“Sexual intercourse is kicking death in the ass while singing.”
-Charles Bukowski

Today I am unshowered and gross, as well as a sneezing mess. Come and get it, boys! Seriously, the only nice thing about being sick like this is that my nose ring doesn’t slide around…because it is covered in snot and thus stuck in place. *sad panda rimshot*

Which reminds me of a story. When I was seventeen I had a car, a little Volkswagen Rabbit (the official First Car of punk rock girls everywhere, coming in second only to giant, rusty Buicks). Sadly, in my senior year of high school my first class of the day was Honors English, which was chockablock with stuck up assmittens, who objected to sitting next to someone who smelled like stale whiskey and cigarettes, and who would say things like “Faulkner was a PRICK” and “Do you realize this class is taught by a soccer coach with a plate in his head?” when called on. This class was followed by geometry, which was mostly full of high-achieving ninth-graders who were all scared of me for some reason.

So I didn’t have much motivation to go to school in the mornings, because my three hours of art classes didn’t start until after lunch. Often my friend (who had stopped showing up all together after her mother died) and I would choose the ninety-minute drive to Chicago over sticking around in town. Usually we would skip breakfast, as we often had a fast-food hangover from the night before, so we had to make two critical stops when we got there.

The first stop was a gas station, since my Rabbit would burn oil like crazy on the Kennedy. I would push the speed limit until the little doors rattled, which the car didn’t like very much, so we could get there as soon as possible. I was usually down about half a quart after this. I learned about the oil thing after my first trip to Chicago and back. When I got back into town an old guy in a truck yelled at me, “Hey, your car’s making that noise because it’s low on oil!” After that I learned to recognize the characteristic ticking sound.

The second stop, of course, was breakfast. We would usually arrive around ten o’clock and park on a side street near the neighborhood we were familiar with, which was near The Alley. We would wander around until three or so and then come home with spiked collars or German pornography.

One morning after arriving we stumbled upon a Jewish deli that had a giant case of bagels. My friend and I walked in and looked in the case at the bagels, drooling. Before the counterperson could come over to us, I was addressed by a very old man who was dressed in a really fine dark suit. He stood at the counter and was waiting for his order.

“Hello young lady,” he said with a slight Yiddish accent, addressing only me.

“Good morning,” I said.

“I see you have a ring through the middle of your nose there,” he continued. Often I was rude to people my own age, but something about this man commanded respect. I usually waited until I saw how people were going to treat me before I shut them down or walked away.

“Yes,” I said.

“I have never seen this before and it is interesting to me. May I ask you one question?” He looked at me with a glimmer in his eyes. Most people in the Midwest came up with the exceedingly clever, “Did that hurt?” or “Do you know you look like a freak?”

“Sure, go ahead,” I said, bracing myself for the usual questions.

“It makes me wonder, how do you kiss the boys?”

He made me laugh out loud. I was always so grateful, then, when I would run into someone who could see a person under the purple hair and metal.

I got an email over the weekend, which said, in part:

So, lately I read your post “Tuesday October 30, 2001, In Which I Eat Something Else That Doesn’t Agree With Me” and it was kind of a shock/revelation to me.

a) Was this topic of yours true or false?
b) What do you think is the reason for you to do this?
c) Are you still doing it or with time this habit gone?
d) Have you ever had any problems after swallowing something?

A) Yes, this is a true story.

B) The reason I was swallowing things is complicated. When I was little, there wasn’t a lot of thought involved. It was like scratching an itch. As I got older I became very interested in the notion of “circus freaks” and people who could do tricks such as swallowing lightbulbs or goldfish and bringing them back up again. I had an idea that I would train myself to do this, to swallow larger and larger things until I was swallowing things that I had to bring back up. I was also interested in the idea of sword-swallowing. Growing up as an outsider in my community (which is another story all together), I felt like I would probably end up in a circus or jail or something. It’s probably better that I went to college instead.

When I got older (teens) I realized that it was more like compulsive behaviors I have read about. My brain would simply “itch” until I had swallowed the penny or rock or bug or god-knows-what. I felt better–until next time. I hit a figurative wall when I was seventeen. My coworkers and I were chatting at work, and we were kind of a foolish, punky crowd so I made a bet with someone that I could swallow one of those sticky security tags that you find on the back of CD cases or electronics (about the size of a stick of gum). I don’t remember how the bet came about, but knowing me I’m sure I initiated it. We were also curious to see if a security tag would go off if it was inside your body. (Imagine the shoplifting possibilities there!)

There were two results: the first was that security tags don’t go off if they are inside your body. The second was that when I thought about what I had done, which was to swallow a sharp piece of plastic encasing a sharp piece of metal, I realized I could get myself into some serious trouble. I realized that I needed to take it to the next level, and get some serious training for my hobby, or I needed to step down.

So, C) I stopped. It was hard, but I quit it like I’ve quit everything else: cold turkey. I have days when I’m only halfway aware and I’ll start fixating on some little object, and then I’ll snap out of it and control myself. It’s not like smoking, which can bring one a lot of pleasure and is still marginally socially acceptable. I didn’t want to drive people away or cut my guts open.

In fact, smoking, which I started doing heavily around the same time, helped a lot. I don’t recommend this as a cure, of course. I quit smoking regularly in ’95, picked it up again during my divorce in ’03, and quit again sometime in ’04. That is also a different story, though.

D) I have never had physical problems that I’ve been aware of as a result of compulsive swallowing. You touched on the issue of swallowing foreign objects and sexual satisfaction as well. There was no connection there for me. I don’t know if all the objects came out, either. Maybe stuff is still jingling around in there, like those sharks that swallow boots and such. I don’t know.

I hope this helps in some way. Good luck.

I had a friend through most of school from the time I was five on. We attended school together in the first grade, until I moved away to the city next to hers. But our moms helped up stay in touch throughout grade school, and we finally ended up in the same building during middle school, at which point we had drifted a bit. Her household was uber-Christian, to the point of not celebrating Halloween (this is borderline child abuse, if you ask me, the godless communist). This made her turn out pretty sheltered, so by middle school having a conversation with her was like having a conversation with someone a couple of years younger than me.

(As an aside: my household was the opposite of this. One of my earliest memories of being taken to the movies was going to see a Dirty Harry flick. Most of it was boringly violent, and violently boring, but what sticks in my memory is a prostitute giving old Clint a blowjob. I didn’t know any of this at the time. I pieced it together later. I must’ve been about six. Then there was Robocop when I was eight. My poor sister was taken to see the sequel ten years later when she was eight or nine, and it scarred her too. Did I mention that I had horrible nightmares as a child? I am protective of my girls, but…no Halloween…versus dirty-cop blowjobs…I guess what I am trying to say here is, find some balance, people!)

ANYWAYS, my friend was lost to me during middle school, because a fellow orchestra nitwit I went to grade school with latched on to her. So I would see my friend in the halls occasionally, small frame dwarfed by her cello case, thick as thieves with Nitwit (second-chair violin). I was banished to bandland with my Fronch horn, so we didn’t cross paths much.

By freshman year, things changed. My friend had a falling out with Nitwit, and remembered how much fun I was. We made plans to go on the big biology fieldtrip together to the enormous aquarium in Chicago. It was the typical public school outing: permission slip, fee, money for a fast food lunch, and a day of mostly-unbridled freedom. We were both heavily into the Violent Femmes and sat in our bus seats with our heads smashed together, sharing one set of headphones. Gordon Gano’s whine seeped out of the walkman’s earpieces, causing the popular kids who only knew about top-forty music to peep over the seats and give us incredulous looks.

We got bored about halfway there and decided to start taking pokes at the other drivers racing down the Kennedy towards Chicago. We ripped off the heavier cardboard backing from one of my spiral notebooks, and she found a marker in her backpack, and we got to work making a sign.

The sign had two sides. We held the first up to the window and gestured frantically to any driver who was currently keeping pace with our bus. What could these panicked-looking high school girls possibly have to tell them, as we all careened down a four-lane freeway at 60-plus miles an hour? Once we got their attention, we would make certain they read the first side:

We would then point to their back tire and look stricken. We would watch in delight as the driver’s eyes, and sometimes the backseat passenger’s, would turn into three perfect “O’s.” You could see forty-ninety-twelvedy separate thoughts rush through their heads all at once. What? What about their wheel?

We would then flip over the sign so they could read the rest of the message:

This provided hours of entertainment, on several fieldtrips we took together. Sometimes we got a dismissive wave and a laugh, and sometimes we got flipped off. In hindsight, I think we deserved worse. When we wanted some variety, we would alternate with a sign that read “Your keys are in your door!!!” Most people would look.

In Other News

Via Manuel, Postsecret. This site is so sad. This was my secret, but I’m 27 so I beat her by a whole year. Except it’s not a secret anymore. I will tell anyone I meet. I might even stand on my balcony and shout it down to the street tonight, if I eat enough Goo-Goo Clusters first.

I have never written anyone a fan letter before. I guess I wrote Carrottop a fan letter sometime around 1997, but that was just to keep him out of the Celebrity Death Pool I was betting in. And that doesn’t really count, does it?

Anyway, I am writing to say thank you for your good works. I have been following your career since you were with Destiny’s Child. I have always enjoyed your music, but what really sparked me to write was this…I was sitting in my car the other day feeling terrible, really miserable. I was thinking about totally changing my life somehow, which I haven’t done for a long time. And then the single off your new solo album, “Me, Myself, and I” came on the radio.

For years, Beyonce, I felt like I had no control over my life. I knew something was missing, but I wasn’t sure how to fill the holes. I know you are only twenty-two, but I feel like you have seen a lot as you have traveled around the world on tour. I mean, your mother, who has to be one of the most passive-aggressive control freaks I’ve ever seen, is your stylist. The fact that you can prosper despite her insistence on tearing the ostrich feathers off your Manolos for one lousy performance at the VMAs…well, you must have the patience of a saint.

So maybe you can understand my side of the story. My husband is like your mother in some ways, except without a flair for sequins. He wanted me to stay home and to stay with him, but he didn’t want to pay attention to me while I was around. In November I was considering faking my own death to get out of Christmas with his family, and all he could say was that he would be “embarrassed” if I didn’t show up.

I kept trying to make myself smarter, and prettier, and thinner, in the hopes that he would really notice me, and love me the way I needed to be loved. Have you ever been that stupid, Beyonce? I might as well have given my love to a philodendron. Actually, I probably would have gotten more of a response from a plant. When I came into this eight years ago, I had some inkling of how cool I was. I really lost that after being ignored for so long. I found out I can’t compete with things that loom that much larger that I do, like depression, a sense of failure, and a saxophone that pulls him away for eight hours at a time.

This is where you come in, Beyonce. I was sitting in the car, waiting to get on the freeway. I was so dead that I couldn’t even cry. I had a real wake-up call on Thanksgiving, because I realized that night what a dead person, a sleepwalker, I’d been for so long. I felt all empty and dried up and really fucking old. I felt much older than twenty-six. Right there, at the freeway entrance, I realized I needed to leave my husband, for reals. Then I heard your song.

“I can’t believe I believed/
Everything we had would last/
So young and naive for me to think that/
She was from your past/
Silly of me to dream of/
One day having your kids/
Love is so blind/
It feels right when it’s wrong.”

Okay, so there was no other woman, only his saxophone and a strong tendency to be self-absorbed, but it struck a cord with me anyway. It was a Pop Music Epiphany. Then I heard the chorus:

“Cause I realized I got/
Me, myself, and I/
That’s all I got in the end/
That’s what I found out/
And there ain’t no need to cry/
I took a vow that from now on/
Ima be my own best friend”

I decided to take your advice, Beyonce, and to become my own best friend, indeed. I cut my losses; I worked out a plan with him for splitting custody with Frannie, our little girl. I signed a lease and am moving in on New Year’s Day. I am typing you this letter on the morning of my last day in this house, as my friend has offered to let me housesit for most of the rest of the month.

He said he didn’t want me to go, but so much damage had been done that I didn’t believe him. He said he still feels passion for me. I listened on the night I told him I was leaving as he wrecked shop in the backyard. It’s all right, though, because my new apartment doesn’t have a patio on which to put all the pots he smashed anyhow.

He kept me up until two last night, on my last night, telling me how unfair it was and how angry he was, and how he felt that I was doing this to spite him. I am so beyond spite and malice I can’t even tell you. I had my heart broken so long ago that it’s healed up by now. I am ready for something new. “Where have you been?” he said. “Who have you been fucking?” No one will ever talk to me like this again without getting fucking shivved.

I am so relieved that I can take Frannie and get out of here, and I won’t have to look at the giant dent he made in the wall when he hit it last night. I told him not to hit me, because I would fucking take him down. I think you would say the same thing.

Anyway, Beyonce, I have probably taken up enough of your time. I need to start packing the clothes I am going to take with me to my friend’s house, as well as the bottle of champagne my thesis advisor gave me for Christmas. Frannie is up, and I need to get her some breakfast. Good luck with your fiance, Jay-Z. I hope he is making time for you as he is planning his retirement and working on his novel.

Sincerely,

I, Asshole

“Independent Woman, Part 2” excerpt by Destiny’s Child:

“How you feel about a girl like this?
Try to control me, boy you’ll get dismissed
Do what I want, live how I wanna live
Buy my own diamonds, and pay my own bills

“How did you feel about this groove I wrote?
Hope you got the message ladies take control
Don’t depend on no man to give you what you want
Keep that in mind next time you hear this song”

My mother has always had a thing for conventionally handsome, muscle-bound dudes. When I was a kid, post-pubescent, I guess, my mom and I would sit around and watch movies on boring Sunday afternoons. Nothing could ruin it faster than one of her exclamations.

“Ooh, look at Mel, isn’t he a hunk!” Mel Gibson would trot across the screen, brandishing a gun and squinting.

She loved that guy from Wiseguy, Ken Wahl, too. I just thought he looked greezy. She would hoot at construction workers with her best friend. Every one of those guys put me off my toast completely. Hairy, muscley, and weird.

Exhibit “A”

She would feel me out at the same time she was making her rude exclamations, like it was some kind of Gay Test. It was too late for her, though; I knew I liked girls when I was six years old and saw the Bananarama video for “Venus” on the MTV.

Anyway, I thought that I liked girls and that it was okay, until I came face-to-face with Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. I was about nine. He is to blame for my love for sketchy tall guys.

Exhibit “B”

He was so weird-looking…and so hot. I even liked it when he started freaking out and growing creepy hairs out of his back. I guess that’s good because I am now prepared for my future with Mr. Husband (who was, ironically, the first conventionally good-looking guy I ever dated).

My next love object was America’s Favorite Squeaky Hemmer-and-Hawer, Michael J. Fox.

Exhibit “C”

This tiny little man took over about three years of my fantasy life, in which we would hold hands and kiss sweetly. He would wear his giant sneakers, like in Back to the Future, and we would go to the movies. And stare at each other, I guess. I didn’t really know what to do with men then, which is good.

He was also the star of my first “erotic” dream which involved us together…holding hands…on a bed. I woke up very hot and bothered.

Finally, there is my Ugly Guy Love, which has come in many forms. Sometimes they are tall, sketchy, and ugly, like Neil from The Young Ones (don’t ask). Sometimes they are really goofy, like Steve Buscemi. I told my mom I had a crush on Steve and she totally lost her shit. Once she was done laughing she developed that far-off, how-have-I-failed-as-a-mother look.

But sometimes they are small and ugly, like my Rob Schneider Love.

Exhibit “D”

If Rob Schneider called me, he’d never have to pay for sex again.

In Other News

Remember that job I was pooping my pants about a couple of weeks ago? Not the computer-versus-human job, but the one for the next school year, where I get tuition waived and insurance paid? The writing center, yeah. I got it, hooray!

And now, before you think We at the offices of I, Asshole lead a completely charmed life, I must report that I think I failed Cataloguing 101. Failed. I got a 2.9 on my first paper and a 2.6 on my second one. Just completely didn’t get it. The third paper was a half-assed toss-off so I know I won’t get above a three on that. But I think I got 4.0s in my other two classes, which is depressing because of the disparity and relieving because it will absorb some of the damage to my GPA.

Although, how cool would it be when I’m all famous to have flunked out of library school? I will have to give this some more thought.

Busy, busy Asshole. It seems I am planning a party for 200, part of my duties as an elected officer. I still think it

I just knew it was over with one of my friends when I was sitting next to her and I saw a giant black hair sticking out of her face. I just couldn’t take my eyes off of it, the whole time we talked.

“Hey, Jerkface,” I said to myself. “You have two choices here: you can ignore that big black hair and hope she notices it later, or you can tell her out of the kindness of being a friend.”

I did neither. Stare, stare, stare. I had another drink. We talked for another hour. We could talk for hours without deriving much enjoyment out of it. I had never almost peed myself from laughing while talking to her, which is how I judge most of my friendships.

At one point, when I was really sliding down into the old martini glass, I started to really root for the hair. Her perfect skin…her delicate features…wouldn’t it be fabulous to think of her battling away at an encroaching man-beard every day?

Then the hair came dislodged. It was just a hair that had stuck to her face in the direction of her natural hair growth. I could see it still, now stuck to her neck. I was crushingly disappointed.

I didn’t call her again after that.

So what would a week at I, Asshole be without sex or dogs, or sex with dogs? Or what would it be without a boring story about one of my horrible piercing experiences or puking or puking on a new piercing? Yeah, I thought so. It would be milquetoast.

Well…when I was seventeen and hopelessly stuck in Butt-fucking Egypt, Illinois, my mom took pity on me and my drooping gothic depression and let me visit a friend who lived in Phoenix, Arizona. Hooray! The big city and freedom from parental tyranny for Christmas break!

My friend was Very Cool and I really wanted to inpress him with how much cooler I’d gotten in the four months since he’d moved away. So I put on my best punk rock gear (“when I was your age, you could wear spikes on an airplane”) and listlesslessly ringed my eyes with as much waxy black liner as my eyelids would hold. Whoa, I was cool. Don’t fuck with me, man, I’m on a trip.

OF COURSE I ordered drinks on the plane; what seventeen-year-old flying alone doesn’t try this? I was flying ATA (“Your vacation airline”) and they had tropical drinks galore. I think I had three Malibus and passed out. When I woke up, I was in Phoenix, and it was dark.

My friend met me at the airport (“are you okay, Asshole?”) and my response to him was less than enthusiastic. He had explained his living situation to me before, but it hadn’t really sunk in til I got there. He had a roommate who paid more rent for the use of the apartment’s only bedroom. My friend slept in the living room, and to use the only bathroom we had to walk through the roommate’s bedroom.

It was an uneventful evening; we chatted and he made me a pot of mac ‘n’ cheese since I was ravenous from my airplane binge drinking. I scarfed the whole pot.

Ooooog….bad idea. I was queasy and the roommate had already gone to bed, which limited access to the bathroom. I had just gotten there and didn’t want to barge in. Did the kitchen sink have a garbage disposal? No? Unnnnhh…

I ran outside the apartment and exploded over the railing, into the courtyard. I wonder what the people downstairs must’ve thought when it started raining macaroni? My friend patted my back and looked over the rail at the steaming pile of noodles on the ground. “Wow. Did you even chew, Asshole?”

Next scene: 7 a.m. the next morning.

The roommate had left for work and my friend and I were still dozing, he on his futon and me on my blow-up mattress. We stirred and looked at each other.

“How do you feel?”

“Bleah.”

We heard the jingle of rabies and ID tags against a collar; the familiar sound of someone taking their dog for a morning walk. My friend rose and opened the door for a little air. The sun was coming up and I could see palm trees- Phoenix in the winter is beautiful.

Suddenly the dogwalker broke the peaceful morning silence in the coutyard:

“NO, SPARKY! Don’t eat that!”

I just can’t stop thinking about my old roommate today. Does that ever happen to you? This person you don’t give a rat’s naughty bits about just keeps floating around in your head, uninvited.

His name was Ward, which apparently (he said) was short for Burton. Mr. Husband worked with him for a whole year when we had lost our previous roommate, and we invited him to come and take her place. At work, Ward was punctual, tidy, helpful, respectful- you know, all that Boy Scout good stuff you look for in a roomie. Once he moved in, it was another story.

The first red flag went up when I saw his stuff. First, a dresser and a bed, fine, fine. But then, a box labelled action figures. I thought okay, perhaps he’s a collector. Whatever. But once the box opened, I saw they were all loose. Some were missing weapons, or even legs. He was twenty-six years old, and was obviously still playing with the action figures. Ward placed them strategically all over his bedroom. One lizardman was hung by the neck and used as a decoration (or handle?) for the string that turned on his closet light. Another action figure, a vampire, was placed too strategically in the kitchen. The vampire attacked the top of my mother’s head early one morning when she opened the refrigerator door.

Ward, who was always freshly showered and a snappy dresser outside of the house, was a chronic slob inside. We would wake up in the morning to discover that Taco Bell wrappers from the previous night’s snack attack were still strewn all over the coffee table and floor. He would depart for work in a cloud of noxious boy cologne, after consuming his morning meal which was always orange juice and cereal, eaten from a giant plastic cup from a fast food joint. Though he owned spoons, Ward always ate his cereal with a fork.

Ward was also very clumsy. One time, while he was preparing breakfast, he spilled his juice all over the kitchen floor (“Oops, I forgot to tighten the lid before I shook it.”) and gave it a couple swipes with one of my dish towels. The sticky residue remained on the floor for days, eventually turning into a big grey dirt-coated spot until one of us got fed up and cleaned it up properly.

Sometimes Ward could be fun, though. When we needed a fourth he would play board games with us, or cards. He was usually too busy for this though, since he was almost always with an engaged woman that he was secretly in love with. She was a giantess, really, about 6’5″ or so. I could clearly see the connection between her and all of the “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman” posters in Ward’s room. I mean, who doesn’t lust after fifty-foot women, right?

The Giantess was also rich and bitchy, and spent her spare time riding horses around. Her horses probably prayed that they would go lame, so they wouldn’t have to lug her giant bones around anymore, or listen to her whiny voice. I had the misfortune of working with her at a coffee/gourmet foods counter at a Cost Plus. One of the Giantess’s confidantes at work secretly despised her, and so told me what she was cooking up behind my back. The Giantess wanted to move out of her parents’ house, but needed a roommate. Who did she want? Why, Ward, of course. Who cares if he still had eight months to go on our lease? The Giantess succeeded in luring Ward away, which was actually somewhat of a relief. It would have been great timing, in fact, if our other roommates hadn’t bailed on us at the same time, leaving us holding the bag for some steep rent. But it was all right. The house was quiet again.

Before Ward moved out, I had known what the Giantess was up to for a couple of weeks, which made things pretty tense at work. One day, as Ward was packing his things at home, I clocked in and saw her behind the counter right away. She was sweet as usual.

“Well, helloooo, Asshole. How are you today?” This was the breaking point for me.

“Don’t you ‘hello’ me. I know what you’re up to, you jerk. I’ll thank you to never speak to me again.” For a giant woman she had a very small mouth, and at that moment the little hinge of her jaw swung shut with a petite snap. The Giantess huffed off. I knew what I told her was impractical, since we worked together, but I just couldn’t stand her any longer.

She narced me out to the boss (how lame for a twenty-five year old woman to handle a problem this way) who called me into her office. I explained the whole thing (she knew Ward; he had worked at her store a long time before transferring to another one) and the boss was fairly sympathetic. She told me I could quit that day, and she would still give me a good recommendation, because I was a good worker and she knew that the Giantess and I couldn’t spend another shift together.

Later, I heard that Ward moved into the same apartments as our other roommates who had bailed on us. They told us that they had seen Ward, and that he was happy and actually had a girlfriend, even. I think they were making that part up.

I’m hoping this will be the end of thinking about Ward and the Giantess. Sometimes you have to exorcise things to get rid of them, don’t you think?

To say the least, I had a very dysfunctional relationship with my stepfather when I was growing up. He would get in my face and say things like, “It doesn’t matter how well you hide things. I know what you’re up to and I will catch you.” When I was about fourteen I figured out this simply wasn’t true- I mean, how could any one person be everywhere all the time? And his desire to control me only led to the creation of a brilliant liar. How could anyone behave themself in a situation like this, where it’s just assumed you’re up to something all the time?

My sophomore year I had a friend whose reason for existing was to fit in with the cool clique. Kelly was a great person; she was intelligent, funny, and had a lot going for her in her own right. But she simply wouldn’t rest until she was in with the cool kids. And, as her best friend, she was determined to take me with her. I knew I was not “popular” material, but I thought it would be a fun ride.

One night, her mom and dad left us alone at her house with her fuck-up older sister who was newly dropped out of college and sitting around doing shots of vodka with her friends. I had just come up from the rec room in the basement where one of the sister’s friends and I had just finished feeling each other up. When I surfaced into the dining room, I saw that Kelly had joined her sister and was now getting a drunk on herself.

“Hey, Asshole, join us. We’re playing quarters.”

I sat down and took a couple of shots when it was my turn.

“Oh, shit!” Kelly said, looking at the clock on the wall.

“What?” I said.

“The float meeting! It starts in five minutes!” I had forgotten all about that stupid thing. I was just getting a good buzz on and Kelly wanted to ruin it by spending the rest of the night attaching little strips of tissue paper to a giant hawk that was made out of chicken wire. Since the popular kids always participated in corny activities like this, Kelly wanted to be there too so she could get her name in the yearbook next to theirs. It was a short walk to the neighbor girl’s house where it was being hosted and we talked along the way.

“What did you and Eric do in the basement?” The question exploded out Kelly as soon as we were out of earshot of her house and her sister’s friends.

“Oh, you know,” I said, too casually. “We just messed around and stuff. Kissed.”

“AND?”

“And, he took it out.”

“Took what out?”

“His penis.”

“Ack! are you serious? What was it like?”

I had to think about that. It was pretty different than anything else I’d seen. “Well, it was…sort of like a hot dog.”

“A hot dog!”

“Yeah, a peeled hot dog.” Kelly laughed pretty hard at that.

I don’t remember much of the meeting. It was tedious work and the cool kids gossiped about those of their cadre who hadn’t made it. I remember they were glad to see Kelly but mostly ignored me, except when the class president asked me if I was drunk.

Finally, Kelly felt she had fulfilled her bowing and scaping quotient for the evening and we headed back to her place. I was, sadly, sober again. The evening culminated with she and I climbing into her parents hot tub with our clothes on, much to the amusement of her sister’s friends. I was due home at nine and so walked the three minutes back to my house. My stepdad said “hello” to me when I walked in. I was still dripping a little.

“Did you have a good time?” he said, walking towards me.

“No,” I said, and hung my head, but was careful to maintain eye contact.

“What happened to you?”

“Oh, Dad. The meeting was at Erica’s house. Everyone was kind of ignoring me and then a couple of the popular guys pushed me into her pool. Everyone laughed.” My eyes brimmed with tears.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said sympathetically, without a trace of suspicion.

“I think I’m just going to take a shower and then go to bed.”

I stepped out of my squishy shoes and went up to my room. I guess he thought it was pretty likely that I was that unpopular. I had cheap thrills aplenty after that night, once I realized how to get away with it.