WARNING: Contains tasteless, shitty humor...and and and other stupid things. :D
I has no self-control. Have a story.

Chapter One
“Dêem-me café, vou escrever!” – Olavo Bilac

“T-tell my dad that…that I love him…” I spluttered, reaching out a shaking hand. And with those words, I died…

That was ten years ago, when I was eleven years old. At that moment, my position on the hit soap opera, Beating Hearts, was over and so was my acting career. Other than a few special appearances in a handful of commercials, I’ve been cut off from the land of the…acting if you even want to call those commercials acting. Saying, “It’s chocolate-icious!” with a shit-eating grin doesn’t really take much talent. Maybe that’s why I’m jobless and depending on my father who actually was successful in acting…unlike me. Maybe I’m talentless.

Or maybe Tim Selby, the director of Beating Hearts, was a stupid mother fucker who wanted to ruin my life. That’s much easier to believe. It’s less of a blow on my ego.

Two things are for certain, though. Jimmy Faraday, son of Mary and Roger Faraday from Beating Hearts, died in a car crash and didn’t even make it to the hospital for a long series of coma shots and a dramatic awakening. The second is that because of that, I, twenty-one year old Alejandro Berne, am a washed-up loser.

“You’re not a loser, Allie,” my cousin, Lily, sighs as she reaches out and pats my hand.

“I am.” I sip at my coffee and stare around the café that I let her drag me to. Note to self: Never call your obnoxious cousin when you feel like you’re going to kill yourself because she will be obnoxious and will save your life by bringing you out to coffee where she’ll tell you that you’re not a loser when you know inside that you are. “I am,” I repeat and she rolls her eyes.

“Says who?” She blows bubbles in her hot chocolate via one of the swirly straws she brings with her everywhere.

“Me. And stop doing that… You’re embarrassing…” I reach out and yank the straw from her mouth, while she pouts at me and busies herself with braiding her bright pink hair instead while she attempts to drink from her cup without using her hands. God, she’s such a fucking eyesore. I should’ve stayed home and made a lunch of sleeping pills instead of calling her.

“Embarrassing? You’re one to talk,” she mumbles into her cup.

“What did you just say?” I glare at her. For someone who was so eager to help me feel better, she’s sure doing a pretty shitty job.

“You know what I said, Allie,” she sighs. I really do hate when she calls me Allie… Not that my real name is any better, but that’s something I’ll need to take up with my mom. “I mean, you’re sitting here whining and being a pussy in public. How embarrassing is that? It’s really embarrassing. Way to be, Allie.”

She definitely did not mean that originally. She meant that I have the right to be embarrassed because I got killed off a soap opera and now the only people that recognize me when I’m walking down the street are middle-aged women who saw me dying while they were at home with their own, young, snotty kids, who unfortunately weren’t dying. I glare at her some more for a long moment before I shake my head.

“Fine. Whatever. I should stop whining, so I’m going to.” I use Lily’s straw to poke at a spot of gum on the edge of the table.

Lily snorts, spraying hot chocolate across the table. “Yeah. Right. Since when have you stopped complaining? Christ, Al, if there was a contest for the person who complains the most, you’d win first place. Blue ribbon, gold medal, and a trophy. Go for the gold, man.”

I take a deep breath. “Well, guess what?”

“I mean, if there was an Olympics for complaining, you’d be the champ.”

“Lily! I’m trying to tell you something. It's important.”

“But there wouldn’t be an Olympics for that, because you have to be like…amazing to be in the Olympics and complaining isn’t amazing. If there were Olympics for that though, it wouldn't be anything to be proud of. It'd just make all the people participating big losers... So…”

“Will you just shut up for a minute? I’m trying to make a fucking announcement!” My voice raises and people as far as three tables over look over to us. Having everyone looking at me almost feels like I’m back on TV. But that’s just a depressing thought…

“Wow, Allie. Way to look like an abusive boyfriend. Even if we are cousins, it does look pretty bad. People don’t know we’re cousins and even if I told everyone that we were, it’d still look bad because this could look like incest and you’d still look like an asshole.” She looks around the room, rising up in her seat. “I am not dating this man!”

God… I lean forward, poking at her pierced nose with her straw. “I said shush. Let me talk. I have an announcement. I have a plan.” She sighs and leans back in her chair, her arms crossed over her unnaturally large breasts. “I have an idea to get a job so my dad doesn’t keep bitching at me.”

She sighs once more and leans forward again. “As what? The last time you had a job, it was when the two of us thought we could start a toy repair shop in our neighborhood. Do you remember that? You ended up breaking more toys than you fixed and we were run out of business when those damned Madison twins set up their lemonade stand down the fucking road…”

“If you’d just let me finish.”

“Well, if you’d just keep talking instead of yelling at me every two seconds…”

“I wouldn’t have to be if you’d just—”

“Just tell me, Alejandro!” She snatches her straw away and narrows her eyes at me. I’ve just noticed that she wears too much makeup but right now is not the time to tell her this.

“Fine.” I sigh and think about the plan I cooked up while I was also going over the best way to kill myself before I called her. “Well, you know how I’ve been wanting to get back on camera… To back to actually being on there longer than to just attempt to sell some shitty product?” Lily nods impatiently, her bright hair bouncing. “Well, I thought of a way that I could do that…”

“You’re not thinking of trying back out for one of those shitty soaps, are you?” she sighs, putting her straw back in her chocolate as if she’s not aware that I was poking someone’s used chewed gum with it. I stare at her in disgust and slowly shake my head. “No one watches those, you know. Just women who are our moms’ age who mope around their house with their saggy boobs and cheating husbands.”

“No… No, I’m done with that. I’m moving on to bigger and better things. I…” I glance around, lean forward, and lower my voice. “I’m going to get into some…adult videos…”

“Adult videos?” she asks, her voice a little too loud for my liking, especially when several people look over again. I sigh. “What do you mean by that?”

“Pornography, Lily.” She still looks slightly blank. “Porn?”

Her face twists up in what I think might be disgust, but I’m not sure if it’s because her gum-straw is in her mouth or it’s because of what I’ve just revealed. “Porn?” A little too loud again. I groan. “Why would you want to be in porn?”

“Will you stop being so loud?”

“Well, excuse me! I’m just kind of surprised to find out that my cousin’s being a sleaze!” I narrow my eyes at her and she narrows hers back. “Why do you want to do something like that?”

I sigh and lean forward, resting my elbows o the table. “Because… Because, I’m sick of being a loser, Lily. It sucks. I don’t do anything. I just rely on my dad while he rubs it in that last week he met Bruce Fucking Willis on the set of some new movie. I need money and I need independence. I need to get back onscreen.”

She shakes her head. “So you think that being in porn will help you feel better? It might bring in money, Allie, but the only people that are going to be watching it are people who are more interested in boobies than they are in you. And even if they were interested in you, congratulations. You have an old hairy creepy guy that looks a lot like your dad’s brother Steve checking you out while he masturbates in his mom’s basement. And he’s wearing dirty clothes that have sweat-stains in the armpits and the places where his stomach folds over, and he smells like fish and Cheetos and keeps writing you letters about how he likes your throbbing cock and how he has every vein in it memorized, and he usually just likes little boys but you’re okay too. Is that what you want?”

“No…” I sigh again. Way to fucking shoot me down... “I just don’t know what else to do…”

“Get a real job! God! Is it that hard to do? I have one!”

“You sweep up hair, answer the phone, and gossip! The job you have at that hair salon isn’t really a job. It’s…a walk in the park.”

“And what you’re planning on doing is much better.” She sighs and blows more bubbles in her hot chocolate, causing the brown orbs to slide over the edge of her cup and form a mud puddle stain on the tabletop.

I really didn’t expect her to react this way. I thought she’d be fine with it. She’s always been kind of eccentric. I stare at her sprawled halfway across the table as more bubbles continue to topple and slide dangerously close to her elbow. Okay. More than eccentric. She’s a flat-out freak. I thought maybe she’d try to talk me out of it, but she seems…mad.

“Lily…” I moan after a long moment. “Are you mad at me…?”

She looks up at me, the straw still stuck in her mouth, pushing her lip upward. “Nuh-uh. Why would I be?”

I stare at her. I blink. Is this reverse psychology? No. No, Lily is not capable of that. “What do you mean?”

Her pink hair falls into her face as she cocks her head to the side, clunking it down onto the table when it slides off her arm. “What do you mean ‘what do I mean?’”

Christ almighty... “You were just lecturing me. And then you seemed mad. Are you mad at me?”

“No. It’s your life. Not mine. You’re a grown man and you can make your own decisions for once. I mean…if you want syphilis, or gonorrhea, or genital warts on your genitals, or HIV, or AIDS, or herpes, or Chlamydia, or hepatitis, or crabs, or erectile dysfunction, that’s fine with me. Just don’t complain to me or show me. I don’t want to see your swollen balls and limp-dicked discharge. That’s gross. It’s like this yellowish white color. Mary…that girl I work with? Her ex-boyfriend had gonorrhea and it was puke-in-your-mouth disgusting. And if you porn with a porn chick, there’s a good chance you’ll be exposed to some nastiness. But like I said, you’re a grown man. Go for your dreams.”

Discharge? Warts? I stare down at my jeaned crotch and bite my lip. If that happened, I’d have to cut it off. “They test for that before anything is done, right? They wouldn’t just expose people to that… It's not like I'll be with some crackwhore off the streets.”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not the one who’s going to be in some porn!” A mother walking by shields her sons ears as she herds him along, shooting Lily and me dirty looks. I think I should wear a shirt that says “This bitch is NOT my responsibility!” whenever I go somewhere with Lily in public. It’d make outings a lot easier. Like…bringing a bag along while walking a dog. It’s good have something to clean up her messes…and yes, I just compared my cousin to a dog shitting on the sidewalk.

“Whatever. I’m sure they check that stuff out before they let you do anything.”

“Yeah, but now you’ll just have to worry about getting it up…or coming too fast. How long does it usually take before you shoot your load?”

I stare at her for a long moment before I abruptly stand up and shrug on my jacket. “Thanks for talking to me Lily. I appreciate it. You’re a good cousin.”

She sits up, her straw leaving her cup and sending splatters of chocolate across the table. “Where are you going?”

“Home. I’m going to perform a lobotomy on myself so I can pretend you didn’t just ask me that.” I toss some money down onto the table – more of dad’s hand-outs – and sigh. “Or maybe I’ll just take some sleeping pills, drink some vodka, and hope that I can’t remember any of this when I wake up...or just hope that I don't wake up at all.”

“What’s wrong with me asking you that? We’re blood, Allie! We’re blood.”

“Yeah, but I like to pretend that we’re not.” I give her a quick smile and walk away.

Well, that went well.

End chapter one.

Translation for chapter quote: "Give me coffee, I'm going to write."

So thar she blows.

Release's next chapter is about halfway done for the...three of you who read that. xD

Thanks for reading. Be sure to leave a review on your way out. You know you want to...somewhere in your heart of hearts, you want to. :D Muchos love-os... o.O