As it happens, I got some very bad news one night while folding laundry and watching 'Gene Simmons Family Jewels'. I'm not a longtime fan of the program and had only just tuned in but I was genuinely touched when he proposed to his longtime girlfriend, the Playboy playmate whose name I can't remember. The mother of his kids. That was a big season finale. My tenuous relationship with the show is similar to my tenuous relationship with the rock group KISS in general. I first met KISS in Ocean City, where the KISS pinball machine scared me senseless. They looked kind of like super villains, and this was well before I knew anything about S&M and satanism or anything of the darker things in life. So the dog collars and skintight outfits and demonic face paint were lost on me. They just looked weird and scary. They looked like Spider-man should be fighting them and winning. This was during those middle years when KISS didn't wear make-up and were still around but not the sensation they were at first and not the marketing powerhouse they are now. It was in the news some time ago that there was a KISS coffin available and I wonder if anyone has been buried in one yet. Later on, I saw vintage KISS in performance on television and my mother said that "they were good" and I wondered what kind of crazy witchcraft my mother was involved in that these evil-looking mimes were , by her estimation, "good". I remember Gene Simmons had a sex tape, too. This was at the end of the big sex tape boom of a few years ago. For a while Gene Simmons had his own magazine called "Tongue". Gene Simmons has a freakishly long tongue, for those of you who don't know. Oprah asked him how long his tongue was once and he told her it was long enough to make Oprah his very best friend. I saw Gene Simmons on William Shatner's talk show, "Shatner's Raw Nerve" once and I liked what he had to say. I've often wished I could reinvent myself. That I could come up with a snazzy costume and not be Paul anymore but someone else that was more of what I wish I were more of and less all of the things I hate about myself. Do you ever feel that way? Today I realized that all of these scattered recollections of KISS and of Gene Simmons constituted an almost lifelong clandestine love affair between he and I, and I don't care who knows about it.
But one day I was watching 'Gene Simmons Family Jewels' and I got some very bad news. The news came via text message and I remember reading it and feeling sick. This particular episode was about a guy who'd been a schmuck and a womanizer all his life, one who was so much of a schmuck that he wanted it both ways, to be a father and family man and still run around having flings with groupies and porn stars. It was the first time I saw this type of guy as being a schmuck and then and there I decided to be less of a schmuck myself. To grow up a little. To commit. He was getting a second chance and I felt like my second chance was on its way. I wanted to be worthy of and ready for it. But then the news came, those damn text messages. There was no second chance for me like there had been for Gene. You'd think realty television would be easier to emulate, wouldn't you? But no. Not for me. And just then I really wanted to paint my face. To become someone else.
I haven't watched the show since. Does anybody know if the marriage turned out okay?
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