Just Make A Choice!

You and Danny came up with the idea for Wipeface.com during one of your many late night drinking binges after a shift waiting tables at Tots, the briefly trendy restaurant (since shuttered) that featured high-end elementary school cafeteria food (menu specialties included mahi-mahi fish sticks, peppercorn encrusted salisbury steak, and their famous $44 plate of tater tots dusted with truffle shavings). Drunk on all the liquor each night’s tips could buy, you and Danny would spend hours slurring out URLs and concepts for what you each dreamed would be the hot new billion-dollar web property to lift you out of your jobs waiting tables and turn you both into moguls.

“Hypochondriac.com,” you’d bark while Danny wrote. “The place where hypochondriacs can go to describe their imagined symptoms and post their time-lapse photos of moles changing shape and color and stuff, and other hypochondriacs can rate on a scale of one to ten how much cancer they have based on the photos. And the home page would have big letters that read: NO LICENSED MEDICAL PHYSICIANS ALLOWED!!!”

“Okay, here’s one,” Danny would slur in turn. “Momfights.com. You post a photo of your Mom on the site, and then visitors vote on which mom looks more nurturing.”

And you’d go on like that until last call. It was during one of these nights that one of you mumbled over the rim of his glass the idea for Wipe-face.com, a place where users would post photos of the faces they make while wiping their asses. The slogan would be “Show Us Your Wipe-Face!”

It was sheer chance that Danny bothered to write the idea down, and even more of a miracle that he managed to hang onto the napkin he wrote on without blowing his nose or wiping the mysterious blood from his lip on the drunken bus-ride home.

Most miraculous of all, after countless nights of spewing these silly ideas at each other, Danny actually followed through on that one. He registered the domain for Wipeface and launched a rudimentary website. He had asked you early on if you wanted to be his partner and chip in $75 for the web hosting service. You hemmed and hawed on getting him the cash, and eventually you just started chastising him for wasting his time on a stupid website idea.

“That would just be a distraction,” you said, though you really had no projects from which to be distracted. You simply preferred to avoid failure by not trying in the first place, and you wanted your friends to take the same route so that you could all stay at the same level of non-success forever and ever. Maybe you could all open a bar together, or a boxing gym for inner city kids.

Wipeface became a viral web sensation and Danny became a multi-millionaire. You haven’t spoken to him ever since. You can’t think about him, or the website, without getting nauseous over how stupid you were. For quite some time you found even the act of wiping your ass would fill you with regret. Visiting him today will not be easy.

When you settle into Danny’s office, he invites you to take an iPod from the pile sitting in the corner. “I don’t even know where they come from. They just get sent to me and I run out of room,” he says. You decline the iPod.

“I need your help, Danny,” you say. “A girl’s been kidnapped and I need $50,000 for the ransom.”

Danny gets up from his desk and turns to watch the baby sharks swim around the embedded tank that composes the entire back wall of his office. Two of the sharks are eating a watersnake.

“I was hurt that you cut me off after my website got successful,” Danny says, his back still to you. “You were my friend. You were supposed to be happy for me.”

“I wanted to be,” you say.

“Well, at least you have a girl in your life now,” Danny says. He pulls out his checkbook. “Success or no, it’s pretty great to see you throw all you have at something.”

He writes a check and holds it out to you. When you reach to take it, he yanks it back.

“I don’t want you to disappear from my life again. The conditions of me giving you this money are as follows. You never pay me back, as long as you come here and work for me. For one year. 9 to 5.”

Working 9 to 5 would require that you stop auditioning, and considering how old you are, it would be tantamount to finally giving up on acting. There’s a big part of you that is excited to have the excuse to finally give it up. The other part of you is pissed that Danny would ever put you in a position that requires that you give up on your dream in order to do what’s right, especially considering how hard it is for you to even be in this office. That part of you wants to tell Danny to go fuck himself.

“I still love you,” Danny says. “But I’m still real pissed that you stopped being my friend. I can’t just give you fifty grand and have you drop out of my life again. What’s it gonna be?”