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Oolong

or

Confessions of a Dead Tea Bag

Where it all began, I can only dimly now begin to perceive. Remembrance doesn't come easy when you're a tea bag, even if you have read Proust. Christ, it's hard enough to brew a good pot these days, let alone lay some heavy karmic rap on a caffeine junky.

But I think it started in the heat of a passionate srping. I was single then. War gripped the nation. New York City and Joan Baez were broke.

Somewhere outside a dog was barking.

Anyway, I know something's up because they've put starch in my cuffs again. Trouble comes in threes. Slipping out of this tea-stained body, I transcend apparel. Then suddenly, like, wow, it's a gig because

— posted in the lounge of the UC Jazz Ensembles, University of California, Berkeley, 1976.
Author unknown. As best as I could recall the text from memory.


Postscript

I just saw a bit of Sunset Boulevard playing on Turner Classic Movies, and it is obviously the genre that “Oolong” was parodying. I don't know enough of Billy Wilder's other writings to know if others had the same voice, but Sunset Boulevard certainly does. Whoever wrote “Oolong” certainly had a knack for capturing the genre.