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Sidney Hipple had a lot going on in his life. His dreams had finally started to take form. He was finally creating the music that he had always dreamed of making. He had created a suitable life situation, where he could develop his potentialities. Now that haunting distracting beast which he carried for so long was finally dormant, or at least for the moment. He was ready to pursue the life he needed to lead. He had his massive website, www.laughingdervish.com with the stories that he had written, with the paintings that he had created as a digital artist. He even found a new art website to store the paintings he had done in the past using a web design program called Fireworks 2. He had over 300 paintings, and he had not painted in years. He had several bands on MP3, sixteen to be exact. Six of the bands he had had for the whole time he had been on MP3.com, which was a little over two years. They did good activity without any promotion. He had started to write new stories (this one included), and he had started to create a large quantity of new music using his keyboard music workstation, his Korg Karma. Now he was doing classical music, and every other style and genre that he had always dreamed of creating. His job at the hospital was a piece of cake. He had been there almost 25 years, more than half his life. He had certainly developed a suitable life-situation. His sole responsibility in this world was his cat Punchie. She was his true companion. He had had her since 1992, almost ten years. His cat was the thing that helped him keep his sanity, being alone and single.

His thoughts of the Queen of Reality were continually running in his mind. When we last left off, she had driven away and they had agreed to meet again the next Wednesday, when he was to record some of the performers at the Sugar Shack with his digital video camera. She had said that she would call beforehand, but somehow he doubted that would happen. He really never knew when she would be home, and he felt awkward leaving messages. As the week went by, and the weekend arrived, his hope of seeing her before that Wednesday would not materialize. More than anything else, he wanted to tell her how she had altered his life. His feelings weren’t even a product of emotion, but of knowledge that he needed to tell her (and, he had hoped to have sex again.) But something in his mind told him that it was a one-shot deal, that night that she stopped over and they got all over each other, and had had intoxicated sex. Having sex when you’re drunk is like smoking a cigar and a cigarette at the same time. The two just weren’t mean to be. That desensitizing of the body can block any sincere feelings or sensations.

He had started to chat with a woman in the building whose name was Debby, who lived on the first floor. Her apartment and windows were directly in front of where Sidney parked his car. Earlier in the summer, she had encouraged him to repair his car himself, and was even willing to help. Sidney got the parts and did fix his car himself. He started chatting with this woman when her window was open. She had had a similar type of car, and that was another subject that they had in common. Sidney preferred women that were harmless, women who wouldn’t bother him for sex and disturb his creativity. The ones who were harmless, he could joke and kid around with, and go to any type of charming extremes, because he knew that the probability was slim, that the other person was probably not interested, or if she were, he could stand holding up a personal composite of himself to the other person, that would make him appear harmless.

One morning he woke, I think it was on a Friday – he had been on vacation that week, and when he left to go in his car, Debby asked if he was going to Dunkin Donuts. He said yes, and she asked him to get her a coffee, which he did. He had never been in her apartment before, or known that much about her. She had mentioned a boyfriend, and said that she perceived herself to be so naturally wired that she was afraid it would scare him away. Sidney saw Debby as a get-up-and-go person like himself, so he was happy when he came back with the coffees and she invited him inside. They started to chat and she told him about herself. She had had an off and on again boyfriend for over fourteen years who was a druggie, and she currently had a boyfriend who would stop over for sex, but who owned a house with another woman. She was always calling this man to get together. It appeared that it was hard for her to reach him, and their situation was strained. She said she was hooked on horoscopes. She may not have considered herself attractive. Whenever she mentioned her sister, she always referred to her as her beautiful sister. Sidney always considered her pretty, and she had gusto like him. She was a fire cracker.

Since Debby confided in Sidney about her life-situation, he told her about his, and of the Queen of Reality, whom he had discovered was more of muse than a groupie. She had been his muse, that was it. But after that awful sex that they had had, that uncomfortable sex, that desensitized sex, where he had very little control over the situation, he had felt reborn. I guess bad sex is better than no sex. But he had learned to be friends with the Queen of Reality first, and with all the other women in his life. It was no different with Debby. Debby told him of her loneliness, and her greatest relief was taking long drives, even as far as Maine. Debby was petite, and certainly one of Sidney’s favorite body types. But she had that spark, that gusto, that carefreeness – that was it. She was very carefree, like him.

He left Debby’s that morning and went on his way, back to his apartment to finish making MP3’s or labelling songs. But now he knew a little bit about her. She had possibilities. He had chatted with her off and on, and now he felt even more comfortable. They were buddies. She was a little like the Queen of Reality, but a little more available.

The weekend went by, and Wednesday came along, when Sidney was to videotape some of the performers at the Sugar Shack. The Queen had not called, and when he got there, he had a feeling she wasn’t going to surprise him like she had done before. I’m sorry, he did play that night, and he had one of the other performers videotape him. He got to know some of the other performers more, and had a very comfortable night. When he got home, he found he had a message from the Queen. She had called around 9 o’clock, obviously when she knew he would not be home, but at the Sugar Shack. She said she planned on surprising him, but she had gone out the night before, and gotten drunk, and damaged her vehicle. She mentioned that she was in her formative years, and said to call her and maybe they could get together for the weekend.

The next day was Thursday and he called in the morning when he thought she might still be home, or someone would be there to take a message. They weren’t, and he had to leave a message. He felt awkward leaving messages at her parents’ house. Who was he? – just a guy she was in a play with. He left a message saying that he had gotten three roles in a play called The Dining Room, that was being put on in Lowell, and that he was on vacation.

By now Debby and Sidney had become chums. They shared a deep loneliness. That Thursday I believe, she invited him down to her place, because she was depressed, complaining how she had taken care of all the men she had ever had in her life, and that no one had ever taken care of her. She asked him to make her macaroni and cheese. I forgot, that’s what brought him to her apartment: he wanted to borrow some tinfoil to reheat some eggs, bacon, and beans that he had leftover from an earlier meal. He asked him he could heat it up in her oven, and she said yes. That’s when she asked him to make the macaroni and cheese. He had never had macaroni and cheese before, but he made it according to her instructions.

The next day, he had rehearsal, and was unable to go to the 99 with Debby as she had asked him to earlier in the evening. Rehearsal ended early, and when he came home, she went up, and they went to the 99. Sometimes Debby seems to have a sense of high anxiety, in a quiet way. They took her car to go to the 99. The music was too loud, and she constantly changed the station, never letting a song play for very long. When they got to the 99, Sidney had his favorite drink, a pina colada. She had a coke, because she was driving. They both had something to eat. They hadn’t talked that much to each other. They had really not developed any rapport. It wasn’t uncomfortable – it just wasn’t as easy to talk as it was in her apartment. They ate and left and stopped in her apartment (which was on the first floor – Sidney lived on the third floor) and chatted a little bit more. Driving down she had said that she didn’t know why she was going out with him, when she was interestedin someone else. Sidney had commented that they were friends. He even suggested going to where this other person was, to make him jealous if she wanted. She said no.

When they got back to the building where they lived, she was going to teach him how to play cribbage. They chatted about their life-situations with people that they both felt had little possibility of being with on a permanent basis. She asked her boyfriend, who shared a house with another woman, if they could go away for a weekend or a week. He told her that it was impossible at this time, considering his situation with his present girlfriend. This made her feel even more worthless, and Sidney tried to cheer her up, and related comparisons in his situation with hers.

As much as he had hoped that the Queen of Reality would be with him on a more regular basis, he knew that she had her own life situation, her own network of friends. It was even impossible to get the Queen of Reality to contribute any of her free time to his creative projects, which they had planned all summer. Sidney knew that the Queen’s vehicle was damaged, and hadn’t known if it was repaired, or if she was driving. He started to feel that his presence in her life was insignificant, compared to her other social activities.

Friday came along and Sidney was still on vacation. He had told Debby the night before that he was going down to the beach around nine in the morning, and if she wanted to come along, yell out her window or let him know. She was sleeping, as he found out later, and he drove down to the beach alone. Instead of feeding the seagulls and pigeons as he normally did, he just dropped the food on the ground and drove back home.

It was 11 o’clock when he got home, and there was a message from the Queen, wondering why he hadn’t been in contact. The call came in 10 or 15 minutes before he got home, and he called her right back. Her mother answered. He was concerned with getting one of his musical workstations that he had loaned her, hoping it would divert her and utilize some of her creative ability, which hadn’t happened. Her mother said she was taking a shower, and to call back in 15 minutes, which he did. They chatted and she told him that her vehicle had been damaged and that the spare wheel was smaller than the others, and she could only drive locally. They agreed to meet in the parking lot where they rehearsed for the summer production they next morning at 10 o’clock. He had so much to tell her. By now he had a sense that it was unlikely that they were going to be companions, or even production partners.

He got to the appointed rendezvous around 9:30. As 10 o’clock rolled around, and she was not her normal punctual self, he decided to wait a half hour instead of his normal 15 or 20 minutes. He knew he had to speak with her. He trusted her more than any other person in the world, except his old girlfriend Virginia, but he had things he needed to tell her. 10:30 rolled around, and she pulled up in her vehicle. She got out and walked toward his vehicle. She had no shoes on. She had scratches and a bruised lip and said she had gotten drunk the night before and had gotten into a fight. She hadn’t even been able to go home to her parents’ home. Sidney had had a similar type of scenario with a number of other women he had been involved with earlier in his life, so he adjusted well and his composure was unshakeable as usual. She had her younger sister’s sneakers in her vehicle, which she put on, and they drove to a diner in his vehicle, the diner they had planned on going to. She said she had to meet her boyfriend, who worked in Newton, around 12, and she had to start work at 1. He had never been pressed for time with her when they had gotten together in the past. Of course she had always come to him, or they had driven to rehearsals together. She felt like a mess – she actually didn’t look that bad. But it reminded him of her free spirit nature, that sense of not being accountable that she continually validated in her behavior when she drank. He just had a coffee. She had breakfast. He talked about the new play that he was in, and how wonderful the other cast members were. He knew there were many, many levels of her life that he had not known and would never know. But there were levels in his that he needed to let her know about.

They left the diner and went back to the parking lot, and sat outside his car. He started to tell her of his feelings, and his transformation after the night they became sexually intimate, and how he had become awakened because of her. He told her that he had felt that she was like a predator, as he had little control, and there were many restrictions during their intimate encounter. He also mentioned how the probability of them being production partners didn’t look like it would be possible from what little time she had been able to commit to his creative possibilities. For a short time when he was talking, it started to get a little ugly, but he cooled the situation with his sincerity. The Queen started to get the impression that he was saying that they could no longer be friends or companions. This was not the case, and he told her so. He was squeezed for time. He told her so many things in less than a half hour, when she was forced to leave. They embraced several times before she left, and although he could not see her crying too, because she was wearing sunglasses, he knew that she was. He told her that they would always be friends, just like they had been all summer long, best buddies. He told her about Debby, and how he had understood her loneliness as his loneliness had been so severe for so long. He asked about getting his music workstation, and she said, she was going up north to her boyfriend’s, where it was, and she would make arrangements for him to meet Sidney somewhere in Lowell on his way to work the next day, and she would call him that evening.

Sidney had a friend who would occasionally get a prescription for oxycontin, and gave him two when he had last seen him. He had known that the Queen liked them, and he had gotten one for her before, and she had given him half, which he took by himself. He had that one pill that he forgot to give her when he saw her earlier in the day. He planned on giving it to her early the next day. Sidney got a decent buzz on a half when he did it before, and since he wasn’t into downs, it wasn’t anything that he preferred, although some people say they bring you up. Sidney had a headache, and he thought, well, I’ll give the one to her when I see her, and I’ll take a whole one, that should take care of my headache. It hit him like the sledgehammer he was always trying to slam into the people who surrounded him with their plexiglass covering, never to make a dent or a mark. But it hit him like a bang. He knew inside he wasn’t going to bother with this again. He vomitted off and on for several hours until he finally could lie down and rest.

The Queen hadn’t called, and he knew he would have to call her boyfriend’s home the next morning. He stayed up all night because he couldn’t sleep, and around 9 he called. Her boyfriend’s mother answered, and Sidney asked for her boyfriend, as he knew she had talked to him about dropping off the workstation. The Queen came to the phone and said that she had not had his number up north, and she knew that he’d be calling, and she and her boyfriend had planned on dropping it off to Sidney’s that day, which was Saturday. Sidney told her he had other things he needed to do, and asked if he could come and pick it up in about an hour. She said okay. She seemed okay. Oh, I forgot to tell you. The day before although their conversation was one of the most emotional he had everhad in his life – he had even wished his acting could be that real – he remembered that when their moods simmered down and they had realized what their situation would be, he had told her as a last relaxing note, that her physical appearance, facial scratches and bruised lip, weren’t really as bad as she thought. After all, she was competent as a makeup artists, and the bruise on the lip could become unnoticeable, and the scratches weren’t deep anyway.

Sidney drove up north the next day to pick up his keyboard. He had met her boyfriend’s mother earlier in the summer when he dropped it off there. He knocked on the door, his keyboard case in his hand. Her boyfriend’s mother answered the door and called to him downstairs that he was there. He came up with the keyboard, and it was the first time Sidney had seen him. He had heard his voice once before on the phone, and he knew he was an honorable person. He was the person that was always there for whenever the Queen would call at 2:00 in the morning, from wherever, for whatever reason, and he had been her companion for over 3 years. They had even had a child together that was put up for adoption, which they both agreed on. As he was putting his keyboard in the case, and her boyfriend went downstairs to get some other programming sheets that Sidney had asked about, he felt a sense of finality in his adventure with the Queen of Reality. The boyfriend said that she had just woken up, and that was why she had not come upstairs herself. Sidney certainly understood. The Queen was one of his nicest memories.

He had told her the day before that she was always welcome into his life. It was hard to get ahold of her, and for her to have a follow-up phone call and call back, but she could call him at any time, and they could hang around like they always had, go to his place, watch movies, if she even found time to be his production partner, that would be fine, that she had saved his life, and had changed his life. He drove away from her boyfriend’s house, with the feeling that it was the end of another chapter in his life.

That next Monday, knowing it was the Queen’s birthday, Sidney sent her a birthday card and a get-well card. She had said the last time that they met that she had been very sick the week before, and that was another reason why they had lost contact. He sent her a note and the two cards were the perfect ending to a wonderful summer.

Certainly the Queen of Reality will again get in contact with Sidney. Sidney is always striving to go to that next level, penetrating deeper. For him that keeps life interesting. Will the Queen of Reality ever develop a stable environment where she can create a suitable life situation? That’s not Sidney’s responsibility. It’s impossible for her to assist him in being in service to humanity when it is impossible for her at this time to be of service to herself. “Honor dies where interest lies.” Sidney heard that somewhere. It seemed to fit together in his life. He thought of the many possibilities he had in his life, and how the Queen had helped vanish the ugliness he carried for so long. He would never go back to that creature, he might slip and fall once in a while, but never to the obsessive extent that he had in the past.

And what about Debby who lives downstairs in his building? Sidney has the feeling that she may be looking for a goodlooking guy, and maybe she doesn’t see that in him – yet. Life is an adventure. Expect nothing, and you’ll never be disappointed. Although Sidney said that to himself many times, he never really believed it, until the end. But the end became his beginning. One door closes, another one opens. Maybe two open. He had done the honorable thing. Not only has he been able to be friends with the Queen, and not have sex, and then have sex, and then actually fall in love with the Queen – he has developed, hopefully, the capacity to not have sex with her again, and still be her good friend as he had always been.

Stay tuned for the next chapter.

Oh, I forgot to tell you, what ever happened to Mal Function? Earlier in this story, we mentioned Oomph and Mal Function, a being who comes from a plane of existence where only souls or spirits live without bodies. And how Mal Function came to earth and inhabited the bodies of Sidney Hipple and the Queen of Reality to find out about love, about human emotions and feelings. He could not go back to his planet unless these two people made a sexual, physical connection. The probability was slim, but it happened. But unfortunately they were both heavily intoxicated, and were unable to climax. And Mal Function did leave their bodies, but because he did not experience the final result of true love, which is a physical orgasm, he was unable to return to Oomph, his home planet. He hadn’t even known that there was anything else when he left their bodies and the physical plane. So many things had changed on Oomph in the time he’d been gone, that it would have been unrecognizable anyways. But instead, when the two parts of his being, the part from Sidney and the Queen, merged, and he vanished into the void, the gateway to the other dimensions of existence, he was unable to go back to Oomph. Travelling through the void, his essence was no longer of a pure nature. Something was missing. His natural radar was going haywire, and instead of going to Oomph, he arrived at Zone 13, also called the Perverted Zone. He’s back in one piece now, but he still has to get back to Oomph. But before that happens, he needs to find a way to leave the 13th Zone, and return to earth to help Sidney Hipple one more time. Mal Function’s being would be shaped by his experience in the 13th Zone, and he would later become, for a short time anyway, Doctor Pervert. He would forget that he was ever Mal Function, but his memory would be restored some day when he would go through the void, and leave the 13th Zone, and enter the earth zone, to become the villain, and later friend, of Captain Weirdo, also known as Sidney Hipple.

We’ll see what that adventure brings. Some people have a little bit of cheering up to do around here, and I’m going to see that they do it. When Doctor Pervert leaves the 13th Zone, meets Captain Weirdo, and hangs around with Sidney Hipple at the laundromat, Doctor Pervert becomes a good guy, and his characteristics are only the results of a disturbed environment. Captain Weirdo and Doctor Pervert become superhero partners, because Doctor Pervert had a sidekick back in the 13th Zone called Sergeant Smegma, who was heading for the earth plane to recruit perverts to conquer the world. The way the world looks today, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, at least it would be a funny thing.