From the Desk Floatie of Nona Lippi:
It’s hard to believe that me, Nona Lippi, a simple, multi-gendered, race-less vessel for an inter-dimensional god whose very name conjures the mind-melting voice of Beelzebub was a founding member of influential rap collective Wu Tang Clan. Indeed, in 1990 I was living on Staten Island, I took a kung fu class taught by the RZA. Naturally, my skills were levels ahead of all of those 12 year olds around me, which caught the attention of RZA early on. One day, after I broke little Jacob Harris’ glasses with a pretty sweet sideswipe, RZ (short for RZA) pulled me aside and whispered “yo, you can’t kick that little boy that hard, he has lymphoma and his parents bring him here so he can feel normal before he passes. Also, I’ve been working on this song I want you to hear; come to my place after class.” After I wiped the blood and spit off of my knee, I followed him, and my life would never be the same.
The RZA’s apartment was a lush loft space seemingly modeled after a concubine room for ancient pharaohs. Rich purple tapestries hung from the rafters acted as a backdrop to scantily clad women with palm leaves fanning all down the barely lit corridor. He led me by the hand like a child, running through trickles of golden sand falling from the ceiling. After running for what felt like a marathon, we arrived at a black room illuminated by a single beam of sterile light which pointed to a single pillar, on which an intricately carved silver LP sleeve rested.
“I’ve known since the moment I laid eyes on you that you would be my one true love, the one to follow me across time once and for always. Every synapse in my brain fires for you, Nona. My very blood bleeds and pumps and gives me life so that it is to be with you. I have loved you from afar in karate uniform, seemingly going through motions the untouched by love would call life, while devoting my life to secretly loving you. And now that you are here with me, I can confess to you my love and my art. On this pillar lies the most perfect album ever created, the magnum opus of magna opera. Every song is about you, every layer of your soul is in each groove,” the RZA confessed to me, with a tremble in his voice and freshly wiped tears on his finger pads and the heel of his shaking hands. “I have named it Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to reflect the plot of my dreams of a life with you. Through an ancient kung fu technique, I have been able to briefly control the minds of everyone in my group, The Wu Tang Clan, to know the majesty of your love, and while in these enchantments, we recorded the album, pressed it on the rarest of platinums, and today, the day the 36 planets in the Galaxy Mystrosia are aligned, it is yours”.
My whole concept of life and humanity was changed in a lover’s heartbeat. “I don’t know what to say, The RZA. I am but a simple woman with jungle fever and a love for karate. Who am I to deserve such a precious gift?”
“Tis why I love you, sweet petunia.” he lightly brushed my cheeks, colored of roses with a mask of tears of the Dead Sea. “I want you to hear my bard’s song, mi amor”. He pressed his hand into a panel on the side of the pillar and the record levitated in the path of the light and began spinning due to magnets or wizard magic or both. With the opening beat, my clothes began to melt off as if they were ice cream left in the sun. My puka shell necklace, my Faded Glory overalls, my Sketchers Shape-ups, all gone thanks to the power of the Clan. Standing naked before my newly confessed soulmate, I felt the weight and majesty of Eve, and The RZA, whose clothes also melted, my Adam. We made love in our pitch black Garden of Eden, as if we were children of God without sin. “Put your child in me”, RZA whispered in my ear with the rhythm of a Sade song. Track after track lifted us higher and higher to the to what he kept calling “Cum Mountain”, a phrase that sounds silly in retrospect, but really got my rocks off. After the final mic dropped, and the record descended back to its resting place, we peaked and convulsed in unison like synchronized swimmers who had a toaster fall in their pool.
“These are my last breaths” the RZA also whispered in my ear with the rhythm of a Sade song. “As I literally put my soul in these records, I am leaving this mortal plane, for I have completed my life’s will. The Wu Tang will continue without me, and they will replace me with someone they claim is the RZA, but know that I am the one true RZ.”
“No, you can’t leave, I need you, I crave you. You are the light of my life, the air in my lungs, the path I walk. Please no.”
“Once Upon a Time in Shaolin will return. When it does, you will find a gateway to the dimension in which my soul resides. Then again we will make love like virgins untainted by reality”
In a blink he was gone. With the second blink, the record disappeared. After the final blink, I was home in my bed as if nothing happened. Tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t blink anymore.
24 years I waited, and finally I can reunite with my love. I used .0001% of Loser City’s yearly revenue to purchase Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The cover is still the same as it was the day I became one with the RZA. Now all I can do is wait for the UPS man. The tracker says it’s in Nashville, so it should be here in a few days.
Nona Lippi, CCO, DDS, DTF
Loser City Headquarters
The Pacific Ocean
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