Today they'll use the "Young/Old Cop" routine to interrogate you.

You're sitting in the interrogation room of the police station. It's exactly what you thought it would be like, after a lifetime of watching movies and TV. You're still dressed in your work clothes, sitting in a hard plastic chair pulled up to a stainless steel desk. The one-way mirror continuously draws your attention away from the two policemen in the room with you, but you force your attention back and look them over again.

The policeman standing up with his arms crossed and brow furrowed looks to be in his early thirties. He occasionally paces around in stark contrast to his partner, an older cop with sweat stains dotting his uniform who sits partially slumped in another chair near the single door. Young Cop scrutinizes you while Old Cop distractedly brushes imaginary dust off of his pants leg.

Suddenly Young Cop lunges forward, planting his hands on the table in front of you with a slight whack sound that is quickly swallowed by the claustrophobic room you sit in. They're going to try to get you to talk.

Young Cop: "Confess, Tough Guy! We both know damn well you did it, and when I put you away I'll be doing this city a favor."

Old Cop: "Even if we do put 'em away, there's fifteen more just like 'em waitin' in line. I seen it again and again. After every bad guy, there's even worse guys waiting."

Young Cop: "Don't listen to him, Tough Guy. Getting scum like you off these streets will make the city a better place, it'll make a difference. Now, confess!"

Old Cop: "Confess if y'want." He sighs. "Go free if y'want. It ain't gonna matter. This city gets worse every single day. When I joined the force I had hope, I wanted to clean up these grimy streets.  But blood don't wash off concrete so easy..."

Young Cop: "Stop it! Look Tough Guy, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. I got a wife and a kid at home, with another one on the way. When I get you behind bars, I'll be providing a better life for them."

Old Cop: "I wanted a family once. I coulda had one. In fact, I was even engaged once...a pretty young gal, thought I was the greatest...for a time. She weren't no fool, though. She knew I was married to the force. When it all fell apart, I thought even though we wasn't gettin' married I could at least do right by her by makin' the city she lived in a safer place."

Young Cop: "Do you hear that, Tough Guy? Do you? This man here chose the job because putting trash like you away where you can't corrupt decent folk is that important. Confess!"

Old Cop: "She was murdered the day before our wedding. Killer never was found, neither. If only I'd known how pointless it all is I woulda put this place in my rearview mirror and married her somewhere quieter. Ain't never gonna know now if I coulda just maybe had one year of blissful love instead of chasin' scumbags and dopeheads like some impotent old bull."

Young Cop: "God damn it dude you are so totally not helping!"

Old Cop: "I'm too old to help. It ain't no good to no one. Too old to play the good guy and pretend that chasin' down the bad guys is anything more 'n a game. No matter how hard I fought crime, they still got her. They killed her."

Young Cop: "But I still have so much time, I know I can do better! Maybe I can help restore this city for the better so my wife and children will be safe in their beds at night! If I can just get Tough Guy here to confess, then in some way your fiance's death wouldn't have been for nothing!"

Old Cop: "It was for nuthin'. All of it were for nuthin'."

BLAM!

The gunshot is deafening in the enclosed space. The old cop sitting across from you drew his sidearm and pulled the trigger with his lips around the barrel without another word.

Young Cop: "Noooooo!"

Your ears are ringing and the room is spinning, Young Cop is frantically attempting CPR on the limp body of Old Cop as your vision blurs with tears, but it's too late. You feel your head violently rocking back and forth and realize Young Cop's face is now inches from yours and seething with rage. His blood-streaked hands clench your lapels and flecks of spit hit your skin as he screams in your face.

Young Cop: "DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU DID!? LOOK AT WHAT YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR! BIG TOUGH GUY LIKE YOU BROKE HIS SPIRIT AND IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU. HIS DEATH IS ON YOUR HANDS! CAN YOU LIVE WITH THAT!? CAN YOU!?"

You can't. You just know you can't, it's too much. You break down and you spill everything. You tell Young Cop the truth. You rigged your cable box to get Cinemax for free. You just wanted to see the new hot season of the UK-based spy drama Hunted, may God have mercy on your soul.

Young Cop: "Ha! Works every time. Boys, call the morgue. And while you're at it, get this sorry excuse for a human being out of my sight and book his criminal ass. I'm outta here...I've got a city to protect."

Today, the Museum learns who fornicated Wax Patrick Stewart.

Say you didn't make it so.

You're standing in a neat line with the rest of your co-workers at the Wax Museum. The Museum air is frigidly cold, the thermostat being kept always at an arctic 67° due to the paranoid obsessive-compulsive command Hugo desperately maintains, despite the sculptor's assurance that the figures wouldn't melt below 99°. 

Hugo, the museum director, is pacing the front of the staff room with tiny quick steps, clearly trying (and failing) to contain his own impotent rendition of anger.

“These wax figures TRUST us,” Hugo explains, finally breaking the silence. “They trust us to care for them, just as the respected public figures who lent their likeness to these wax figures trust us to not use their likeness for anything but to give the public an afternoon of diverting, slightly eerie entertainment.”

Hugo has clasped his sweaty hands behind his back, and tries to create what you're sure he feels is a suspenseful silence. Standing next to you, Eric covers his mouth and fakes a yawn in order to toss back an indeterminate number of percocet. He stiffens as Hugo resumes his address with a theatrical shaking of his head.

“Do any of you know what nearly every celebrity asks before giving their consent to add their wax replica to our museum? 

Janet opens her mouth to reply, only to be interrupted when Hugo whirls around to answer his own question.

"They ask," He wails. "HOW DO I KNOW THAT YOU'RE NOT JUST GOING TO HAVE SEX WITH IT?"

Some of the staffers drop their heads in shame. It doesn't feel good to know that the worst fears of a celebrity have been confirmed. That a celebrity put his or her trust in you and you dropped the ball.

Jon raises his hand and asks how Hugo knows that someone had fucked Wax Patrick Stewart.

“I don’t want to get into it,” he says. “Suffice to say, there were some indentations. What's more, is there were stains! Now the sculptors tell me they can fill in the....disruptions to Wax Patrick Stewart's figure. But first you must be aware that the stains carry DNA!

Someone gasps.

"Now...I don’t want to have to ask everyone to provide me with a DNA sample. We’re a family here and we’re supposed to trust each other. So instead, I’m just going to turn my back for 30 seconds. If the perpetrator who violated Wax Patrick Stewart will simply walk up here, lay their museum-issued vest and cummerbund on the table here and walk out the door...then there will be no further questions, no prosecution.“

Hugo turns his back. For thirty seconds, everyone on staff looks to each other, trying to see if the culprit will come forward. No one steps forward. When Hugo turns back around, the disappointment on his face is palpable.

You raise your hand with a question.

“Wait, why would anyone try and have sex with the figures anyway?” you ask. “When you take off their clothes, it's not like there are any orifices or holes or anything for you to put your...your..."

Instantly you feel two dozen eyes scrutinizing you. Hugo looks at you and pauses with his mouth open in an "O" shape, as he begins to speak.

Before Hugo can ask you how you could possibly know Wax Patrick Stewart or any of the other figures in the Museum have no naughty bits, you make a break for it. 

You hightail it out of the glass double doors of the museum, startling the throng of overweight tourists who have no idea that the reason there is one wax figure missing is because he is lying in the back room, decorated with your shame, glass expressionless eyes gazing at the ceiling.

You round the corner into an alley and drop your vest and cummerbund in a dumpster, and once you're certain you haven't been pursued, you will end up in the park miles away, hiding in the bushes drinking sprinkler water for three days as you wrack your brain to try and figure out just what the hell you're going to do with your life, now that your dream of being a Wax Museum guard have been shattered forever by one night of erotic bliss.

Today you're Couch Connie.

Your Dad ran a moving company and he was killed by a couch. It was being raised up to the third floor to try and get it through the window of an apartment because it couldn’t fit through the door. The cord snapped and the couch dropped right on your Dad’s head, snapping his neck. In an exploit the local news called "incredible in it's physical improbability" Daddy had tumbled down three flights of stairs into the street and his face was ran over by three taxis before a homeless person dragged him onto the sidewalk.

“He left the business to me,” you’re telling a customer. “And I’ve built it into a small local empire. I did it with hatred in my heart.”

The logo on your trucks reads “Your Furniture Killed My Daddy, And I Will Never Let Your Furniture Get The Upper Hand Again.” As Couch Connie, you promise that you will be in control at every point in the move. No one will ever see you or your team members hesitating or guessing at an angle or a width for getting a couch or an armoire through a doorway. You’re always ten steps ahead of your furniture. You’ve already carried their couch up the steps and around the corners and through the vestibule and into the living room before your customers have even finished packing. 

“It’s about not letting the furniture get the jump on me,” you’re telling your customer. “Like my Dad did.”

This is the point where you turn to the portrait of your Father that hangs over the register, the portrait is imposing and massive, to the point where the front teeth in your Father's smile are the size of  index cards and his presence dominates the room in it's 9 foot portrait.

“You were sloppy, Daddy,” you state plainly to the mammoth rendering.

The customers are getting uncomfortable.

“SLOPPY!” you shriek. “YOU!  WERE!  SLOPPY!  DADDY!”

You’re now sobbing uncontrollably. Spit is coming out of your mouth as you scream.

“HOW COULD YOU, DADDY! HOW COULD YOU LET A COUCH TAKE YOU AWAY FROM ME?! HOW? DID YOU WANT IT TO TAKE YOU AWAY? DID YOU NOT WANT TO BE WITH ME AND MOMMY ANY MORE? WHYDIDN'TYOULOVEUSDADDYWHYYY!?”

The customers are moved to tears with you. You barely even know they’re there anymore.

“WHYYYYYYY DADDY? WHYYYYYY?”

You've bitten your tongue, it hurts and though it takes a minute you gradually recede back to a less manic state. You blink the tears away and turning to the customers, you raise your arm high and slam your fist down on their moving contract. 

The wife of one of your customers starts to tell you blood is dripping off of your chin, but you cut her off.

“As God as my witness,” you snarl through gritted teeth. “I will tame your furniture. I will be its master during the entire course of your move. Your furniture wants to be damaged to prove that it cannot be subjugated to human will. I will make very clear to your furniture that on this matter, it is very mistaken.”

Your customers sign their contract, and then the three of you hug and cry together. 

Today you're going to take a road trip with your beloved family!

It's summertime.  You have two weeks off from working in the small state farm outlet where your Dad is an agent and pays you 7 measly dollars an hour to type and to rub his temples when he gets a migraine.  Your husband has been laid off from the Callahan Brake Pad Factory.  Your son Jack got kicked out of day care for stealing cigarettes from the yard attendant and you're afraid if you leave your daughter alone at the house for more than an hour she will without a doubt lose her virginity.

Time to get your snot-nosed brat kids into the back seat and your husband in the front and hit the fucking road.

“WHY ARE YOU DRIVING SO FAST? IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! WHERE ARE WE GOING!” your kids and husband will shout. Tell them to shut their goddamn mouths or you’ll drive through a guardrail into a gulch and kill them all.

“Road trips are supposed to be spontaneous,” you explain once they’re all silent and shaking with fear. “We’re going to drive and have dangerous adventures until something about us CHANGES.”

First stop is downtown Cleveland, where you'll pull into bars and pick fights.

Later in New Orleans you'll visit the grave of a voodoo queen.  Legend has it if you draw three red x's in chalk on her tomb she will grant you a wish.  Your wish is that you were dead.  Your husband stoops down, draws three x's and stands up, loudly proclaiming "I wish that the Packers would make the playoffs" with his eyes closed.

You erase your old set of x's, draw three new ones.  You'll wish your husband was dead.

Your daughter sexts her boyfriend the entire time, while your son urinates on a gravestone that reads "Beloved Aunt."

From then on you stop reading street signs and point the car in random directions.  Somewhere on the eastern seaboard you transport crystal meth and pick up hitchhikers who remember seeing the ghost of Freddie Mercury and you come to the aid of a crashed crop duster, managing to rescue the pilot before his plane bursts into flames.

You drive for four more months, and when you pause to celebrate your daughter’s fifteenth birthday and your son’s ninth by the lip of the grand canyon, you all finally agree that you've each discovered something about yourselves that has changed you forever.

“I hate the road,” your daughter says.

“I hate America,” your son says.

“I hate anyone who isn't caucasian,” your husband says.

“I want to spend the rest of my life in a tree,” you say.

Your husband hoists you up into a tree then he and your two kids wave goodbye as you climb higher and higher. Your husband says he’ll come back in a few months with divorce papers, but that he’s glad you’ve discovered yourself, and that you won’t be in his life to drag him on another awful trip like this one ever again.

Today you'll leave What's His Face!

"Don't forget the ice cube trays, bitch."

You've just received word that Jacques is still alive all these years later, that when his car went off that cliff he wasn't in it, that for one reason or another he needed you and everyone else to believe he was dead.

“Guess we need to get a divorce,” you say to your second husband, Robert.

Robert won’t be happy. “You don’t have to go back to him! He’ll understand that you thought he was dead and moved on.”

Tell Brad you didn't move on. You thought you did, but you didn't have a day go by where you didn't have to consciously push Jacques out of that little space he occupies in the back of your mind.  Tell Robert he’s a really sweet guy and he’s pretty great in the bedroom department and you've had a fun time these six years during which he helped raise your kids as his own, but he’s no Jacques.

“But you don’t even know why he faked his death,” Robert will say. “For all you know he didn't even care how his death affected you. For all you know he left town and traveled far away and faked his death to get away from you.”

Explain to Robert that that might be the case, but now that you know Jacques is alive again there's really no reason you should pretend not to be completely bored of Robert any more, and that you're out like disco.

“Tonight! What? You’re just going to…Ow!”

Apologize for dropping your suitcase on his head while trying to get it out of the closet.

Robert will switch gears and start to tick off reasons on his fingers why you should feel guilty.

“Sorry Robert,” say. “I’m just in a hurry. Want to try to get Jacques to see me naked before he changes his mind again.”

Robert will be exasperated. “You’re supposed to be conflicted about this kind of thing! You’re supposed to be searching your heart to find out if you still love him or if you having mourned him and married someone new has effectively closed the chapter on that part of your—”

“Sorry, not conflicted. Jacques is alive! Thanks for subbing in as my husband for a while!” you’ll shout from the window of your car as you speed out of your driveway, laughing at a text Jacques had sent to you a few seconds ago.

Robert will go inside to find your kids packing their things. “You’re not our Dad anymore! You’re just Robert now!”

Robert will go into the bedroom and try to get used to just being Robert now, just being Robert now that Jacques is alive again.

Today, you'll go to a pool party.

Welcome to our Ool Party.  Notice there's no P in it.  Please keep it that way

You knew about it all week and you waited and you waited but finally Friday night came and you never got the invite to the office pool party that you were desperately waiting for.  You waited by the water cooler when Mark walked by, hoping he would glance at you and a light bulb would go off above his head and he'd say hey why didn't you RSVP on the Facebook event calendar that you're going to the pool party?  

And you let your pen slide off your desk and onto the floor when Sharise walked by so that she would stop and pick it up for you.  When she handed it to you, you said thanks and looked right at her so she would be forced to acknowledge you and when that happened she would suddenly realize she had totally forgotten to include you in the mass office memo.

Neither Mark nor Sharise ever said anything about the office pool party.

So the next day you'll drive your Sebring out to Sharise's house and climb a tree in the front yard to watch all you co-workers splash around in their bathing suits, enjoying their time without you like you never even existed.  Laurie is wearing a yellow one-piece and she's laughing so hard at something Aaron said that she's bending over and holding her stomach with the hand that isn't holding her Grey Goose martini.

From your vantage point, you'll see your co-workers swim and tan and drink fruity drinks and sneak off to make out under the shade of the very tree in which you're hiding, and the whole scene will make you feel incredibly alone.  So alone that you'll start to cry, and you'll cry loud enough that your co-workers will hear you and they'll run to the base of the tree and set it on fire.  

The flames will rise, forcing you into an impossible dilemma; either you leap down to safety where you will doubtlessly be humiliated for coming and spying on a party which you were not invited to, or you stay in the tree and slowly burn to death on its branches.

You'll stay in the tree and burn to death on its branches.

Today, Cosmopolitan is going to spell it out for you!

Top ten ways to make your boobs extra-pointy.

He’s been working a lot. Cosmo says when he works a lot it means he might be working on loving someone new.

He’s showering a lot. Cosmo says when he showers a lot it’s because he’s washing off the lingering scent of someone new.

He’s constantly singing love songs out loud without any cause for a love song to be sung. Cosmo says if he spontaneously bursts out into love songs it’s because those love songs are songs he has to sing when he thinks about someone new.

He occasionally shows up covered in mud. Cosmo says when your man shows up muddy it’s because he had to dispose of the bodies of the people who witnessed him giving all his lovin' to someone new.

He bought seven new cars. Cosmo says a man has no reason to buy a lot of new cars unless he’s going on long moonlight drives with someone special, someone young, someone fun, someone who is anyone, anyone at all, anyone at all but you.

He has crabs. Cosmo says there ain’t no other reason for a man to have crabs unless those crabs hopped to his pubic hair from the pubic hair of someone who isn't you.

He’s been spending a lot of time in his super-secret second apartment and according to Cosmo, a man should spend an average of no more than two nights a week in his super-secret second apartment unless he’s using that super-secret second apartment to spend super-secret time with someone secret and new.

He can sometimes be found with his penis inside the vagina of another woman. In the immortal words of Cosmopoliton, “There is simply no reason for your man to store his manhood upon or up inside the womanhood of a woman who, for all intents and purposes is not you, unless your man is interested in the womanhood under the operation of a woman other than you, AKA a woman who happens to be someone new.

He has a shoehorn.  You read in Cosmo that shoehorns are luxury items that a man uses to facilitate the process of applying footwear to his feet.  It goes on to say that why would a man be in such a hurry that he would feel the need to eliminate the precious seconds that is required of one to actually bend over to put on a shoe and instead use a tool to do so if he wasn't using those extra seconds to be lying on his back in someone else's apartment with some other women that isn't you sitting on his face?

He says he met someone new. If Cosmo is correct, a man never says he met someone new unless he’s decided that you are someone old and there’s another one, a different one, a one who in your man’s eyes is someone who alleviates that “I’m scared of not mattering anymore” feeling, a one who can only be described as someone new.

Since your man meets all ten criteria, it’s time to tell him that you wish him well but you understand that the heart cannot be tamed, girlfriend.