THE FUTILITY OF LOVE IN LATE 20TH CENTURY AMERICA The day starts out all right. Barbara Dare, porn star, is appearing at a local video store. I arrive just a few hours early and help the guy open the store. After lunch, Ms. Dare arrived. Her skin was very clear and her hair smelled really good. I was in love and felt queasy when I looked at all the lechers ogling her. But worse still, at the end of the day, she retreated to a back room and emerged with her panties in her hand. They were to be auctioned off. Oh the humanity. I got the panties and headed back home. On TV Johnny Cougar's(Yeah, I don't give a fuck what he calls himself, he'll always be Johnny Cougar to me) new video ("Get a leg up") is on and in it, he's dancing with this model (Elaine Irwin? Nancy Irwin? Ashley Montana?) and there's something about the way she smiles as she dances that makes the whole Barbara Dare thing seem cheap, and leave a bad taste in my mouth. So I take the panties from my mouth and later that evening head out to a local comedy club. The manager is a guy I went to high school with and after the show I go out with him for coffee. Joining us is the woman who had just performed(to a standing ovation), mousey, deadpan comedienne Margaret Smith. She and the manager are buzzed because the show went so great and I'm buzzed because as we drink our coffee, smoke our cigarettes down to the filter and talk, I come to realize that her onstage persona(the first lady of angst) is no sham--she *is* just like that. Her despair is voluptuous; her entropy goes straight to the bone. Mine. Her skin is pasty; she is flat-chested; her ass(as she puts it) is two Saltines; she smells like stale cigarettes and I want her desperately. Our calves touch under the table and she doesn't pull hers back. I lose my breath and when my manager-friend goes to the bathroom I ask her out. A few hours later, as I'm whacking off into Barbara Dare's panties, I laugh so hard I burst a blood vessel in my neck and I die. Oh, I die. RICHH