The shoe has dropped, and though we all saw it coming from light years away, we're all still speculating as to what caused the final toe to slip out. Was it that Tom had pulled some strings and signed Suri up for early admission to Sea Org, the Scientology academy that boasts one billion year employment contracts and a smooth transition from human to cyborg? Was it that the marriage was predicated on nothing more than a contract, whose five-year expiration date had finally been met? Was it that Katie smelled an opportunity with the demise of Johnny Depp's marriage to Vanessa Paradis?
No one knows. Sadder still, perhaps we'll never know. There are surely juicy stories to be shared, with details so bizarre they could only be true. But the couple has asked the public to respect their privacy during this painful time in their family life. And, since this was not a couple who at all rubbed our noses in their romantic bliss, back in the day when everything was sickeningly sweet and infinitely better than whatever any of the rest of us had ever experienced on any happiness scale we could ever possibly fathom, that's a privacy we'll of course afford them. I mean, fair's fair.
Besides TomKat's consistency in the "let's keep our relationship private" department, we know that we're not going to get much dirt on this divorce -- or the "relationship" that precipitated it -- because of how iron-cladly silent everything surrounding TomKid's marriage and divorce was. Years have passed since Tom and Nicole ended their union, and still Nicole's lips haven't leaked a word about the insanity that is a life as Mrs. Tom Cruise. Maybe it's because her lips have been Botoxed-shut, but I think there's something more at work than overzealous needle injections.
To these eyes, it seems that Tommy Boy has a pretty good legal team surrounding him. The only thing the public knows about him, for sure, is the sappy horse shit he peddles to the press. There are always rumors about the wackadoodle Scientology devotions, the covert homosexual hook-ups, and the lopsided marriages he presides over. But the rumors stay rumors. It's all anonymous sources or pure conjecture. An eye witness to the event never comes forward. There is no tell-all book. There's not even a bombshell interview with Matt Lauer or Piers Morgan or one of those blondes on Fox News.
As far as I am concerned, that's because there are some confidentiality agreements out there that are breached upon penalty of death and/or repeated viewing of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Mr. Cruise and his team must leave the compound every day with a ream of them under one of his chiseled arms. They must get tossed around like initials before "Ron Hubbard." And then signed with the blood of the placenta of the counter-party's first born.
Too much? Don't blame me. Blame Tom Cruise and his mercenaries.
It is sorely disappointing to me that we'll never know all the details surrounding Tom Cruise and his mating rituals. I wish someone would break their silence and quench the thirst of my curiosity.
But you, dear reader, are not condemned to that same fate. Nay, you shall be privy to some of the guarded secrets surrounding the coupling of the Tom and his Kat.
You see, one night in 2005, I was Clueless in Cleveland. I'd been sent there as a lowly law firm associate to do some document review. Bleary-eyed and looking for a diversion, I went down to the bar of the Holiday Inn where I was camped out to have a glass of wine. As I waited for the barkeep to fill 'er up, my eyes fixed on a cocktail napkin. The napkin appeared to have been white at one point in its life, but it was now a smudged, cloudy blue, nearly destroyed by all the scribbling someone had done on it.
I picked it up and quickly read it over. I couldn't believe my eyes. Because those eyes were telling me that I was staring at an agreement between one Tom Cruise and one Katie Holmes about a "Five Year Plan" that puts all other "five year plans" to shame.
No way, I said. He's so much older. He's so much crazier. Who puts pen to paper to construct a relationship? Surely neither of these people could be so desperate, so fool-hardy, so...calculating. This is the work of a bored cocktail waitress with a pen she wanted to put to some use before it dried up.
And yet....I couldn't bring myself to toss the napkin in the fake plant to my right. Instead, I slipped it in my pocket. I brought it home, bookmarked it in my People Magazine Anthology: 2000-2005, and left it there. Over the years, it has become my Nostradamus. My Mayan calendar. My lottery ticket.
Because here is what it says:
1. I will call you Kate. "Katie" is for sissies. And Catholics.
2. When you look at me, your eyes must go vacant with lust. Your smile must be jaw-breaking. Seriously, you have to make people's faces ache when they watch you watch me.
3. I will have lifts put in my shoes. You will stop wearing heels.
4. You will slouch or stand downhill from me. Always.
5. If we are in touching distance, we must assume some variation of a ninja warrior headlock, only it must look lustful.
6. We will always be in touching distance. Because of all the lust.
7. You will stop being in movies where you come across as sexy or even remotely appealing. There's only so much lust to go around.
8. If you are in movies, they must be terrible. I will have my people call Adam Sandler's people on your behalf.
9. You are allowed one semi-respectable part. It is the part of Jackie Kennedy. Your Boston Brahmin accent must be so painfully off, however, that no one can watch you try to act because they are bent over to use their knees to muffle sound from reaching their eardrum.
10. If you appear as a guest performer on a dance competition show, you must show a talent so underwhelming compared to the hype surrounding your appearance as to make Jay Leno's return to the Tonight Show appear an unmitigated success.
11. You will forget everything in your life that came before me. To that end, we will not eat pie.
12. Allow me to introduce you to this army of people standing behind me. Don't let them alarm you. Also, get very used to them. They will monitor you, manage you, and mother you. But only when I am not available to do so.
13. We will procreate. Her name will call to mind a donkey-pulled rickshaw, a servant's response to a master, or an Indian entree. Within those parameters, you may choose the moniker.
14. You will speak only when spoken too. I, on the other hand, will speak often, and in nothing but hyperbole.
15. The day you leave me is the day pigs fly. And by "pig's fly," I mean, of course, me starring as a 1980s rock star with long stringy hair and glass-smashing vocals which I do myself, shirtless on stage and looking all of 28 years young.
Signed,
Mr. Tom Cruise, Supreme Commander and Master Warlord of the Universe
Ms. Kat(i)e Holmes, Hopelessly Optimistic I'll Change Him and Also Too Young To Make This Decision Without A Parent or Legal Counsel Present, Neither of Which Is
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Seriously, these guys need to stop writing this kind of stuff down on cocktail napkins.
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