Once, I had a friend named Chuck. I met him in my psych class because he immediately began talking to me, the very first day.

He decided inside of ten minutes that we should start dating; after twenty he knew that we were meant to be together forever.

Despite this, Chuck’s intensity was one of the things I appreciated about him.

A few weeks after I met him (and a week before the Homecoming dance), my boyfriend uncerimoniously dumped me. I was now fair game, right? Chuck asked me to the dance and I accepted, and even went out and bought a new dress for the occasion. Conveniently, my best friend was asked along by Chuck’s friend, so I had someone with me that I knew. The group we were going with were pretty cool kids in a marginal way- we were all flamboyant weirdoes but everyone knew us, so we were all a good fit.

The new dress was a mistake; we never even made it to the dance.

After a nice (to the boys’ credit) Italian dinner we were taken to Chuck’s, where a house devoid of parental authority awaited us.

So we could be alone for a few minutes, Chuck took me out to pick up a couple of cases of beer. He was sincere in his romantic intentions; we had a nice moment listening to ” Nightswimming”, after which he tried to kiss me. I ducked him since I was still smarting over recently being dumped by my ex.

As soon as we arrived, Chuck and his friends went into a sudden death drinking match. To make up for his recently damaged ego, Chuck rapid-fire drank six beers, and promptly vomited into his kitchen trashcan. Sexy! He was instantly drunk, despite his system’s rejection of most of the beer. My friend and I sat on the couch, watching, while we timidly sipped our single beers. A few minutes later my friend left to go make-out with her date, so I was left alone with Chuck. We went into his room.

There wasn’t much to it; just a bed without a frame and some scattered belongings. What I noticed right away, however, was his nunchuku.

“Wow! Where did you get these?”

“My Dad got them for me in Chicago. Watch this.” Chuck proceeded to give me a display with his nunchuku that I had previously only seen in bad Kung-Fu movies on late-night cable.

“Gosh, you’re good at that.”

“Yep. Thanks.” Chuck thought for a moment. “You know, everytime I look at these things it makes me think of something.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

Chuck did not ever mince words.

“Well, I’ve always wanted to see one end of these inside a girl’s vagina.”

Oh dear.

“And I’ve got twenty bucks that says you won’t do it.”

“Make it forty, motherfucker, and I’ll swing em around.”

*************

I didn’t see Chuck much after that. I hooked up with another guy who didn’t have an orifice fetish. But I still heard about the many fantastic doings of Chuck.

For instance, my best friend had a science class with him; the teacher asked if anyone would be willing to volunteer various secretions (such as saliva) for viewing under the microscope. According to my friend, the next day Chuck brought in a sample of semen in an ” I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” tub.

“It was really crazy! He put it on the slide, and they were so fresh they were still wiggling around. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

For a moment I felt a pang that I hadn’t assented to becoming the girlfriend of the gutsiest person I knew.

We went out as friends a few times after that. He told me about his life. He told me that he really regretted his relationship with his last girlfriend because he had always faked orgasms with her. I found this revelation perplexing; Chuck was an admitted chronic masterbator and had even brought some of his spoils into school. Until this point, I hadn’t realized that men could fake orgasms.

Once when we went out he showed me his penis, which surprisingly I hadn’t seen up to that point. Chuck was having an insecure moment while we were talking in his car. Suddenly, he whipped it out. Chuck had the weirdest penis I had ever seen; he made it get hard and it was only about a couple inches long, and looked like it was about three inches wide- the closest I can come to describing it is to say it looked like a potato.

“What do you think? Is it too small?”

“No,” I lied. “It looks fine to me.”

About a month later, Chuck disappeared.

We knew he dropped out. Some people heard he had moved to France; others heard he was in Alaska.

I didn’t think about him much after that, until I had a party at my house. The parents were in Las Vegas, and I had a mellow soiree with about 12 people including my current boyfriend.

After several bong hits, and around about 11:30, the doorbell rang. It was Chuck.

“Hey- how ya been?”

He had lost about 100 pounds and looked like he had gained about five years.

“Come in! Where have you been?”

“Well, I became a Zen monk in New Orleans. Now I’m back.”

“Great. I’m having a party. Do you want a beer?”

Chuck informed me that he was going by the kinder, gentler moniker ‘Charlie’ now. He was after a friend of mine all evening and ended up with her in the ‘rents Jacuzzi.

Good old Chuck.