The country mouse

I hate liars but the world is so full of them we can’t get away – or maybe I’m a liar magnet, I don’t know.

My grandmother used to say, ‘Donde hay calor har serpientes,’ ‘Where there is heat, there are snakes.’ This terrified me as a boy growing up in San Diego – when wasn’t it hot?! But now I’ve come to the City of Angels, I understand what she really meant. Where there is more to win there will always be more snakes.

I, like many others, Greyhounded here, a dungareed hick with straw in my gapped teeth, looking politely for my shot at immortality. My personal dream? To unite the world with my Oscar™ winning speech after directing The Versace Story. Now I go to class, I wait tables, I test – so it goes. One of 10 million dreamers. So will I succeed? I’m hot, I’m loud but… here be snakes.

And here in the virtual world, the competition is just as fearsome. Will it be little me, with my out-of-town morality, or will one of 10 million others be prepared to lie and cheat their way into hearts and minds and through closed doors, thinking nothing of pushing friends and morals aside to achieve glory?

Maybe I’m trying to deny the truth – but the world deserves to hear my acceptance speech.

So, good people, a word of warning to you. Many are now looking for Xi and the stakes are getting higher. I can feel the heat. So check your shoes, because I think the snakes are already among us.