During the intermission, I met up with Bill Cosby to discuss the play.

Me: “So what do you think so far?”

Cosby: “Matthew Lillard’s a fucking genius and if he doesn’t win eight Tony Awards for this fucker, then I’m going to burn down two more of Aretha Franklin’s houses.”

Me: “Agreed.”

The lights in the lobby flashed and Bill Cosby suggested that we return to our seats.

“I’m right behind you, Dr. Cosby; I just have to use the men’s room first.”

But I didn’t have to use the men’s room. In fact, I wasn’t even sure this theatre had a men’s room or, if it did, that I would be able to find it. I stepped outside and let the cool spring New York air catch me off guard, like it does so often. I lit a cigarette.

I never did like the second act of this play anyhow, I thought. I knew what I was missing: monologues that Lillard had taken from all the off-off shit he used to do when he was a kid. They’re good monologues—don’t get me wrong—but when you’ve seen the same monologue so often that you know it by heart, it’s hard to convince yourself to stay and not just walk across the street to a bar where you know Famke Janssen is waiting to get drunk with you and screw the hell out of you.

I never saw Matthew Lillard again after that. His tragic motorcycle-repair accident the following spring took him, his genius penchant for writing one man shows, his charming naïveté and his inability to stay true to himself all into eternity.

I only saw Bill Cosby once after that. Lillard’s one-man show won a disappointing five Tony Awards, so Cosby and I fulfilled a promise we’d made to each other under the influence of alcohol and crystal meth: we burned down two more of Aretha Franklin’s houses.

When we told her why we’d done it, she began to cry.

“Boys,” she said, “what the fuck are you talking about?”

***