1Another Day: Roger's Way

A/N: We're back!

Soooo...yeah. This is officially "Another Day: Roger's Way."

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Okay, so here's the deal. I am sitting on the counter with my guitar, stroking its beautiful strings lovingly, and all of a sudden, there's this big noise on the fire escape. It was like this big screeching—oh, crap; it was Mimi. Again.

Alright, her face appears in the window, and she fogged up the glass with her screaming about going outside...which didn't really make any sense, because she already was outside, and then invited herself inside...through the window. I respect her for that; one of the most conventional ways to enter the loft.

So she got inside, and did this creepy little bend down/flick your hair at the same time—congrats, you multitasked—and wailed "Don't forsake me; ouuuuuuuuuuuuut tonight!"

Then she decided it was okay to crawl across the table. Hello, we have to eat off this table! Just because we're not all anorexic like you are doesn't mean that we don't use our tables! "I'll let you make me ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut tonight!" Eew, why would I ever want to do that? Gross.

Then she repeated "tonight" another several times, as if I hadn't heard it the first two painful times. Then, get this—she grabbed my head and shoved her tongue down my throat! And it was bad! Well, not bad...

I mean, she was grabbing my hair! Hands off the merchandise, please! I pay good money for that hair, and a great deal of patience as well. I wake up every morning, rinse, lather and repeat it multiple times, and then I brush it in five minute intervals as it's drying, then I get Mark to stand around me with a big mirror, just so I can look at myself and bask in the wonderful glow that radiates from my lovely hair.

After sinking into thought about my hair, I realized that I was still tonguing this girl and that she had a bag of heroin that was in my hair! She was trying to get my hair addicted! I was having none of this. I shoved her back, trying to hide the glee that this girl had just kissed me (and had a choice to do so as well), and put my guitar between the two of us, as if it would protect me.

"Who do you think you are, barging in on me and my guitar?" Here shines through my rhyming abilities. "Little girl, hey, the door is that way, you better go—you know the fire's out anyway! Take your powder, take your candle, your sweet whisper I just can't handle!" Alright, I'm just going to inject here and say that I was getting a little carried away with the rhyming fun. "Well, take your hair in the moonlight—your brown eyes, goodbye, goodnight!" I opened the door and prepared myself to have to forcibly remove her.

Then I stopped right after opening the door, thinking about how really pretty this girl was. And she was actually seeming to be very nice! "I should tell you, I should tell you... I should tell you, I should—" then she touched me and I remembered her addictedness. Right. Drugs. Bad.

"No!" I shouted, turning around and slapping her hand off of me. For the record, NO, I am not a woman beater, I was just uncomfortable. "Another time, another place, our temperature would climb, there'd be a long embrace," I thought of each cliche very carefully. "We'd do another dance, we'd sing another way. Looking for romance? Come back another day. Another day!"

I repeated myself, hoping the message would get through to her. I sat down in a huff on the couch, my guitar safely next to me in case I needed to use it to beat her with—UM, I mean... to share cookies with, and make happy rainbow smiles. "The heart may freeze," Mimi coated her words in sugar and walked around behind me, as if to catch me off guard with a flank attack. "Or it can burn. The pain will ease if I can learn."

I stiffened, using my spidey sense to know whether or not she was going to attack me. Instead, she attacked the coffee table, climbing on top of it. I dubbed her an official Table Crawler. "There is no future, there is no past. I live each moment as my last!"

Waaaaaait a minute. Her words are actually starting to make sense! Especially being someone with AIDS, I think I'm starting to understand what she's talking about, even if it's not really what she means! "There's only us, there's only this. Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. No other road, no other way—no day but today."

There was a bit of a pause where I tried to fix my face, which had been screwing into odd fashions as she sang these lines at me. Then I realized—no day but today? Another day? What a fight this would pick! And I love fights!

"Excuse me, if I'm off-track," I mocked her politeness, "but if you're so wise, then tell me, why do you need smack?" Oooh, good rhyme! And it was burn as well. "Take your needle, take your fancy prayer," I rolled the first r on the prayer to make it sound neat as I lead her over to the door, "don't forget, get the moonlight out of your hair! Long ago you might've lit up my heart," I noticed my mistake—it had not been long ago—"but the fire's dead, ain't never ever gonna start!"

Bad grammar has always been a strong subject of mine. "Another time, another place, the words would only rhyme," I thought desperately for a rhyme, "we'd be in outer space." I was desperate, okay? "It'd be another song, we'd sing another way, looking for romance? Come back another day!" I chased her down the stairs, kind of confused when she didn't stop at her apartment but raced out to the street as I spun on my heel in a little huff and stomped up the stairs, making sure that my footsteps echoed in the empty hallway.

I could hear her voice drift up from the street outside—she was screaming at me very loudly... so loudly, in fact, the next door neighbors peeked out their windows to see what was going on. Even the laundromat across the street emptied as people fled with their laundry. One woman lost a sock and some lovely pink panties—I made a mental note to pick them up for Mark.

What? He has a collection.

Whenever people forget things in the dyers, or we find some clean laundry on the ground, he takes it like a little packrat. Yeah.

Instead of allowing Mimi to embarrass me by shouting nasty things about me in the street, I decided to go out onto the balcony and retaliate, so that the neighbors didn't think I was a pansy.

"...no other course; no other way! No day but today!" I caught just the last bit of her rant as I reached the fire escape.

Then, get this—everybody comes out of nowhere, and they all started screaming at me...as if they had been there the entire time, just listening to our very private converation.

...okay, maybe not so private. We were only screaming in the middle of the fricken neighborhood...no big deal, really...

Ahem. So anyway, they're all yelling at me: "I can't control!"

"Control your temper!" I whined, trying to get them to stop making loud noises, which make me very jumpy.

"My destiny!" they continued persistently.

"She doesn't see!" I yelled to the others, who had apparently already assessed the situation at hand and ignored me, yelling: "I trust my soul, my only goal, is just to be!"

"Who says that there's a soul?" I inquired aloud, sounding slightly stupid, but still. "Just let me be!" I finished lamely, not even really rhyming or anything, but I guess that's okay because they didn't seem to care all that much...I mean, they were all too busy yelling and defending Mimi and not even listening to my side of the very long and boring story because they APPARENTLY already KNEW everything there was to KNOW about the stupid argument Mimi and I had HAD!

So then, I repeated my whole spiel from before when I was basically telling her to get lost. I caught on to Mimi's first statement, "There's only now, there's only here—"

But then I pretty much had to focus my one-track mind on keeping in time with the weird music that also came from noplace. I looked at Mark to see if he was bursting into music again (he does that when he's drunk—long story, don't ask...I will tell you that it involved a rubber chicken, three olives, a corkscrew, and a flaming jukebox), but found, to my relief, that I wasn't going to be fetching the funnel tonight. Thank God; Mark wasn't making music. Woot.

Okay, so after we had our little rhyme-joust, I stopped yelling after I screamed "Another day!"

Which I had screamed at the exact same time as Mimi and co. yelled, "No day but today!"

Stupid optimistic idjits.

Then, Mimi collapsed into the arms of Collins' very own transvestite, Angel. The two held each other close, while Collins and Mark sent me very dirty looks.

...until Mark noticed the lingerie lying in the street. He glanced around quickly to see if anyone was watching him, and then dove for his silky prize.

I know exactly what you're thinking: "Wow, Roger; you are soooooooo much cooler than Mark."

Trust me; I know.

A/N: Me and Sara are combining our efforts to bring you "Today 4 U: Roger's View" (Thanks to DramaQueenMaureen for the rhyme), Roger's POV, through, you guessed it, Today 4 U.

Read it, 'tis lovely!

This was a tad shorter but we had a tonna fun writing it, so please review!

–Steph and Sara