The one thing I could always do, the one talent I could always fall back on, ever since I discovered it at nine years old with a half-rack of Schlitz in my grandfather's basement, was that I could drink like a son-of-a-bitch. I could hold my weight in wine, I could ingest my height in beer. I could stay awake for thirty-nine hours and be continually drunk. I could drink, puke and die, then roll over to do it again the next day. But this talent never really came in handy until after the apocalypse. Now in this heaven-forsaken time of human suffering I thank God every day, drunkenly, cursing up at the sky and yelling my slobbering praise for the hold of my alcohol, all the while the world continues going to shit. And since I work for a traveling comedy troupe, it's good to have such clear insight into contemporary life.
So this day like almost all others I'm loaded, and sitting around watching the bottom left corner of an old eighty-seven inch television. Giant and flat and turned on its end, the far side is jutting up to the ceiling and thin cracks run along its surface. Only fourteen inches of the whole goddamn thing can we get to work, me and my partner Pokey. We're sitting on the up-turned bottoms of two plastic five-gallon buckets with cushions strapped down. We're drinking liquor made from fermented raisins and rotten apples while watching hip-hop videos from nineteen ninety-seven on this small fourteen inches of pleasure. Our bit comes on in about ten minutes. We're trying to get drunk and jubilant enough for it. Mary, the pratfall mime from act 3 comes in to bother us, as is routine.
"How can you two watch this shit? That flaunted decadence is exactly what got us into the position we're in today! Ostentatious! Ridiculous! Crap!"
"Shut up," we say in near unison, trying to concentrate.
It's quiet for a moment and we just sit there slugging away, as she stands over our shoulders, all of us for a time watching the large-breasted women gyrate their beautiful clean skin all over the rapping and bejewelled ghetto adonis.
"Those tits are so fake."
"SHUT UP!"
There's one thing people still need when everything else is down, almost more than the dire daily need of food. That's entertainment. And that is why I got into this job, because me, I need more than just food. I need liquor, and that costs more to make and buy and consume than just regular living, which is fucking damn hard enough. You're rich if you have a full-body lead blanket to sleep under at night. I don't, but I have a chain mail shirt. I'm always wearing that, except when Pokey strips it off my limp passed-out carcass and I have to coerce/beg/steal it back. He can be a real jerk about it sometimes.
"Two minutes, Casablanca!" the stage manager shouts at us. That's our show tonight, Casablanca highlights, and I'll be the one in 40's drag. I play a decent Bergman, but I prefer Louie, the clever, womanizing, self-interested Prefect of Police. He's the only one whose motivations make any sense.
"Damn it! Have you seen the Fedora?" Pokey asks frantically, searching around through the piles of ratty costumes.
"No, no, it's Blanca tonight, not Falcon!"
"Oh.... oh yeah. Those raisins make some decent shit, eh? High sugar, good liqs. I'm totally swimming. But weren't we going to start doing Star Wars again?"
"Naw."
People can still watch these films, it's not like they've been destroyed. At least if they can find enough electricity to power a panel. But for some reason they love to watch us act them out. Probably because we do it completely smashed, stumbling, falling, and on occasion fighting each other or puking on stage. That kind of stuff gets a big response. People love making fun of the rich past, it's the only way to deal with it.
