Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

This is where the end of cancer begins!

When together we become a force unmistakable

A movement undeniable

A light that cannot dim!

When we take our wild impossible dreams

And make them possible,

Make them true. .

when together we rise as one.

When we stand up -

when we Stand Up To Cancer. .

— it was her time, hersurvivor time, her mom loved watching Laura Linney have C on TV, kancer was in the air , kancer was hot, Telma wanted someone to orchestrate the swag, the kancerswag, copyrighted back-to-school backpacks, journals and calendars just like Taylor Swift, she wanted to go kancerdashian, entrepreneured greeting cards and keychains with hands in the shape of s logos, t-shirts, headbands & lunchboxes, maybe her own zero to hero clothing line, bandaids & babypowder & pajamas & K(ancer)-Mart pajama jeans, maybe even design the bottles the medicine comes in — the wheels were turning. .

. . everything old is new again ——

She got a big idea and maybe the genesis of the big idea had something to do with Lea Michele and (an unannounced) Barbra Streisand dueting on “Children Will Listen” at the NMJC! Ball ( No More Juvenile Carcinoma! ) at the Beverly Hilton — she was supposed to be there but that was the weekend she went with her mom to the White House — maybe it had something to do with Miley Cyrus, Drake, Jeff Bridges (Gwen loved Jeff Bridges), Chris Colfer (Telma loved Chris Colfer) and Rihanna taking the stage at that very same event… maybe it had something to do with (an unannounced) Steve Perry joining all the above ½way thru “Don’t Stop Believin’”—or maybe it had something to do with the upstart Canuck’s malicious personal best. . because Telma wasn’t interested in the silver: she wanted Olympic gold.

Whatever it had something to do with, she already had that tried & true familiar tingly feeling in her tummy, same as when Christina Applegate flew her & two other hersurvivors (dubbed “The Pink Bucket Brigade”) to Louisville to lipsynch dance a raucous, hypomanic “Single Ladies” at KFC’s lavish corporate HQ “Buckets For the Cure” Breast Cancer Awareness Brunch.

So her idea was to be on Glee .

Not as a guest, and not as a Glee Project loser doing a 4-part consolation arc. No way!

To be on Glee — permanent cast member .

They already had cripples and fags and fat sexless mountainous black monsters & whatever. They needed a spunky funny pretty girl being stalked by an unseen predator, the one that would come for us all, it’d be like Lea or Heather or Matthew suddenly got a fatal disease. It would be hot and awesome, & it would rock .

With newly minted brainstormy resolve, the fear receded — that wild, vicious little-girl-fearing-littler-girl poison fear — not rescinded but softly retreated, soaking her to the bone in Ellen ish Hope, & the ajar world opened wide like an awesome fragrant flower blooming in the night.

Everyone’s a *

(*and deserves the right to twinkle)

Reeyonna’s

mother insisted she go with her to the Central Library for an event . She rolled her eyes and took more pills.

“You’re going to go, Jerilynn, and you’re going to like it. And no texting . For one whole hour.”

She used to call herself Jeri but it’d been Reeyonna for a while now. Mom was the only person left who called her by the hideous birthname. She could h8t on her twice — for calling her that, and for naming her that.

Friends sometimes called her Ree, for ReeRee (the singer’s nickname tho Rihanna spelled it RiRi ; Rihanna’s closest friends/family called her Robyn). Every girl at middleschool had a mad crush on the Rihannaissance Woman, with different cliques having different ogle alerts: Rihanna fashionwatch, (secret)body(spray)watch, hair&wigwatch, chrisbrownwatch, S&Mwatch. Ree liked RiRi way more than Nicki — Nicki was awesome, she was genius, an amazing actress, a comedienne , OMG that song shitted on em was so hardcore, LMFAO, but Nicki was kind of cartoony, she liked being cartoony, all that Barbie stuff + she had that cartoony Kardashian ass — but Rihanna was a woman , not that Nicki wasn’t but maybe Rihanna was more of a woman. Sometimes it was just too hard to relate to Nicki, like she was moving too fast or whatever, but you could always relate to Rihanna, or aspire to be like her, or relate to aspiring to be like her. Plus she was more upfront sexier than Nicki, or maybe it’s just that she was more upfront about sex period, you never really heard too much about Nicki’s hookups, maybe Nicki had some hangups, but Rihanna was out there. ReeRee & her friends didn’t like what Chris Brown did but they all loved Chris Brown & didn’t care if they were fucking again as long as he didn’t hit her, everyone thought it was swank when Rihanna changed the restraining order so it wouldn’t interfere with Chris performing at award shows Rihanna was at because before she changed it he couldn’t be like within 100 yards of her meaning he couldn’t even go to the same award shows she went to even if he was nominated, swank that she could move on & swank that she told all the hashtag h8trs to back the fuck off . Besides, no one could dance like Chris flying thru the air on the VMA, Reeyonna’d been getting stoned and watching that performance every day for a year now—& that youtube of him dougie-ing OMG it made her cum, Sex in the air I like the smell of it , she was sure they’d get back together one day, a fairytale that began grimm but frogprinced in the end, Ree just wished she’d seen the hacked foto of his dick Chris sent her to make nice but Rikki couldn’t find it on the Internet.

One day ReeRee wanted to be in a magazine with perfect abs, perfect tits, perfect tatts. Rihanna had about 20 of them so far, she & Chris Brown got matching s, how awesome was that, hers was on the back of her neck, his behind his beautiful little ear. She kept it after he beat on her but added more stars. How awesome was that. (She loved the idea of getting a somewhere, maybe near her pussy, she loved the Marilyn quote Lindsay had everyone’s a star and deserves the right to twinkle, Lindsay had a on her wrist too and a live without regrets and clear as a crystal sharp as a knife I feel like I’m in the prime of my life on her ribs but Rikki said rib tatts hurt like fuck no matter how loaded you got.) Ree had the idea to get one of those totally lifelike portrait tatts of her baby when it was created (the Kardashians used created instead of born ), which was only like 7½ months away, no one but her 2 BFFs even knew she was pregnant, them and her bf Rikki. ReeRee wanted to get her baby’s face on her arm or thigh or even maybe on her ribcage below the tit, they could do tatts of photos so amazingly real and eerie, she saw one on an old LA Ink , a gal got her nephew on her shoulderblade, he was thrown from the car & died when they were hit by a drunk — maybe a poem on the ribs that swept below her , like in keltic or Hebrew or maybe in Buddhist, lots of movie stars had those, but how could you even pick a poem, there were so many? The trouble with getting a baby pic or a poem under your tit was one day your tit would sag & cover the pome;(