Libby is a nut. From the first day I met the guy he was prone to excess and outrageousness. (The name Libby is short for Liberation. I still don�t know his real name). He is tall, well over six feet, even without his boots, and one of his top front teeth is missing. When I first met him he weighed no more than a hundred and fifty pounds and his two most unsettling characteristics other than his height and the missing tooth were his propensity to never shut up and the nearly constant public use of the words fuck and cocksucker. Scandalizing the proletariat has always been the main way Libby got his kicks. Even now.
On the day we met he struck me as a beat-up, blabber-mouth, rock star; an alumni of the Keith Richards school of beauty. He hadn�t slept in twenty-four hours and his dirty shoulder length black hair was cut in a Mohawk style with the top brush area dyed red. That day his wardrobe consisted of a wrinkled black shirt and leather pants and snakeskin boots. The boots appeared to have been hurriedly painted pink to compliment his haircut.
The first time was by accident. Either he or his girlfriend, who answered to the name Niggabitch, or just Bitch, had telephoned my taxi company�s 800 number to hire a cab to take their remaining bedroom boxes from an apartment in Venice to their house on the side of a hill, overlooking the coastline, in Malibu. The dispatcher�s radio call came to me because my taxi was the closest car to the address on Ozone Court. For me, in those days staying sober and uncrazy was a major challenge. To keep on writing I worked three or four shifts a week as a cab driver. My mental disposition would not permit more.
Sometimes good things happen to people here in L.A. and Liberation is one of those guys who got lucky in the movie business. Perhaps, after seeing him face to face in his rock star �get-up�, that film producer decided Libby somehow looked the part of a Production Designer. According to Liberation, who twists the truth at will, the man hired him on the spot after viewing his dazzling portfolio of masterful sketches. Before that Libby worked for ten years as a grunt draftsman in downtown L.A. in the Design Mart. However it happened, the movie job worked out well. The film won a festival prize and eventually became a financial success. Another movie assignment followed that one. And so on. So, by the time we met in my cab that day, Liberation was on a roll and the large Hollywood paychecks were permitting him numerous bad habits and excesses.
After we loaded his boxes into my cab I discovered right away that my passenger and his girlfriend were no strangers to the booze and drug scene of Venice. While we drove up the coast in the direction of Malibu Pier, with Niggabitch following in their restored �58 Buick Roadmaster Convertible, hauling additional boxes, Libby continued to yak manically and filled my nose from a gram vial of coke while we passed an open quart of VO across the seat back.
Somewhere on the ride he must have decided that they would need the use of me and my taxi for the entire afternoon because when we arrived at the three-story house that extended off the side of a hill on stilts, my passenger stuffed a roll of ten twenty dollar bills into my hand. The money easily covered my pay for the shift. I said thanks as I shoved the cash in my pocket and after that we began carrying their load up the stairs to the master bedroom.
The inside of the house looked like a dingy West Hollywood art gallery. The walls and rugs and furniture once had been all white and the living room was covered with Libby�s wild, floor-to-ceiling, framed, original designs.
As the work continued, Niggabitch, barefoot, dressed in her jeans and t-shirt, began making separate trips up and down from the kitchen with drinks and a fresh vial of white, top-grade, Columbian Marching Powder. Like a ghost Bitch would appear quietly in the doorway. Smiling. She was not a talker but, in her way, a good person. Always friendly. I was having a busman�s holiday. Happy as a pig in poop.
The entire unpacking task might easily have been accomplished in ordinary time but Liberation, as I said, was a ringmaster at endless bullshit. Our work kept getting sidetracked by his riffs on topics like American political corruption and The Tri-Lateral Commission, and illegal Israeli terrorism. And citizen�s rights. And the IRS. �Man, didja know that there are only two major economic powers in the world that don�t have nationalized health care? Who are these cocksuckers, you ask? Well, for one: those racist fucking assholes from South Africa. And, for two: the good old cocksuckin�, George Bush, U S of A.�
�No kidding,� I heard myself say, squeezing in the words. �I don�t have health insurance.�
Liberation sneered. �Exactly my point, ace. Exactly. Precise-a-fuckin�-mundo.�
Along with his political declarations the guy with the pink hair enjoyed dishing gossip about folks he had worked with in the film business. There was the actress who, while drunk, had given her seventeen-year-old kid a blowjob in the hot-tub by mistake. �Ha! Ha! Imagine finding out that you just let your own fuckin� son squirt his load down your throat? Uhhhhhh!�
And there was the director guy who used to do kiddy-porn in Van Nuys before he began making movies with Michelle Pfieffer. Liberation had no love for this cat and while they worked together on the set Libby made it his job to clip out provocative photographs of pre-teens twice a week, then anonymously tack the pictures to the film crew�s Call Board.
At the back end of each harangue my benefactor would laugh his crazy laugh that flashed the hole in his teeth, then launch into a new topic. His yakking never stopped.
Eventually I learned that we both had used the services of the same drug dealer at The Sunset saloon. A bad-smelling, fat asshole named B.B.Bowman. And we both knew Slavin� Dave the guitar player whose band gave the free concerts on Sundays at the Sidewalk Caf� on Venice Beach.
After about a-third of the unpacking had been done it became apparent that the only items in the pile of stacked boxes were pairs Libby�s boots. In total, fifty-five sets of boots. He would pass me a pair, interrupt whatever monologue he was on, and say something like; �Hey, check these out, my man. These are Bourgesi. From Milano. Hand-made. Eleven hundred bucks.� Or, �I got these cocksuckers in Argentina. Feel the leather.� I would oblige, examine the boots, then slide them into the closet with the others. Everything was expensive and, according to my host, they were all custom made.
By the time the job was done we were quite drunk and high from snorting coke but the long hardwood floor of the bedroom closet was neatly lined end to end with exotic footwear.
A fresh glass of VO in one hand, flashing his trailer-park grin, Liberation commanded that I follow him down the stairs. �C�mon my man,� he said, rolling his eyes, brushing passed Niggabitch, �I want to show you something. It�ll make your dick stand up like a cocksucking cruise missile. No shit.�
�Sure,� I said, grabbing my own drink then wobbling after him out of the bedroom. �Let�s do it.�
Arriving at the basement of the house after three flights, Libby stuck a special-looking key into the door�s brass tumbler, then pushed it open.
Inside there was no furniture at all and the walls were made entirely of glass on three sides, but the most noticeable thing in the room was the abrupt change in temperature. It was airless inside, heavy and wet and at least thirty degrees hotter than anywhere else in the house. Pinkboots re-bolted the door behind us then slipped the key into his pants pocket.
Tree trunks and heavy branches crisscrossed the open area and a layer of straw covered the tiled floor. The place appeared to be a do-it-yourself zoo cage. Possibly an enclosure for wild dogs or monkeys or a bear. But even drunk, I didn�t like being in the room. I don�t like cages. At all.
Libby began clapping and whistling and stomping his foot. He kept this up for half a minute but nothing changed. Then he repeated the process. He was grinning again but this time when I observed the black gap in his mouth I felt impending trouble. His expression was that of a salivating perv whacking off to a porn video. And the information being conveyed to me from my booze-soaked brain wasn�t good either. Maybe, I thought, this skinny,
chattering, toothless nutjob was about to permit my ass to get attacked by whatever he kept in this cage. Perhaps I had been lured here by Jesus to finally get my comeuppance, locked down with a satanic prankster and a crocodile or a huge rodent or some horrific, carnivorous, cab-driver-eating, beast fuck.
Finally, there was movement in the far corner of the room and a large section of the floor began to shift and re-shape itself. A few seconds later Princess� head popped up above the straw and she slowly began advancing across a dead branch.
I had not been within six feet of any kind of snake for years. In fact, as a kid living near open fields, in the summer, when my big brother Nick would surprise me at night by having two or three lizards or a king snake in bed with us in the dark, I had developed a distinct hatred toward all things that slither.
Libby began rattling off Princess� statistics: The monster was a Burmese Python. She was eighteen feet long and eight inches thick, with a weight somewhere around six hundred pounds. He explained that Princess had once belonged to Niggabitch�s father, a rich agronomist guy who traveled around the world irrigating the desert and teaching backward nations how to grow food in unusable
dirt. The house we were in had belonged to Dad too. Bitch�s Pops, before his un-described death, had deeded the place to her. The care and feeding of Princess was rolled in as part of the deal.
Blab. Blab. Blab. There was more. Relationship data snot about how Libby and Bitch had gotten together, about how he had been overcome by the weirdness of his karma and good fortune at hooking up with a soul mate who admired serpents as much as he did. Alistair Crowley-type demonic, sick, creepiness shit.
I hated all of it. What Bitch had inherited. How they got together. All of it. This chattering asshole required immediate murdering. My imperative was to silence his mouth for ten seconds in order to allow my mind to calculate a way to break a window or steal the key to get out of the cage. Meanwhile it was becoming clear that the huge animal scooching up the log in my direction wasn�t at all inhibited by shyness.
Backing my body toward the door I watched as the snake finally coasted to the top of her stump a few feet away. Happily there, the giant fucker began twisting itself around the log.
Liberation�s face was at eye level to Princess and no more than three feet away when she began to whip her long, split tongue in and out.
�Hey look, she�s hungry,� giggled the eerie scarecrow who hadn�t slept in thirty-six hours.
�No kidding?� I said, now aware of two black eyes being fixed on me � sizing me up. �Look friend, I don�t like snakes. And this is a very big snake.�
The zookeeper sneered. �That�s okay, my man. It�s easy to fucking see that you don�t know shit one about vipers. For your information these cocksuckers only eat what they can get their jaws around. Pythons don�t bite. They don�t have teeth. They swallow.�
�I�ll say it another way: I don�t want to be here. Give me the key. Let me out.�
Liberation�s attention span for other people�s issues was limited, and he had become distracted by petting his snake.
I stayed glued against the door until he finally spun around in my direction. �C�mon man,� he barked, �let�s go get our baby some food. She hasn�t eaten in three or four days.�
Cross Creek shopping center was ten minutes north on the Coast Highway. Planck�s Pet & Feed is one of the store
fronts in the long line of high-end boutique shops. The girl behind the counter recognized her tall steady customer as he entered the shop and obligingly began folding together several new air-holed pet boxes.
Captain Blabbermouth got right down to business. He gestured at the cages lining the side counters. �I�ll take a dozen of the bunnies,� he demanded. �Those little fuckers too,� he said, stabbing his finger in the direction of the wire coops containing rats of differing color patterns. How many have you got?�
The kid in the blue apron was unsure. �I don�t know. A dozen and a half, or twenty,� she said. �How many do you want?�
Liberation was groping in his pocket for his bankroll. �Bag �em all. The more the merrier,� he said, flashing his gapped smile.
He was counting out money by the register when he spied a good-sized brown animal caged in a corner near the front door. �What�s that?� he asked the girl. �What kinda fat rat cocksucker is that?�
The kid didn�t blink. �That�s not a rat, sir. That�s a possum.� We received our first pair in last week. A brother and sister. They make excellent pets but they�re quite shy.�
�Him too,� Libby hissed. �But we�ll need a separate box for mister porky possum. Then he leaned toward me. �Spare parts,� he whispered. �An extra tasty treat for my Princess.�
�Have you got a carton big enough?�
�Of course,� said the girl.
�Cool. Box him up.�
But I had had enough. After we returned to the cliff house inhabited by the mute black chick and the snake, I was done, pissed off, completely sober, and sickened by the knowledge of what was to come.
I helped Libby finish carting the boxes of live food down the stairs, stacking them against the cage door, then I faced him. He could see by my expression that I had gone as far as I was willing to go. Clearly, I wasn�t interested in hanging around to watch Princess do her act.
He didn�t look surprised. �Okay, my man,� he grinned, extending his hand, �thaz cool. Thanks for the help� Hey, you okay?�
�I am now you crazy whackjob fucker.�
Two years passed. Maybe three. I sobered up intermittently, wrote half a novel and threw it out, did a 28-day bit in a psych ward, and eventually found myself in an out-patient recovery program that convened twice a week.
With the exception of my mind I was doing okay, living back in Venice and driving for a private car service. But one night I had a slip and got drunk and sliced my wrist in a blackout. The ambulance came and transported me as a 51/50 to the Emergency Room at Brotmann�s Hospital. Three days later they placed me at SOBER (Self-help Obtained By Enlightened Recovery), a dry-out deal in Culver City.
There were four men to a room. We had group therapy twice a day and private evaluation sessions with the shrink, Dr. Tomasso, once each week.
One night after lights out I heard conversation in the next dorm. In fact, it wasn�t two people talking but a single voice, a jerk that wouldn�t shut up.
Because of my history of �clean� time I had been made a night trustee. My job was to keep order after lights out in the dorms and snitch on all wrong-doers to the a.m. administrator. The compensation for being a trustee is unlimited access to the padlocked cafeteria refrigerator, and real coffee.
Getting out of bed I went next door to inform the troublemaker that he was violating Ward Rule 7 on the poster tacked to the big board in the hallway. Of course when I opened the door there was Liberation sitting on his cot, upright like a used ice cream stick, wearing fancy,
joyously pissing-off his fellow bunkmates.
It was his first night at SOBER. I shook his hand and said hello but I knew right away by his expression that he couldn�t place me.
The brother in the bed next to Libby�s suggested that since we were acquainted, that I might want to take his skinny, yakking, white ass down the hall to the cafeteria and calm him down. If not, he had no problem going over my head to the night orderly who would issue Warning Number 1 on the way to getting Libby kicked out.
The tall man on the cot was even more gaunt and weary looking than I remembered. In those days the new style was skinhead and Libby was now �punked out�, shaved completely bald, with a row of a dozen silver ear rings and a pierced lip. Sometime in the last couple of years he had added the long tattoo of a snake. It wound around his right arm from the top to the wrist. The bags under his eyes had become permanent and his missing tooth was replaced by a set of the kind fitted to order.
In the dark we drank the rotting herb tea dispensed 24/7 at the cafeteria while I filled him in on the events of our first meeting. He couldn�t remember about me or my cab or our trip to the pet store for Princess. That was okay. A natural brain fart considering the circumstances.
When I was done talking, SOBER�s new in-patient became oddly speechless. It was as if my words had cast a spell of silence. For half a minute he just sat in his chair, staring passed the tables in the unlighted room. Finally, he jerked one of my cigarettes from the open pack on the table, and lit it. �That bitch!� he yowled. �That cocksucking fucking cunt liar bitch.�
With that he was off. My memoir had touched a flame to a gas main. For the next hour all I needed to do was to be there in the dark. Breathing in and out.
No happy endings here. It turned out that within a few months after I was introduced to Princess, Libby and Bitch had gone on to discover speedballing and shooting smack as a pastime.
At first with his income they could almost afford the ride. But after a while it turned into a daily deal. Junkies all tell me that heroin is for people who love themselves but, in truth, almost no one can handle the freight. Over time, invariably, slamming shit will have the effect of relocating one�s possessions. Work ethic and cash flow become seriously fucked. And the more he and Bitch dabbled the more unimportant his movie deadlines became. It took a year for them to run through his film money and for Libby to become a repeated no-show at important production
meetings. �Man, bro, no shit; one or two mistakes and the cocksuckers dumped my fucking ass like a mongoloid step child. Kno wh�am sayin?�
I knew.
After that, rather than make any lifestyle course correction, the couple elected to hock the cliff house.
�Hey, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Am I right?�
�First things first,� I said, sliding in the words. Sipping my tea.
The mortgage of the house brought in an immediate windfall. In those days homes in Malibu like Niggabitch�s place on the hill above the ocean were selling for upwards of $500,000, so the couple�s problems were solved for the time being. Sort of. Libby kept the faith and continued to assure his girlfriend that a new movie gig would show up any day. But producers and production designers and movie editors all know that once you�ve blown your reputation in Hollywood, chance two almost never comes.
After a six month visit to Milano where Liberation explored designer possibilities and another six in dope-rich Amsterdam on an extended vacation, the couple were back at the hocked cliff house with most of their money spent. To supplement their smack habit Libby became a dope dealer.
But there was still the problem of the stupid snake. Once back at home the expenditure of $500 a week for live food for Princess had become decidedly excessive as weighed against the cost of two days worth of heroin. An over-indulgence. Rather than murder and wall-mount the malevolent fucker or donate it to be ground up and sold as plant-food mulch, Libby devised a plan to supply his creature with living red-meat food and avoid the cash drain.
The grin was back. Across the cafeteria table in the darkness the skinhead with the ear-rings was giggling at his own weirdness, looking smug, showing no signs of fatigue whatever. He�d already smoked half my cigarettes and consumed five cups of the rancid herb tea.
�So where�s the goddamn snake now,� I asked, eyes watering, exhausted, trying to cut to the chase.
�Well, the cocksucker was eating us out of house and home, like I�m sayin�. But to me giving Princess up would have been equal to giving up�like�a kind of legacy. And I wasn�t going to do that to our baby even though, if I knew then what I know now, how my lyin� twat cocksucker girlfriend was gonna dime-me-out to the law an� all, I mighta done the whole thing different. Whothefuck knows. Ya know?�
�Okay.�
�Cocksucker! Bitch twat cocksucker! Fucking treacherous poisonous cunt slut!�
I pushed my chair back. �Look,� I said, �I�m going to sleep. We�ll finish this up in the morning. If you don�t want to get eighty-sixed from the program just remember to keep quiet in the dorm. Violation of the talking rule is grounds for discharge. The first buzzer goes off at 5:30.�
�Fuck that! No way! Just let me tell it. Completely bizarre shit. You�ll love it. I fuckin� promise. You say you�re a wanna-be writer. Just listen. Totally fucking bizarre.�
�I�m tired.�
�Five fuckin� minutes, I promise.�
�Okay. Deal. Let�s hear it.�
�Cool. So fuckin� Princess is up to two hundred and fifty pounds a week in food. You know, bunnies and gerbils and lab mice. That shit. And now the cocksucker�s twenty feet long and weighs Christ knows how much. Right?�
�Right.�
Then, like a spewing gush of undigested vomit, it came out. Libby, in full voice, commenced detailing his atrocities in the name of the murderous, over-indulged, python. It was sick stuff. Mayhem and sadism. His polluting
tale engulfed the darkened cafeteria like great chunks of unprocessed municipal turds after a Santa Monica Bay rain storm. The account exceeded every twisted nutjob limit of the most strange and creeped-out grotesque dope-fiend diabolical perversity.
Here�s an accurate summary, omitting, of course, the use of the words cocksucker and fuck eleven thousand times. And also shortened by half an hour: In L.A. there are several throw-away newspapers where citizens place free or low-cost ads for their used stuff. Mostly it�s junk. Second hand bikes and TV�s and out-of-date computers and CD players. Garage sale type merchandise. But, as it turns out, most all these bargain sheets also contain a section for pet adoptions. One afternoon while zoned on China White Liberation is reading his free West Side Penny Saver and seizes upon a solution to feed Princess. �FREE PUPPIES. SHEPHERD/COLLIE MIX. 6 TOTAL. FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE.��.�LITTER OF TABBY KITTENS � WITH SHOTS � TO LOVING HOME.�
Twice a week Liberation and Niggabitch began heading out from the Malibu cliff house in their �58 Buick Convertible with the shiny chrome dash and massive trunk to pre-called residences around Southern California.
In the beginning the couple ran into a bit of resistance. Their first problem was one of appearance; like for instance, Libby is over one-foot taller than Bitch. And she, of course, is black. And in those days he was still sporting his bright red Mohawk. If their target market were to be families in homes with kids, it would, of necessity, have to exclude Hollywood and Venice and the �liberal� West Side of town. It was L.A.�s distant and vast gold mine of middle-class residential communities like Hawthorne, Westchester, Long Beach, and Lakewood that would accommodate Princess� feeding frenzies and blood lust. But in these areas Libby and Niggabitch encountered culture shock. Pet donors were mostly white, up-tight Republicans and Christian right-wingers. At first sight these folks tended to became unnerved at the strange couple on their front porch ringing the door bell. Naturally, Libby and Bitch were always stoned on smack too, so reading road maps and asking directions, and getting lost, often took hours. As a result, in the beginning, several of their missions to provide victims for their insatiable viper ended in wrong turns and disappointment.
According to Libby, the presentation issue, at least, was solved effortlessly by a stroke of his genius. They purchased a used garage-sale teddy bear for Bitch. She
would carry the big fluffy fucker to the front door and hug it tenderly while he did the negotiations. The ploy worked. The other thing the two had going in their favor was their willingness to adopt all the excess pets at each home. Families who had been overburdened with a litter of ten or twelve yapping mongrel muts were more than pleased at the notion of getting themselves off the hook in one fell swoop.
The only down side for the doper Samaritans was the copious paraphernalia that always seemed to accompany the transactions. Many of suburbia�s guilt-ridden, home owners wanted to leave their discarded animals well-equipped, so the Buick�s trunk became the repository of useless shit: bags of dry food and wire pet cages and baskets and quilts and colored bowls of every description. The car�s back seat and floor had plenty of room for the animals themselves but after two or three stops, Libby and Bitch usually had to turn back. Once at home they would dump the extraneous crap in their garage.
Naturally Princess� couldn�t have been happier. A steady stream of live meat got released into her clutches every three or four days. The ghoul fucker could chomp away at her leisure while the dozen or so frantic animals still uneaten in the cage were losing their sanity and exhausting
themselves scurrying back and forth seeking a way out. And every once in a while there was the added bonus of a full-grown dog being donated to the cause because it bit someone or had behavior problems. Yummy.
Then things gradually came to a head. Over time the massive accumulation of pet junk in Libby and Bitch�s darkened car park began to become a health issue. The couple spent most of their waking hours stoned in front of the TV watching videos. They would sell smack to the occasional dope client who dropped by, but little else. Soon enough their garage was overrun with filthy animal cages and rotting pet food. Thoughtlessly, these items had never been discarded. The crap was mostly confined to the garage but little by little it began to overflow into the kitchen as their storage needs grew. Of course this got the attention of cockroaches and all manner of creepie-crawlies. Then there was the stink itself. Curious rodents and the other neighborhood animals began congregating and nesting outside the infested, smelly pad.
The fire department and other public services were contacted by their nosy neighbors. Libby himself was up for any and all confrontations but Bitch had the remnants of a social conscience. She had lived in the house most of her
life and didn�t like to have to jive and shuck when the locals began rapping on the front door.
The two junkies began to argue. Naturally Bitch blamed her red-haired roomie. Money had always been a sore spot between them and since the mortgage they were perpetually 90 days late on the payments, but that was light weight compared to these new troubles. She sensed that the hammer was about to come down. Fireman were snooping around. Almost daily white dudes in suits in unmarked cars parked up the block. Local gardeners and kids on their skate boards had been watching them carrying load after load of live animals from the Buick into the house. It was Libby who was the one with all the bright ideas and now his best thinking was about to get the two of them permanently jacked up.
Bitch couldn�t take the heat. A day or two later he woke up and she was gone, and with her his original restored �58 Buick Convertible with the chrome dashboard. Later on that same afternoon, in a foul doper mood, he opened the front door only to be greeted by a distraught pet donor. She�d changed her mind and called and called their number only to hear their answering machine message. Now she was here to get her Bobo back. Her kids were driving her crazy.
Libby was pissed. Out of patience. He said follow me then clomped his way down the stairs to the converted basement cage. There, he unlocked the door and pointed to Princess. He suggested to the woman that she ask the big snake what had happened to her goddamn Bobo.
Later on when the cops arrived he was pretty sure that it was because of the woman who had run from the house then stumbled down the street, screaming. That, he found out, was not the case. It was Bitch who had dropped the dime from a women�s shelter in Van Nuys.
It was 2:00a.m. by the time he had finished the story. I was done in. I left Liberation there in the cafeteria with one cigarette in the pack and the admonition not to bother anybody else.
Ten days later I was released from SOBER and went back to my apartment in Venice. I kept my court-ordered end of the bargain and returned twice a week for �alumni� meetings.
Somehow Libby had managed not to get himself ejected from the hospital program. Doctor Tomasso, rather than terminate his whacko ass had come to recognize that he was in the presence of a special case. The doc eventually provided Libby with his own private dorm room and changed
policy to allow that, on a daily basis, he might personally monitor this client�s recovery.
Later that month I was attending an evening group session that fell on the same night as Libby�s graduation.
\There were eleven guys in total who�d made it through the entire four weeks without bolting or violating the rules to get themselves shipped off to the slam.
I was in the parking lot smoking and talking shit with an old-time alumni named Base-pipe Bob when Libby walked out the door. He smiled at me and waved good bye then got into the classic red �58 Buick Roadmaster Convertible parked at the curb. The pretty black girl behind the wheel tried to kiss him but gave up when he wouldn�t stop talking. Instead she punched the gas pedal, then turned left on to Washington Boulevard.
It�s been quite a while and I still see Libby around town at AA meetings. We always say hi and shake hands. I mean, you know, what the fuck. The rest of that stuff is ancient history now. But hey, everybody knows that only true love lasts forever.