Michael

Anthony walked into Mace before attending a BLM protest. Unfortunately, it was his Mace, and he had done it on purpose. So when he ran into the crowd, he was not acting, though that is why he was there and what he did for a living. He thought that if others believed the police had Maced him, the exposure would be suitable for his career. Give him the benefits that no timely Instagram post would ever produce. These antics were years before he started dating Daria, a woman he genuinely loved, but others tolerated because she was an integral part of the Pangea franchise. A franchise with much clout, starring a woman who relished telling others about the poverty of her youth, but poverty has different definitions in the industry. It confused Anthony at first, but he could fetch a disk better than any dog. While others had two nannies, Daria had one. Anthony understood this hardship; he had Maced himself before a BLM protest, hoping to be arrested, knowing his white lips would walk, but it never happened, unfortunately. At least his videos went viral. Viral enough to land him a role as Daria's boyfriend in the new Pangea film, directed by Daya.

Anthony's friends fit on a charcuterie board. Smelled, tasted, and looked like food you would find on a charcuterie board. All wanted to be picked by a hovering hand and given the opportunity to take calls the rest of their lives. There is a desire, a vision, that one day their Grandchildren will ask them what they are doing on Thursday, and they can say, "I'll be on a call," or "I'm taking a call." Though they dare not speak it, no new age crystal or vile of Buddha's piss can reverse that juju; they have all driven past the Hollywood sign and thought it should say 'I Have A Call,' or their name. Daria fit right in. She remembered what it was like to have one nannie, and to sit on the chacuterie board, waiting for the hand to pick someone with a missing leg, which it did when it chose her.

Anthony worked on the Pangea film; the producers told him never to look at or speak of her prosthetic leg. He was envious at first until he saw that she needed help at times and could not go for a run when he asked her if she would like to join him for a jog. Though they were in a film together, it was then that she remembered where they had met before, on Instagram. He was in his story, Maced, and running around a BLM protest. She remembered the passion in his red face as he jumped in front of every camera, screaming his contact information. She thought he looked like a desperate Clark Gable, and he felt the same. When asked who she looked like, he replied, "A woman with both of her feet on the ground." She thought it sweet, and that night they kissed and started their off-screen romance.

Daya was a Sikh woman from Branson, Missouri. She had made a handful of short films that won awards, attended film school, and interned at every studio that would have her. Her immigrant parents believed in her, and she in herself. She did not know about the charcuterie board, but was privy to the rules and the industry's cutthroat nature. That the way she would have things done was not the way things went, but she played ball and could hit, hit enough to know that by being herself, it did not matter how the game was played; she played it well. All she wanted to do was make movies, and the studio where she had interned offered her the next Pangea film. "Of course," she said. She had a movie she wanted to make, and what she made, directing Pangea, was the budget for this film she had built on a foundation of passion. Relatively obscure in social circles, it took her ten years to reach this step in the ladder. She was busy, and that's why she was shocked when she received an invitation from Anthony and Daria's friends to hang out. She had known them and followed them on Instagram, but her posts were weird until she started directing famous TV shows, and then Pangea. Her first words were, "I can't believe we've lived so close all this time and never hung out." Neither could they. She had sway with the hand that chose the industry's winners and losers. Anthony went to high school with her and immediately started writing a series he thought they would be perfect for. Daria watched a potential husband, scratching her wooden leg.

Anthony was not entirely in vogue. He technically lived with an alcoholic named Michael, who believed life owed him many unachievable standards, and these standards he applied to those who entered his vicinity. He rarely shared the facts or informed anyone of what was happening to him, so while Michael went through withdrawal during Anthony and Daria's wine tasting in Michael and Anthony's living room, he was beside himself when he heard someone say this was Michael and Anthony's living room. He took no ownership of that living room. It was ceiling-to-floor, Anthony, covered in Italian movie posters and a bookshelf that said, this is who I am, and if you have read any of these, let me know how they end. Michael ate at Taco Bell and thought he was Samuel Beckett. He was a sick man who also knew Daya. They had not seen each other since a film they worked on titled The Living, which starred Anthony, 20 years ago. He, too, was part of Anthony's circle of friends, but had no connections and no one knew whether he was sober, so he was relegated to a sort of napkin beside the charcuterie board—someone who could be used to wipe their mouth with and discarded. So when Daya came around, she looked like she hadn't aged a day, and Michael looked like he aged twice a day, but she was still nice to him as she is with everyone, and like everyone around Daya, Michael too was selfish. They were romantic, but she was the only romantic partner. He would be sober, and then he would get drunk and neglect to reciprocate anything that might be considered human behaviour. He was something else and everyone else at the same time—some monster, a Dr. Jekyll who loved being Mr. Hyde, or this is what he thought at the time. We all have our trials and tribulations, and Michael would do much more damage than he thought he was capable of to people, even if he is a napkin; let him hang around. Instead of being grateful and at peace, he was in perpetual war and sick, like everyone else who takes things for granted.

Daya eventually met someone else and went on to bigger and better projects. Anthony and the rest of the charcuterie board were picked by the hand, repeatedly, and he and Daria were in love, despite his reservations about her wooden leg and her reservation that he lived with a lunatic. He moved in with her, and over time, discovered that they were perfect for each other despite these handicaps. Everyone loved what they were doing except for the organ grinder's monkey, Michael. If he had written anything of significance, one could compare him to Mank and William Randolph Hearst's entourage. Still, as in everyone's life, there are nuances we only have the benefit of reflecting on once they've passed us by in the rear-view mirror. That night was New Year's, and Daya invited everyone over to her two-million-dollar house. Daya knew the sober Michael, as did Anthony and Daria, and when the other showed up, it was no big surprise, and those who could stand to be within the vicinity of his dark orbit turned black hole, had enough bumber cushion to deal with him gently until shortly after midnight when he whispered in Daya's ear, "You've been here for ten years and they didn't call until you passed them on the ladder."

No one knows if this is what was said, but Daya lay in bed, sobbing while female guests attended to her. Michael walked home with the same movement, anger, and rejection Dennis Rodman might feel if asked to leave North Korea on foot. When he got home, he was surprised Anthony was there and smacked his door, calling everyone a whore. Michael went to bed.

The next morning, Anthony said he needed to give up the drink, and Michael agreed. He spoke with Daya, and it wouldn't be another three months till she talked to him again, because he kept up his end of the bargain and was sober. It would be another two years of alcohol and drug withdrawals before Michael found Michael. What Anthony and Daria were up to, he hadn't a clue. Michael and Anthony moved out. Michael believed Anthony fucked him over and destroyed a TV and a cabinet. Anthony refused to tell their landlord he was moving out, and Daria told the landlord that Michael was leaving when he had every intention of staying. He was scared, still insane, and another morning, another phone call, and he paid Anthony for the broken cabinet. Daria didn't charge him for the TV; it was from "her poor aunt," and the next Pangea was about to enter production. Daya was gone, or perhaps Michael was. No longer a napkin, he was no longer anything that could be thrown away, for that would imply he was something, but Daya stumbled into something during the last nights of the home that was Anthony and Michael's public dispute. A creature, a drunk elephant man that she brought to a gathering where Anthony and Daria were staying. Anthony said, "He looked like he was angry because I didn't invite him," and others, simply, with names like Neoux and Cherokee, avoided eye contact with him, until Daya brought him back, no longer fit for public display. She might have said something like, "Get help," but his ears were full of lager. He shouted, "Ten years, Daya," and she replied that she had moved to LA two years ago. That she lived in New Orleans. They were not using her; Michael was using them. He walked into Mace, told lies about poverty, and tried. He heard her and tried. Like Daya, Daria, and Anthony, he was not all that he seemed. He struggled with drug addictions, he wouldn't wish on any Pangea employee, and other nuances that can explain behaviour but not explain a man. He dares not try to explain anyone, but knows his biological misfortunes cannot be a book of checks he hands to someone whenever he has disappointed them or hurt them. The checks ran out, and that is when he got free.

No one knows where he is free, but there is a rumor that you can catch him walking around an open field as the sun slowly descends into Mother Earth. He does what he can to help those who are kind of like him, since no one is the same, and those who are nothing like him, for they are the examples of what a good person can be.