Brock says: After a couple of weeks without, we picked back up on the weekly writing exercise.

Karaoke is over. Nobody is singing because they’re too drunk to work the machine. It is sincerely amazing that they had “Somebody Farted” by Bobby Jimmy and the Critters. People bitch because I don’t sing, but they never have songs that I know. Me and my two best dame friends woulda tore the club a new earhole if they had “Keep It Goin’ Louder” by Major Lazer featuring Nina Skye, because I do an uncanny impression of autotune. Our private room is strewn with emptied Soju bottles and shattered affections. We have one of those in-bred circles of friends that you couldn’t bring a member of the opposite sex to without causing at least a little disappointment, if not full-fledged heartbrokenness. Don’t fuckin’ fret. Those shards would be swept into the bin on the way to the next friend in the circle by next month, if not next week. Jimmy brought Giselle (Jizzelle), so Tina is outdoors smoking a cigarette to stave off panic and keep them out of her eye line for, like, five minutes. She’s thinking desperate thoughts like, “If I don’t mean everything to you, then I might as well mean nothing.” Poor Tina.

I am drunk and wearing my cock on my sleeve, so I address Janelle, the tall blonde with the most beautiful backside I’ve ever ogled. What I like most about her is that when presented with a complimentary rhetorical question, she answers it honestly. “Janelle, you’re smart, you’re funny, you get hotter with age, and not in a desperate housewives kind of way. Why don’t you have a husband?”

“Because I’m smart.”

Her tone of voice lets me down, but not easy. In case you’re wondering, the woman with the best ass on Earth does ride the bus. #sexist She should have an insurance plan for those pistons.

Then I overhear Brock, the author of this bullshit, speaking on the other side of the karaoke room. He doesn’t know how to modulate the volume of his voice, so I have to listen carefully. He says, “You can’t mock the overeager audiences of Inside The Actors Studio. You’ve never been starstruck? I remember how I felt when I saw Connie Britton that time in Whole Foods downtown Austin. She wasn’t even answering James Lipton’s questions, she was buying god knows what in her sweats, with no make-up, and that shit still made my day.”

Which is the eightieth time he’s mentioned seeing Connie Britton in Whole Foods. She must give him a huge boner.

I am up for it and Janelle isn’t, so I turn my eye to raven-haired beauty single mother Linda, put my arm around her shoulder and give her an affectionate squeeze. I knew she’d always wanted to fuck me, so I figure I might as well give her what she wants once in her life. Guess tonight’s the night. She’ll get over it when we don’t get together afterward. She’ll have to, or she’ll have to leave the group, and none of us are ready to go.

I was wrong, it isn’t over. When did Tina get back? She starts singing.

Oh, are you fucking serious? They have “Banana Phone,” but they don’t have “Novocaine For The Soul?!” Fuck this karaoke joint. If we’d gone to a better karaoke bar, Janelle prob’ly woulda gone for it, and fell a mighty boner.