The Agreement That Could Have, Should Have, Been

A “pre-act-tual” agreement can save a lot of heartache and a ton of money, avoid prosecutors both ordinary and special and juries both good and grand. With a moment’s thought and reflection, as well as an indelible ink pen and a registered notary public with a current license, two people about to engage in an act that would be better kept a secret can protect themselves and thereby protect the rest of us. People who find themselves about to roll in the hay, hop in bed or do anything at all in any round or oval offices would be well advised to stay buttoned for just 35 minutes longer, the time it takes to file a pre-act. There is going to be fallout from your little indiscretion, but why should it spill all over the place, on you, on the party of the second part, on the Republican or Democratic Party or any part of the national press, which has been known to spoil so many parties before yours?

Essential clauses for the typical pre-act:

1) You both agree to tell no one, ever. You both agree to forget this ever happened and do so before the end of business today. No one will know. It never happened. The party of the first part agrees as does the party of the second part and all the parts of the party of the first part and all the parts of the party of the second part. No parts of any party did any such thing. What is there to remember? Did something happen? Have we been introduced? Who exactly are you?

1a) You both agree to do all laundry before noon, including delicates and all garments requiring special handling. You both agree to keep no laundry in a banking institution, either a bank or a savings and loan, either in a safety deposit box or an unused teller’s drawer.

1b) You both agree to vacuum the event site with the international crossover technique, back and forth, and then to dispose of the vacuum bag and the vacuum itself in an Environmental Protection Agency-approved incineration facility, paying cash for such services.

2) If someone finds out, you both agree to deny that it ever happened. You not only agree on this, you promise on pinkies. If you tell someone in a secretly taped interview or on camera or if there are pictures of you and the party of the first or the second part actually engaged in the deed in question, you agree to deny this or look blank forevermore until the end of the world should it come by fire or ice. So let’s say this again: It never happened. It not only didn’t happen, nothing after it happened, not that there was anything in the first place after which something might have happened, which it certainly did not.

3) If someone finds out that you both agreed to deny it ever happened, (promised really with bare naked pinkies in a warm private moment), then you agree to act confused about this as if there has been some weird time warp in this galaxy. You agree to remind everyone that this galaxy does, in fact, contain not only the party of the first part and the party of the second part, but--if it is of any interest--parties of the third through 6 billionth part; hey, it’s a big planet and parties of various parts coincide every second all over the darn place.

4) All parties agree to deny agreeing to deny, and this agreement (made with the traditional blood brother exchange of fluids through an open wound) shall last until the 12th, 13th and 14th of never, even if the interview in which such denial of agreement to deny be made public is conducted by Peter Arnett.

5) All parties involved in the aforementioned and impending act agree to deny such an act transpired (if it does ever transpire) until the denials of agreements to deny the agreements to deny to deny the agreements to deny are stacked like Chinese boxes closely and intimately inside of each so tightly and so layered that to separate them would take years and thousands of highly trained and highly paid drones. The time required to get to the last box and look in at the tiny space must be equal to 10 million times the length of the act that the party of the first part and the party of the second part are about to be involved in. If, in fact, any act at all is even possible now.