so my boss calls me.

"hey, stainer, get to my office. gotta show you somethin'."

"yes, er, ma'am, er, i'll, uh, be wight, gu-eehh, down. Glybin!!"

i develop a speech impediment when i'm nervous. i begin speaking like mike tyson with professor frink's inflections and quirks. worried i finally got busted for perpetrating redbrain activities on company property. i enter. better not to speak. i'm the SMOAT, so the sweating spoke volumes about the state of my nerves. to speak would only make her job more difficult, more revolting anyway.

"close the door, randy." she looked up briefly, a flit of bother, intent on some papers in front of her.

the rest of this must be told in the third person...

Sweatiest Man Of All Time's leather business fold slips between his fingers. it hits the carpet as he reaches for the doorknob. reaching down to collect the folder his right foot has stepped on, he simultaneously grabs the door handle to fling it back. pushing the door back somehow creates enough force to make the folder slide from under foot, then wet hand slips off knob, and SMOAT falls on ass ("Glybin!!"). the door slams, shaking the walls. he stares at the popcorn painted ceiling during a pregnant pause.

"uh-oops. wet me just, uh, get this. Whoa!" he starts sweating even more, stands, collects, smoothes himself, then sits.

"randy, i want to show you something. this may be a little embarrassing for you; but i thought that you should know this is out there, and that people you know have seen it." she stepped to her office window and closed the blinds. she walked over to her television and inserted a tape into the VCR, then stood facing the screen, away from me, butt against her desk.

the screen went fuzzy, then blue. then a dance floor appeared populated by what americans would call dancers. what tribal africans would call afflicted people forced to writhe together in pain for a long time. randy recognized faces. this was at his boss's wedding. he didn't remember that night. a timid sort, not one to voluntarily place himself in too prominent a viewing place, randy decided to get drunk at that wedding to soothe his nerves so he could do the funky chicken, then leave. it didn't work out like that. he remembered thinking some nice tattooed lady -- who inhaled cigarette smoke by inserting the butt in one of her nostrils -- taking -- what he interpreted as-- a shine to him, then going outside to pee, then waking up in the city, face-down, drooling on a friend's couch, his red face streaked by impressions of the afghan's fat lines.

familiar strains of earnest violins with a heavy bass-drum beat brought his attention back to the screen. the floor had begun to clear. but a group had gathered around the middle of the floor staring in amused horror at an obscure, flailing figure. then they parted.

what emerged from the crowd was a face familiar, yet grotesquely contorted. a kindred expression of tortured glee. a nauseous eruption of stifled artistic expression. a face he never saw in the mirror, but so like him. it was randy stainer. the SMOAT. and he was performing... vigorously. a drunk lady fell down in the background. his fist pumped. he acted like he had a microphone. he appeared to hold it upside down and over his head, like he had to crane his neck to sing into it. he looked very serious, intense, and his pelvis... my God, the pelvis...

next week, "th' COMING to AmeriCAAH!" the conclusion...