Drew Magary - The End Specialist

“To you liberals out there listening—and I know you are, because our ratings’ demographic breakouts make it plain as day—I have a question for you. If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, would you keep the cure from him? If Thomas Edison were alive today, would you keep the cure from him as well? Would you willingly let some of our greatest statesmen and inventors perish from the globe? Do you think you’re helping the world if you do that? Or is there some special little Hollywood guest list for people you think deserve it? Not Mr. and Mrs. America, of course. They’re far too dumb, and too busy polluting the world, to make your cut.

“Never mind the positive impacts of the cure, like the end of senior citizenship and all the Social Security and Medicare costs that go with it. Liberals don’t have any time for that. They’re too busy dwelling on all the horrible things we naughty humans will be doing with it. So you can’t have this cure. Not even in this country, where it was invented. Can you believe that? Can you believe the gall? Liberals always say they love science. This is science! This is science! This cure is ours. We shouldn’t be banning it, we should be subsidizing it. But we’re letting other countries take this cure and run with it. Do we hand out our gold and oil reserves to other countries? No.

“That is why I say to you friends out there listening now: Buy a gun. Maybe you believe in taking the cure. Maybe you do not. But tell me if you want to live in a country where the government will let you die like this. Buy a gun. I know they’re hard to come by now. I’ve bought plenty myself in recent months. I know my friends at Smith & Wesson—proud sponsors of the show, mind you—are trying to keep up with the demand. But if you have to drive to another state to do it, do it. Buy a gun. Buy as many as you can and learn to be skilled with them. Because the government is robbing you of your life, your liberty and your happiness. You tell me what they’re going to rob you of next. And you tell me what we should do if the Russians decide to visit our shores with an army of twenty million ageless soldiers, because you know they’d like nothing more. Buy a gun. Buy a damn gun! If you love America, and what it stands for, buy a gun. Because right now, I don’t know if the country I live in is fit to be called the United States of America. And I’m willing to fight to get it back.

“Are you?”

Jesus.

Date Modified: 6/24/2019, 11:49AM

“They’re All Getting Divorced”

I’ve been at work all week, ever since getting the cure. This was lousy planning on my part. I should have booked a vacation in Aruba to coincide with it, so I could sit back, relax, have a fruity drink, smoke a joint, and bask in my own foreverness. And now Katy says I can’t ever retire. That was all I could think about this week, as I got loaded with files: you will be doing this forever and ever and ever and ever. I’ll always need money, I imagine. But I’m not quite sure what I’m doing here now. I have no life goal anymore. There are no golden years I have to stockpile for, and the idea of trying to save for some thousand-year retirement makes my head explode. I can’t worry about the future, because now it’s not finite. I can only worry about what’s right in front of me, at this very moment. It’s kind of liberating, when I think about it. I could go be a bartender in Denmark if I wanted. I don’t think I want to, but it’s a nice option to have.

I said nothing to any of my co-workers about getting the cure. But yesterday, while I was doing research for some eight-thousand-page brief, a colleague pulled me aside. Well, not a colleague. One of my boss’ colleagues. Someone far more senior than I am. He asked me if I had a few minutes. This terrified me, because I thought I had fucked something up. Then he brought me to his office.

“Do you know anything about divorce law?” he asked.

“A bit.”

“You need to learn it all. I know you’re buried right now, but I’m organizing a special divorce seminar, and you need to attend.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re all getting divorced,” he said. “All of them. Every banker and hedge fund guy in this town is looking for a way out right now. And if they aren’t looking for a way out, their wives are. We have three guys here who are good with divorce statutes. That’s not enough. We’re gonna have to double or triple the load. We’re talking about cases that could go on for ages. They haven’t even defined the law on most of this stuff yet. Big, big moneymaker. It’s where you’re going to want to be. You don’t want to stay in estate law. It’ll be extinct within two decades.”

“Jesus.”

He then told me a story relayed from one of the divorce partners at some other firm. One day some big swinging dick showed up at the firm, flew past the receptionist, and stormed into his office.

“I want an annulment,” shouted the big swinging dick.

The lawyer was nonplussed. “What?”

“You heard me! I want an annulment, and I want it done quickly.”

“You can’t get an annulment,” the lawyer told him. “You’ve been married to your wife for twenty years.”

“It was under false pretenses.”

“What false pretenses?”

“She got the cure, and so did I. Completely changes the parameters of our original arrangement.”

“Yes, but the cure didn’t exist twenty years ago. For there to be false pretenses, it had to have existed back when you signed the marriage license. And even then, I’m not sure how it would count.”

“Listen, I’m a traditional man. I believe when you take that vow at the altar, you should abide by it. I vowed to stay with that woman all the days of my life. But I figured that was seventy or eighty years, tops. Now I’m supposed to spend the next thousand years with her? That’s insane.”

“I think what you want is a divorce.”

“Why? So she can take everything I own? That woman has been spending every weekend with her personal trainer for six years. And then I have sex five times with a brand manager and I’m the asshole? You tell me how that makes sense. No, I want an annulment. Our marriage never would have existed if this cure had been around.”

“I can’t issue you an annulment under those circumstances. It’s a binding marriage. It lasts forever.”

“But no one told me forever would be this long!” the big swinging dick screamed. “I know I swore to be with her till death, but that was under a different definition of death, was it not?”

The lawyer stammered, “Well, that’s a bit of a gray area right now.”

“Well, ungray it. Make it black or make it white. I don’t care which. I’ll pay you five million if you can get it annulled. Five million. And, if you can’t, you get me my divorce. Then you charge me one hundred million in legal fees. That way, I’m technically broke and she can’t touch the cash. But I only pay you five million, and you ignore the rest of the debt.”

“That’s illegal in about thirty-seven different ways.”

“I don’t care! I want my money, and I want a clean break from that woman. Give her the townhouse if you need a negotiating tool. Between the dog hair and that glass sofa she bought, she’s made the place all but unlivable anyway. And I want it done by fall. I have a two-week vacation in Majorca with our former nanny, and I don’t want to cancel it. Get it done or I’ll find a real lawyer.”

And with that, the big swinging dick stormed right back out. Two hours later, his wife walked into the exact same lawyer’s office, demanding the townhouse, the Hamptons estate, and “alimony for the rest of his miserable existence, regardless of length.”

I’m definitely attending that seminar.