1. Lewis and Clark are Miami Beach traffic cops, Lewis the curmudgeonly, by-the-book veteran, Clark the brash, hotshot rookie, reluctantly partnered together to fight the mysterious Colombian cartel ruthlessly violating the city’s parking, speeding, and vehicular ordinances.

On their first assignment together, in South Beach, amidst gratuitous cleavage, g-strings, volleyball, Lewis and Clark spot a man exiting a Ferrari Testarossa in a clearly marked No Parking, Stopping, or Standing zone. Lewis pulls out his pad of citations, prepares to write a ticket, but Clark says, “No, let me handle this my way,” and several quick cuts later, flashes of Clark’s barreling fists, his blurred baton, his knee’s uncongenial introduction to the parking ordinance violator’s groin, the man lies on the sidewalk in a pool of his own blood, high-heeled models and their European boyfriends irritatedly stepping over his motionless, prostrate body.

“There,” says Clark, walking back to Lewis and his unused citations. “He’ll never park, stop, or stand in this town again.”

“Careful cowboy,” says Lewis. “That kind of thing might play across the bay, but this is Miami Beach, where roughhousers aren’t suffered lightly.”

Then, putting on his sunglasses for dramatic effect, he adds, “Play with fire here, caballero, and you’re going to get burned,” and Clark blinks, blankly, trying hard to make it to the title sequence without punching his partner in the jaw.

Post-title sequence, Lewis and Clark drive down Ocean Drive, facilitating more shots of cleavage, hot pants, pastels. Clark grows tired of listening to chatter concerning burglaries, arsons, and domestic assaults and switches the squad car’s police scanner to 99 Jamz, and the cruiser suddenly bumps with seat-shaking bass and electronic handclaps rather than suspected felonies and misdemeanors.

“What’s this crap?” snarls Lewis, in characteristic curmudgeonly fashion.

“The Dirty South,” Clark answers. “‘Right Thurr’ by Chingy, featuring Trina and Jermaine Dupri. This, old man, is booty music.”

“Like hell it is,” says Lewis, who shuts off the radio and slams a cassette into the squad car’s tape deck. The handclaps and rolled r’s of the Dirty South are soon superseded by cheesy 80’s drum machines and rhythmically stilted raps about sexual promiscuity, and Lewis says, “Now this is booty music. 2 Live Crew. 1989. TR-808. That’s the problem with your generation, Clark. Shaking your booty to all the wrong beats, for all the wrong reasons.”

Lewis and Clark stop at a pizza shop, after fifteen minutes of trying to find legal South Beach parking, and as chart-topping Latin pop plays in the background the two cops discuss the growing menace of the Colombian traffic cartel while enjoying delicious Italian sausage on piping hot Parmesan, mozzarella, and feta.

“They come from the most lawless regions of their homeland,” says Lewis, shaking on extra seasoning. “Places where yielding is unknown, where the unsignaled turn is king, where roads are regularly blocked by ox carts, paramilitaries, cattle. They have no respect for our laws, our tow-away zones, our loading zones, our parking with permit only. The obstruction and chaos of the jungle – that is all they know.”

Clark, meanwhile, hears not a word, instead intently observing a provocatively dressed meter maid across the street bend over to make chalk marks on the tires of a Toyota Land Cruiser, her work shorts rolled up, her shirt scissored into a backless halter top.

“Is that a new city uniform?” asks Clark, his tongue hanging out, burned by the pizza’s three searing cheeses.

“No,” says Lewis. “That’s Sacagawea. And don’t even think about it, Clark – she’s dangerous. Play with her, compadre,” (again sliding on his sunglasses) “and you’re going to get burned.”

Clark excuses himself to the restroom, his partner’s dialogue and the Italian sausage causing an acute attack of indigestion, but not before Sacagawea’s eyes meet his own through the pizza shop’s floor to ceiling window, her devious stare indicating thoughts far, far more impure than parking in a loading zone, than changing lanes without signaling.

Lewis and Clark, back on the beat, patrol Washington Avenue, scanning side streets and curbsides for parking ordinance-violating Colombians. They pass an ad for the most popular program on television, Seven Underwear Models in an Elevator, the skivvy-clad stunners of Season Three staring broodingly at traffic and pedestrians from the side of a city bus, and Lewis reads the show’s tagline aloud: “Seven models. Seven pairs of underwear. One elevator. Mondays at 8 PM. Only on Fox.”

“I see they’re skewing more toward thong underwear this season,” says Clark, admiring the public transportation. “Smart. A sure ratings winner.”

Lewis and Clark continue down Washington, pass more buses plastered with TV show ads – Celebrity Crack Addiction, Marriage in Sixty Seconds or Less, Who Wants to Reinvent the Cotton Gin? – and Lewis, shaking his head, airs his displeasure.

“Reality television,” he says. “In my day, you wanted reality, you drank half a handle of bourbon, passed out beneath the Christmas tree, woke up the next morning in a Santa Claus outfit of unknown origin, hogtied with tinsel, with your whole family standing over you, telling you to get your life together. Boom – reality. Doesn’t get more real than that.”

“I’d rather get my reality from underwear models in an elevator,” says Clark. “More fast-paced. More brightly lit.”

Lewis grimaces, rolls down his window, spits in the general direction of a Seven Underwear Models in an Elevator glorifying bus.

“That’s the problem with your generation, Clark,” he says. “Always looking for the next reality. A simple Yuletide hangover is never enough.”

After Lewis cuts off the bus, gives the driver the finger, burns rubber onto a cross street, Clark, his eyes diligently scanning the periphery of the roadway, alertly spots the first evidence of the nefarious Colombians, a Hummer arrogantly entrenched in front of a No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays sign.

“Pull over,” says Clark, reaching for his gun, “I’ll teach this joker to celebrate the Lord’s Day of Rest on a Wednesday,” but Lewis, eyes twitching, body trembling, sweat pouring down his brow, refuses.

“What’s the matter with you?” says Clark to his shaking, perspiring partner. “You seen a ghost or something?”

“I don’t do No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays,” says Lewis, making a squealing turn at the next street.

“What do you mean you don’t do No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays?” says Clark.

“Let it go, Clark,” says Lewis. “Let it go.”

Later that night, still puzzling over Lewis’s bizarre reaction to the No Parking sign, Clark returns to his condo on Meridian Avenue, only to find Sacagawea writing up his Honda Civic for extending its hood into the forbidden domain of a yellow-painted curb. She wears high heels, heavy makeup, a zebra striped mini dress with a plunging neckline, and when the unissued parking tickets disappear into her briefly, tantalizingly revealed undergarments Clark completely loses his bearings and walks face first into a Tow-Away Zone sign.

“Lewis was right, you are dangerous,” says Clark as Sacagawea looms over him, exposing further gratuitous cleavage.

After an abrupt and efficient sex scene, and a commercial break, Clark holds Sacagawea in his muscular, tattooed arms and asks her where she’s been his whole life.

“Tow-away zones, mostly,” she says. “And the occasional parking lot for customers only.”

Provocatively illuminated by the streetlight spilling through the windows, Sacagawea leans to the side of the bed and retrieves Clark’s discarded police uniform, draping it over her made-for-primetime-television body and tenderly fondling the badge, the eagle at the crest, the palm tree at the center.

“I know your partner, by the way,” she says. “The one with you at the pizza place, when you were checking me out. We go way back.”

“How far back can you go?” says Clark. “What are you – twenty? Twenty one years old?”

“Nineteen,” she says. “Your partner is my father.”

Clark’s skull slams against the bed’s sturdy wrought iron headboard.

“I would’ve mentioned it before,” says Sacagawea, sheepishly, “but we moved to the foreplay-with-tire-marking-chalk stage rather quickly, and I figured any discussions involving paternity would have been inappropriate, given the context.”

Clark sits up, rubs his welt-forming head, and observes, with both desire and disorientation, his partner’s nubile teenage daughter, immaculate in the streetlight, draped in police navy blue, bringing new meaning to the phrase “The City’s Finest.” There are a number of things he’d like to say to her, a number of items he’d like to bring to the agenda, but first and foremost are two pressing and puzzling questions concerning the man who so serendipitously helped bring her into this world.

“Sacagawea,” says Clark, “if you don’t mind me asking – would your father, when you were growing up, deliver poorly conceived one-liners roughly once every seven minutes while putting his sunglasses on for dramatic effect?”

“Oh yes,” she says. “But more often than that. He practiced every morning and evening in the shower. Running water and poorly conceived one-liners were the soundtrack of my childhood.”

Clark nods. Now, pressing question number two.

“And another thing,” he says. “Does he, by any chance, have an irrational fear of No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays signs?”

“No,” says Sacagawea. “But he does have a rational fear of them. A No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays sign killed his partner.”

The next day, after more gratuitous shots of cleavage, booty shorts, sand, Clark confronts his new, requisite love interest’s incorrigible father while directing traffic at a busy, construction-ravaged intersection.

“For God’s sake, Lewis, why didn’t you tell me about your partner?” says Clark, motioning for eastbound traffic to proceed.

“You slept with my daughter, didn’t you?” says Lewis.

“Answer my question first,” says Clark.

“He was off duty,” says Lewis. “It was a Saturday. Nice day. He was walking his dog. According to the official police report, he came across a man leaving a vehicle parked in a No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays zone. Witnesses report a verbal argument, growing in volume, intensity. The man tried to rip the No Parking sign from the ground and my partner produced his badge, ordered the increasingly agitated and erratic man to stop, but in all the excitement my partner let go of the dog leash and his dog ran in the opposite direction, weaving in and out of traffic down the street. My partner turned around, called for his dog. ‘Baxter!’ the witnesses claim he yelled, ‘Baxter!’ But before he could chase down his beloved schnauzer, who used to sit between us in the squad car, eat strips of bacon from my hand, howl whenever a burglary-in-progress was reported on the police scanner, the crazed parking violator rather impressively ripped the sign out of the ground and smashed it, fatally, over my partner’s subsequently concave head.”

“Jesus,” says Clark.

“And the thing is,” says Lewis, “not a day goes by, not an hour, not a minute, when I don’t think, if only it had been a Sunday. If only it had been a holiday.”

“Yes, I slept with your daughter,” says Clark, and the screen goes black, the credits roll, a somber, baritone voice promising, next Thursday at 9/8 Central, another thrilling, heart-pounding episode of Lewis and Clark: Miami.

2.

Lewis and Clark are the unlikeliest of pals: Lewis, an observational comedian, Clark, a divorced conceptual artist raising his three children the only way he knows how: in a hollow, larger than life replica of Elvis Presley’s digestive system, made out of fiberglass.

When Lewis shows up in Elvis’s esophagus, unannounced, as is his custom, the Clark household is in disarray: the eldest child Kimberly screaming at her father, storming through the King’s gastroesophageal opening into the stomach, the middle child Marcus bleeding from the forehead after tripping over the Father of Rock-n-Roll’s fiberglass villi in the small intestine, the youngest, Sam-Sam, trying to cook a microwave pizza casserole with his father’s welding equipment.

“Don’t you hate it when your progeny, conceived out of tenderness and love, cause you nothing but pain and emotional torment,” says Lewis, to uproarious prerecorded laughter.

“I’ll tell you, Lewis,” says Clark, “parenting is certainly one wild roller coaster ride, much like my 1997 piece ‘Jackson Pollack’ in which I rode the Texas Scrambler after a county fair pie eating contest and projectile vomited abstract expressionism onto the Pepsi cup littered earth below.”

Lewis opens Clark’s unplugged refrigerator, peruses the paltry, mold-covered contents, and Sacagawea, Clark’s ex-wife, appears in Elvis’s oral cavity, to take the children to their extracurricular activities.

“Clark!” she screams, sprinting inside the esophagus and shutting off the fuel supply to Sam-Sam’s torch. “How many times do I have to tell you – don’t let Sam-Sam play with the welding equipment!”

“How else is he going to learn?” says Clark. “See – he’s wearing gloves, he’s wearing eye protection. What’s the big deal?”

“He’s in second grade!”

“Mozart composed his first symphony at eight.”

“So? A symphony doesn’t burn at six thousand degrees Fahrenheit! A symphony can’t melt off your skin!”

“Obviously you haven’t seen John Cage’s Concerto for Bassoon and Flamethrower.”

“Did you ever notice,” says Lewis, “how the whispered endearments and sweet nothings of young romance soon give way to argument, disdain, betrayal,” eliciting more riotous studio hoots and guffaws.

Sacagawea, shooing Sam-Sam away from the acetylene torch, notices, for the first time, the blood dripping down her other son’s freckled face.

“Marcus, pumpkin,” she says. “What happened to your forehead?”

“I tripped over the villi in the small intestine again,” says Marcus. “It doesn’t hurt that bad. Dad says I remind him of his performance piece ‘John Hancock’ when he bled his signature onto the guest books of several New England bed-and-breakfasts.”

“Clark!” Sacagawea screams again. “Why do you insist on living inside this godforsaken digestive system? Fiberglass is a very abrasive material! This place is a death trap!”

“Sacky,” says Clark, using the pet name she once loved, now hates, “you know that we’re making a very important political and artistic statement by defying our society’s unquestioned paradigms of ‘acceptable’ domestic habitation.”

“And?” says Sacagawea, folding her arms across her chest.

“And I can no longer afford the rent on my artist’s loft,” admits Clark.

Kimberly, hearing her mother’s voice, emerges from the stomach and launches into an anti-paternal diatribe, her sympathetic maternal audience allowing her to speak freely on the subject of her father and how he is irrevocably ruining her existence.

“Mom,” she says, “I refuse to live with Dad anymore! I’m tired of not having electricity, I’m tired of sleeping in Elvis’s rectum, and most of all I’m tired of Dad using my boyfriends for his stupid art projects!”

“What did you do this time?” says Sacagawea to Clark, awaiting his latest justification for traumatizing their daughter in the name of antiformalism.

“I really don’t see what all the fuss is about,” says Clark. “All I want to do is collect sperm samples from her ex-boyfriends, store them in the freezer aisle of a Winn-Dixie, and enter the whole mis-en-scene into a juried exhibition as ‘What Could Have Been My Grandchildren.’”

“You see, Mom!” says Kimberly. “You see!”

“Okay, Kimmy,” says her mother, “but – be honest with me – have you been having premarital sex?”

“Oh my God!” wails Kimberly, rushing back into the stomach. “I hate both of you!”

“What’s the deal with the brutal suppression of your most-yearned-for hopes and dreams?” says Lewis, the canned laughter so loud and distorted it sounds like a multiple vehicle accident.

Sacagawea regards Clark coldly, paces the esophageal lining, shuts off the oxygen tank connected, in conjunction with the fuel line, to the welding torch.

“Look, I know we have our differences,” she says to her ex-husband, “our divergent paths, our conflicting aspirations, our separate schools of thought, but this – this has to violate some basic, nonpartisan, universal law of parenting. You can’t raise children in a small intestine, Clark.”

“I sleep in the small intestine,” says Clark. “Marcus and Sam-Sam get the large.”

As Sacagawea steams, tries to refrain from switching on the oxygen and fuel tanks and welding her ex-husband into oblivion, little Sam-Sam approaches her with a blank sheet of copy paper and an ear-to-ear grin plastered on his cherubic face.

“Look Mommy,” he says, proudly, “Daddy’s helping me with my art project.”

“Sweetheart,” his mother says, “that’s just a piece of printer paper. That’s not art.”

“Not art!” growls Clark. “Have you seen what the other kids in his class are doing? Lifeless, formalist scribbles with crayon, Cray-pa, washable marker, finger paint. Representational depictions of dinosaurs, kittens, Disney characters, suns with smiling faces, little girls and boys with triangular noses and three fingers on each hand. And yet this – this so-called ‘blank’ page – which contains more truth, more significance, more resonance than anything those talentless seven year olds or their blinker-eyed hack of an art teacher could ever dream of creating – this, according to you, is not art.”

Sacagawea glares.

“What was your assignment, munchkin?” she says to Sam-Sam.

“ We’re supposed to draw the person or people we love most in the world,” he says.

“It’s titled ‘Oblivion #7,’” says Clark. “Obviously I’ll help him with the spelling.”

And as Sacagawea stares at the acid-free void of the page, “Oblivion #7,” tears forming in the corners of her eyes, Lewis says, “How come, despite our best intentions, our lives always fall victim to the most derivative and artless of human errors?” and the laughter, buoyed by hysterical applause, is deafening.

3.

For a time, my life eerily mirrored the plotlines of the popular syndicated television sitcom Lewis and Clark: The College Years. It was unsettling, uncanny. In episode three, for instance, Lewis was telemarketed by his estranged father, absent since Lewis’s infancy, his identity revealed midway into a sales pitch for Do-It-Yourself Exorcism, and within one hour my own father called me on the phone to apologize for abandoning our family in my youth and to offer limited-time-only deals on electric chairs in bulk. Quite the coincidence, I thought at the time. Another curious instance of life imitating art. But then, the next week, when Clark lost his virginity to the campus mascot, Buddy the Beaver outside, Jasmina the biology-majoring fox inside, and, that very evening, I found myself enwrapped in the tender, fuzzy embrace of our own cheerleading rodent, Musky the Muskrat, the orgasmic moans emanating from Musky’s unrodential interior muffled by an absorptive layer of shag carpeting and a giant, mouthless, flame retardant polyester muskrat head, I thought – perhaps greater forces are at play here – and was unsurprised when, moments later, we were discovered, mid-coitus, by the sousaphone section and drum line of the marching band.

At first, it was nice – my male friends were all hilarious, eccentric, multi-ethnic, spoke only in punchlines, my female friends were all attractive, stylish, promiscuous, spoke only in double entendres – but, after awhile, the novelty of constant witty repartee, spontaneous monologues, fleeting celebrity cameos, sexual innuendoes leading to no actual sex, wore thin. I would try to engage my friends in serious discussions, about globalization, immigration, the Indo-Pakistani conflict, the war in Afghanistan, the Cyprus Question, and they would reply with absurd non-sequiturs, comedic double takes, celebrity impersonations, laughter bursting from an unknown location – the drainpipes, the ventilation ducts, beneath the futon – I was never entirely certain. I would try to date female classmates, treat them chivalrously, lavish them with attention, refrain from deceit, cunning, subterfuge, but within a week, without fail, I would lose them to situational irony, to comic misunderstanding, and the unprovenanced laughter would again assail me from all sides as I found myself, once more, alone.

I quit watching Lewis and Clark, switched over to The Beast Wrangler on Animal Planet, an excitable New Zealander braving alligator infested swamps, bear inundated caves, empty swimming pools full of poisonous snakes, but, while I no longer succumbed to crumbling weekly romances or ratings-grabbing embarrassments or painful, slapstick-related injuries, I did find myself routinely inconvenienced by wildcat maulings, elephant stampedes, shark attacks at the beach, in hot tubs, at the Y. Next, tired of commutes ruined by wildebeest migration, dates ruined by boa constriction, bachelor’s parties ruined by snow leopards leaping from hollow cakes and devouring the Best Man, I tried the local news – ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox – but, while the savagery of the wild abated, the savagery of humanity only escalated – drive-by shootings at every traffic circle, tragic murder-suicides in every produce section, community productions of Grease, Guys and Dolls, Godspell with casts composed entirely of convicted rapists, drug dealers, child molesters – and not a day went by where a friend didn’t perish in a gasoline fire, a professor didn’t convulse mid-Powerpoint Presentation from a terrifying foodborne illness, a classmate didn’t consume a lethal amount of anthrax slipped into a turkey Reuben sandwich, the sudden influx of sexy brunettes appearing in my dorm room with the current temperature and barometric pressure affording me little consolation.

Lewis and Clark: The College Years spawned several spin-offs – Lewis and Clark: Homicide, Lewis and Clark: Chinatown, Lewis and Clark: The College Years Bittersweetly Remembered – and Sacagawea, a popular recurring character, got her own show, Single Shoshone in the City, but, even though I appreciated my daily crises de-escalating from machete attacks, gun battles, and axe murders to mere public humiliation arising from a series of unlikely coincidences, my life fell into a tired, predictable pattern, every day spent lethargically going through the motions, as if it all had happened before, except now everyone around me was older, heavier, balder, their faces lined with a faint but detectable desperation and sadness. Lewis and Clark: The College Years went into syndication, airing at least once an evening, a double helping on Sundays, and my life really did repeat itself – friends who had died from bear attacks, cocaine cartel shootings, opiate binges, suddenly resurrected, spouting one-liners I could finish before the third word had left their lips – but, though at first I was ecstatic to see my old compatriots, old lovers, enveloping them in my arms, smothering them with kisses, overwhelmed with emotion, they never returned my affections, maintained their unshakeable sarcasm, wry, unrelenting cynicism, and I was thrown further into the depths of darkest despair.

Many nights I contemplated turning off the television for good, pondered the existential question of my remote’s on/off button, but I never had the nerve to press it, too afraid that, if my plasma flat screen remained dormant, its pixels no longer illuminated, its soothsaying of Things-to-Come silenced, my life, too, would be extinguished, falling into darkness, swallowed by the void. While watching the surprise midseason replacement hit The Day the Music Died, I, like the protagonist, was visited by the miniature ghosts of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper whenever presented with a moral dilemma, the famed rock ‘n rollers materializing on my shoulder anytime I considered cheating on my girlfriend, on my tax return, in mini golf, in gin rummy, but whenever I pondered the quandary of whether or not to turn off my TV, to risk self-annihilation for the sake of my sanity, the ethereal, deceased musicians were nowhere to be found, abandoning me when I needed them the most. What could be more moral a dilemma than this – to be, or not to be? Why wouldn’t they answer Shakespeare’s most beloved and oft-quoted question?

I searched for the answer everywhere: Television for Men, bodybuilders challenging me to fistfights, crashing helicopters into my Volvo, incinerating my neighbors with flamethrowers during backyard barbeques; Television for Women, girlfriend after girlfriend lost to anorexia, bulimia, painkiller addiction, sex trafficking, homicidal ex-husbands, crystal meth; Television for Children, terrifying costumed creatures accosting me on the street, at the supermarket, teaching me phonics, how to tie my shoelaces, how to count to ten; but I found nothing but a growing emptiness, a vacuum displacing all matter in the pit of my shriveling soul. I searched during cooking shows, reality shows, reality cooking shows, chefs struggling to make venison stroganoff or steak tartare while simultaneously traversing a ropes course, a mineshaft, a balancing beam slathered with liquid detergent, but I learned nothing, except how to make julienned fries while rock climbing, how to water ski while preparing a spicy raspberry vinaigrette. Whenever a new show premiered, White Men Shouting, Political Roller Derby, America’s Most Inadvisable Cosmetic Surgeries, I crossed my fingers, watched with bated breath, hoping my life would take on three rather than two dimensions, would feature revelations profound rather than contrived, wouldn’t be interrupted every seven minutes by complete strangers informing me about the Sales Event of the Summer, the side effects of antidepressants, the revolutionary designs of toothbrushes, the special features of the Qu’ran for Kids, but – time and time again – my dreams were crushed, obliterated, smashed to splinters by yet another tired plot device, yet another recycled premise, and I remained in the vice grip of monotony, repetitiveness, violence, cliché, falling asleep once more to the sound of lighthearted theme music, to laughter emanating from the fire detector, from the pipes.

Until I discovered Telemundo.

Telemundo, Channel Fifty One, my light, my savior, my Holy Grail. Men wearing schoolboy outfits, clown makeup, dresses; women wearing feathers, low-cut blouses, thongs; conga players appearing out of nowhere, the sun forever shining, everyone dancing to merengue, to mambo, to cha-cha-chá.

My virgin Telemundo experience was ¡Domingo Estupendo!, a craggy-faced man and buxom, fast-talking woman introducing comedy sketches, dance numbers, slow-panned shots of spectacular cleavage, and though I had no idea what anyone was saying, no idea why the men so often affected silly voices, why the exclamation points were occasionally upside down, why the women barely even attempted to cover their unwieldy, surgically enhanced breasts, I found, in my confusion, a sort of peace – came to the realization that, with the world chaotic, illogical, mad, with the meaning of life unfathomable, the intentions of God unknowable, it was pointless to waste one’s life with unanswered yearning, to wallow away precious hours with self-pity, anxiety, regret – it made a lot more sense, in the face of such existential angst, to, like the full-figured feathered women of Telemundo, smile, strut, salsa dance.

As I spoke not a word of Spanish, beyond the stereotypical ¡ay carambas! of Mexican-American cartoon characters and the regular menu items of Taco Bell, I was able, in the absence of the English language, to fashion my own realities, forge my own truths, apply my own, idealistic subtitles to the indecipherable phoneme combinations assaulting me from every direction. When old men rolled their r’s at me on the bus, gesticulated wildly, introduced me to women wearing strategically placed fruit, pied me in the face, I pretended they were conversing eloquently about the aesthetics of French New Wave cinema, the evolution of Senegalese folk music, the prose style of John Dos Passos. When the fruit-wearing women spoke to me, sultry and incoherent, booties shaking, bananas jiggling, citrus-covered hips gyrating to bus radio merengue, I pretended their dialogue was nothing less than an inspirational oratory on the existence of universal truth. Freed from the narrow constraints of American television conventions, I was finally allowed, in the colorful, kinetic universe of Telemundoland, to construct a rich, fulfilling, multilayered life, imagining myself forming deep, lasting friendships with the conga players, joining recreational soccer teams with the tabloid journalism anchors, being invited to weddings and first communions and Polynesian-themed backyard barbeques by the men in wigs, dresses, female bodysuits. I’d run into telenovela actresses at the gym, the quad, the stir fry line at the cafeteria, Intro to Computer Science, their jewelry jangling, their breasts heaving, their fists clenched mid-tearstained monologue, and I’d envision us falling in love, walking hand in hand on white sand beaches, picknicking in verdant meadows, promising to honor and cherish one another ‘til death did us part.

For the first time since Lewis and Clark: The College Years had premiered, Monday at 8 PM Eastern, followed by a very special episode of Jesus Christ, Federal Assassin, I felt unencumbered by the stringent guidelines of American sitcoms, soap operas, crime procedurals, talk shows, dramedies, instead hurled into an alien, guayabera-infested world in which nothing was certain, everything possible. When I woke up each morning, rather than dread the inevitable car chase, amnesia episode, discovery of my evil twin, I was excited, exuberant about the unfathomable Latin-tinged absurdity awaiting outside my dorm room, shirtless male pop stars and backup dancers singing, for all I knew, about the Teapot Dome Scandal, the Hawley Smoot Tariff, the Silver Purchase Act. And so, at long last, I was content, again grateful for the gift of life, no longer staring endlessly at the remote control’s on/off button, contemplating my self-eradication, as the same tired scenarios played and replayed themselves on my screen, in my dreams, in the mind-numbing predictability of another soul-crushing day. I was free to fantasize, fashion my own narratives, own plot twists, own season cliffhangers, no longer held captive by scriptwriters, advertisers, demographic research by faceless multinational corporations. My only fear, the unspeakable terror that would often keep me up at night, cause me to awake in a pool of cold sweat, sleepwalk, regain consciousness in a sand trap, tiger cage, all-you-can-eat buffet, was that, eventually, I would learn Spanish, a phrase here, a phrase there, picking up vocabulary, idioms, verb conjugations through osmosis, daily exposure, until the endless mysteries of Telemundoland revealed themselves to be banal, mundane, trite, the craggy-faced men speaking not of German Expressionism, Kantian philosophy, truth, but of puns, knock-knock jokes, desire for the women in peacock feathers; the amply endowed women expressing to me not their undying love, their unextinguishable devotion, but their enthusiasm for an exciting new brand of hand lotion; the pop singers performing not poetry, but a translation of “Bennie and the Jets” by Elton John. I can only hope this day never comes to pass. I can only pray, desperately and fervently, that the men will forever cross-dress, the conga players will forever play, the fruit-wearing women will forever twist, swivel, peel themselves, as miraculously and mysteriously as in the golden, unsubtitled days of my youth.

Today the women wear mangos and papayas, the music starts, and they begin to dance.