I had just received my beautiful certificate of admission to the bar of the United States Supreme Court, and I had taken it in to be framed so that I could hang it on my office wall and, thereafter, the name of my gay, foul-mouthed, and somehow beloved supervisor, mentor, and friend, Carlton Francis Mallace, III, could forever look down upon me from now on and for however long my legal career lasted because Mallace’s name was also on my certificate over mine as my sponsor for admission.

Maria and I had just buried our “adopted” mother, Ruth Soldier, that morning after we had led our little Baptist church in Ruth’s “Home Going Celebration.” I was in my office alone typing out my first ever and, as it would turn out, only petition for writ of certiorari for the United States Supreme Court to the California Court of Appeals, not even to our state’s highest court, a fact that hurt the already astronomically long shot chances of my petition being granted for the Supreme Court to overturn Brown v. Illinois, and give me back Duendes’ confession for my retrial of him that was already calendared for a month away unless I could get Judge Connolly on Monday morning to grant the state a stay in Duendes’ criminal proceedings.

“How in God’s Name am I going to be able to do all this?” I asked myself with no confidence at all in my piss ant abilities to do this . . . or anything.

“You CAN do it, Mac!” Ruth’s voice rang inside my head . . . and my heart. “GOTT VILL HELP YOU!”

In one of the last conversations that I’d had with our family’s “adopted” mother and grandmother when she lay in a bed of the hospital’s intensive care unit with only fifteen percent of her lion’s heart still working, the seemingly indomitable little old Ruth Soldier had encouraged me one more time.

And so I began to write, “In the Supreme Court of the United States, October term, 1996, State of California, Petitioner, vs Marcos Miguel Duendes, Respondent. Petition For Writ Of Certiorari To The California Court Of Appeals.”

“GOTT please help me!” I prayed as I typed.

Suddenly my office door swung open.

“GOOD! You porn-loving lazy piece of shit! Finally working like a real lawyer on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, huh? THIS, I’m glad to see! You’d BETTER BE working! Monday is a BIG DAY FOR YOU, Jerk Off. Fuck THIS up and your ass is MINE!” my friendly faggoty little mentor encouraged me too in his own special way.

[DISCLAIMER: NONE OF THIS IS REAL, PEOPLE. I KEEP TELLING YOU THAT, BUT SOME OF YOU KEEP FORGETTING.]