Would that there were another glass for Sal on Peggy's coffee table. The poor dear, who seemed like she'd already made good headway on that bottle of red, awkwardly suggested that Kurt could give her ticket to a man if he wanted before she just broke down wondering why she had the world's worst luck with crushes. "What's wrong with me?" she cried. Then Kurt did what every woman hopes the most compassionate and wise gay man in her life will do for her when she falls into a pit of self-loathing. He gave her a good once-over, frowned over her hair, and promised that he would fix her. Then he plopped Peggy on a kitchen stool and lopped off her ponytail. Kurt, I'll get us Bob Dylan tickets too if you come over to my house next and advise me on whether low-rise jeans are my friend or foe!
In Los Angeles, the former object of Peggy's misguided affection couldn't get a break. Poor Pete is neither rich nor good-looking enough to get any of the tanned jet set to put up with his snapping-terrier personality. Meanwhile Don, who stared with a dreamy and dazed expression as Betty's doppelgänger passed him by at the hotel bar, was a hot ticket because, as he was told, "you're beautiful and you don't talk too much." After sitting in a Kubrickian white room with other somber men in suits, watching city after city get bombed as the presenter promised "total annihilation," Don fell for the promise of some easy Joy. "Why would you deny yourself something you want?" the little kitten purred. He stared confusedly after her backside which promised both release and escape, and then hopped into her convertible and fled to Palm Springs.
After Joy unpeeled her dress out by the pool, a sweaty Don rumbled and shook, before crashing wave-like to the deck. When he woke up, it was as if the heat exhaustion had erased his very self, and he was left surrounded by a band of crazies who were considering how best to serve him for dinner. He was neither Dick Whitman nor Don Draper, just a hunk of meat without a past, a man who seemed to give serious thought to the idea of island jumping with just a babe on his arms and a tuxedo in his bag. "What's your story?" one of the women asked him over dinner. "I don't know how to answer that," he said, before Joy decided that what her chile relleno really needed was a side of suck face. In the boudoir that night Don told the young girl that he was 36 years old. "You're still warm," she promised, saying just the right thing to a man worried about his very existence, before she climbed on top of him. The next morning Willy glided into the bedroom, laughing over the fighting couple next door. "The humiliations have been spectacular," he laughed, before sitting down on the bed and marveling over his daughter's stud.
NEXT: Don's decline
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