(11 october 2006)

a friend and i are writing a play. tonight this play took us where we inevitably knew it would. but that doesn’t mean we were prepared. that we weren’t both rather stunned when the friend dunked her chocolate chip cookie, leaned back and declared, so i guess at this point we must ask ourselves how marilyn would greet jackie in heaven.

blindsided by the fact that we would have to ask ourselves such a thing- though i must have always known we would- i abruptly leaned forward, my hair sweeping up the pile of pumpkin bread crumbs that i would spend the remainder of the evening shaking from it.

i was a mess. i wasn’t ready. had i known we were going to heaven tonight, i would’ve at least shaved my legs.

by now, we’re pretty certain this play is unspeakably awesome. we read it and we laugh and cry. as though this weren’t actually our play. as though elves were writing furiously in the night to produce theatrical brilliance for us.

our ladies are surprising. these ladies we know so well. we read that jackie ashed her cigarette on marilyn’s carpet and we jumped back in shock. jackie! we gasped. what a bitch! as though we hadn’t been sitting in panera a month ago cackling about how hysterical it would be for jackie to do precisely that. as though she were no longer our jackie. as though she had become her own.

so tonight the play made it to heaven. and we sat in starbucks trying to figure out what jackie and marilyn would say in heaven. we, of course, knew what they would be wearing, but what would they be like? would they be funny in heaven? or serious? would smoking be allowed in the afterlife? we had no idea. we didn’t know where to begin. we were lost. we could not go on.

until the friend dunked her chocolate chip cookie, leaned back and astutely observed, we’ve got to assume they’d have all sorts of wisdom and shit because they’re, like, dead. and with that we had our motivation. and our subtitle.