bacon grief by Joel Shoemaker

Author:Joel Shoemaker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indie Author Project
Published: 2022-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

I don’t want to mislead. I truly am a simple person. But it’s not always the crackers68 that get me.

Today, Mrs. S promises chocolate chip cookies and she delivers, as I knew she would, with the nearest bakery’s finest confections. They’re a dream. They’re one of those not too crunchy, not burnt, but not too soft, and also no nuts because this is not intended to be some kind of tragic cry-fest, and, we want readers with allergies involved, and well, basically, we can simply say that these are the kinds of cookies Jesus provides in the afterlife69. I assume. The Book doesn’t say, insofar as I am aware.

Anyway, he doesn’t even like chocolate chip cookies, he says. And I tell him, this is why this arrangement works because I’ll eat yours. I’ll make the necessary sacrifices. This is something that I can do.

Here we are at the pre-audition workshop. Here, laid out in front of us all, are sides of music and pieces of dialogue from the show. He looks horrified. It’s understandable. I’m making him do all of this, only, I'm not actually making him do any of this. Of course I’m not. He wants to be here. Cookie or no cookie. He looks, I dunno, happy. Subsequently, I’m happy. For me, it’s the cookie but it’s also, undeniably him.

“EVERYBODY ONSTAGE NOW70!”

And then there’s this massive rush of people finishing cookies and making lines onstage, and it’s our own version of a cattle call only a terribly organized one, like one in which the bovines probably stampede all over each other and not in some cool, Riverdance-meets-Rockette sort of way, and, anyway, Mrs. S just keeps shouting and no one knows what to do and we’re all running around and I’m holding someone’s hand.

I’m holding his hand. BUT ONLY BECAUSE HE NEEDS TO KNOW WHERE TO GO.

Um. Obviously.

He stops and he looks at me and he shakes his head and he forces his hand out of mine and he runs off. Offstage left, for the record.

And he’s just, gone, like some kind of horrible magic trick. Only one in which the magician has moved the curtain or opened the door or lifted the lid two or three times looking for the assistant to reappear after a fabulous surprise costume change only they don’t. He doesn’t.

He never comes back.

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