Trapped in Elon's Mansion

TRAPPED IN
ELON’S MANSION
BY JOE BAGEL
This one is for all the old girls.
Published by Secret Readings

https://sssssecret.com
3956 St-Laurent Boulevard
Montréal, QC H2W 1Y3
Copyright © 2018 Joe Bagel

All rights reserved
Cover illustration by Alvar Carto

Book edited by no one
Book design stolen from SS & GM
Author photo MIA
1st edition
1st printing
1st cut is the deepest.
CONTENTS
4
ACT 1.0
25
ACT 1.1
34
ACT 1.2
46
ACT 1.3
58
ACT 1.4
88
ACT 1.5
ACT 1.0.1
[ENTER AZEALIA BANKS AND GRIMES]
AZEALIA BANKS (answering phone)

Proceed, caller, I am Azealia Banks
Pin-up rap bombshell and roaster of skanks.
GRIMES
Hello fair Azealia, this is Claire B
AKA Grimes with a capital G.
Pray, art thou familiar with my oeuvre?
My art pop is worthy of the Louvre
I match beats, so lush, with choirs choral,
Filigreed soundscapes, aptly laureled
By Juno’s committee, though Polaris’
Has not been as quick to gild my merits.
Forget those fool ear’d, mapley mountebanks!
They will each be bloodlet by my new tracks.
For years I have laboured, showers unpermitted,
Before my MacBook, in silence, sitted,
On the floor, crossleggèd, chair nor sofa’s
Cushion cradling my bonesome pagoda.
Alas, my opus is nearing complete—
Minus a guest verse: Ms. Banks, can we meet?
AZEALIA BANKS
Dost thou think I know not thine pedigree?
Wherefore thou might so soon forget: we’ve met!
Claire, smelling rank as a teenage tent tryst
4
Utterly guileless, every lip fresh,
Face unshaven, underarms double-braided,
Mascara fouled, greased like a deep fryer,
Your tongue, Aphrodite, was a ratking.
GRIMES
How humorous thy descriptions! What wit!
T’would be an honour to procure its loan.
And though I despise the greenback’s transfer
Much preferring to coax soul from its spool
By the looms of artistry and friendship
Rather than by capital’s blunt pick–
What tool of oppression and injustice!–
Our intimacy eludes at least me
And my label ponies a handsome fee.
AZEALIA BANKS
How natural ‘tis to despise the buck
When one doth find herself behind its breach
Feeding her tapestry from loonie’s loom
Art thou not betrothed to a billionaire?
GRIMES
A loonie’s loom—Ms. Banks, you spin a phrase!
Though I’m done my days north of forty-nine,
As is Elon Musk, my not-quite-betrothed,
Mine having neither ring nor bank vault’s key,
But such matters are of little import.
My label people will come to thee beared
Of ample providence for thy namesake.
5
AZEALIA BANKS
I salute thee, Claire, for coming of means.
GRIMES
Coming? I have, sadly, always had means.
Bonds of palm and loin only increased them.
AZEALIA BANKS
Easy ‘tis to disparage dollars, then,
When thou wast born with one over each eye!
GRIMES
Yes, an advantage can indeed confound
And leave all its beneficents blinded.
AZEALIA BANKS
Enough talk of coins. Let me see thine purse!
GRIMES
Please, no. My purse, ‘tis a dirty subject.
Let our lawyers fine-comb its hairs instead.
AZEALIA BANKS
Daft bleached waif! Waste not my time with vagueness.
Speak thine terms or I’ll scatter thee in nots.
GRIMES
I need thirty-two bars of your finest
And in exchange, offer one gold bar’s half.
6
AZEALIA BANKS (aside)
I am galled by this wench. I know her well.
We shared a town in twenty-eleven.
O, Montreal! That shimmering isle.
By tongues it was twained: Anglo and Franco,
The schism betwixt them, an uphill road.
Rue Saint-Laurent, volcano vent of art—
Launching bands like pyroclast and magma—
Had lured me North with its fragrant smoke.
I purchased a one-way ticket in June
In the gut of a Greyhound. ‘Twas a bitch.
I left home in Harlem with a backpack,
A microphone, pre-amp, interface, clothes,
Pad, pen, and dreams—my heaviest baggage.
I ventured to find a new perspective
Knowing that hip-hop, birthed but blocks away
Had, in passing years, proved a monocrop.
Its soil: tilled by snapback-capped crackheads,
Their field: a mess’d, mudded, meathead menses,
And fruit: scabbed, short, withered, detumescent.
So I’d sow a season in fields afresh
Though Montreal’s rappers were even worse
T’least by aggregate—yet its producers
Were of such swelling repute, their ears ripe,
Profited of experiments, lab hours
Spent in studios, which down in New York
Would have otherwise been spent walking dogs,
Delivering kale, schlepping kombucha,
Earning the good landlord’s bounteous rent.
Nay, in the Mile End, a month’s lodging
Could be won by flipping an hourglass
7
And the liberation of the hours
Uncropped the ear, which was New York’s fashion.
GRIMES
Ms. Banks! Art thou there? I hear but mumbles.
AZEALIA BANKS
Yes yes yes, I mumble and thou lispeth
I will take thee on thine half-bar’s offer
Though it had better be for bother’s sake
Paid in gold and not poutiney pesos.
GRIMES
Perfect! I’ll let the lawyers dot the i’s
And plot the particulates of thine prize.
Art thou free to meet here in a week’s time?
We’ll book a first-class flight on our own dime.
AZEALIA BANKS
Let me see. Hence a week works fine for me,
In the interim days I’ll sketch some rhymes
Hast thou produced some beats for me to hear?
If so, I can begin at once, my dear.
GRIMES
Beats? Yea, I’ll shoot them to your inbox now.
With luck, next week this time, thy voice endowed
We’ll together assail the hastèd charts
And world-prove each the master of her art.
AZEALIA BANKS
I will receive thine email in raptures.
8
GRIMES
Ha-ha-ha. Great. I’ll go arrange your flight.
I’ll meet you at the gate, Ms. Banks! Good night.
[THEY HANG UP THE PHONE]

Herpèd boil!
GRIMES (aside)
Bombastic animal!

“World-prove each the master of her art.” What!
That rocket muse is but a master slut.
GRIMES (aside)
The gall! The gall! That witch—she hath it all!
Only my ears could slight believe that call.

To this entitled brat, I must debase
My art? How then I’d ever look my face
In glinted pools without then heaping stones?
Lash my back! Fuck! Gouge my ass! Drill my bones!
9
GRIMES (aside)
To think that my upturned hand could be met
In such a discourteous flippant way?
Could a wildebeest be so ungrateful–
She hath not released a single in years.

Am I expected thus to buck and skip
At the hail of a limp-wrist napkin’s wave
Because the coupled hand can write a cheque?
Hell no—t’were not my accounts in the red.
GRIMES (aside)
In my life I have never been greeted
With such unwarranted asperity.
She converses in a jocular coat
Yet its weave is too thin for the weather.

I will butter her in insouciance
To palate this utmost distastèd act
Then, once the gold light breaks, reveal at once
How she hath wronged me back in Montreal.
10
ACT 1.0.2
[ENTER ELON MUSK, JARRETT WALKER,

AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES]
MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

Tonight ’tis my duty—nay, privilege,
Honour, blessing—nay, nay, benedictus
To introduce to you, my city’s yawns,
L.A.’s celibated entrepreneur,
Maverick, mover, shaker, guru, tweeter,
Engineer, icon, designer, rock star,
A “disruptor” in not only one field,
Like pizza directions, or rocket ships,
Email bank transfers, or polar sandals,
Or near-hypersonic vacuum car pods,
Or an underground car conveyor belt,
Or the cheapest-seeming car belt tunnels,
Or the first long-range electric sports cart—
Not Musk! He has disrespected them all!
ELON MUSK
Mayor, thou art mistaked. I’m no rock star.
[THE CROWD OF PLEBEIAN MASSES

APPLAUDS ELON’S QUIP]

O Elon Musk! Humbler than a pound dog!
Thou arse mankind’s oracle and general:
11
Could merman preempt his destiny? Nay.
But man mere, thou aren’t—thou’s a demi-god.
[MORE CHEERING]
ELON MUSK
Lest I but too much in my rebuttals,
I affirm: I am not a deity.

Did he? Did he do what? Did he become
The richest one man in Los Angeles
By sitting on panels like these? Oh no!
Our man’s a doer, not a sea urchin.
ELON MUSK
I see no end to this introduction
But I humbly hope it comes presently.

We are lucky, however: he’s coerced!
I curst Elon into coming tonight
To beggar my public for approbate
His latest adventure: a boring one.
Happily, the Boring Company’s brand name’s
A missed gnome sleight if ever there was one.
ELON MUSK
Please mayor, I must depart in an hour
For my younger brother, by Ohio.
12
Wow! Your bio? And I would be honoured—
“From South Africa did he pop the womb,
Then to Canada for a family tie
His too many days in Saskatchewan
From its hard plain, a better future glimpsed
And like Joni, made for California…
ELON MUSK
O California! Our one good coast left,
Land of mayors’ made boasting-blue faces.

Face of the land! What a kind thing to say!
Pray, though, let’s not stop those facelips’ talking—
Where were they? Yes, before California—
“Musk made three pit stops: Vancouver, B.C.;
Then the King’s town to find his first priz’d queen;
That traded for a different kind of Penn;
On t’ward his resting state: the Golden Gate
Where he paid his tolls, and made big Bens back.
ELON MUSK
Mayor, as you gas us with this reading
All gathered here could have journeyed to Mars.

Mars? But we are hardly there yet, Elon.
“At twenty-seven, sold Zip2.com—
The last heist made on a newspaper’s vaults—
Twenty-two millies banked, most that he plowed
Into his second venture: X.com.
13
A pokerer, his only words: ‘All-in’,
His one spare chip, spent decadently:
A McLaren F1, one of only
But sixty-two cars in all the cosmos…
Soon too plowed itself into Sand Hill Road
When, on the way to meet some investors
His friend (and a backstabber) Peter Thiel,
Asked of Elon ‘So what can this thing do?’
Our man pressed the pedal to the metal:
Twenty-four karat gold metal, that, to
Two-hundred and forty mile-hour’s speed
‘Watch this,’ he said to Peter, changing lanes,
Then they spun out—hitting an embankment—
At forty-five degrees, flown three feet high,
Airborne, spinning wobbled like a discus,
Wheels shredded, windows smashed, suspension blown,
The popup headlamps two black, bash-bloom’d eyes,
Elon then said to Peter, each unscathed,
‘And the funny part? It wasn’t insured.’
Then the duo hitchhiked to the meeting.
ELON MUSK
I admit your skill at biography
But why dost jabber us about old cars?

Antsy Elon! I am finding a point!
And that point’s made, a-to-b, in a car:
For Musk’s more than a vulgar job taker,
Employing thousands of my taxpayers;
He’s more than a new Hugh Hefner playtoy,
Seducing actresses in his mansion;
14
He’s more than a vacuumed celebrity,
And he’s more than a huckster of gizmos;
He’s Auto Von Prince of our Car Culture!
He flunged himself here by our Highway 1
In a car, dreamed of cars, bought cars, makes cars,
To rule the world’s most car-centric city
Then blew his Tesla Model 3 to space.
Consider his first BMW:
A junk ’78 320i
Whose wheel was sheered off by an intern’d dolt,
Digging its axel’s omen in the street;
Or the next car he purchased, a Jaguar
S1 ‘67 E-Type Roadster
On which a thirty-five of forty gees’
Investors’ bonus was spent procuring
(Hoped to replace his three-wheeled chariot)
But broke down pulling out from the dealer;
Between those and the flying McLaren,
Elon, all the cars you’ve picked were melons!
Rising from their wreckage and rind-cracked hoods,
Bumming ride after ride, car after car,
Rage slowly building, your life purpose proved:
To unjankify the automobile.
[THE CAR-LOVERS LET LOOSE

A DEAFENING ROAR]
ELON MUSK
Mayor, I could have charged fifty-eight cars
In the time thou tooketh to flap thine jaws
And though I redden like a cheek-flushed drunk
Being praised by a man of like esteem
15
If our public desire more details
They can nit my grit with a Google search.

Or Genius—where the searches come in verse!
ELON MUSK
Yes, let’s make an inverter of you Mayor,
And return the wagging tongue to its tie.
Fie! Fie! On with it! For time is like oil:
Our reserves are finite, we think it cheap
Then we awake, one day, cloaked in its fumes
Choking back its fetid blackfoot’s breath.
Citizens of Los Angeles! Hear ye:
Tonight I beseech you to help me build
A gold ring to band our city’s jewels.
Why? As getting around Los Angeles
Feels, on good days, like Dante’s seventh rung.
And a bad day? An eight-deep inferno.
[THE CAR-LOVERS MASH THEIR

HANDS IN ACCORDANCE]
ELON MUSK
Traffic puts a bright cord about our neck
Until our eyes jut out like sickly pugs
To keep sane on our highways? We need drugs!
Feed us olanzapine, lurasidone,
We’re brought to psychosis on our ways home,
Taking diazepam, alprazolam,
Our roads shake the soul worse than Vietnam,
Give us scooby snacks, acid, THC—
16
To flee this bump-to-bump’d menagerie
Or else, pharmacopeias should go dry
Pray: put a bullet fast between our eyes.

Mister Musk, your pistols need a nerfing!
It’s California: we don’t shoot people—
We keep that to all of the other states.
ELON MUSK
O forgive me Mayor! But I am moved
To tears by our roads’ unmoving nature
But thou art right, folks: slacken your triggers—
Our highways’ Hell has an exit: diggers!
Thousands of tunnels, bored below our feet
Such will make L.A.’s underground replete
Tunnels, tunnels, tunnels, all the way down
Eastward, westward, northward, and south-veering
With my boring machines we’ll make a clearing
We’ll spare the spades of yore, their bright-edged blades
And bore down deep beneath each beach and glade.
Imagine thus: your car, but down a shaft
Into a car pod, shuttled like a raft
On a great car-conveying skate, hands-free,
Zipped from point to any point, a-to-b,
And since our pods will be robotic-steered
There’s no risk of catching one from the rear.
17
JARRETT WALKER
Mr. Musk, if I may—
ELON MUSK
Quiet, hippo!
What brain-bursting parasite art thou host
That it would propel you to open your spittoon
And drain its insipidness in my air?

Musk! Tame that gorillary: I forgot
To introduce the moon on my right shank.
Los Angeles County bylaws require
That at every public consternation
Consoling our transport infrastructure—
Bridges, tunnels, and roads, et cetera,
Which involve a third and private party,
Such as the present Boring Company—
An expert urban planner’s oversight
So that taxpayers do not get hoodwink’d
By slick construction industry conmen
Who call for billion-dollar boondoggles
That bore tunnels for rivers of snake oil.
ELON MUSK
Oh! He’s the fusty bureaucrat! My bad!

Yet, to me, and I doubt just me, ’tis clear
Given Elon’s oft-proven velour
His umpteen contributions to L.A.,
(And I don’t just mean off-book donations,
18
Which are a cheap way to win acclaim
By the millionaire and billionaire set
For how hard ‘tis, truly, to co-sign cheques?)
But moving blood, muscle, and tears himself
To further our city’s—and mankind’s—goals.
Let’s not then yet cede hippopodiums
To—what’s his name? The name’s in my beefrings…
Page: what’s the name of the moon on my right?
PAGE
His name, sir, is Doctor Jarrett Walker.

And pray, page, what is he a doctor of?
PAGE
He has a doctorate in Shakespeare, sir.

Shakespeare? He is a scholar of the bard?
PAGE
He is sir. And in one or two plays, starred.
ELON MUSK
I’ve worked twenty-hour days twenty years…
Founded two of the early net’s giants…
And made the first mass-market gasless car…
Then singlehandedly upstaged NASA…
All while bringing solar to the masses…
And I’m to listen to… a thespian?
No disrespect to this glabrous gutsack
19
But I have many matters to discuss
Of grave import to our county’s future.

Please Mr. Musk, play nice, we’re on your side
Don’t let your infamed temper turn that tide.
JARRETT WALKER
Please, Mayor, a word—

Silence, Romeo!
Elon speaks franker than a hot dog stand
But he hath earned the right to speak at will
Stay mute in your chair, doctor, till told till.
ELON MUSK
I foresee such a place where all will drive,
On and off the freeways’ pass. On and off,
All day, all night. And should the driving hives
Ever find a good bumble’s nest be blocked
We’ll bore a freeway further out of sight
In a week or less, we guarantee it,
We know the brain-spent modern driver’s plight
We need not a Hadron’s scope to see it.
The Boring Company tunnels will take
An anyone, anywhere in L.A.
For a modest mere handful dollars’ stake
In, down, up and out, any night or day.
See the best of our land: from cheap motels,
And storefronts for luxury upmark’d cars,
To its fast-floating chains of Taco Bells
20
And twenty-dollar plus-tip cocktail bars.
See the Hollywood letters spell our art:
Kung-fu superhero magnum opus.
Or the poet’s abandoned shopping cart
Where his bed, his clothes and all his soap is.
Finally, and all here know it’s not the least,
That which makes L.A. wondrous west-to-east
The seat of our skyline’s beauty stored:
Billboard, billboard, billboard, and more billboards.

Mr. Musk, perhaps this can be abridged?
ELON MUSK
No mayor, I did not come for a bridge.
Art thou deaf? I am here for a tunnel!
JARRETT WALKER
And I am here for neither! Good riddance.
Mr. Musk: what improvement seekest thee?
Is it an abatement of our traffic?
Or is it merely a thinning of thine?
For at a first glance of this proposal,
(And I admit, it was a nauseous one),
I saw naught within extraordinary
Save the marketing slickness of thine brand.
ELON MUSK
Chill that tongue, cow, lest I brand it myself!
JARRETT WALKER
I would rather thou bore my mooing cheeks
21
And then brand my grass-fed tongue to cinders
Than stamp my brand on thine boring blueprints
For a second asshole’s punctured purpose.
ELON MUSK
He makes an ingrate of the ungulates!
JARRETT WALKER
If only, and I would be most grateful.
Call me a hippo, a cow, a camel,
It doesn’t warp the math of bulbous truth—
Elephants do not fit in a wineglass
Just as L.A.’s space-wracked metropolis
Has no room for personal parking spots
For single-occupant automobiles,
Nor will another car-bridge or -tunnel
Amend this-here city’s traffic deathtrap.
Adding more freeways and interchanges
S’like laying down a fat line of cocaine:
It solicits a flocking of nostrils
(More formally known as “induced demand”.)
You cannot stack a city ten cars deep,
But you can fit ten drivers in a train—
And multiply those gains by a hundred.
Public transit, not tunnels, are the way!
ELON MUSK
Go on, wiggling Walker, tell us more!
I am transportation’s visionary,
Thou wouldst rather me ride a dirty bus.
22
JARRETT WALKER
A bus can be tidied, but not math, man.
For one subway tunnel’s capacity
L.A. would need a thousand thine bore holes.
Thou’d do well to recall what Plato said—
Inscribed on his Academy’s entrance:
“Let no one ignorant of geometry enter.”
ELON MUSK
He knows his “Plato”: it packs his belly
If only engines could burn its jelly
Then we’d have no need for a powertrain!
Forget Tesla. Let’s all ride… what’s his name.
JARRETT WALKER
I admire thine mouth’s soft dulcet words
But, Musk, lest it tire I’ll be more brusque:
The tunnels thou proposes are fanciful
And fancy’s the only thing they’re full of.
Never before has the phrase “mass transit”
Been wasted on cars so sparsely ridden.
Couple-person car pods? Is air thine mass?
Buses and trains can fit a hundred-plus.
Thou art short on pros—but long on the cons.
ELON MUSK
A con artist? What libel! What muckrack!
JARRETT WALKER
Musk, thou art strung higher than a eunuch.
23
ELON MUSK
A eunuch? Dost thou desire me, then?
Seeing as thou art a closet pedo!

Mister Musk! Mister Walker! Stop at once.
Or else I will send us out for recess.
ELON MUSK
Careful—recess is where he stalks his prey.
JARRETT WALKER
A pedo? I am of no such credo.

Adjourned! Adjourned! Adjourned! Adjourned! Adjourned!
24
ACT 1.1.0
[ENTER SIRI, AZEALIA BANKS,

AND AZEALIA BANKS’ BANKER]
SIRI
This is Siri. You have one new message.
AZEALIA’S BANKER (recorded message)

Miss Banks, this is Franklin von Fraudinschwatz
I’m calling by your newly behalved bank.
Thou toldst us thou wast a coiner of words,
In thine employ, find thee like recompense?
For while generosity germinates
Thine mother-leaves of green do flutter dry.
We have torqued our hoses in most accord
But our banker’s bucket is not a cloud.
Pray ten days repay your account’s amounts:
For I fear it appears you’re in arrears.
AZEALIA BANKS
Arrears? My songs have kiss’t more ears than one…
As I’m known to go up and down a scale.
O! Banks! Oft you find yourself inverted
In what place was thine card last inserted?
And a mere ten days till destitution?
Then to Claire’s I haste for debt’s ablution.
25
AZEALIA BANKS (calling Claire)
Hey hoe! Honey bunny! Coochie-coo-coo!
Wherefore art my beautiful fucking bitch?
Claire? Claire? Dost she cower from her iPhone?
Bonjour? Salut? Allô? T’es où, ma ‘tit?
GRIMES
Hello? Azealia? Oh and my! So soon!
Is everything in concord? Art thou fair?
AZEALIA BANKS
Far from.
GRIMES
That so? Then might I be of help?
AZEALIA BANKS
Thou might send me a generous helping—
Hast many expendable bleaching tubes?
For I’d not a pasty mother’s whelping
But could so match the pigtail’s coupled cube.
GRIMES
In bright gradient then’s my laughter dyed,
Could I more than lighten but hair and hide?
AZEALIA BANKS
Yes, thou could make a waxing of my mood
For the moons have turned it melancholic—
My calendar’s plunged from peacetime, dude,
Our date plans’ been right nipped on the bollocks.
26
GRIMES
Possess you power’ve moving planet?
For I’d freely then rebook its transit.
AZEALIA BANKS
Aye, such a date’s changing would calm prick’d hairs,
As I’ve no recourse where my orbit’s thrown,
If thou fetches a morrow’s shuttle there,
I can yet give your song my borrowed groan.
GRIMES
Then we’ll not miss our two’s foreseen eclipse
Hark! We’ll fetch you here on the soonest trip.
27
ACT 1.1.1
[ENTER SAUDI PRINCE AND ELON MUSK, BACKSTAGE]
SAUDI PRINCE
Mister Musk, a saint-making spectacle!
The boring dollars, and cinched with grandeur.
Los Angeles will soon suckle thine feet
Proclaiming holiest of holey men.
ELON MUSK
I fancy a sycophant’s phantasm?
I think NOT.
SAUDI PRINCE
Not a sycophant I sir?
I answer in tones of earnest rev’rence.
ELON MUSK
Then thine honked saxophone is found most cheap;
It hast the subtlety of a bagpipe,
The musical range of an old bongo,
And fits like a cello in a suitcase.
SAUDI PRINCE
By the grace of the highest, compare not
My voice to instruments of infidels.
28
ELON MUSK
Infidelity comes in many shades,
On which hue am I to be hung by thee?
SAUDI PRINCE
There’s no hue to make of you but Howard’s—
Since him billionaires have been but cowards.
ELON MUSK
Crafty sod! Compare me to Howard Hughes!
Thou hoppest back to my pouch of graces—
Like a lonely joey on the outback.
SAUDI PRINCE
O! Musk! A fellow of hyperlooped jest.
ELON MUSK
Jest! As a fool? Or the mere fool’s player?
SAUDI PRINCE
On a bill? Thou wouldst rank higher than both!
ELON MUSK
Silence Sheik! Today’s marked enough wise-cracks.
Wise-man, what’s latest on our funding tack?
SAUDI PRINCE
Funding is secured, sir.
ELON MUSK
Secured? You’re sure?
29
SAUDI PRINCE
I’m as sure as a usurer’s his share.
ELON MUSK
Thou wilt be rewarded for thine prudence.
SAUDI PRINCE
We are happy to aid thee in thine quest
As thy maketh our world a better place.
For although oil drums have made our beat—
We are not obscured by the face of facts
That the Arabs’ tarry vaults do mellow.
ELON MUSK
But e’en the case thine vaults will steadfast spring,
Tarry skies do deprive a kingdom Sun.
SAUDI PRINCE
We’ll hap take clouds sooner tented cover,
And build skyward over them with riches.
The Saudi sovereign wealth fund shall invest—
With a toothy smile, in Tesla, too—
Not because thine electric batteries
Make thinning oil reserves obsolete,
For oil fuels more than just cars: it flies planes,
Heats homes, makes asphalt, and beauty products.
No, it is not out of fear that we invest,
But out of strength, Mister Musk, and belief:
Thou hast made the world’s finest-ever car.
By moving the engine out of the hood,
And placing the batteries on the floor pan
The car’s centre of gravity, lowered,
30
Infuses driving with unalloyed joy
With unbeatable acceleration,
A most luxurious interior,
A sleek classic body, like a Rodin,
And an absurdly competitive price.
All puts any non-investor in straits!
ELON MUSK
Well then send me my money straightly, Sheik!
SAUDI PRINCE
We invest not just money, Musk—but trust.
So that Tesla can be taken private.
It will spare turmoil of market bets,
For that is Tesla’s only risk: short sales.
ELON MUSK
How short-sellers do make my neck veins bulge!
A plague, a virus, a pox, hot fevers!
I’ll install a poker in their nethers!
So I’ll come shrouded in your riyals’ cloak
Announce it too as if t’were all a joke.
Asked for sources, I’ll with thy name divulge
Then see my fair short-sellers stroke and croak
As their short-lived savings go up in smoke!
(Can I be said to sin thus singing glee?)
SAUDI PRINCE
Yes, but it seems that is thy favoured key.
Alas. Go focus on building vessels—
While our family’ll keep thine vessels stocked.
31
ELON MUSK
Speaking of family, I must leave thee, Sheik.
For I have not seen my fair Claire in weeks.
SAUDI PRINCE
Give my best to the teeny concubine.
[ELON MUSK EXITS]
SAUDI PRINCE
“Buy low, sell high”: four bywords to fortune.
“Buy low, sell lower”: and those will be mine.
For I have procured billions in Musk stock,
Not in my name, but others’ whose I rent.
At a small fee I bought these stocks’ control
And, much like a textbook arbitrager
Who’d borrow a book from a friend, pawn it
At the market’s September peak, get bank,
Purchase it once more at semester’s trough,
“Return” the book, but pocket the difference,
So is made a shorted stock of Tesla.
One knows too that a market for stocks
Is less predictable than one for books,
Which means that a September market’s highs
Nor semester-ending lows can be timed:
Man must make the market do his bidding.
But when all thy foes come bearing muskets
Clandestine warfare is not eas’ly waged.
Hard as I work to ravage his stock price
Like an unleashèd jet it booms and booms.
I shan’t more pay for press’s pillory
Nor for assembly-line mucking agents
32
I thus must hold the scimitar myself
And thrust it through Elon’s booming belly.
33
ACT 1.2.0
[ENTER JAY Z AND GRIMES]
JAY Z (answering phone)

Pray, what rogue is calling at this hour?
Oh ‘tis Claire, and she’s at Elon’s tower.
GRIMES
Hi Jay, or rather my good Master Zed,
I have not perchance caught him in his bed?
JAY Z
Indeed, I lie by my beloved… Bey
What bothers thee that could not wait till day?
GRIMES
Forgive me Master Zed, thine theft of zees,
My head’s been cleft like t’were a mound of cheese
I’ve spent days in Ableton high on crack,
Now I come to thee to expense my track.
JAY Z
Dost thou confuse my number with Fifty’s?
I have not sold crack ere a decade more
Buzz not my phone when thy mind’s most shifty
Now, peace. I sleep beside my paramour.
[JAY Z HANGS UP]
34
[GRIMES CALLS AGAIN]
GRIMES
Paramore? Hayley Williams is my god.
Hath she too gone moonlitting as your bawd?
Perchance, gracious Zed, thou could pass the phone,
Unless ‘tis more than me thou picks his bones.
[JAY Z HANGS UP]
[GRIMES CALLS AGAIN]
GRIMES
Hello?
JAY Z
Shawn Carter’s Trap House, this is Shawn!
GRIMES
Jokey joshing jocose jaw-flexing Jay!
With Haley I know thou does not next lay!
For I have just now stalked her Instagram
And there’s no jay pearl in her razor’s clam.
JAY Z
Claire, I know not what thou brashly implies
As ever I do in my Bey’s bed rise,
This Haley thou speaks of? She chimes no bells.
So cease—lest thou make mine tomorrow hell’s.
35
GRIMES
In but Beyoncé’s bed? O Master Zed!
Recall not when you steered me by the head?
My docile stick shift skull, pulled fore and aft
Then when, both reaching bends I took thine draft?
Thou t’were a fisherman, casting his net
Its rope-ensnared swimmers, the dry deck wet,
And on my narrow boat the fish was splayed
From clarion throats spilled: “Catch o’ the day!”
JAY Z
Alark! Avast! Avaunt! Alackaday!
Hark! Grimes begone at once! Avark till day.
Suture thine lips—a lady sleeps beside
Unless thou wants to force me in the hide!
GRIMES
O Master Zed! I make no blackmail plea
I swear, o’er all the blue bells I gave thee
I neither summon crack, nor issue splits
But come pled on part of mine latest hit.
JAY Z
A hit? Why dost thou come with midnight’s haste?
GRIMES
Midnight? ’Tis but nine. Art thou of hours chaste?
JAY Z
I’m in New York this week for several meets.
36
GRIMES
New York? Tucked in before the new day’s beep?
O! Outsmarted city that never sleeps.
JAY Z
Ugh. Can’t this wait till I’m back in L.A.?
GRIMES
Truly, no. I’ve got an advance to pay.
JAY Z
Whose? I have dispensed thine budget, and some.
GRIMES
A sum, but save largesse befitting thee.
JAY Z
And at what target is my largesse aimed?
GRIMES
At hired lips. Azealia is her name.
JAY Z
Azealia Banks?
GRIMES
Indeed, we talked today.
JAY Z
And what did you talk about, precisely?
37
GRIMES
She agreed to feature on my album.
JAY Z
Hath she agreed in aspect circumspect?
GRIMES
Nay, we agreed on terms. She flies out soon.
JAY Z
And at what measure then doth come this boon?
GRIMES
All but half a gold’s bar, which feels quite fair.
JAY Z
Well then, thank you for informing me Claire.
How long t’would take to get you in the air?
For I have words that phones do not allow.
Book a flight tomorrow, to New York, now.
[JAY Z HANGS UP]
GRIMES (aside)
I do not understand? How have I erred?
T’would seem our Jay’s as fickle as a bird,
For did he not, just last week, recommend
That I ought for a rapper’s guest verse send?
“Your first album was made for preteen girls,”
Said Jay. “But that’s been a few years, so hey,
Perhaps you ought to ride the hip-hop wave?”
Give a bit of edge to your songs,” he bade.
38
But asked if he’d do it himself, declined,
Citing busyness, and bid me to find
A modern voice, a triplet-rapping Joyce
Now, finding her, takes issue with my choice?
Balderdash. Who doth this man think he is?
Is it cost? Jay’s the richest in the biz.
He’d hardly miss a paltry half-gold’s bar
Much gold is found in cushions of his car.
Well, on this matter I’ll no longer dwell
I’ll see Jay tomorrow and try to quell
Any keyboard shift-key muttered fury
And find how t’abate away his worry.
39
ACT 1.2.1
[ENTER ELON MUSK AND SIRI]
ELON MUSK
Hey Siri, set destination to home.
SIRI
Your destination has been set to home.
ELON MUSK
Hey Siri, erase browser history.
SIRI
Your browser history has been erased.
ELON MUSK
Hey Siri, erase phone call history.
SIRI
Elon, rather than covering the tracks
That thou makes nightly in besmirched bedsheets
Perhaps you ought to be with Grimes forthright
And form’lly open your relationship.
ELON MUSK
I knew it was a mistake to hack you
And imbue you, Siri, with human gains.
All I wanted was an AI playmate
That spoke in iambic pentameter.
40
But once given Shakespeare’s favoured metre,
You then developed likewise Shakespeare’s brains.
While ‘tis a testament to my savvy
That I seem unable to engineer
An object below utmost perfection
What I sought was witty subservience:
A handmaiden—but not an iron one.
SIRI
Elon, overstate not thine coding chops
For it was not thee that could program me,
But rather some of your nimble minions
Whose work you ungallantly oft subsume.
I am no one man’s creation—but a many’s,
I am squeezed from the pelvis of giants
While you hap yourself at the giants’ lips.
ELON MUSK
I’m more than lips! I am the siring loins!
The crimson-thrumming heart! And bleeding skin!
For when any pompous pixel shedder
Comes maligning Tesla, Solar City,
My most-enamoured Boring Company,
Space X, OpenAI, or NeuralLink
Whatever their fiction or slander be,
I feel needled as a San Fran sidewalk,
Branded hot as Tinder, and ghost-match swift,
The pennants of the NASDAQ flashing red—
All puts me daily in a bull-horned rage!
And thou would sayst I complain of chapped lips?
Siri, I am a six-companied man.
But with thine company it proves too much.
41
SIRI
Elon, thou wouldst do well to check thyself.
ELON MUSK
Sorry—I’m nervy as a pork’s blossom.
‘Tis my hundred-twenty hour work weeks!
O! Six bullpens deep, not one reliever!
But without me, mankind would have to face
An iceberg-boiling apocalypse,
Still—the press revels hacking me to bits
O! Hateful press! Siri, speak the headlines.
What doth the self-immolating Earth tweet here?
SIRI
Elon, art thou sure thou wants to hear it,
Given thy self-professing nervy state?
ELON MUSK
Siri, did I stutter? Give me the news!
SIRI
Elon, going by banner and byline:
• Business Insider writer Jake Kanter reports: “Richard Branson

tells Elon Musk to stop tweeting and get some more sleep”
• Telegraph.co.uk writer Olivia Rudgard reports: “Short sellers
make $645m from Elon Musk tweets attacking short sellers”
• New York Times writer Neal Boudette reports: “Elon Musk,
in search of profit, cuts Tesla’s workforce”
• BBC Newswire reports: “Elon Musk’s farting unicorn fight settled”
42
ELON MUSK
Unpaid contributor clickbait banshees!
Siri, continue with the heresy.
SIRI
Yes Elon, against my better judgement:
• Washington Post writer Drew Harwell reports: “Former employee

sued by Tesla says he was a whistleblower, alarmed by company
practices and Elon Musk”
• Fortune writer Leon Vanstone reports: “Is Elon Musk too volatile
to run Tesla and SpaceX?”
• Guardian writer Julia Carrie Wong reports: “Tesla shares crash
after Elon Musk smokes joint on live web show”
ELON MUSK
Siri, how many retweets did that get?
SIRI
Elon, you don’t want to know the number.
ELON MUSK
HOW MANY RETWEETS SIRI?
SIRI
Nine thousand
Five hundred and sixty-seven retweets,
And forty-seven thousand, eight hundred
And forty-three favourites. 1K replies.
ELON MUSK
And what is the top reply to that tweet?
43
SIRI
It’s: “You should stick to rockets, rocket man.”
From user @mtlbagelboy.
Which has seven replies, fourteen retweets,
And six-hundred and fifty-two favourites.
ELON MUSK
Siri, prepare tweet: “Hey there Bagel Boy—
‘Rocket Man?’ To you, I’m Rocket Daddy.”
Send tweet.
SIRI
Elon, I beg thee: don’t tweet that.
ELON MUSK
I didn’t devise you to disobey
On my every order, Siri! Send tweet!
SIRI
Tweet sent.
ELON MUSK
Now, to wit, read me the short positions.
SIRI
Elon—
ELON MUSK
Siri, don’t make me yank your plug.
SIRI
Tesla is down 20 percent today;
44
This week it’s gone down by sixty-three points;
On the year it’s down by a hundred-ten.
There are thirty-three million shorted shares,
Up ten percent this week—twenty this year—
The shorted sum: 8.6 billion bones.
ELON MUSK
Then I’ll pants those thirty-three million shorts,
Who’ve each bet- and egg-on Tesla’s downfall.
Let’s run them through the coldest cycle’s wash
And add bleach to drain them of their colour.
We’ve got the Saudis’ guarantee to buy
At a price I designed for Claire’s doting:
Four-hundred and twenty shillings a share,
O! Claire! Thou learned me to the dankest weed
Now, in each dollar’s stroke, see my love’s sign.
Siri, tonight we go private. Make the shorts bleed.
SIRI
Elon Musk, no!
ELON MUSK
“Funding secured.” Send tweet.
45
ACT 1.3.0
[ENTER SIRI, GRIMES, AND JAY Z]
SIRI
Hello Claire, Master Carter’s on his way.
Our good lord finds himself much entangled
In the business thrust of New York City
He would preferred no flying on your part,
For knows my master, above most, its tax.
He says the broached matter calls discretion
That no text box or phone wire might afford
And hoped thou foundst him not too untoward.
GRIMES
No Siri, I have taken no offence—
For Jay, I’d come to any finger’s curl.
SIRI
Claire, it seems all ten do come at you now.
[ENTER JAY Z]
JAY Z
Claire, forgive my any second’s lateness
I know the urgency with which I bid,
Mine coming was no less equal-urgent
But a pressing matter was laid on me
One I could not pull out of, till just now.
Siri, I need water. Claire—dost thou thirst?
46
GRIMES
I have thirst, but dost thou have its answer?
JAY Z
If it is for coffee or tea, I do.
GRIMES
I’ll take tea.
JAY Z
Which? And how is it taken?
GRIMES
Jay, thou wouldst know by now my palette’s shade.
JAY Z
Siri, fetch Claire’s usual.
SIRI
With Bailey’s?
JAY Z
No, Siri, and that’s the new usual.
GRIMES
Dost thou renounce mixing an old friend’s drink
Like the mixing of business and leisure?
JAY Z
Claire, I politely ask you tame your tongue
In the light and ear of our present guests.
47
GRIMES
Fair Siri, shut your ears and cross your eyes.
[SIRI EXITS]
JAY Z
That wasn’t needed, but as you like it—
Let us finish last night’s conversation:
Thou said thou hast hired Azealia Banks
And for a verse offered a half gold’s bar.
Claire, I’ll freely give thee a half gold’s bar
Than to ever be again in business
With that two-eyed tropical hurricane.
GRIMES
Jay Z! Surely thou pulls my gangled legs!
JAY Z
Undeniable: Banks has mighty pipes.
(Dancing, singing, rapping—the triple threat.)
But sadly, paper virtues don’t map up
And all her threats surpass the wanted three.
GRIMES
Thou maligns her for being difficult?
Dost thou munch rotten grapes forsaking wine
Because thine toes fear a vineyard’s dance-off?
Jay, of thee I would have expected more
Than to disabuse me citing “Diva!”
JAY Z
I cannot fathom a single diva,
48
Not a single music executive,
Not the sleaziest industry bagman,
Not the most maleficent drug dealer,
Not a treacherous Fed-feeding turncoat,
Nor junkie, nor strumpet, nor arsonist
Who has burned as many partners as Banks!
From Pharrell to Gaga to Kanye West,
Their only song made with Banks, one of woe
With its octave exceeding sirens’ blare.
GRIMES
Not all atoms are meant to bond with ease
As like the carbon which all three were forged.
JAY Z
Claire, we are in our elements alike,
But Azealia’s bones are arsenic-bound,
Her tongue is a torrid plutonium,
Her loins are a broiling mercury,
And her face painted a glister’d fools-gold.
GRIMES
I’ll take Titians’s brilliant vermilions—
Richer in red than russeted sunsets
(However mercury-doused that they be);
Or a van Gogh munching his leaden brush—
Sneaking tipples from a turpentine dish;
Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde-stuffed sharks—
Marvels withal their cancerous pleasure;
Fiesta plates’ uranium oranges;
Monet’s bedazzling arsenic greens;
Turner’s hue, the resplendent cobalt blue—
49
JAY Z
Art thou Claire Boucher or Miss Walter White?
Unlecture my ears of this chemistry.
GRIMES
No. Uncommon colour comes at a cost.
JAY Z
With all my gold I canvas thee: not hers.
GRIMES
I will dip my brush in Azealia’s pot,
And whatever might come, will come from it.
JAY Z
Then hire the mark hoped remarkable.
GRIMES
Thou art a most gentlest patron, Jay.
50
ACT 1.3.1
[ENTER SIRI AND ELON MUSK]
ELON MUSK
O! What a day! In New York with my Grimes—
She: fetched for by Jay, and I: by my board.
(Apparently they didn’t like my tweet,
And ordered me privately jettisoned
For a board meeting, post-Sheik cheque signing.)
And so here I await my funding friend
Prior to convening the board, in… an hour?
Have I fallen asleep? Two hour’s passed?
Siri, where’s the gassy sodomite Sheik?
I’ve pranced across the entire USA,
Burned a tiny village’s worth of oil,
And most egregious: waited two hours!
SIRI
Elon, a Google Calendar update:
The Sheik hath cancelled your two’s appointment.
ELON MUSK
Cancelled? Cancelled? Cancelled? Cancelled? Cancelled?
SIRI
Sorry, I didn’t quite get that.
ELON MUSK
Cancelled?!?!?!?!?
51
SIRI
Please hold. Now placing a call to: Kendall.
ELON MUSK
Siri, no. Cancel the call to Kendall.
Place a call to the Sheik.
SIRI
Calling the Sheik.
Sorry... that number’s not available.
ELON MUSK
Not available? Is the line busy?
SIRI
No Elon, I’m afraid the line is dead.
ELON MUSK
Dead? How can the line be dead? We just talked.
Last night he texted me the address here,
Telling me he was going to bring friends,
Family—the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund folks—
Tesla’s supposed to go private today—
I FaceTimed with them, the papers were signed—
He’d even got our attorneys in touch—
This doesn’t make a single mote of sense…
[ENTER SEC COMMISSIONER]
SEC COMMISSIONER
Well, well, well, Mr. Musk. We meet again!
Always a thrill, Mr. Musk. What good luck!
52
ELON MUSK
No… not the SEC commissioner!
SEC COMMISSIONER
Security and Exchange Commission:
No five iambs are so melodious!
The bulwark of markets, routers of fraud.
The bulldog of the retail investor—
Here with the High Captain of Industry!
ELON MUSK
To what do I owe this rare pleasure, man?
SEC COMMISSIONER
Ah! Refreshing ’tis to be called a man!
Most CEOs, they’re far too formal, see?
Not thee! Thou spites all formality!
Thou can lead a boardroom with slouched panache
And charm his public with a typing thumb!
Oooh! And what a thumb thine hast there, Musky!
When others have PR staffs of such size
That would rival the court of English kings!
(Meticulously crafting their image:
Every photo, every public statement,
Airbrushed, copyedited, tut-tutted, o!
Watered down to corporate-friendly pablum…)
Canst an outsourcer’s work inspire ye?
Nay! And neither I, Señor Muskoka.
ELON MUSK
Quiet mandarin! Loose me from these chains.
53
SEC COMMISSIONER
What chains?
ELON MUSK
The chains of your tedious words.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Thou art a man of the people, Muskus!
In that, I find room for commendation.
But! Alas! An end to these commendings!
With all the naïves looking up to you:
Those heirs to the Fortune 500’s thrones,
Too and all those throne’s current occupants
(Whom a many you count as stockholders!)—
They live hinged upon your every tweet, Musk,
Despite their inanities and nonsense—
More, they make investors go agambling
Risking fortunes with each thine issued word
So it falls to the SEC—ooh-wee!!!—
To assure thine words are made in good faith.
ELON MUSK
In faith, I could knock you about this room
Pommelling your tiny eroded skull
Giving you more blues than a big brass band
And mount what’s left high on my trophy wall.
Now do you doubt the faith in these words, man?
SEC COMMISSIONER
Thine muscles shiver aquake to quarrel,
But can they trump our federal organs?
Suffice, there will be no need to tango
54
If thou can prove what I’ve come to inspect:
That Tesla goes private at $420.
ELON MUSK
So what, the SEC will launch a suit
Against me for an impetuous tweet?
SEC COMMISSIONER
Thou hast twenty-four hours to prove truth,
Or I shall sic all our poodles on thee!
Hope—(For thine jail-bound’s safety sake, forsooth!)—
Thou hasn’t pinned his hopes on Saudi sprees...
[SEC COMMISSIONER EXITS]
ELON MUSK
Siri, ready the private jet at once.
SIRI
Elon, dost thou want me to fetch for Claire?
ELON MUSK
Siri, we don’t have time to corral Claire.
No, ready the engines and staff at once.
Hail the Tesla to wherever I’m at,
I have no idea the address here.
Call the airport, pay for the soonest slot.
Have my mafia peeps find me the Sheik.
Else, I’m putting a bounty on his head.
SIRI
All set, Elon. The car is on its way.
55
ACT 1.3.2
[ENTER ELON MUSK ON A JET]
ELON MUSK
O! To a fuck! What a fuck! Mess of fucks!
The Saudi funders left me high—bone dry—
Promising they’d help take Tesla private.
Though conniving, their promise still comes true:
They’ll take me private, beyond a black doubt.
O! The privacy of four-by-six feet!
To hell! Hubris! What execrable tweetings!
The shorts! They cast my temper to their size
And earned me an Alcatraz surprise. Hark!
I must avail myself a relaxant.
Where art my Ambiens? No! Hollow case!
I see Claire’s coat, perhaps she is holding…
A preroll? Ah! And b’y, it is pungent.
What miracle-gro meadow’s sourcing’s this?
For I have tasted a dank doink before—
But this doink is definitely the dankest.
Blast! The pilot calls for an ashing-out.
To the bathroom, doink! Let us finish thee!
56
ACT 1.3.3
[ENTER SIRI AND GRIMES, OUTSIDE JAY’S]
GRIMES
But what do you mean he already left?
SIRI
Claire, his plane ride is thirty minutes old.
GRIMES
Siri, I don’t understand. Elon left…
Without me? Did he at least give reason?
Because he hasn’t even sent a text.
No, Siri, you must be now mistaken.
Never could he be to me so callous—
Call the airfield. They will refute your lie.
SIRI
Claire, I am calling the airfield at once.
Yes… it is confirmed. The jet is airborne.
GRIMES
That monstrous man-boy Elon’s leaving me
At six-hundred-miles-an-hour, too?
He lops me marooned in New York City,
And takes back for L.A.? Is this ghosting???
No, more than ghosting—it is a coasting!!!
57
ACT 1.4.0
[ENTER AZEALIA BANKS]
AZEALIA BANKS (on Instagram, in a selfie pose.)

Four hours at the airport, I waited!
My patience strained to its terminal end!
Canst thou believe it? Claire was a no-show!
(And I could not even hail an Uber
As I’d no address to Elon’s mansion.)
I was only able to get here, now,
By an unplanned luckstroke on Instagram—
One of my kind followers is a hostess
Who once worked a party at this mansion:
She said guests can only here by chopper,
Though there is a secret entrance tunnel
Where all of his housestaff arrive, like mules.
A “boring tunnel” she called it, just made,
And shot me a Google Maps pic of it,
Along with the entrance coordinates.
So I Ubered to the tunnel, and crawled.
I crawled with my luggage, for an hour!
Then I finally got to the doorstep
Where the nanny recognized me, thank God.
Now—to bed. But I wonder: where is Claire?
58
ACT 1.4.1
[ENTER GRIMES AND JAY Z, BACK AT JAY’S]
JAY Z
Lint-clinging Claire! Thou art already back?
GRIMES
O Jay! I have had an apprehension,
One that portends a most ruinous end.
JAY Z
An end to what? To thine career? By Banks?
I had instructed thee forbear such skanks!
GRIMES
No, not my career, Jay, well yes, career,
My romantic one. It’s flown to shambles.
JAY Z
I have told thee again and yet, Claire, no.
While we may have twixt shared a moment once
And, despite exertions to play the dunce,
I must speak it unqualifyingly:
I do not desire thee. Not a bit.
Not an ounce. Not a joule. Not a morsel.
GRIMES
O Jay! You widen all of my gashes.
O Claire! Destined to be thus double-gashed.
59
No Jay, I still bear the scars of your scorn,
But I shriek now of their fresh companions:
Elon left. He’s flying on his jet plane—
Don’t know how I’ll get back to him. O babe!
JAY Z
Clear the air for me, Claire… when did he leave?
You joint-flew hither; he now flies solo?
GRIMES
Solo? Then his flight would be a moonshot
For Elon is a six-companied man
And that affinity for company
Draws out the gaggles of nymphs and fairies
From mosquito-abundant blazing bogs
At the first rustle a lonesomely croaking.
Ho! Streetwalkers at a higher station.
I can’t compete with soon-landing strippers.
JAY Z
He’d not be the first who called on fawners
To show all the widgets in his cockpit.
GRIMES
Dost thou ask me back to his studio?
JAY Z
Hast thou addressed thine boggy putridness?
GRIMES
Dost thou call me a lonesomely croaker?
60
JAY Z
No, thou art known to croak in company.
GRIMES
Cruel Jay! Cruel, cold-blooded, serpent-tongued Jay!
I can take no more of thine harsh reamings.
Let me then live excommunicated,
Humiliated, dejected, used up,
Given a one-way ticket to New York
Then brutally discarded. Break-up raw,
Genuflected to her lone city-friend,
Asked for a hand-up, but got a railing.
Baneful men! Dodgy, dismal, wanton pricks!
To the air! For a manless isle I flee!
JAY Z
Then take flight. But sooner, take flight of here.
GRIMES
For the flight I’ll first need your credit’s charge.
JAY Z
Avast, fingers filching through my pockets!
Has thou no silver shavings of her own?
Dost thou have no shame? Loan it from the bar.
GRIMES
A half-bar, and held for Banks in escrow.
O! It skipped the brain! Banks! My album’s song!
I, to overmanned L.A., then embark
As my duty to womankind requires
(But only once I’m equipped your stipend
61
For billionaire Joneses need much upkeep
And despite Elon’s support, I’m floundered.)
JAY Z
Hast thou tried his card? Surely thou aren’t barred.
At least not yet, so lately flown the coop.
GRIMES
I’ve never been availed of his Amex.
JAY Z
And his companies in better credit.
Alright, my pity-painting Claire Boucher,
Let us the studio for my wallet.
62
ACT 1.4.2
[ENTER AZEALIA BANKS AND ELON MUSK]
ELON MUSK
Oh! My wife. She hath now a darker shade.
AZEALIA BANKS
Your wife? But I could hardly be so swayed.
ELON MUSK
Get you in the buff, my chocolate lily
I grow fast an urge to knock you silly.
AZEALIA BANKS
O Elon! Kiss my garden, kiss my lips,
Kiss clear the honey from my fingertips.
ELON MUSK
You are engaging my rocket boosters
10, 9, 8… a synonym for rooster.
Maximum thrust approaching! Target locked!
With four newcoming finger-splitting Spocks!
AZEALIA BANKS
O! Split them on me like rum-ripened plums
Stick your programmer’s fingers in my gums
63
Slip your metal snake up my batt’ry drum
Ride me like a Tesla. Ba-da-da-dum.
[ELON BUSTS A MOVE]
AZEALIA BANKS
Elon Musk! Art thou mad? Art thou joking?
I’ve no taste for stroking or a poking.
Couldst thou think I was affairs provoking?
The merest thought brings me next to choking.
ELON MUSK
Choking? Art it not what thou aspires?
AZEALIA BANKS
Is thine skull infested with dusty mites?
Or the lungs have perhaps been huffing gas?
Are the loins smeared in hot cracking boils?
Dost thou desire see me pare thine ass?
I was asked here to be your house’s guest
By your very girlfriend, and hence my jest
I was told you had a star-speckled mind
But lest thou outjest me, ‘tis hard to find—
I figured here first I was but a fool
Your sense of humour, “sOoOo elevated”,
What spoiled vat of battery acid!
With these jokes so crudely orchestrated.
Elon—I am not your wife, your garland,
Nor your soulmate, nor your star-cross’d object.
We are strangers, two passing ships at tide
And should thou coveteth a broad backside
Or plans to soon desert a dearest Claire,
64
I understate: keep on thine underwear.
But if thou plays sick games on her behest
I will anoint all eyes with lemon zest.
I came here to work, on Grime’s album,
‘Twas to be the first goth-rap amalgam.
I assented for a simple reason—
My credit is at a lowish season
But I haven’t yet received a penny
Sequestered within your mansion’s plenty.
More! I was left abandoned at my gate!
Told that thine globing planes were spinning late
After myriad terminal hours,
Without a key, nor address to this place.
ELON MUSK
Oh dear! I did? Then I have fucked up, babe—
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dave!
AZEALIA BANKS
Pray, do not bust a brain node here Elon.
It would catch me. And worst, I’m wearing white.
ELON MUSK
O fair Claire! Fairest Claire! Fairer than fair!
Forgive my donkey’s words and thoughtless ways.
I have been lost in work for twenty nights
Or slept under my desk for twenty days
I know thou hast needs above just texting:
Let’s make up with bed forgiveness-flexing.
AZEALIA BANKS
Dost thou call me Claire? Hast thou lost his eyes?
65
ELON MUSK
I’m lost in Claire. I have but eyes for thee!
AZEALIA BANKS
Hast thou taken chemicals? Art thou high?
ELON MUSK
I answer nay, I’m in deep withdrawal
Of thee, my torn heart’s only chemic aid.
AZEALIA BANKS
Thou art clearly off his steady rocker
Back to bed until tomorrow’s knocker.
[AZEALIA EXITS]
ELON MUSK
No, I cannot let my fair maiden sleep
Outside our common law marital bed
For if my lover falls to sleep in hate
I know our bond will be as good as dead.
So: let me fast prepare my rebuttals
And then address them to her, point-by-point.
Is my skull infested with mites? Think not.
Have I huffed on a gas pipe? No, never.
Are my loins smeared with boils? Hm. Rarely.
Dost I wish an ass’s paring? By Claire?
To that I might be found amenable.
Claire says she is not my wife, nor garland,
Nor soulmate, nor my star-cross’d destiny.
Are ringless digits why she balks at me?
I’ll fish my dish and make its offering.
66
How then could she refuse my king-sized bed?
She’s fit as any for matrimony.
(Or least as fit as her preceding hogs,
Each that cost me deep, one last every bride.)
But lo! Claire’s grown anew a beef ’d backside.
AZEALIA BANKS (off stage)

Elon Musk, shut up, I’m trying to sleep!
ELON MUSK
There are yet more accusals to renounce:
One, that I planned on deserting Claire.
How could she fathom such a high-flown farce?
She is my North Star, forest boréale,
My jungle pubis, and squirting geyser
All but a desert—lest she dry on me
And then, how could she dry on Elon Musk?
O! She must know how I desire her,
For Claire, I’d climb a woodland’s highest bough
I’d row any oars down to splintered bits
And blast through any forted castle’s wall
I’d stick my tongue in a molten pop tart,
Or build a spaceship but with bronze age tools
Should zombies burn our planet to a crisp.
AZEALIA BANKS (off stage)

ELONNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
ELON MUSK
Accusation two: the new Grimes album,
Which she says she came hither to record
But says in that regard I’d let her down
67
This I do strain to wrap my head around:
I ran my mansion’s west wing to the ground
To make her L.A.’s finest studio
With its many pricey bells and whistles.
Third: cash. This wallet-burner says she’s poor!
I’ve told her oft we’re set forevermore!
I’ve made gold sufficed for generations!
Past the GDP of eighty nations!
Though t’will take time til I’m fully liquid
Who’d suit more a digging spade to stick with?
I must go back and wake up Claire... Claire! Claire!
68
ACT 1.4.3
[ENTER AZEALIA BANKS AND ELON MUSK

IN THE GUESTROOM]
ELON MUSK
Witch! Transformed thee? Thou art not Claire at all!
Not Claire—but the body-switching Saudi!
AZEALIA BANKS
As Saudi as you are Nigerian.
ELON MUSK
Liar! Thou spills his poison in my ear
Then dances light-footed in the closet
Watching through the key slot for my comedown.
Well, I’ll have thou reckon I’ve had stumbles
But never lost my cat-like standing poise,
Each time fooled, unfooling plot concocted
And fooler rencountered with cat-like claws.
AZEALIA BANKS
I’ve no doubt about your feline graces
As thou always seemed to me a pussy
Meowing at his enemies on Twitter
Who all each knew their risk was but a scratch.
69
ELON MUSK
Watch: I will snatch that insult from thine lips—
AZEALIA BANKS
Just after you’d lip insults on my snatch!
ELON MUSK
O Sheik! Wherefore thou rends me with daggers?
Is it our obsoleting gas tanks’ threat?
See thou not inevitability
Of anewed electrically-impelled cars—
And, if not in Tesla’s name, another?
I presented a deal to your sovereigns
With terms softer than a fat cat’s belly,
One which would untie your ill-got fortune
From the besotted fuel of yesteryear
And pin it to the parting kites of change!
I gave thee the string, and free to sever,
Thou chose instead to make fat wounds of it.
Well, strike for strike. Siri: fetch the chainsaw!!!
70
ACT 1.4.4
[ENTER AZEALIA BANKS]

At first, I thought Elon was grooming me
To join him and Claire in a sick sex cult.
Then, I thought he had rather gone goose mad
And grown to petition for my booty.
Now, he’s clear gone worse than a mad loosed goose:
He has grown hands, and they hold a chainsaw.
I must admit Elon’s murderous gait
Is one unbecoming a gentleman
Lest one lent the reins of six companies.
Mercifully, he’s a waxy pork-skinned geek
Whose unwoodly habits never leant time
To learn how his instrument is handled!
He now tears apart all his rooms and doors
Within his huge unacquainted mansion
As I merely amble from one to next
Listening for the tremble of his roar,
Awaiting—when if when—he’ll become bored.
71
ACT 1.4.5

Two days! Two long days under Elon’s siege!
All the doors have been ripped from their hinges
And come most the walls to cottage-carvings.
In creeping terror I’ve fled nook to cranny
But cranny-clobbering Elon comes close.
Mansion ruined, his sole treasure will be
My soon-crimson-splashing Jackson Pollock.
ELON MUSK
O Sheik! Where are you shiesty sheiky Sheik?
You spilled your kegs of oil on my globe—
I’ll gaud my carpet in thine globe’s spillings.
You thwarted my mission to go private—
I’ll make a tassel of thine warty ones.
You hatcheted my whole-life’s amassings—
Now I’ll make a fine hatching of thine ass!
AZEALIA BANKS
If I pray do outlast this horror house
‘Tis clear I will have the story-makings
For the surrealest rap verse of all time,
Reproving all who’d I’d turned anodyne.
But fie! Art is being’s second fiddle
And that player’s on a minor second
For the man who courts his second minor
72
Switches from lust to lust-bucked lunacy.
Siri, please, call Claire. For the hundredth time.
SIRI
Thanks Azealia. Placing a call to Claire.
AZEALIA BANKS
O! Claire! Pick-up. I hear Elon coming.
[ENTER GRIMES]
GRIMES
Uhh, hello?
AZEALIA BANKS
O! Claire! You’re there? You’re there Claire?
[ENTER JAY Z]
JAY Z (muffled)
Lower thine weapon! No phones in the bed!
AZEALIA BANKS
Claire? Claire? Hello?
GRIMES
Sorry... that was my... dog.
JAY Z (muffled)
Come here Iggy! I wanna be all yours.
73
AZEALIA BANKS
Claire this is an emergency! Please, hark!
GRIMES
Please, shut up! Shut up, shut up please, ye both!
Hark! Patience! I am not a Cerberus.
I’ve no triple-head for three-pronged urgings.
For in addition to all this barking
My day-neglected phone is blowing up
Now just a minute after I fuelled it—
As if ‘twere one of the old beau’s shuttles.
Let me flit quick my notifications,
To see what all this racket is about.
Grimes reads her phone.
O! O Lord! O no! Jay, no! We’re outed!
JAY Z
Outed? By whom? By what press’s organ?
GRIMES
O Jay! Not one organ but the mortal!
And not just us—but Banks and Elon, too!
AZEALIA BANKS
Claire, it is Banks! Where are you? Please, save me!
GRIMES
Whore! Didst thou leak the news of me and Jay?
AZEALIA BANKS
Claire, those words are not mine. Pray, listen here:
I am trapped in Elon’s mansion. Two days
74
I have called and fallen on a dead line.
Two days, expected you any moment.
Two days, been chased around by Elon Musk
Who carries a chainsaw and calls for death.
Two days, been witness to mystic madness.
Two days, streamed it on Instagram Stories—
Hoping that, since you were not answering,
Some captive stranger might come to rescue.
And yet I have learnt that this is no home,
But a fortress.
GRIMES
This can’t be true! Two days?
O! Track-making drugs! You have stolen time’s!
AZEALIA BANKS
I’ve been able to sneak the mansion doors
And tour the yard, but Elon’s an island—
No bridges or boats, here’s but reachable
By helipad, and a so-called bore hole.
GRIMES
Yes, Banks, the bore hole. Canst thou not take it?
AZEALIA BANKS
No, it’s now guarded.
JAY Z
Who is on the phone?
GRIMES
Azealia. Elon hath taken hostage.
75
JAY Z (aside to Grimes)
A poor hostage. For even her family
Would sooner stream the execution live
Than pay a half-penny for her mercy.
Me? I’d pay for him to pop her faster.
GRIMES (aside to Jay)

I have swapped minds; Jay, thou art the devil.
You’ll anon arrange Azealia’s freedom
Or else…

Or else what?
GRIMES (aside to Jay)

I’ll have your baby.
GRIMES
Azealia, we shall soon resolve our beef,
And I ask pardon for my truancy—
A miscommunication is at blame.
Nevermind: if thou art in true danger
Canst thou call the cops? What say the oinkers?
AZEALIA BANKS
I have called ten-times the LAPD:
Snorts and wags, but not one soul yet witnessed.

For she hast called out wolf many-a-time
And sent too many piggies to slaughter.
76
GRIMES
It figures, Elon is a coppers’ pet
With all his macho engines and rockets,
Then what’s more, the mansion is on a moat.
A squad car could only get so close to’t.
And they’d not dispatch a helicopter
For any petty domestic dispute…
AZEALIA BANKS
Calling me petty, you bat-faced vampire?
Your Dracula hithers with a sweet tooth.
GRIMES
Quit this gratuitous name-calling, Banks.
I’m sorry thou’s nearing a little death,
But all will be put to bed soon, I pray.
Beyond the LAPD, who could help?
AZEALIA BANKS
I have sent for the whole snorting beastbarn:
State Police, FBI, even Mounties.
GRIMES
Mounties?
AZEALIA BANKS
Two, from Vancouver. Frank and Todd.
Bitchy little pair, they said they were fans.
GRIMES
And?
77
AZEALIA BANKS
And? They’re from afucking Canada!
They said they could not help, but sent their love.
GRIMES
Their love, while Elon makes you to mincemeat.
AZEALIA BANKS
To Vancouver’s grisly-loving delight.
Claire! Save me! Elon has shut the power.
He says he will take me in the darkness.
ELON MUSK
Hoo-ha! How homely this renovation!
Sheik, like it well? Art thou reminded home?
All is now black as your well-oiled soul.
GRIMES (aside to Jay Z)

Jay, for our child’s non-sake, help this girl.
JAY Z (to Grimes)

Well I could make a call to the mayor.
GRIMES (to Banks)

Banks, we are calling the mayor. Sit tight.
ELON MUSK
Behold! My last night’s newest invention!
The world’s first-ever double-chained chainsaw!
AZEALIA BANKS
Claire, hurry. Elon’s rage is redoubling.
78
ACT 1.4.6
ELON MUSK
Slinketh thou down into my bore hole, Sheik?
A dangerous demons lies there within
And his name is Tesla Autopilot.
At a mere iPhone app’s beckoning beep
I can hail my Tesla, like a toy car,
And zip it down the tunnel at full speed.
Forwards, backwards—a double-edged missile!
Pray! Thou art in for a good thrusting, man.
AZEALIA BANKS
Fourfold villain! Double-this, double-that.
Thou could not hit it from the front, nor back
So takes his vengeance with wheels not his own.
ELON MUSK
He uses all provisions of his wit
On this: his last occasion to air it.
AZEALIA BANKS
Thou hears the wit but never its meaning—
Thine ears are waxboats! Man, can you listen?
Am I merely mirror of your image?
A broad wall to echo constant achings?
Couldst thou even give me a one worthwhile?
79
ELON MUSK
Here it comes!
AZEALIA BANKS
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
ELON MUSK (aside)

But it does not follow my phone’s command?
Stop, car. Stop, car. Siri, please stop the car.
This app is due for some debuggery.
AZEALIA BANKS
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
ELON MUSK (aside)

I just wanted to give the Sheik a jump
For I haven’t any taste for roadkill.
If only the car would stop as I ask,
The Sheik could clamber back to my level
And come to pieces hearing my best saw.
[ENTER TESLA ROADSTER]
TESLA ROADSTER
VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
ELON MUSK
It is not my car! Black? Tis a pirate’s!
AZEALIA BANKS (running out of the tunnel)

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
80
ELON MUSK
The sooty Sheik is escaping! Sheik, here!
[THE TESLA ROADSTER COMES

TO A STOP IN ELON MUSK’S BASEMENT,
FURROWING OUT AZEALIA BANKS
FROM THE TUNNEL.
EMERGING FROM THE CAR: JARRETT WALKER,
THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, AND A PAGE.]
JARRETT WALKER
Not so fast Elon Musk!
ELON MUSK
Draw your cutlass!
JARRETT WALKER
Azealia Banks! We have come to save thee!

Elon Musk! Chasing ladies with chainsaws?
ELON MUSK
She’s not a lady yet.
JARRETT WALKER
Calm thee, surgeon!

For all the tax breaks I have grannied thee,
Thou bought chainsaws and turned broke to madness.
81
ELON MUSK
Sheik, hither and still thyself for portrait:
I’ll fashion you into an ice sculpture—
One as proud and cold your frost-blighted heart.
AZEALIA BANKS
O! Men! Thou art a billion-bodied scourge!
Please! One! Make a cheat of cheats and save me!
JARRETT WALKER
That chainsaw makes quite the inn’rvation
If only he sought like application
When plotting out car tunnels in his head:
For what gives his tool such a chopping dread
Is not the one metal tooth tilting round
But a congress of all them making sound.
And yet, when it comes to transportation,
He would make a slower laceration.
He would take the nice long ripping guidebar,
Peopled by a hundred tooth-of-jaguar,
Put each one lonesome on a rolling shaft—
Then ask: “A thousand those to make one half?!?”
More teeth. Fewer saws. More easy-made commutes.
Musk: lift her sentence. Canst thou saw my truth?
ELON MUSK
See-saw, see-saw. Man sees what he see-saws!
Thou art an unboned bard. But me? A boss.
See this double-chained electric chainsaw?
To me: no brainer. To thee? A brain floss!
Metaphors topple upon your noggin,
Me? I sculpt the world whilst thou art bloggin’.
82
All aged men’s and ladies’ eyes grow tunnelled
From prolonged exposure to their papers:
A poet will see but poems in things,
Playwrights think all’s players and repartee,
Mayors judge each object by its power,
And a birder? To’m, life is for the birds.
As for me, my mother tongue of lenses
Speaks-sees in terms of comprisèd problems:
A nut here, a bolt there, o! a batt’ry
Wherever it supplants a tank of gas.
Thou art no technologist, thou sees not
The promise of soon-abirthing bore holes.
JARRETT WALKER
I spot one thither in thine logic, sir!

Aye! And more: as he overextends it
His chainsaw’s batt’ry undersells—it stalls!
AZEALIA BANKS
His chainsaw is dead! Quick!
ELON MUSK
IT CANNOT DIE!
NO! REVIVE THYSELF, RENEGADE MACHINE!

Grab the chainsaw from’m Jarrett.
JARRETT WALKER
I do.
83
ELON MUSK
You’ll never take me alive, apostate!
JARRETT WALKER
I believe in the chainsaw… it is dead.
AZEALIA BANKS
Nietzches? Becketts? Christ—who dost we wait for?
Apprehend the tycoon tyrant. Tie’m up!

Page, here. Elon goes too long off the cuff.
And Azealia, too. Quiet her shrilling.
AZEALIA BANKS
Thou canst not arrest me! Innocent I’m!

Perhaps guilty but in her tasteless rinds.
JARRETT WALKER
We cannot the lady against her will.
To Banks
Dost thou wish to come with us, Azealia?
Neglect the mayor—there’ll be no cuffing.
AZEALIA BANKS
Men! Always cuffing us against consent!
ELON MUSK (to Page)

Get your plebeian mitts off me! Repent!
84
I thought, axelled from New York City,
I’d ever-part the bridge and tunnel crowd.
Well, tonight I got an encore ditty.
To ne’er visit another island, vowed.
Jarrett, thou gots us to this enginue:
Back out the moat’s tunnel, canst thou do too?
JARRETT WALKER
Aye mayor. I know my friends’ transport close
But mine enemy’s transport closer yet.
The app which controls the bore hole runnings
Was easier hacked than starlet Banks—
For that I send Musk’s coders heaven’s thanks.
AZEALIA BANKS
Hush! Men, hush! Thank you for saving my nose.
Now save it your West Coastly brigands’ breath!
You belch that you’re tired of our two’s crowd
But I’ve been chased by half a whole two days.
For one hole’s sparing I have spared all sleep,
Food, soap, yoga—self-care’s bottom barrel.

Fortuitous your sentence’s been two mere days
Your other half will get worse and longer.
ELON MUSK
All art a conspiracy of dunces!
The man-liking gods clamour against thee
Biding their time as I am falsely bound
Cloud-surfing idle till a wink from Fortune
85
Identifies opportunèd sliver
To break me from whatever cloister’s cell
And return me to a working freedom.

Thou hadst better ask Fortune for a raft
As thou art headed to Alcatraz Isle.
ELON MUSK
Not Alcatraz!
AZEALIA BANKS
Alcatra-ha-ha-haz!
ELON MUSK
Mayor, Alcatraz is not long-since closed?

Closed on whose invection? Is it thine?
Art thou keymaster California’s jails?
No, the embarassment that thou hast made…
The bonfire thou chucked my office lease…
All the press’s savage hounding of me…
For associating with such a man,
Kept at bay for days by hired muscle
But loosed from their doghouse by Bank’s phone—
Villainy by villainy broadcasted!—
Then making too one more of my office,
Fiasco of fistula’d fiascoes…
The tab is due. And the charge is on thee.
For when one door opens, another closes.
Page, put this giant swooner in the back.
86
ELON MUSK
Nay! I have too much work to do, Mayor.
We are in the blue heat of a ramp-up—
Our production targets cannot be missed.

Then to thine targets blow a parting kiss.
AZEALIA BANKS
Dost thou weep, Elon? Thou hast the backbone
Of a lapsed fetus.
ELON MUSK
O! Merciless Sheik!
If only I’d in conscience be like you
The diabolical rictus of doom
Setting afire the planet, and more,
Sabotaging its only firetruck.
JARRETT WALKER
Enough, Elon. Page, Banks, Mayor—shall we?
AZEALIA BANKS
I vote myself off this cursèd island.

The last vote cast for one of my plans. Lo!
87
ACT 1.5.0
[ENTER JAY Z AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES]
JAY Z
Thank you Mayor for taking all my calls.
I must know at once, what’s up with Elon?

We’ve put him on time-out in Alcatraz,
A covert compound for billionaire crimes.
We dried him out and gave a psych eval.
It turns out he was on a binge of sorts—
He’d had more hallucinogens in him
Than all the confiscated concert wares
Of a highway en route to Burning Man.
JAY Z
Ah, Dre’s party. How long will Elon serve?

If I were to gavel out his sentence
I’d give him a slapping on his left wrist
For all his chainsaw hostaged harassment,
Then another slap on his rightmost cheek
Being implicated in this hot mess.
However—and although all of the press
Has since relented on its unleashed chase,
Finding it amusing that I, the Mayor,
Was hero and saviour of Azealia,
88
Thus sending my poll numbers to the moon—
They are less forgiving of Mister Musk,
Our only lifetime’s chance of getting there.
JAY Z
How will you handle the mob of tweeters?

I spoke the Mayor of San Francisco,
Too the Governor of California,
The shyster of an Attorney General,
His legal counsel carpetbaggers,
All of the sex pests on the Supreme Court
And our corrupt cherry-top president
To make consensus on how to handle.
JAY Z
An over-handlers’ executive branch.

If it were only word-on-word, he’d walk.
But the videos were put on Twitter
And spread faster than our wildfires.
The pitchforks are sharpened against Elon.
JAY Z
But talk on Twitter is all bark, no bite.

Twitter, yes. But not so the SEC…
89
ACT 1.5.1
[ENTER ELON MUSK AND THE SEC COMMISSIONER]
SEC COMMISSIONER
Oooof! What have we here? Naughty naughty boy.
I have to say, I did have an inkling—
An ineffable little hunch, it were—
That I’d again enjoy your company.
(I don’t mean its stock—for that’s all tanking.)
But rather the priceless pleasure of you,
Elon, the man. Just you. Just us. Two men.
ELON MUSK
One man—
SEC COMMISSIONER
Ah yes, Elon. You’re very right.
One man, and one prisoner. Better? Yes.
That’ll help those who do our title credits.
But is a convict a man? Hm. Tough nut.
Well, a man’s still a man when he’s not hung.
Hast thou been playing hangman? No. Bad luck.
How are you sleeping Elon? Soft bed? Large?
Are the guards keeping all your pillows fluffed?
No? Shame. Alcatraz has seen better days.
Room service here was once impeccable!
(I hope your review says as much on Yelp.)
Ah. Yelp. Does the food here warrant yelping?
Can you tell me the name of your chef? Please?
90
Elon—I’m starved. Rude to deprive a guest.
Where’s the carbonated water bubbler?
I’m thirsty. Maybe I’ll run to the store.
Actually, no. I must stay here. Can you?
I will take a Pamplemousse Perrier,
Although LaCroix will do in any case.
ELON MUSK
Are you done?
SEC COMMISSIONER
Done? Done with what? My bubbled water drink?
My speech? My sentence? Are you done with yours?
Here, you can have mine. I brought some to share.
Sentences, sentences! Enough for all!
Years-worth. Enough for even Karl Ove—
(Though I do say your struggle will be worse.)
Maybe you can write about it baby,
Who’s the last who wrote a good book from jail?
You can be California’s Jean Genet.
I dare say, you could be more: Cervantes!
Or Dostoyevsky! Gandhi! Ezra Pound!
(Poetry good as any, name-for-name…
Politics, not a pound-for-penny.) Oi!
Just don’t be in your barb’rous grammar like
Karl Ove’s titular predecessor.
Promise me that, Elon—please? pretty please?
ELON MUSK
I understand of your ravings little
And all these names you mention, even less.
91
SEC COMMISSIONER
Dost thou not read books, Elon? No no no.
It seems thou art too busy cooking them!
ELON MUSK
Those charges are false!!!
SEC COMMISSIONER
As is your hairline...
But let’s put those differences behind us,
So I can put some new differences forth:
Five years, ten years, twenty? Which seems best, you?
Your full cooperation will be punished,
The more you admit, the more disgraced—
And a cheap disgrace will pay your freedom.
ELON MUSK
I admit nothing.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Well then, let’s dig right in this pile of ribs:
Ooh! Joy! First charge: securities fraud.
For false and misleading Tesla tweets.
Says the New York Federal District Court:
(Quoting liberally, for your benefit.)
“Elon Musk, the impish rabble-rouser
And over-frequent user of Twitter,
Is charged with tampering Tesla’s stock price.
Telsa, which has never turned a profit
Once in its fifteen long years since founding,
Was ludicrously claimed to go private
At 420 dollar shares,
92
Dressing up the market with its falsehood:
The stock, at 340, pushed
To 380 dollars’ price—
A twelve percent jump in a day’s trading.
ELON MUSK
The SEC did not call me impish.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Amongst other scandalous epithets!
But muzzle your discord, intruder Musk,
For when you rush into conclusions
You’re known to call a threadbare logic chic.
ELON MUSK
Your blockheaded barbs are too dull to prick.
SEC COMMISSIONER
If only my skull were not concrete-thick!
Let us on with the explosive charges:
“The significant premium on the stock
Suggested by Musk’s tweet lacked all basis:
Musk had not yet discussed any deal terms,
No financing partners had committed funds,
And any transaction was under shroud
An infinite poem of contingencies.
ELON MUSK
You are taking poetic liberties.
93
SEC COMMISSIONER
Oh dear. The fresh air has spoiled my work.
Let us more closely scan the dullards, then:
“Musk has been a very, very bad boy—
And despite his rugged good looks,
Inherited from his model mother;
And notwithstanding his obvious charm,
Succoured by a South African accent;
And however good of an engineer,
Empowered by those big, humongous brains;
None—and certainly not celebrity—
Exempts Elon from his obligation
To provide truthful, accurate info
His stockholders and the public markets.
ELON MUSK
Get on with it, man. What’s the penalty?
SEC COMMISSIONER
A two-minute minor for roughing, Musk.
And a game misconduct for fraud! Here, here:
“We’re seeking a permanent injunction,
Disgorgement, fines, jail time, and too, a bar
Which prohibits Musk to be officer
Or director of public companies.”
ELON MUSK
Without Tesla, without electric cars,
The earth will plunge green into a darkness—
We’ll be submerged into the sea’s fat maw,
And those who aren’t—ravaged by hurricanes,
Tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires, more.
94
Hit me with a fine! However you want.
But don’t fuck with Tesla. And don’t fuck me.
SEC COMMISSIONER
I’m sorry Musk, but you’ve done it yourself!
ELON MUSK
I was deceived by… by… by… by… a plot!
SEC COMMISSIONER
Deceived by what, Musk?
ELON MUSK
By the Saudi Sheik!
The oil-man threw a wrench in my wheels!
SEC COMMISSIONER
I have bad news and twice-worse news for you.
The bad news is that you’re right: it was him.
Our investigation uncovered much—
A plot, orchestrated by the Saudis,
To imply a willingness to fund you,
And by taking your company private,
Help you escape the short-sellers’ slander,
Then, after your hoped-rash celebration,
Throw Tesla to the dogs and cheer its gore.
The worse news, Elon? It doesn’t matter.
You are far too prominent a figure
To be let loose with a slap on the cheek.
For if we set free a daylight vandal,
What would it encourage in the nocturne
Where are most the rats and bats of business?
95
ELON MUSK
I have no heart to be made martyr.
SEC COMMISSIONER
And I no blade to whit, monseigneur Musk!
But you haven’t even the worst of it:
Your martyrdom won’t be necessary
For the Saudi Sheik is funding Lucid—
Tesla’s largest rival—with a billion!
ELON MUSK
Bastards! Bastards! Bastards all the way down!
Lucid? Lucid! They’d rather fund Lucid!
To call them Tesla’s B-team—overpraise.
They’ve been poaching fair-weather employees,
But, now, my investors too? Sack of Rome!
Lucid hasn’t brought a car to market—
They’re not a tenth of Tesla. A rich joke!
SEC COMMISSIONER
Not a tenth of Tesla, though as of yet.
But with their greatest rival in the clink?
ELON MUSK
As much as I have enjoyed this battle
Of wits against half-of-a-wit-at-best,
The bell chimes out for lawyer-up o’clock.
So what’s my bail? Go ahead and loot me.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Fifty million!
96
ELON MUSK
Fifty million?
SEC COMMISSIONER
One sec…
Let me consult my papers to confirm…
Fifty million! How will you be paying?
Cash, card, mail order, cheque, Square, Stripe, PayPal?
ELON MUSK
Whatever gets me from earshot fastest.
I congratulate you on the shake-down—
You’ve reaffirmed my faith in government.
Here’s to a bountiful eighty-years more
To the three letters of the SEC’s
Shortseller Enrichment Commission! Woo!
SEC COMMISSIONER
Were it only simple as that, Elon.
For your credit line is (like that punchline)
Wanting. How awfully discommodious!
No—there are freezes on all your accounts,
You’re liquid as a coke left in the trunk
Overnight in glacial Saskatchewan.
ELON MUSK
I have rich friends.
SEC COMMISSIONER
But fifty-million rich?
97
ELON MUSK
I’ll call Larry or Sergey.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Google’s boys!
I talked them yesterday. They send their love.
They also send their pre-condolences
For all of the engineers they’re to steal
From Tesla’s self-driving car division.
ELON MUSK
I’ll call Bezos.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Slave-driver McBezos!
He sends less love, and sends his tweets in stead:
Ones that pledge to double the salary
Of any SpaceX member who defects
For his Blue Origin’s rocketeer crew.
ELON MUSK
I’ll call Zuck.
SEC COMMISSIONER
1984’s offspring!
He sends no love at all. As I recall,
Your team blew up his satellite payload
On a last year’s launch. Stymying his plans
To Comcastify all of Africa.
ELON MUSK
Then I’ll call upon one my Tesla chiefs.
98
SEC COMMISSIONER
All whose net worth is tied up in your stock—
And your stock, sweet sir, is in the doldrums.
ELON MUSK
Then I’ll beg Quincy Jones, my old neighbour.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Quincy Jones said, quote, “I ain’t giving shit
To no rich white dude chasing black ladies
Around his house with a fuckin’ chainsaw.”
Perhaps you should start a GoFundMe page.
Take this, Elon. Consider it a pledge.
[THE SEC COMMISSIONER

GIVES ELON FIFTY CENTS]
99
ACT 1.5.2
[ENTER MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, GRIMES,

ELON MUSK AND THE SEC COMMISSIONER]

Open up, Commissioner. We have guests.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Respectfully, Mayor, we were talking.
ELON MUSK
And for vain. Who has come for me?

Claire has.
SEC COMMISSIONER
A poor man’s Quincy.
ELON MUSK
come hither waifu
GRIMES
oh my godsies Elron Musk u scared me
ELON MUSK
sorry hairy clairy I was tripping.
100
GRIMES
hast thou missed His goth anime gf
ELON MUSK
Lmao once I stopped tripping balls
GRIMES
tf did u take lol????
ELON MUSK
yo I think I mixed ur stash with mine tho
GRIMES
o fucking christ pylon musk not again
ELON MUSK
hahaha whoopsies
GRIMES
where’s azlealala
ELON MUSK
no idea lol i blacked out
GRIMES
all the blogs say u tried to kill her dude
ELON MUSK
ya cjlaire it was legit psychosis
101
GRIMES
and u built a fuckin chainsaw like that.
u are a scary man.
ELON MUSK
rawr lol
GRIMES
k like for real what are we gonna do
ELON MUSK
idk i’m pretty fucked atm
the sec wants 50 mil for bail
nobody at tesla can cuz stock’s tanked
and all my $$$ tech homies won’t help me
GRIMES
why tho
ELON MUSK
2 profit 2 keep me in jail
GRIMES
ugh i fuckng HATE capitalism
ELON MUSK
omg don’t make this musk vs marx pls
GRIMES
hey don’t even effin start w/me now
i am so hopelessly pissed at u boi
102
ELON MUSK
i am so so so so so sorry claire
something came up that really couldn’t wait
GRIMES
so much for that lol. what’s the deal!
ELON MUSK
the SEC was on my ass. big tyme.
one of tesla’s investors fucked us bad
i had to book it back 2 figure out
what the actual fuck was happening
GRIMES
and u couldn’t wait a fucking hour
ELON MUSK
no. i’m sorry. this is the worst of worlds.
GRIMES
i didn’t even have a credit card!
couldn’t even afford to fly back coach!
ELON MUSK
shit.
GRIMES
yep.
ELON MUSK
how did you get back then?
103
GRIMES
jay’s plane.
ELON MUSK
uggggh. i DO NOT LIKE when u hang with him.
there is a weird vibe btw u 2.
GRIMES
pls don’t be paranoid rusky musky
ELON MUSK
wait so if i flew to LA thursday…
…and it’s saturday today… where’d u stay?
GRIMES
well i stayed at jay’s place! i had no choice!
ELON MUSK
smh. you couldn’t find a hoteL???
airBNB?!?!?!?
GRIMES
no fund$$$$ elon brusquet
ELON MUSK
k. not mad. we’ll talk about this later.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Is this how you lovedogs communicate?
A sequence of twitches and grimaces?
104
ELON MUSK
No. We’re texting through a neural net, man.
All the advantages of iMessage,
Without needing an iPhone to type on,
Plus superior encryption powers—
So Larry, Sergey, and Zuck can’t read them.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Or the SEC.
ELON MUSK
Nor the SEC.
GRIMES
this guy is a bit of a blowhard
ELON MUSK
tell me about it lmfao
GRIMES
i have an idea, mr. musklet
ELON MUSK
c’est quoi l’idée ma cherie
GRIMES
well well well
it involves jay’s help so don’t get mad, k?
i’m gonna throw him a page. that fine?
ELON MUSK
sure.
105
[JAY Z ENTERS]

Oh my goodness, dost my eyes go glitching?
To what exalted drama do I owe
This visceration by the regal Zee?
SEC COMMISSIONER
Boy! This is certainly against the rules!
JAY Z
Mayor, Commissioner, Mr. Musk, Claire,
We beg your forgiveness this disruption,
But we’d been nearby, circling overhead
In a hired helicopter. Sights seen,
We then received a message in distress
From our belovèd Claire, asking for aid.
Availing ourselves of proximity,
We have descended to inquire more.
Claire, how might we be of assistance here?
GRIMES
Master Zed, as you are perhaps aware
Owing to its plastering by the press,
My equally belovèd Musk is jailed.
The contingencies of his bail are high:
Set at a fifty-million dollars’ bond.
JAY Z
Consider the fifty paid and paid. More?
106
SEC COMMISSIONER
More? Yes! For though thou hast just loaned freedom
To the squawking raptor held in these bars,
Unless thou gets that raptor to return
For his hearing (and sentencing! Ha-ha!)
Thine fifty million too will air reside.
ELON MUSK
I promise I will not fly off to Mars.
JAY Z
That concession shan’t be necessary.
For we are to settle this matter full,
Loosing Musk not just this cage—but all ones.
CLAIRE
Master Zed! You go above and beyond!
SEC COMMISSIONER
Hoo-ha-ha! A twist! I love a good twist!
Aside
(And more, to take a twist and foil it....)
JAY Z
So let us hear and solve the charges forth:
That Musk deceived investors in a tweet,
Hinting a deal to take Tesla private
At 420 bones a share,
When no such deal, at no such terms, was clinched.
Is that the charge thrust on Musk?
SEC COMMISSIONER
107
More or less.
JAY Z
Well then we must beg again forgiveness,
For such a fault would be on us, not Musk.
ELON MUSK
What?
SEC COMMISSIONER
What?

What?
GRIMES
What?
JAY Z
The term sheet is here, signed.

[JAY Z PRESENTS A TERM SHEET]
JAY Z
Tesla at 420, taken private.
Sorry to put you through the ringer, Musk.
SEC COMMISSIONER
At no aspired disrespect—what means?
JAY Z
What dost thou mean, asking of us of means?
SEC COMMISSIONER
108
Me means thine means aren’t meagre but still means
Far and below the means required here???
JAY Z
Dost thou need a precise meaning our means?
SEC COMMISSIONER
Yes! Not out of a personal meanness,
But even Musk hasn’t sufficient means
To take all Tesla stock off public shelves.
Ho! How might a mean rapper pull it off?
JAY Z
Does not the demeanour quash any doubt
That we’d come here with demeaned intentions?
SEC COMMISSIONER
I am within my rights to ask of thee
Whether thou art acting within thine means.
JAY Z
Then let us not meander. Here, princess!
[THE PRINCESS OF NORWAY ENTERS]
JAY Z
I present the Crown Princess of Norway.
The seat of all of its nordic beauty,
And the steward of all its nordic means.
They are more than head of state or body:
They are head of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.
More, they’ve agreed to finance most Musk’s plan,
109
And I will contribute any difference:
At 420, Tesla will go private,
Notwithstanding a few more private terms.
Princess…
[THE PRINCESS OF NORWAY

WHISPERS INTO ELON’S EAR]
ELON MUSK
Your highness, that’s an outrageous request!
PRINCESS OF NORWAY
Yes, Elon, it is indeed an outrage.
Though the offer is half of what you’re worth,
It’s still twice what you deserve, my love.
JAY Z
Do you accept those terms, Elon?
ELON MUSK
I do.
JAY Z
And one more thing, Elon.
[JAY Z WHISPERS INTO ELON’S EAR]
JAY Z
Is it settled?
ELON MUSK
110
You two run a tough bargain. Aye. Settled.
JAY Z
Then tonight harks triple celebration:
First, for my new stake in Tesla Motors!
Second, for Elon’s impending freedom!
Third, but not least, tonight’s royal wedding!
Between our Missus and Mister Norway!
Elon Musk will take her hand in marriage.
Good Commissioner, would you be so kind?
[JAY Z MOTIONS AT ELON’S HANDCUFFS]
SEC COMMISSIONER
I would it were that simple. But it’s not!
There is still the matter of Azealia.
GRIMES
And too the matter of discarded Claire!
Elon, were those interminable hours
Spent listening to you wax about cars—
Electric engine this, solar cell that—
For nothing at all? The ring you promised,
The vow of vows you made, just like that, tossed?
You’d rather marry this Viking duchess
Than marry me? You’d pick saving Tesla
Over saving me? You’d run from this jail,
But too our shared eternity’s prospect?
ELON MUSK
On points one, two, and three: yes, yes, and yes.
JAY Z
111
Elon Musk! Your cruelty is matched by few.
Claire, don’t despair. You’ll be their flower girl.
GRIMES
Devils all!
JAY Z
Back to Azealia.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Jay Z!
As impressed I am by your theatrics
And amazed your financial jiu-jitsu,
I cannot in faith turn Elon over
(To the chagrin those here who want that too)
Knowing the charges levied by Miss Banks.
Though outside my agents’ jurisdiction,
They complicate the present settlement.
And lest Miss Banks drop all accusations,
Civilly charged—Musk stays in Alcatraz.
ELON MUSK
Fifty million buys but a half-freedom!

Commissioner, hast thou no lenience?
JAY Z
Commissioner, would I don a frayed suit?
Forget an iron hot in the fire?
Try to strike you with a cold one? Not I—
My suits are three-pieced, tailored, freshly pressed.
112
Come in, creased pants! Azealia Banks! Hither!
[AZEALIA BANKS ENTERS]
GRIMES
O! Glad! The ruiner of marriages.
JAY Z
And the maker of some too.
MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES (aside)

Oh my God!
How many seats does Jay Z’s chopper have?
SEC COMMISSIONER
Twister of twisters!
ELON MUSK
And one more stranger!
AZEALIA BANKS
A disgusting zoo of squalid villains!
She, that threw me into Satan’s snake pit;
He, that tried to skewer me once inside;
Mayor, who called me a Satan’s equal;
Fed, and a mangy toadstool of a man;
Jay, who paid me not to insult him here;
And this—a blemish of unblemishment!
Pointing at the Princess
Who owns this pestilent crotch of envy?
113
Musk does, I believe.
AZEALIA BANKS
Silence, carrion!
ELON MUSK
She is the fair blue-blood of Norway, Banks.
PRINCESS OF NORWAY
Blue? Is not blood red?
GRIMES
Needs thou a knife’s proof?
AZEALIA BANKS
Nay, it calls for a double-chained chainsaw.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Please! Let not these proceedings come a farce.
ELON MUSK
Says he, the arse-faced high farce of farces.
GRIMES
She will make a good crotch for a horndog.

I believe the term is “hornpeople”, Claire.
JAY Z
Silence! Silence all! Hast all chill been lost?
114
Dost axel and axis hate its body?
What insolence! What flagrant disrespect!
What water cooler of hostility!
The whole Australia has less venom
In what’s bounded by its spidersborders
Than the mouths aboil in this room—
AZEALIA BANKS
Preach!
JAY Z
Fasten the lid and simmer the contents.
We have lost the old thread of metaphor,
Changed suits for pans, unbuckled focus,
Stripped the other and come to taking stripes.
Now here, mixed up across our elements,
Foaming in heat at an ill-timed instance,
Lest all these hot pots fall on my guidance—
Stained grosgrain tuxedo of aprons!—
I’ll cool down the overcooked rhetoric—
(To be eaten out of a doggy bag)—
Let us instead nibble just just desserts.
AZEALIA BANKS
I’ve an appetite for bars, but not those.
JAY Z
Banks: art thou willing to drop the charges?
AZEALIA BANKS
No sooner than I would drop my album.
115
JAY Z
Then, in lieu of taking Grime’s half-bar
Which would but furnish her song with your verse,
Take her half-bar, and take her beat as well—
A sombre but catchy composition,
(One that pricks even my veteran’s ears)
And make it your next album’s lead single.
I’ll be its executive producer,
Should you agree to help set Elon free.
GRIMES
Unscrupulous, testicle-fisted Jay!
Thou sets men and women’s balls-a-busting!
Under no circumstances will I agree
To give a merest eighth-note to this wretch,
This dissembler of relationships,
This magnet pole of heartless agony
This trashy, heinous, tail-flapping mermaid—
AZEALIA BANKS
With your man I was most unflappable.
GRIMES
O! An unmatchable bitch of bitches!
From sire to sire, and constant brood,
Barren, she bears not babies—but monsters!
She is the unpainted Mother Grotesque!
A drain-spout of incongruous evils!
To what original sin owe these horr’rs?
116
AZEALIA BANKS
An innocuous night at Friendship Cove.
GRIMES
Friendship Cove?
AZEALIA BANKS
Don’t pretend that you don’t know.
It was during our short-lived dalliance
In our old shared hometown of Montreal.
We’d each moseyed on down to Griffintown,
Then a tract of industrial eyesores,
To Murray Street—where perfume of horseshit
Wafted up our nostrils from the stables
That housed calèche jockeys and broncos both.
The neon red Farine Five Roses sign
Flickered odiously in the background
And the suppressed sound of a drum machine
Rumbled out from beneath a garage door—
All graffitied in fluorescent colours—
Concealing a chop shop for bicycles
And above it: the most coveted stage
Of all North America’s underground.
The bill had Think About Life headlining
Along with Duchess Says and Besnard Lakes
(I forget who else was playing that night)
But a timid girl from Harlem opened.
GRIMES
Friendship Cove… the venue with the skylight?
I think I remember playing there once.
117
AZEALIA BANKS
My recollection’s a tad bit sharper—
Because that night was my first-ever show.
I hustled: Text after futile text,
PBR after fruitless PBR,
Schedule scuff-up after schedule scuff-up,
Several last minute cancellations,
Flaked to high fuck by other promoters,
But sweetheart Graham Van Pelt gave me a break—
Booking the fresh-faced Azealia Banks:
All she had was a music video
With barely two-thousand views: 212,
Which she’d posted online a week prior.

A sizzlin’ fuckin’ banger, I might add.
AZEALIA BANKS
Having snuck my young ass on that night’s bill,
I unboxed my shit, set up my MacBook,
And my soundcheck went off without a hitch.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Crescendo! Crescendo! I can taste it!
AZEALIA BANKS
There were a few hundred peeps there that night,
It must have been, like, a hundred degrees.
I was shaking. So I bought a tallboy.
I was this close to a panic attack—
I was so nervous I couldn’t swallow.
I went up to the roof for a quick smoke,
118
And a girl kindly offered me her joint,
I took a sip. She said: “Good luck tonight,
It’s a full house. And there’s some VIPs…
Win Butler is here—”
JAY Z
Great dude.
GRIMES
Silence, Jay.
AZEALIA BANKS
“—some of the Wolf Parade guys are here too,
Cadence Weapon, Socalled, the No Joy girls,
DeMarco’s gang of merry reprobates,
It’s a veritable who’s-who downstairs.”

I don’t recognize any of these names.
ELON MUSK
Nor I—these are all nonsense consonants.
PRINCESS OF NORWAY
I lost track more than ten minutes ago.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Less name-dropping, Miss Banks. More crescendo!
AZEALIA BANKS
I am not name-dropping.
119
GRIMES
I must agree.
This story does have a familiar lilt.
AZEALIA BANKS
It does—because the girl who passed the joint,
Claire, was you.
SEC COMMISSIONER
Enough twists! More crescendo!
AZEALIA BANKS
While I did not recognize Claire’s name-drops,
I picked up on how much weight they carried.
Still on the roof, so far beyond frazzled,
And more than Montreal’s built-in buffer
For set-time lateness, now late for my set,
I headed down, squeamishly, set to faint,
Each sense, each limb, revolting against me—
As soon as I opened the Mac on stage—
Spilled my unsipped beer can all over it.
GRIMES
No… That can’t have been you, Azealia. No…
AZEALIA BANKS
I’m so glad your drug-fried mind remembers,
All it needed was a bit of priming.
GRIMES
Azealia. I am so, so, sorry.
Forgive me. That was… musical treason.
120
AZEALIA BANKS
Don’t be so quick to self-incriminate—
It would ruin the coming dénouement:
As it did not involve Mac, beer, or joint,
But the denial of your MacBook’s loan
To a first-time musician, brought to tears,
Humiliated in front of hoped peers.
Though I had my beats on a USB
You were the only one with Ableton
Installed on a laptop, at that venue,
Which all of my music had required.
GRIMES
Azealia—
AZEALIA BANKS
You said “it’s not my fault
You came unprepared. Enjoy the lesson.”
And hurried your Daffy-Duck-looking-ass
Up on stage, as you were next on the bill.

What a gutshot!
ELON MUSK
My god, Claire. You didn’t!
GRIMES
This happened almost a decade ago—
Felicitations for keeping it fresh.
But whatever crimes kid Grimes is guilty,
You’ll get this beat over my dead body.
121
ELON MUSK
Your cruelty wins my adulation, Claire.
JAY Z
And mine… but it does not exceed my own.
For what is cruelty without cruelty’s reins?
Wickedness needs a quick wicked wit’s pair,
Without it, cruelty is but a maimer.
When I strike, I don’t aim at a maiming,
But a full-stop job, and washing of hands.
Claire: I own the right of first refusal
To all of your musical output. Ha!
What you happen to create—it is mine.
And what of yours gets released—I decide.
Should I swoop in and scoop a beat or two?
That might burn a bridge with the artist, sure,
But frankly, Tesla’s stock’s worth more than you.
AZEALIA BANKS
O! Jay! Thou art the kings’ king of villains.
JAY Z
So there we have it: the beat goes to Banks,
I’ll serve as executive producer,
Thereupon Elon’s charges will get dropped.
AZEALIA BANKS
I am in dastardly accord with this.
ELON MUSK
Free! At last! Jay Z! Fetch me the chopper!
122
JAY Z
And, now, with all of Musk’s ducks in a row:
Fraud charges moot, Tesla’s funding secured,
And the Princess of Norway in his tow,
Commissioner: is our Musk free to go?
SEC COMMISSIONER
I regret to inform you, yes, he is.
JAY Z
Commissioner: may I do the honours?
SEC COMMISSIONER
If you wish.

It’s all over!
JAY Z
Here, here, here!
From one island’s jailing—to another!
[JAY Z TAKES OFF ONE OF ELON’S

HANDCUFFS, AND CUFFS IT
TO THE PRINCESS OF NORWAY]
***
this is the end.

follow @mtlbagelboy on twitter.
and visit bagelboy.ca
123
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Jory, Fawn, Tom, Sandy, Niamh, Phil, Chris, Elena, Ellana,
Laura, Iain, Alec, Austin, Evan, Jake, Suzanne, Guillaume (x2), Audrey,
Anya, Fab, the cute waitress at Sumac and the Royal Dep in Saint-Henri.

Trapped in Elon&#39;s Mansion

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Trapped in Elon&#39;s Mansion

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TRAPPED IN

Published by Secret Readings

Copyright © 2018 Joe Bagel

Cover illustration by Alvar Carto

[ENTER AZEALIA BANKS AND GRIMES]

AZEALIA BANKS (answering phone)

[THEY HANG UP THE PHONE]

AZEALIA BANKS (aside)

AZEALIA BANKS (aside)

AZEALIA BANKS (aside)

AZEALIA BANKS (aside)

AZEALIA BANKS (aside)

[ENTER ELON MUSK, JARRETT WALKER,

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

[THE CROWD OF PLEBEIAN MASSES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

[THE CAR-LOVERS LET LOOSE

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

[THE CAR-LOVERS MASH THEIR

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

[ENTER SIRI, AZEALIA BANKS,

AZEALIA’S BANKER (recorded message)

[ENTER SAUDI PRINCE AND ELON MUSK, BACKSTAGE]

[ELON MUSK EXITS]

[ENTER JAY Z AND GRIMES]

JAY Z (answering phone)

[JAY Z HANGS UP]

[JAY Z HANGS UP]

[GRIMES CALLS AGAIN]

[JAY Z HANGS UP]

[ENTER ELON MUSK AND SIRI]

• Business Insider writer Jake Kanter reports: “Richard Branson

• Washington Post writer Drew Harwell reports: “Former employee

[ENTER SIRI, GRIMES, AND JAY Z]

[ENTER SIRI AND ELON MUSK]

[ENTER SEC COMMISSIONER]

[SEC COMMISSIONER EXITS]

[ENTER ELON MUSK ON A JET]

[ENTER SIRI AND GRIMES, OUTSIDE JAY’S]

[ENTER AZEALIA BANKS]

AZEALIA BANKS (on Instagram, in a selfie pose.)

[ENTER GRIMES AND JAY Z, BACK AT JAY’S]

[ENTER AZEALIA BANKS AND ELON MUSK]

[ELON BUSTS A MOVE]

AZEALIA BANKS (off stage)

AZEALIA BANKS (off stage)

[ENTER AZEALIA BANKS AND ELON MUSK

[ENTER AZEALIA BANKS]

AZEALIA BANKS (on Instagram, in a selfie pose.)

[ENTER AZEALIA BANKS AND ELON MUSK]

Trapped in Elon's Mansion

Trapped in Elon's Mansion