:)

Beautiful Music
THAT 70's SHOW
by Jennifer Ryan
02/14/08

:)

With my Fez on

The great thing about a pregnant woman is that as soon as she becomes fat, she must be on the top for sex. Instead of driving Laurie home from class today, I brought her to my apartment under the pretense of feeding her this really great flavor of ice cream I recently discovered, but guess what - I lied. It was only neapolitan; too bad, baby.

I tell her Michael must have eaten the magical mystery treat - the sick bastard, and she agrees Kelso has a way of ruining good things. So I fix her an over sized bowl of neapolitan with a banana and some cherries and chocolate syrup and whipped cream and anything else that strikes her fancy. I dig through the top cabinet and ofter her Twinkies and Captain Crunch cereal to add to her sundae, but she is too busy eating to answer me.

I eat my snack cake slowly ... seductively, hoping the slightest suggestion of anything sexual will make her underpants slide to the floor. These last several weeks I have been wearing her down with my begging and since her belly has surely become too large for her to satisfy herself, she will need Fez to satisfy her. She just doesn't know it yet. Even though I have written many notes offering her my services, she checks the box reading no, but her willingness to come to my apartment says her true answer is maybe.

"This is a really great apartment, Fez. You don't know what a drag it is to live with my brother and his pet orphan." In between handfuls of dry cereal she tells me she can't wait to have her own place and that when Eric is at school Hyde spends the day writing stupid, depressing poetry about love and dying.

"I know, he showed me some." I say matter-of-factly, breaking the last cake in half and handing her the larger portion. "You know, you could move in with Michael and me, but, we only have two bedrooms so you would have to share my bed."

"That's generous. I'll think about it and tell you no later." She tries to push herself from the counter but can't lever her body from the chair. It frustrates her terribly, something I find strangely erotic. I picture myself her white knight, pulling her from her seat and gently rolling her to the bedroom on her side as if she was a beach ball, kissing her each time she turns to face me.

During her struggle, she belches loudly and I feel myself become excited. I place one hand behind her back, the other on her arm and lift her in one fluid motion. Before she can thank me I put a finger to her lips, silencing her, and direct her toward my bed. "We are going to make sweet love for at least forty-five minutes, Laurie Forman, and I will not take no for an answer. You are my woman."

She pauses briefly, as if considering, then smiles with nonchalance. "Okay, but I'm lactose intolerant so I might be a little gassy from the ice cream."

"Me, too." I usher her through the doorway, kicking past a laundry basket of clean clothes and pulling shut the curtains. I give the Kool-Aid sleeping bag that tops my bed a good shake in case there are cracker crumbs and arrange the pillows neatly in case she wants to hit me with them later. She sits on the foot of the bed and arches her back into a stretch, moaning with relief as she lies back. I help her remove her tennis shoes and socks, but I do it slowly in hopes it will turn her on. It doesn't. She unbuttons her shirt while I work on her pants and I hiss in grateful affirmation as giant pink cotton maternity underwear are revealed to me. I, Fez, have struck gold. Mentally, I chant I'm going to dooo it, I'm going to dooo it, I'm going to dooo it and worry I've said it aloud when she breaths a small laugh and, as if just realizing, accuses me of not lasting forty-five minutes last time.

"Well, excuse me for living. I was overexcited the last time!"

Her expression tells me she's thinking hard, reflecting on our last encounter. "You know, come to think of it you barely lasted five minutes. I think that was the shortest, crappiest sex I've ever had."

I remove my own shirt and tell her it is only right I am given the chance to make up for my poor performance. "We will just practice until you are pleased with me. The baby will not interrupt us for at least three more months."

"Yeah? Us?" Her smile is soft and a little surprised that I would mention the baby as a person all his own or perhaps myself in the same sentence with him. I don't know what the problem is with American men, they are all baby haters and women haters, only wanting sex. I was raised with solid Catholic priorities - to want a lot of babies and a lot of sex!

I lay myself beside her and she rolls on top of me - because we're going to doooo it - and says maybe she'll give me a chance one of these days. Well, that and we're going to doooo it! She rises to sit on my lap and I take a strand of her hair in one hand, cup a breast in the other and tell her she's a pretty little thing.

She has no witty remark or sarcastic put down, she just smiles with lots of teeth then lets her head fall back and begins to moan. I sit up and kiss every inch of her and she tells me it would be a really great idea if we did this every afternoon when school is over. I praise her copiously, she really deserves it for thinking of something so wonderful, and continue kissing and nipping her earlobes and neck, pressing her breasts against my chest as she wiggles and writhes under my attention. My touches are long and light and in all the places I know will make her squeal. She positions herself to allow me entrance and before I know it I'm telling her that I have a goldfish and take really good care of it.

She stills and looks down at me like I'm crazy, so I clarify that taking care of a wife and a baby are a lot like taking care of a goldfish and that I am very good with responsibility. She snorts and calls me stupid, then goes back to work, helping me establish a comfortable rhythm, but all I can think of is that a goldfish is a big responsibility and if I add a wife and a baby I might not be able to handle a goldfish anymore.

Maybe I could take him to Leo's house and let him live in the pool with Benny. He might enjoy having a friend to swim around with and teach him big fish ways. I'll call Leo later or maybe I will see him tonight at the basement when we all play cards. Sometimes he shows up and sometimes he doesn't, which might mean he has a girlfriend. I will ask him that when I see him. But if he does have a girlfriend, maybe she will not welcome another fish in the house. A lot of women do not care for slimy pets who don't like to cuddle and play and she might even have a cat, which is not a good thing to have around a small fish. My thoughts are shattered by Lauries' howls of joy and I realize - AY DIOS MIO - I missed the fireworks!

She drops down beside me, cuddling close. "Damn, Fez. That was way better than last time." Her hand moves up and down my chest and she thinks aloud that maybe she should be my woman.

:)

SKYLAB LAND HERE

When Kelso's mom refused to give him gas money to join Leo's friends at the monastery in Kentucky, he ran away from home. Granted, he no longer lives with his parents, but it was his grandmother's birthday last evening and they had a house full of guests. So when Kelso didn't arrive as instructed, his mother checked his apartment and found a good-bye note promising she would never find him, never, ever, ever. Naturally, she came here, where a delighted Red escorted her to our basement Global Command Center.

Because I find myself unable to lie to a beautiful woman, but mainly because I was enjoying an episode of Star Trek, I grunted and pointed her toward my old bedroom where the prodigal idiot was reading a comic. After two full minutes of whining, he threw himself to his knees so she couldn't force him to leave. But Karen Kelso has been a mother far longer than Michael has been a kid, so unfazed, she grabbed him by the arm and drug him to the back door, spanking him all the way.

So the next morning when Kelso visits, he doesn't find it strange that I'm in the same spot he left me, working through my third six-pack of Coors and staring at an episode of The Superfriends. He thrusts his fist in my face and shouts, "Wonder twin powers, activate! Oh, I see you've already taken the form of a douche bag."

He bounces and rocks on his heels, clapping his hands in self congratulation and doing the idiotic I just burned someone victory dance that I'm hopeful will one day be mistaken for a seizure, so I'll get to see the ambulance haul him away. Then I grab the front of his t-shirt and pull him down, causing him to somersault over me and land on the couch with his head in my lap. Since he's unharmed enough to giggle and snort, I stick my finger in his eye, poking him lightly but causing him to whine. "OW! My eye, man!" I open another beer and point to the TV, warning him not to interrupt me again.

Eric creeps down the stairs, still in pajamas, and asks if I've been in front of the tube all night. I chose to answer by motioning to the pyramid of beer cans I have created, revealing the more interesting part of last nights activities, though I concede I may have fallen asleep after Carson. Kelso chuckles, looking up at me with the same tender trust that is forever his downfall, and I pat his cheek softly, urging him to get his head the hell off my lap before I snap in a hair-trigger wave of psychotic violence. He springs from my grasp and announces that he didn't come here just to be abused. "You see before you a changed man!" Kelso does a slow spin for us, beaming with such pride that I almost don't have the heart to make fun of him. Almost.

"So, is this a Renee Richards kind of thing or is that just a clean shirt?"

My idiot beloved bestows a high-five upon me, in recognition of the biting wit that would reduce a more intelligent victim to tears. Kelso grins stupidly, in what I can only assume is blissful misunderstanding and tosses his backpack in my lap.

"OK, so I went to the library to get some books to help me out with my ... situation, let's just say. And you remember Brooke the brain, the chick I nailed at the Molly Hatchet concert? She works there. I banged a librarian! Oh, and I just got that Renee Richards comment and it hurt my feelings."

He tosses himself down next to me on the couch and my voice drips with sarcastic wonder as I inspect the contents of his bag. "Wow, Kelso, books from a library. This is awesome." I throw them aside, uninterested, and allow him to explain.

"Hyde, these books are an important part of my training as a Buddhist monk, which my mom still won't let me go to Kentucky for, by the way. Irving and Josh are living in the apartment with Fez and me until I can swing the move. See, I got basic Japanese, a book about reincarnation, basic meditation techniques, and a guide to booby traps. For the past two weeks Irving has been teaching me kung fu moves, you know, like Kwai Chang Caine does. He says I really suck at it, too. All this stuff is going to come in handy when I have to face Jigoku." He graces me with a sly wink that tells me Jigoku is really Godzilla, his handlers just don't permit him to say so.

"Groovy." I pick up the book on reincarnation and flip through the contents, embarrassed to admit I'm curious about the subject to which I've dedicated so much private thought since the incident at Leo's. I've had several dreams about Eric and I in another life and I don't know that I believe any of it, but it's interesting and a little disturbing. The last time I tried to talk to Eric about it, he pointed out that my dream girl with raven hair and a mini-skirt was actually a representation of Jackie in her cheerleader uniform. Then he elbowed me in the stomach and told me to go fuck myself, so now I try not to bring it up.

Kelso appears relieved when Forman heads upstairs for a shower, as he's decided he and I need to have a private man talk.

"Don't say anything to Eric, but I know he made up the whole Godzilla thing. I mean, I understand that Godzilla isn't real real, but that he's in Heaven with all the other dinosaurs. And if he was mad at me for something I did in a previous life, I think he'd attack on a psychic level and not a physical one, which is disappointing because I had this great plan to tie him up with duct tape and feed him Twinkies until I gained his trust so we could hash out whatever relationship issues have him so worked up."

"You mentioned firecrackers in this plan before?"

"Well," he says with a fond smile, "after we made up we were going to set them off together." I stare at him for a long time, tickled but too tired to laugh. "That's not the only reason I wanted to talk to you alone, though, Hyde. Ever since Josh and Irving started working with me on meditation, I've had a lot of visions like the one you had at Leo's house. Sometimes it's you and the girl in the green skirt and we're both trying to see her underwear, but sometimes it's you and another woman. I don't know who she is, but she's cold and strong ... and she looms over us all, watching everything we do."

"There was a second woman in my dream. I thought she was going to kill us, but she helped us somehow. She protected Eric - I can't remember. I don't remember most of it, not anymore, just fragments and feelings."

"It wasn't a dream, Hyde, it was a vision of a past life. OH! You should totally come over to the apartment and meditate with us, man! Like a double date; you could communicate with Eric-chick and I could work on the other lady."

Though I admire Michael Kelso's attempt to get laid from beyond the grave, I can't believe I'm even listening to this. "I've got an even better idea. Eric is going to meet with his study group for a few hours, so hand me another six-pack and I'll drink it while I make fun of you."

"Hyde, we do that all the time. It's like ever since you and Forman decided to be ass pirates, you guys got boring."

OUCH, I never saw that coming. I tell him to go home and he stands, huffing with his usual dramatic flair. "Fine. Fez and Franklin and I watch BJ and The Bear on Saturday nights anyway. We have this drinking game where you do a shot every time Sheriff Lobo is a dick. It's getting kind of expensive."

I lean into the sofa and sigh, rolling my eyes at the disappointment of it all. While Fez and Kelso are parked in front of their TV with a bowl of popcorn and a bottle of strawberry schnapps, I'll be counting the minutes until Eric comes home from learning psychology so that we can be ass-pirates together. I seriously need to get a life that doesn't involve this basement. But more importantly, I shouldn't be spending my only weekend off this month pouting alone when I could be upstairs raiding the refrigerator.

Before I top the stairs, I pause at the sound of strange voices. Cracking the door slightly to eavesdrop, I notice Red sitting at the table with a man and a woman who I've never seen. Both are well dressed and a little imposing, the young lady formal and impeccably polished, the gentleman kind looking and round. I can't make out their words, but the lady notices me and, once nailed in her sights, demands that I join them. Red stands, pointing stiffly to the chair he'd just occupied, and I sit per his unspoken command, knowing well that speechless is beyond pissed.

He places a hand on each shoulder and presses me down firmly, making it clear that I'm not to wiggle or blink. Our guests have badges stating that they are police officers from Kenosha. I promise that whatever it is, I didn't do it, but offer them a comprehensive list of everything Michael Kelso has done wrong since kindergarten, including the time he accidentally tied his own shoelaces together and fell down the stairs, landing atop the principal, or when he taped construction paper wings to his neighbors St. Bernard and tried to make it fly. I offer alternatives - distractions meant to divert them from the purpose of their visit, such as my certainty that Fez is Russian spy pretending to be a Venezuelan weirdo.

The lady cop attempts to look severe, but her voice betrays her when she tells me I'm not in any trouble at all. Her partner, a soft spoken, much older black man with graying curls, attempts the casual approach with the friendly smile and the I'm there for you psychological crap. "We're concerned you may have been the victim of a crime, Steven."

He lay mug shot pictures on the table before me and I recognize three hookers, Polish ones at that, though he didn't specify and I sure as hell didn't volunteer. Seems the gal who was arrested with my wallet, AND her husband - AND her two best friends, who happen to be sisters - AND her best friend's boyfriend who happens to also be her brother in law - are suspects in the disappearance of a seventeen year old girl.

I'm told their contemptible gang indulges in the nasty habit of seducing young girls - and boys - by means of illegal sedation. But they don't keep their sick proclivities all in the family, Kenosha PD believes they've ties to the Bertrand Brothers - a band of criminal masterminds from Ontario, Canada.

In all fairness, it's not difficult for one to be involved with the brothers, though. Leo went to university with Lucas and baby Barry screws his one of his mistresses at least three nights a week in the hotel room next to mine and Eric's. They own several businesses in both Wisconsin and Michigan and are rumored to have a hand in prostitution, dishonest lending and even chop-shops, if my old high school automotives teacher can be trusted.

On one of our many high school beer runs to Canada, we learned that the brothers are well respected, home town heroes of sorts. Their parents were working poor and the boys, once old enough, helped their father build up a corner grocery. It's said that the eldest son, Jack, while only twelve, began to sell narcotic drugs to his fathers' customers, quite discreetly of course, with the help of his girlfriend's uncle, a licensed pharmacist. As their wealth began to accrue, Jack and his trusted lieutenants, his fraternal twin brothers Alexandre and Gabriel, decided to diversify their investments. Their school friends became both prostitutes and clients and their first brothel rose from an abandoned warehouse in the old textile district.

By the age of seventeen, it is said that young Jack could buy and sell the city several times over, should he chose. By nineteen, the folks in his periphery began to die mysteriously and at an alarming rate, including but not limited to his girlfriend, her pharmacist uncle and the neighbor's collie dog. Leo maintains the pharmacist committed suicide because law enforcement was imminent, and his niece did not die, but moved as far away as possible for reasons unknown. As for the dog, Leo told me he suspected the worst. The animal was elderly and arthritic, but pretty damn loud, howling night and day with doggie Alzheimers and s topping only when petted vigorously. Did Jack and his brothers really have a hand in such unbelievable cruelty? No one really knows for sure, or seemed to care enough to risk the discovery. Leo said the boys didn't mind the doubtful whispers because it cemented their reputation as unimaginable bastards in the first degree.

After the passing of their dear father Pascal Bertrand, the boys took things up a notch by breaking into South American imports. Back in those days, there was a sixth brother, Etienne, and he set the family up with connections throughout the known universe before he was killed by police in a sting operation. After that, the brothers laid low on the drug thing, or so it's said that Jack forbid such risky and violent activity, refusing to lose another brother. Of course, they burned down the police station in retaliation first.

They were quiet long enough that some hoped they had faded to black, disbanded, or maybe been edged out by another organization, but the Bertrands' had an advantage the other syndicates did not - the fact that they are true blood family. Jack and the twins had changed their younger brothers' diapers and held them when they were teething. Being twins, Gabriel and Alexandre were closer to each other than any two people could or should be and were addressed with names hyphenated, as if they were a single entity. When not knee-walking drunk and beating each other unconscious, they were said to be incorrigible pranksters as well as shrewd businessmen.

With Etienne dead and Barry an effeminate pansy who faints at the site of blood and becomes nervous with the raising of voices, Lucas was left to deal with rational decision making and public relations. Leo always spoke of him as such a fun guy, a real jack off, but lacking his older brothers' hard edges. He's the one I had flirted with approaching; the one who seemed somehow less threatening, probably due to his long association with Leo. I have to wonder if I reach out to him now, would it be too late?

The detectives don't buy my innocent wide-eyed act for a moment. Though I swear up and down that I've never seen these people before and that no one has ever laid a hand on me, I freeze at the sickened fury in Red's expression. We spend tense moments avoiding direct eye contact, then progress to daring one another to speak the inevitables - the words that will spark our shocked and hurt disbelief into the unquenchable flames of a selfish anger that is near impossible to disobey. As if Red Forman could ever blame or hate me more than I do myself. He could never inflict a punishment worse than forcing me to live with the knowledge that I allowed the only person I'll ever truly love- the one who knows the location of every scar on my body and my heart- to be harmed.

Dressed in warm flannels and burdened by his badly overstuffed, but much coveted and highly collectible Darth Vader book bag, my idiot beloved breezes through the door, pausing in confusion. He's quick to notice the mug shots I failed to identify and, face excited in recognition, declares them to be the bitches who picked us up at the roadhouse. "They stole our money and all our clothes and Fez had to pick us up in Kenosha and I threw up for a week!"

The officers scribble furiously into their little notepads, impressed as I am with how much information Eric can fit in a single sentence. Eric is so matter of fact and unashamed, seemingly so excited to recount every detail of the foggy evening he spent barely conscious while a crew of perverts felt us up and G-d only knows what else. My pleas for his silence remain unspoken, the hard look in my eyes not enough to quiet him and before I realize what I'm doing I spring from my chair and scream, "JUST FUCKING QUIT TALKING, FORMAN!"

Everyone stills, shocked and surprised by the "sudden" outburst that no one has a clue was a long time coming. When I heard my voice just now, it was my mother's voice; it was the abusive voice of every boyfriend she ever drug home and the cruel voice of her parents, as I remember them. I flush with humiliation at the horrible words that are responsible for Eric's hurt little face, so stunned and vulnerable. His lips begin to quiver slowly, then his fists ball in anger and he shouts, "I better NOT be the Forman to whom you are referring, or I might just have to WIPE THE FLOOR WITH YOUR ASS!."

Kitty holds her arms out between us like a referee and with a frantic shriek explains that she has just mopped the kitchen floor. Red almost smiles at that, as do the detectives who are patiently waiting for Eric to make a fucking oil painting of the nights' events, in case it's needed for evidence in court.

I hold up one of the mug shot pictures for Eric and compare the girl in it to any number of ladies we've met this last year. Thin body, average height, sandy hair and light eyes. She's really no different from any girl we've seen at the Hub, the bar, the movie theatre or school. "The only thing in the world special about this girl, Eric," I say slowly, "is that she appears to work for or otherwise be involved with the Bertrand brothers. Do we know anyone who would knowingly associate with any of the Bertrands?"

When he takes the picture from my hand, I think I've finally reached him. He understands how common and unspecial these strange girls are to us and how none of our friends are acquaintances with anyone who would burn down an entire police station for revenge. Imagine what vicious people like that would do if they were to feel threatened in any way by some otherwise innocent teenage boy.

He tosses the picture to the table with the others and admits that I have a point. I know he's really imagining what could happen to his parents or maybe his sister or me, but is not willing to ignore the issue because of that missing girl. He swollows hard and tells me he's sorry that he can't lie about something so important as this, not even for me.

In sickening slow motion, the web of denial I had so carefully constructed unravels by the slender thread from which my sanity is precariously suspended and there is no action I can take to prevent it. While the entire eastern hemisphere prays to be spared, I silently plead for Skylab to land directly on me.

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To be continued

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For those illegally downloading the soundtrack

:) I Do It with My Fez On by Steely Dan

:)

Authors Notes:
:) Renee Richards was a male tennis player who made waves by becoming a female tennis player.
:) A Fez is that hat Mr. C on Happy Days used to wear to the Leopard Lodge.
:) Skylab was a space station that began falling apart. In the summer of '79 it began to rain debris upon the earth, resulting in world wide prayer vigils and popular signs, often homemade, that begged, "SKYLAB LAND HERE."