… Nine hundred miles away and a month sooner, at his mansion in Isleworth, FL, Shaquille Rashaun O’Neal announces to the press his retirement from professional basketball. His beat-up knees make getting up and down the court at the necessary pace an impossibility. The last time I see him try to run in a game, he looks like a man using 80% of his strength to keep from crapping his pants. He’s 39. It’s worse (more alien) than Christopher Reeve in a wheelchair. After the press conference he goes upstairs into the master bathroom, unfurls his penis, and urinates into a Japanese electronic toilet. The disturbance of the water’s surface triggers the toilet to play Beyoncé’s “I Care”. Shaq tweets with one hand, aims his mighty stream with the other.
“I’m old only compared to Young Shaq,” he thinks. “College Shaq. Bringing Down the Backboard Shaq. Compared to Old Shaq — Grandchildren Playing Soccer Shaq, Fat as Fat Marlon Brando Shaq, Hard of Hearing Shaq, Dead Shaq — compared to them, I am Young Shaq.” He shakes the last drips of piss off and visualizes a future in which a thousand cloned versions of him dominate a growth sector of a world economy that is dependent upon genial humour combined with astonishing acts of strength and grace.
