Scientists conclude that impact is inevitable, and in less than two hours humanity as we knew it would no longer be the same. It's hard to say if we can survive as a species, they concur. But what we can do is do what we can do to make survival possible. Survival. It is a strange word. One that humans so rarely have had to consider. The dinosaurs were in this same predicament. I am sure they handled it with more class and without commericals for things they don't need or can't afford. Oh, well, belched an indifferent T-Rex. So it goes. 

I heard it all before. Just a few years ago, which still hangs over me like a pernicious and noxious cloud. Wear a mask. Get a shot. Save a life. Survival. It turned out the virus was created in a lab by the same people who later told everyone to get the shot. Companies made billions of dollars. Tax payers lost billions of dollars. There was an aging problem in the world. An overpopulation problem. Well, not anymore. The asteroid will take care of all that for us. But unfortunatley for capitalism and the billionaire class, there isn't time to market it. No time to print off t-shirts or to sell asteroid survival kits. I wondered what new species would emerge from the ruin being that we were much different than our dinosaur predecessors. I wondered if they would use our decayed corpses as fuel. Erect our bones in museums for class field trips. Have their own Jesus. Lizards, I bet. I bet they will be lizards. There will be a Jesus lizard. 

I decided to drink a martini instead of champagne because champagne gives me a headache and I realized I never had a martini, so I looked up the ingredients on my phone. Then there was a voice from the end of the bar. In the shadows. Meekly she said, "One part dry vermouth, six parts gin."

I didn't realize at first that her voice wasn't meek at all. It was distracted. It was demure. It was reluctant, perturbed, betrayed, angry, yet resigned. I didn't know that until I saw her face. The gloom cast over it. The sadness of her pallor. The forsaken sunken yet beautiful eyes. The depression that seemed to radiate from her pores and make me want to passionately kiss the life back into her face. Under no normal circumstance would I think that I had a chance to be with her in any way. But these weren't normal circumstances we found ourselves in. Her bottom lip protruded and her cheeks sagged hopelessly like a child's with the vestiges of babyfat still evident.

She was the girl. The waitress I had seen before but in passing. And at a closer range, she was even more beautiful than she was walking by at a distance. We were the only two people left in the restaurant. And it was as though we were the only two people left in the world. We both sat at the bar and looked out the large open windows to the black night. The ocean lied to us with its mellifluous chorus of deceiving waves. The soft lapping followed by the placid swish of its gradual receding. In a matter of hours, when Jerry hit, when his flabby yet rocky buttocks slapped between the shores of a whore Earth, the ocean would swell and wipe everything out, possibly creating a Waterworld situation Paul I. Waters, the fearless anchorman hypothesized solemnly on the TV. He was back. The commercials were over. 

"My name is Victor. Victor Lazlo," I lied.

She looked at me and smiled. Of course it wasn't my real name. It was Ilsa's inconvenient husband's name from Casablanca, the brave resistance fighter whose time in a concentration camp allowed for Rick and Ilsa to have their ill-fated affair. She thought he was dead. She longed for love. But the girl didn't know that because she had never seen the movie. It was the end of the world. Too late to watch it now. Too late to explain it. And what did it matter if she knew my real name or not or the plot of an 80 year-old movie?

"I am Kat Monroe. But you can call me Kitty." I realized then that maybe she had seen the movie after all, and maybe she made up a name for herself, too, all in good fun. No one's name is Kitty Monroe. Not even a stripper would name her child that. But what did it matter? In a few hours we would drown and be fish food. When the ocean finally waged a successful overthrow of land, all these years futiley lapping, sparring, defeated again and again. It's time had finally come. Neptune raised his mighty trident to rally the sea.

We certainly had a right to be different people, under the circumstance. To have a little fun. I poured her a Vodka as though I was her bartender and she invited me to come sit beside her so not to be alone, though she said she didn't want to talk about it. The "it" I understood to be the asteroid. But she talked about it anyway. I didn't ask her why she stayed rather than fleeing with everyone else in the world. She told me without asking. 

"My boyfriend was supposed to come pick me up. But I guess he left without me. I guess you never know who people are until the time comes. Before then they are just a pile of words and empty promises. But when the shit hits the fan, that's when you know. We were together for a year, but I was just wasting time with him. I guess I knew. He bought me things, but there wasn't anything really ever there. I tried to text him, but he didn't reply. I didn't drive to work so I had no car. He borrowed mine. Anyway, I figured what the hell. What's the point of running from something that is destined to happen?"

I cheered to that. Our glasses clanged. I couldn't have said it better myself. I never expected her to be so profound. In my experience, most beautiful women are not. They are like trained seals. Either purposely or naturally dimwitted. As though they feel being intelligent would somehow dull the luster of their beauty. We drank and talked. Neither of us were nervous in meeting someone new, which I suppose was due to the remarkable circumstance in which we met. A gentle breeze blew in as though to assure us of our place in the universe. Like a doctor appeasing us, telling us the shot isn't going to hurt, though it will.  

"Isn't it great," I marveled. "Just think of all the drug addicts that will be instantly cured of their addiction. All the criminals that will no longer commit crimes. All the cheaters that will no longer cheat. All the kids that won't grow up to become terrible people. The pain and suffering that will end or never happen. People with terminal illnesses who no longer will suffer them. Surely, someone out there has to take an exam tomorrow that they haven't studied for. Not anymore. People who got life in prison for crimes they did or did not commit suddenly will not have to serve another night in prison. Think of all the garbage makers that will no longer make garbage. No more animals will be slaughtered and suffer for gluttonous devils. No more death or destruction. No more terrorism or rape or incest or manipulation. And all the broken-hearted people will no longer suffer a broken heart. It is quite magnificent! There has never been a time when we were all so equal."

"Victor, you might be the most optimistic person I've ever met," she remarked. 

"Maybe so. I don't know. I always liked it when it rained, if that says anything. By the way, my name isn't Victor. It is Pete. Peter Holland.

"Pete. Peter Holland," she repeated as though contemplating it on a wedding invitation. 

"My name is actually Calla. Calla Holland sounds nice. Do you suppose we have time to marry?" 

"Anything is possible. Though finding a reverend under the circumstance might prove difficult," I answered.

"I don't understand why the religious people ran. Isn't this the moment they've been waiting for?"

"You might think. But I suppose they've suddenly developed some doubt. Survival is inate and greater than their faith."

"Hmm," she pondered.   

She asked me to turn off the TV so we could enjoy the moment and so I did. Goodbye, Paul I. Waters. You are a brave soul. Surely, the lizard people if they know of your bravery ought to give you a posthumous honor. Like a reptilian Pulitzer. May your face live on in effigy. A bronze bust on the grand lizard king's desk, perhaps. 

Skankopotamus texted me again. This time saying, "Nothing???" 

No. Nothing, my dear. I didn't reply. I, of course, still loved her. It isn't a switch for me that can be turned on and off as it is for other people. Rather, they never really love at all and just say that they do because it is what people say because they want to feel it, or they're supposed to feel it, or because they greedily want it returned without themselves being so emotionally invested to give it. I sold my soul for her and I hadn't a spare. No time to shop or salvage one. I felt raw and ruined. Vulnerable and lost. But all things heal in time. And in time I will be grateful that we are not together because she was, after all, a mortifying slut. 

But there was no time. I turned my phone off and something changed in me. Maybe it was acceptance. Maybe I realized I didn't love her anymore. There wasn't anyone in the world that had anything I wanted to hear and there was nothing I wanted to say. My brother messaged before I shut it down and told me to ask Jesus for forgiveness. I suppose he thought Jesus was riding Jerry the asteroid bareback, smoking a cigarette and wildly waving a cowboy hat in the air. 

"YOU GOT TO BE SAVED!" my brother plead. He watched too many religious movies. He tried his best to look like Kevin Sorbo. 

I didn't reply. The screen went black. I would think Jesus would think it a bit facetious of me to beg now for forgiveness, under the circumstances. I have a hard time believing that suddenly, in the face of death, just to be sure, just in case, that Jesus would be forgiving of my sins, however paltry. I would think that to be so insincere and fake would do the opposite in his eyes. That perhaps he loathed hypocrites, which might be why he was hurling this rock at us. And if there is a kingdom of Heaven made up of such people who only begged for forgiveness when the time came to beg, I don't want to be there because it sounds too much like Earth, or catholic church, or Applebee's. 

Calla and I talked. I couldn't bring myself to call her Kat or Kitty. I asked if she would like to walk the beach with me. She agreed with a smile that pleasantly surprised me. A smile that for an instant made me forget about our impending doom and my broken heart, which we were both handling with grace and unparralled calm. I told her how I would change the name of the restaurant to Rick's American Café if I could because The Casablanca was awful. But I found it to be silly to complain of anything with so little time left, so I spent the next hour complimenting her on her exquisite beauty which took no effort because she was truly and naturally stunning. 

We took our shoes off and threw them as far as we could into the ocean, laughing as we did. What did it matter how much they cost or how we would walk back. We wouldn't. Soon we would be part of the sea. We all would. An entire civilization of dunces under water. Then as we stepped onto the sand, she reached over and grabbed my hand, unexpectedly. I could feel the tenderness of her soul surrender in my palm. The way she gave herself in that moment to me, relinquished herself without hesitation, was something I'd never experienced before. People don't give themselves to other people wholly, I realized suddenly. We borrow and are borrowed. We are lenders and renters. It is all with the disclaimer of "for now." Happily ever after*. Through sickness and in health*. Until death do we part*. I love you forever*. For now. For now. For now. 

But with Calla, there was no asterisk and it was more than for now. Not because it was all about to end and we were all going to die. But because she was my person, and I was hers, and this cataclysmic event brought us together. It was appropriate in how extraordinary our burgeoning love was that we would meet under the most dire of circumstances and burn like the asteroid that will end us will burn upon entering Earth's atmosphere until it crashes into the ocean at an imperceptible rate of speed with a force equal to a 10,000 nuclear bombs. I told her and she smiled and burrowed into me as we sat on the sand, the waves licking our barefeet, tasting us before to swallow us. 

"I knew I loved you whenever I saw you," she admitted to me as I held her. "I can afford to be so bold now. There is no consequence or risk of embarrassment. I've been waiting my whole life for someone to look at me the way you did. Not in a lurid way. Not like I was some sort of toy or product to be used. But in a way that made me feel like I was the most beautiful woman in the room and that you'd rather look at me than anyone else. Is that a bit presumptious or misguided of me to think so?"

"No. That is how I feel. And not just in the room. In the world."

"And to feel that look in return," she went on. "To look at you as I did. Did you notice? I told Christine I was in love and pointed you out. She didn't understand, but she knew. I wish she was here to confirm it so you know I'm telling you the truth."

"I needn't any proof. The proof is in your eyes. Your words find a home in me."

"So when my boyfriend didn't come to get me, which I knew he wouldn't, I was relieved. I was worried of the paradox of choice. Survival or love? The choice was made for me. Christine offered to give me a ride as well. But when I saw you sitting there, alone, I knew my place was with you. I'm tired of running, Pete. Of masking. Of getting shots and hiding and being with fake people and saying the right things or worrying who I might offend. Fuck them. Fuck them all. Look at them now. Running like rats. Maybe I am just tired of living a boring life with boring love and boring music in this trash heap we call society that progressively gets worse because everyone is afraid to actually make it better."

I knew in that instant that she was my soulmate. She was intelligent and beautiful and thoughtful. She was more than a pretty face and I couldn't imagine her cheapening herself, or desperately begging for attention from random men because she was insecure and puerile. 

I wasn't going to waste what time we had wishing for more. I kissed her there on the beach, which would be extraordinarily romantic under any circumsutance, but given the moment it was augmented tenfold. And then we were consumed in a conflagration of passion that was enriched by our desperation to live and to endure, but also by our acceptance of our fate. To be human and to make mistakes. To worship false religions in a desperate search of purpose. To not live up to some infallible ideal. To question science and God, and to have doubt. To not believe anything blindly, but to have faith. To have emotions, and to sometimes be wrong and be able to admit it, or sad for no reason, or happy for no reason. To laugh and to cry in equal measure. To love and hate as well. To loathe and to sin. To admire and repent. Because there is value in everything and every emotion. And there is value in everyone, even the terrible ones you meet along the way who steal your time and cheat you. They make the good ones all that much better. 

She was my last meal. I've not experienced anything as intense in my life. The pleasure was so great it spilled over into another time and our love-making mimicked the ebb and flow of the ocean. We scooted back a few times. I picked her up and carried her to dry sand and plopped down on top of her. We made love like crabs. I threw her down and she rolled over and buried her hands and knees into the sand an dipped her back and pushed her ass up, using my jacket as a pillow for her beautiful face that turned to look back at me as I grabbed her hips and thrust again inside of her, trying desperately to beat Jerry before he hit Earth. Maybe, this is how we'd go out. With me balls deep inside her. So be it. 

All bad thoughts left me there as though this were some sort of ritualistic exorcism. I owed it to Summer, the Skankopotamus. I owed it to Jerry, the blimp. Because without them and their seedy affair, I wouldn't be here in this perfect moment with the love of my life. I told her it was all worth it just to meet her. The end of the world was worth it. She cooed and awed before I put my hand on her throat and choked her, doubling-down, slamming her home like a hurricane. 

I was sore and she was sore, but it was even better sore and we were both insatiable, invigorated by the end of the world enthusiasm that coursed through our veins. I couldn't stop making love to her and she refused to relent, as well. We were both out of breath and beat up when she insisted to get on top, confessing that she was not on birth control but that it hardly mattered. And then she grabbed my penis like a handlegrip and slipped on top, slid across my glazed lap, soaked through, disemboguing, gushing like a geyser, pushing down on it like God was somewhere pushing down on the doomsday button with a long finger, releasing the rock to destroy his failed creation. He promised not to flood it, but he never promised not to stone it. And in that instant, as she milked my nearly dehydrated middle leg for another squirt, riding me like a department store horse with a fistful of quarters, I saw it. My God, I saw it!

A beautiful stain of light in the dark of night that slowly got larger and larger. It was gold and then white. Pure white like I had never before seen. She came again and I pulled her down next to me so she could see, this beautiful yet disastrous divine coup de grâce. This is what it means to live and love without an asterisk.

"Oh my God!" she whimpered. "Here it comes, Pete!" She must have seen me smiling. I caught her stunned face out of the corner of my eye and she must have thought I was a lunatic. Maybe I was. There we lied naked like two fucked-out beached dolphins, our skin aglow in the moonlight, a moon that looked on with indifference like the cold monocled eye of an old aloof billionaire. I suppose all those rich folks found a ride to space or were up in their linear jets doing coke and underage kids looking down upon as all, postponing their fate. I suppose they got a real view of the big show. 

"Isn't it beautiful," I admired as the golden flower of its flames bled like the burgeoning crimson of a gunshot wound through a clean white shirt. I held her hand as we lied there waiting, completely naked and relaxed. I looked over at her as the asteroid grew larger. There was nothing we could do but watch. No where to go, even if we wanted to. But then, as I oozed out of her into the sand and my membrum virile did its Jeckyl and Hyde act back to Dr. Jeckyl, as she squeezed my arm, held on to me in a final embrace, it came like a knuckleball. And then an armada of missiles torched through the black of night and missed it by what appeared to be a fraction of an inch, though more likely it was miles. 

But then out of nowhere a lone missile slammed the asteroid and it disintegrated above us in the loudest and most impressive fireworks show I've ever seen in my life. The threat was neutralized by a one-in-a-million shot and mineral-rich fragments of rock showered the Earth and it was gone. Waves crashed over us but receeded. Neptune was turned back once more. The threat was over. If there had been people around, there would have been a large racous uproar of cheering. Like New Year's Eve every year when the ball drops. But I was happy there was not. I was happy we were alone. I was stunned without words. Unable to say a word. Unsure of how I felt because I was so deep in acceptance. Calla turned her head and smiled at me, biting her bottom lip.  

"If it is a boy, we will name him Victor Lazlo," she said rubbing her stomach. 

I smiled back. It turned out that every missile fired at the asteroid missed. Every US, British, German, Chinese, Russian and Indian missile were off course. All but the one fired by the madman affectionately known as "Rocket Man." Kim Jong Un, dictator of North Korea, had saved the world. And "Rocket Man" t-shirts with his face on them became the hottest selling t-shirts in internet history. He won the Nobel Peace Prize and married Britney Spears — a match made in heaven. 

Calla and I married on that same Ft. Lauderdale beach exactly one year later, with the lights of The Casbalanca glowing behind us like an oasis, and baby Victor Lazlo cooing at the stars.