The Placeholder Show

Word Count – 380

For the record, we never had any doubt that you were not “an Oriental”. Your thick accent and dark complexion were enough to sway our inquisitive minds to broach the subject of “This very drunk man swaying in front of us, what do you think is his country of origin?”

I don’t know where you came from that cloudy day, or why you started talking to my friend. All I remember was I was in line, looking aloft with my inflatable whale, when my friend started shouting at you. I looked over and saw that you were looking down for some reason. Following your eyesight, I was treated to the sight of a shrivelled, mud soaked dick and ball sack. As I turned away to laugh hysterically, you insisted that this was evidence that you were, in fact, not “of the Orient.”

I’m glad you are so comfortable with you heritage that you embrace it publicly, but you embraced it in line for an inflatable slide with a parade of strangers parading slowly behind you.

Being a naturally positive person, I guess I have to thank you for finding a way to quickly evidence your point without dragging me through the exhaustive and irrelevant game of guessing game your ethnicity, which would truly have been a bore. I also feel like I should thank you for not throwing up on my back after you butted into line behind me. While I’m thinking about it, I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the women behind you, who noticed how inebriated you were at four o’clock in the goddamn afternoon and took pity on me, making sure to shout whenever you teetered forward slightly, looking like you were ready to expel chunks of fish onto my back from your fine fat belly.

Truly, you reminded me that we are of one world and one peoples and our differences are not many. We remain divided only into tribes of the meek and tribes of the brave, with a final division being those brave enough to get drunk and put their genitals on parade for a float full of school children.

– Timothy Legion

PS – We only thought about shoving you into the Police Pony once. I hope you’ll forgive us. We are only human.

Word Count – 1200

Hey. How’s it going, Showcase? Yeah, its been a while, I know.

I hope you don’t think this is weird or anything, me writing to you out of the blue and all. I mean, christ, its probably been, what? Seven? Maybe eight years? However long ago it was, it was probably right around the same time I just started getting high speed internet in my home.

Now, listen, I know we did not have a very amicable split. I just want you to know, it was all me, not you. Things just kind of happen, you know? You grow up, you find that the things you’ve been used to for so long no longer excite you. You want to try new things, see what else is out there. Turns out the “what else” that is out there is people having real sex with actual penetration, free and ready to view 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I don’t mean to upset you, but there really is no competition for that.

But let us not dwell on that, shall we? Let’s think back to some of the better times. Why, I can remember a time when you and I were practically smitten with one and other. I can remember waiting for the school bell to ring on fridays, knowing later that night you and I would share another magical evening together. It was a time of discovery, a time of experimentation. Those truly were ‘Fridays Without Borders’.

You were the home to those little known television series’ that promised at least one carefully staged sex scene, and a minimum of two pairs of exposed breasts every episode. For a young boy with nothing more than an active imagination and basic cable, it was heaven. The best of the lot, in my memory, was Red Shoe Diaries. Every week, David Duchovny would unveil a new tale of unrequited love and forbidden sexual desire before my young nubile eyes. He taught me more about sex than my own father. This was so long ago, it was before I was able to distinguish between actors on screen and the characters they played. There was a time when I figured that when Mulder was not finding out if the truth was out there, he was answering letters that began with “Dear Red Shoes, I just fucked a french zookeeper in a janitors closet.”

But then, at midnight, when those shows ended, you and I shared our most cherished times. Every week, you would open up the vaults, and share with I and the rest of the country your vast collection of top quality soft core european pornography. I don’t think I ever formally thanked you for those gems, but no thank you would truly suffice for the generosity you showed. I watched you every friday night of my entire teenage life, and not once do I recall seeing the same film twice. I can just picture the basement of your headquarters being endless catacombs full of dusty old VHS tapes, with an old grey haired gatekeeper proclaiming “BEHOLD! The vast annals of european muff! Stare in bewilderment at the failed community theatre actors from across the British isles. Gaze at body hair in places you never presumed it could grow!”

You taught me so much about myself, Showcase. You showed me that the physical expression of love is a beautiful, natural act. Well, most of the time. Sometimes the physical expression of love happens when a man who looks like a romanian Santa Claus foists himself on top of a woman with more facial hair than he has. Regardless, those were teaching years, and through masturbation trail and error, I learned more about myself sexually than I ever would have watching conventional pornography. Some weeks, the sights and sounds pleased me from dusk till dawn. Other times, it was a film where the penis/vagina ratio was waaaaay too lopsided for me to maintain composure. But I did not despair, because I knew my own desires were starting to solidify and become more refined. I became open minded, and proud of my natural urges. I never questioned my sexuality. You questioned it for me, night after night, when I was praying that the next people to have sex on screen would not have been alive when Lincoln was shot.

At a point in my life when I needed a friend, you were there. You may not believe it, but… I love you. I know it is not normal for a man to say he loves a television station, but I think when you go through an entire box of kleenex and two rolls of toilet paper every weekend with one, the label is only appropriate.

But I’m worried about you, Showcase. I checked in on you a little while ago, just to see what you’ve been up to. What I saw in the place of what used to be is a slew of reality shows about the porn industry. I understand your motives, you are trying to compete with the big, bad troublemakers on the internet who are stealing your thunder, and riding the reality tv bandwagon at the same time. Frankly Showcase, you’re better than these shows. Your appeal is your innocence, your knack for not showing us everything all at once. Some of us like to use our imagination, to pretend that the genitals we are not seeing might be our own. The thing that those reality shows do is ruin the mystique of pornography. If you watch enough of them, over time it just becomes depressing. Its like an ongoing documentary about type casted character actors, only instead of “whatchew talkin’ bout, willis?”, its gaping anal cum shots.

The other reason I worry is I don’t think you truly understand the vital role you continue to play in this world. For christ sake, children are watching this, man! You gotta make sure these kids become perverts slooooowly. You can’t reveal everything all at once and ruin whimsy for the people who are just starting to enjoy it. You’ve turned into the guy who rushes the stage at magic shows, pulls open the magician’s jacket and shows the kids where he hides the doves. If you and the rest of the basic cable smut peddlers carry on like this, pretty soon we are going to have a whole generation of kids who will become bored with sex before they even start having it. Without the intrigue and fantasy that late night soft core porn in your pre-pubescence provides, they will all become nothing but joyless, oversexed douchebags. Having “ironic orgies”, buying cockrings at American Apparel, and claiming they liked double penetration “before it was cool”. There is a name for these kind of people, Showcase, and they are called Hipster-sexuals.

But do not misunderstand me, I don’t want to come off as ungrateful. Truly, I thank you for all the great times we have shared together. I thank you for being there for me, when the scrambled Pay-Per-View channels were too jumbled to distinguish between where one body part ended and the other began. And lastly, I thank you for acknowledging the fact that anyone at home watching television on a friday night is only doing so because every other plan they had to have sex that night failed miserably.

– J.D. Renaud

Just so you know, I have still not forgotten about you, but whatever point it was you were trying to make about my disdain for whatever nationality you were is still as lost on me now as it was then.

I promise to be nice to everyone forever if you can assure me we will never meet under those same circumstances again.

– J.D. Renaud

Word Count – 500

Thank you for making my day just a little more special.

I was in a bit of a bad mood as I was trailing you two down the sidewalk. A little worried about finances, politics, women. General malaise, I guess you could say. Then I saw you, in your tank top and parachute panted glory, fall down in the middle of the street. Hard. You were holding hands with your boyfriend, who was not paying attention and did not catch you. He did not even make an attempt to catch you, as a matter of fact. He was busy staring at a poster taped to a pole for a concert that happened four weeks ago.

I was watching the entire time, but was too far away to have provided any assistance. I walked past you both and attempted eye contact to see if you were alright, but quickly looked away once I heard you two ‘talking’ to each other. You both made a series of groaning noises to signify that the afternoon walk would be temporarily delayed. Instead of moving aside and seeking refuge, you both sat in the middle of the sidewalk and waited out the pain. Your boyfriend actually poked your shoulder to see if it would hurt. Based on your reaction, I assume it did. As he helped you up, neither of you said anything that could be construed as english, but the general attitude from both of you was one of confusion and annoyance. He, for not understanding why the walk suddenly had to interrupted, and you, wondering why your arm, the one he was still holding, suddenly hurt so much for some reason.

In a perfect world, I would like to imagine that neither of you were drunk or high. I would truly love it if you two were merely stricken dumb for your love of one and other, and now require constant supervision from the other in order to survive. Perhaps his less than speedy reaction was attributed to an incident I had not witnessed, such as him walking into a mailbox up the street that you failed to warn him was quickly approaching. I hope this fantasy reality I have created gives you some solace as you continue to shamble your way around this big, crazy world.

One small word of advice before I go. You’re five foot nothing and wearing sandals, do you really think you should be wearing size 62 length pants? They had to have been at least two inches longer than you were from head to toe. May I suggest some casual capri’s, or perhaps a modest seasonal skirt? Unless of course you were on your way to a belated fourth of July celebration (in Canada), and were just about to pick up your stilts and fake beard to complete your Female Uncle Sam Meth Addict uniform, in which case, pay no mind to this comment. I’m apparently just talking out my ass.

– J.D. Renaud