Wake Me Up For Brunch

Haven’t They Heard of Butt Plugs?

2005-12-12T05:25:00.000-05:00

"Oh, this happens all the time. A lot of people don’t seem to realize that once an object moves past the sphincter, it’s almost impossible to remove without a visit to the ER."
-- TRIAGE NURSE

As you may or may not know (and I reckon you don’t) I volunteer in the emergency room of a hospital.

Just previous to my thrilling incarnation as a part-time volunteer, I had been warned that I would see some mega-weird shit traipsing its way into the ER. Ergo, I am pretty much unfazed by what I am confronted with.

But *ahem* I just have to ask…

… I mean, maybe someone out there can… um, educate me as to why…

:::gazes off into the distance:::

Oh, I’m sorry. Where was I? What was I talking about again?

Hmmm? Oh. Well. Of course. The ER. How clumsy of me to lose my train of thought.

Really, I just have a question. A tiny little pinprick of a question.

Why would a man want his girlfriend to shove a beer bottle up his ass during sexual hi jinks?

What moves a man to say — oh, I don’t know — something along the lines of “Gee, ‘Sally’, this sexual experience I’m sharing with you is simply the mostest. Say, know what would make it even peachier? Why don’t you shove that beer bottle up my ass.”

Is this part of the general public’s sexual repertoire, or an aberration? Forgive my ignorance, but my sporadic joke of a sex life is pretty much of the white-bread variety, if you catch my drift. Nothing supremely exotic, erotic, or particularly invasive ever happens to your’s truly.

Why would a straight man want a beer bottle up his ass?

Let’s presume for a second that the man did not specifically request an assault on his anus. Let’s imagine that, driven to the heights of passion, ‘Sally’ decides on her own that a beer bottle invading the rectum of her beloved would catapult the proceedings into a new realm of ecstasy and wonderment.

I’m not so sexually stupid that I don’t realize that alcohol has a hand in this… practice, for want of a better word.

But(t) how drunk do you have to be? I mean, I’ve been so drunk that I’ve barked at a neighbor’s dog and managed to convince my drunk friends that I was ‘communicating’ with the confused animal. I’ve been so drunk that I erroneously informed my former fiancé ‘Dan’ that I would marry him.

I’ve been close to black-out drunk, and got all sloppy and sentimental (according to my friends) and started sobbing when ELO’s Telephone Line came on the radio and it reminded me (I guess) of my childhood and all of the happy times I had torturing my baby sister. This was the party in which I locked myself into the bathroom for two hours, causing the other partygoers to pee in the bushes. And I don’t really remember it, because I was shit-faced.

However, I have never been so drunk that I’ve slammed a beer bottle into someone’s ass, or even thought about it for that matter.

Nor have I entertained that request. Ever. And people, as I’ve pointed out, most of the men who are around me are homosexual! You would think after all this time that at least one homosexual man would have asked me to put something in his ass, but(t) alas! It has not happened.

I’m beginning to think my gay friends aren’t attracted to me.

‘My First Boyfriend’ – The Preamble

2005-11-30T01:27:00.000-05:00

When I was twenty years old, I went off to college.

I was painfully shy, and mortified at the prospect of meeting new people and trying to fit in. The first day of class, I slipped into a seat and concentrated on becoming invisible, something I excelled at.

It didn’t escape my notice that I had, in my haphazard way, picked a seat right in front of a gorgeous male classmate. I desperately hoped that he didn’t think I had chosen the seat because I wanted him to pay attention to me; that I was being flirtatious and in-his-face. I had simply plunked down at the first desk I came to, eager to hurry up and sit before I did something embarrassing.

God, I hope he doesn’t think I picked this seat because of him. I hope he doesn’t think I like him or anything. I only really saw him as I was sitting down. I’ll drop out of school if he doesn’t realize that.

Yeah, I was so self conscious that this is the way I thought.

Now, this was the 1980’s, and fashion was pretty much taking an atrocious turn. Think Olde-Tyme Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.

For reasons which now escape me, I didn’t dress like a shy girl. I guess the influence of the era’s fashionistas was so pervasive that not even a bashful chick who hated to be looked at could escape it.

I actually wore little hand-crocheted ankle socks paired with pumps… and jeans! And I apparently did this without feeling like a reject from the movie set of Valley Girls. I pulled my long hair in a ponytail on top of my head. Smack-dab on top of my head.

I did this on a regular basis back then.

I want to throw up just thinking about it.

The morning ritual preceding my inaugural appearance at college had moved me to include an additional flourish to my hairstyle. I had wrapped a multi-colored leg warmer around the base of my ponytail.

I dunno, I think I had seen Cyndi Lauper wear her hair like that in a video.

Before class, I had ducked into a rest room to pee, and was complimented on my ensemble by a nice fellow student. Looking back, I think she was sincere. All of my female classmates appeared to get their outfit cues from MTV, and in the time between high school and college I had strived to perfect the art of dressing for the status quo.

As I sat there in my seat and thought about the compliment, I began to feel more comfortable. I’m cool! I thought. I should wear my sunglasses at night.

And then I heard the incredulous whisper behind me.

“Oh. My. God. Are you wearing a sock in your hair?”

I could feel the blush creep up from underneath the thick rolled collar of my acrylic sweater and crawl up my neck. It rushed over my cheeks in a hot swarm, infusing the dead end of my scalp and tickling the roots of my tightly coiffed tresses.

I tried to concentrate on what the instructor was saying. Something about the book store, and what books were and weren’t needed for class. Something about tests.

“You’re wearing a sock in your hair.” There was a touch of awe in his whisper.

With elaborate care I opened one of my notebooks and focused my attention on the instructor’s half-assed chicken scratches written on the blackboard. I surreptitiously cast my eyes over the room to gauge the mood of my classmates. Were they aware of the drama unfolding in their midst? Blessedly, it appeared they did not.

Finally, the class ended.

With the clatter of books being flung into knapsacks and book bags, the sudden chatter of students temporarily released from the bonds of academia, and the rustle of people heading for the exit, I surmised that it was now safe to face my tormentor.

I turned to him and hissed “It’s a leg warmer!”

I slammed my things into my bag, adjusted my crocheted anklets, and scurried from the room. It’s hard to scurry in pumps but I managed just fine.

He caught up with me in the hall.

“I’m Jeff,” he said. “Are you mad at me? I was hoping we could be friends.”

And that was the beginning.

We had lunch together, and discovered that we had the same major and would be sharing the same classes.

Despite our inauspicious beginning, it was shaping up to be a beautiful friendship.

Our next class, he hastened to sit behind me. During the lecture, I felt a little nudge on my shoulder. It was a note from Jeff.

This was to be a pattern for the next few years, these in-class notes of Jeff's. Sometimes he was not sitting directly behind me, and would get classmates to pass the notes to me.

I would look down at the desk, and a little folded piece of paper would be lying there. I would stealthily open it, smiling, shielding it from the disinterested gaze of my fellow classmates. Now and then it would be penned in brightly colored ink, on other occasions rendered in the muted charcoal and light grays of pencil lead. It always contained the same thing.

A little drawing of a sock.

Momisms- part 1

2005-11-27T01:24:00.000-05:00

I hear loud, exasperated sighs coming from the vicinity of my Mom’s computer, so I go to investigate.

ME: What’s wrong?

MOM [frantically clicking on the “send” button on her email account]: I’m trying to send an email! [clickclick!]… But the computer… I can’t…*sigh*[clickclick!] I just want to send an email!

ME: Well, let’s calm down here. Maybe the computer’s just slow—

MOM [verging on hysterics]: I’ve been trying for a while! [clickclick!] *sigh* I just want to send an email. WHY won’t it let me send an email?!?!

ME [looking at the screen]: Okay, where is the email you’re trying to send?

MOM: It’s not up there yet! I want to send one!

ME: Have you written it yet?

MOM [giving me an annoyed look]: That’s what I’m trying to do! I just want to send an email! It won’t let me! [clickclick!]

ME: Okay, first you have to compose an email. See the compose button? You click on that, you write an email, and then you send it.

MOM: Oh, okay!

ME: You can’t send an email that doesn’t exist.

Kula is an Exhibitionist!

2005-11-19T05:23:00.000-05:00

If you have not visited StuffOnMyCat yet, you haven't lived.

Book Review

2005-11-19T04:06:00.000-05:00

I have reviewed the latest soon-to-be-released offering by the startlingly prolific Nicholas Sparks.

Oh, you're welcome.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An Enduring and Undying Perpetual Love
by Nicholas Sparks

review by Jillian Staci
*note* spoiler alert!

The novel begins with Tacie Bradshaw sitting on a porch swing outside of a five-and-dime in Winston-Salem North Carolina, circa 2005. She is breathlessly anticipating the arrival of the “love of her life,” a man named Trey whom she has never seen in the flesh, but with whom she has shared a voluminous email and message board communication.

Through flashbacks, we learn that these two cyber-lovers “met on the net; an example of virtual-love at first keystroke” while visiting an off-color but amusing website, a place whose inception was inspired by a shared appreciation of the female breast, given the website’s largely male constituents.

Unbeknownst to her unseen suitor, Tacie has recently undergone a bungled double mastectomy by an alcoholic surgeon who (we glean from further flashbacks) fancied himself in love with Tacie when she was a teen, but who was cruelly rejected in favor of a brief fling with a young man from the wrong side of the tracks with “wonderfully shaped, muscular arms” and an “understanding of Nirvana, particularly Kurt Cobain, that left Tacie dizzy and weak with wonder.”

In their internet correspondence, Trey rhapsodizes about his fascination and attraction to the bounteous female chest, and how much he would relish “nuzzling and fondling the ripe, firm richness of the breasts lurking beneath the thin silk in Tacie’s [now outdated] profile photo.”

In her turn, Tacie sends him emails detailing her admiration of the male arm, “provocative curving biceps, your masculine forearms, evoking delights such as impromptu lifts into the stratosphere of our combined aura. Your strong limbs thrusting my limpid body heavenward, sturdy hands on my thighs and waist, fingers imprinting my flesh.”

All of this playful banter is interspersed with extensive declarations of love, meticulously discussed and analyzed, as the two plunge deeper and deeper under an amorous, albeit celibate spell.

As the story leisurely winds down, we are brought back to the present (and an apprehensive Tacie) nervously awaiting Trey’s arrival from the quaintly restored lighthouse he lives in on Hilton Head. Certain of horrified rejection, Tacie closes her eyes as a taxi stops at the five-and-dime, revealing a figure wearing a red and green golf hat (“I will wear a red and green golf hat. My darling! You will not fail to recognize me. Wear the silk shirt and no bra.”) sitting in the back seat.

As footsteps crunch towards her, Tacie’s eyes fly open, “unveiling the dusky violet of her beloved irises to Trey’s hungry gaze; everything about her and on her was beloved,” and she gives a cry of shock and pain as she spies Trey standing in front of her… armless and crestfallen.

Trey falls on his knees in front of Tacie and, taking her trembling hand between his chin and shoulder, tearfully recounts how he lost both arms in Desert Storm. He bleakly admits his fear of her (imagined) rejection and derision of him as an “armless freak” and goes on to confess that he painstakingly pecked out his messages on the computer via a pencil held between his teeth, “its base scarred with a profusion of bite marks, each one a small but valid testament to his love.”

Tacie joyfully reaffirms her everlasting love for Trey, triumphantly divulging her own secret by dramatically popping the two prosthetic breasts out of her sweater. She then embraces Trey, “who could only mutely hug her with his heart”. They sob together “in a moist synchronized ballet of weeping; crying tears both wet and healing, like a summer rain on the blithe upright daffodils rising limblessly from fertile loam surrounding Trey’s lighthouse, itself armless and unaware” and proceed to live happily ever after.

‘Oink’ If You Have Parasites

2005-11-15T00:19:00.000-05:00

“STELLA!” screamed the worm dolefully. “STELLL LAAA!”

I once had a romantic relationship with a man that lasted for years. We even became engaged one night after I had downed two Long Island iced teas in a row at Red Lobster.

No sooner had I slammed the empty tumbler onto the table and daintily dabbed at my lips with my sleeve than I found myself vaguely listening to the unlikely words:
“I love you. Will you marry me?”

“Yeah, right! Okey dokey, big fella!” I answered in what he naively took as genuine acquiescence.

Astoundingly, the guy bought me an engagement ring the very next day. I felt honor bound to accept the diamond bedecked token seeing that it cost “a pretty penny” as he put it.

Much to my surprise, his parents considered me a good influence on their son since I exercise, don’t do (illegal) drugs, lack a police record, and pride myself on being self-supporting. I also manage to impart a duplicitous but completely unintentional façade of patrician good breeding and cool Nordic dignity, no doubt adding to my appeal.

In what I considered a minor albeit unnerving breach of confidentiality, I later discovered that their son had assured them that I “didn’t get around” “didn’t have a lot of experience with men” and had “never been pregnant or had a disease.” All factual statements, but really none of his mater’s or pater’s business.

According to “Dan’s” (doubtless) biased reminiscence, his previous girlfriend was a perpetually depressed and woefully humorless goth chick with multiple genital piercings, a propensity to cut herself when anxious, and a history of abortions. The latter paid for by the magnanimous Dan.

“I don’t even know if all of those fetuses were mine,” Dan lamented to me late in our relationship, an admission I thought tacky of him.

Given Dan’s tasteless penchant for enlightening familial tête-à-têtes, his parents had despised the sporadically pregnant and clitorally enhanced goth babe almost from the beginning of her ill-fated dalliance with their little darling.

I was her exact opposite, hence my allure.

“God, I loved her so much,” Dan confessed over flickering candlelight on our second date, squeezing my hand for emphasis. “The sex was fantastic. Otherworldly. She could send me into another dimension.” He then shook himself out of his reverie and opined that two people could not base a healthy relationship strictly on sex.
“We tried, though,” he added wistfully.
His parents hoped that my good habits would rub off on Dan, a recovering marijuana addict who was often loathe to flee the easy chair strategically plunked in front of his large-screen TV.

I briefly considered actually going through with the wedding because I liked his family so much. Both of his parents were gourmet cooks, and they simply adored whipping up large tasty meals and watching me consume them with my customary gusto.

And then I found out that my future mother-in-law thought I was a pig.

“How much does she weigh?” she stage whispered to Dan as I gnawed on my fourth pork chop at the dinner table.

“I dunno. 105 pounds? Something like that,” Dan answered.

“How tall is she?” continued my soon to be ex-future mother-in-law.

“5’ 4”,’ muttered her son.

“And a half,” I mumbled around a mouthful of meat, “5’ 4” and a half.”

“Holy Toledo! She eats like a…”

uncomfortable silence.
“Pig?” suggested Dan.

The sentence rounded out by the wünderkind she had whelped, Dan’s mother momentarily relaxed. With renewed vigor, she leapt to her feet and resumed her mid-meal domestic duties, which primarily consisted of fetching milk, condiments, and napkins for the slovenly Dan. Tasks I rarely undertook.

Per Dan, I found out that she had several theories as to how I managed to reconcile my gargantuan appetite with my girlishly slender figure.

I had to be one of the following:
Bulimic
Diabetic
The victim of an overactive thyroid or other metabolic disorder
Crawling with worms
“WORMS?!” I later screeched at Dan. “She thinks I have worms?!”

“She thought it might be a possibility. She just can’t get over how much you eat.”

“So she thinks I may be hosting a gaggle of gluttonous WORMS in my intestines? Or maybe just one huge Marlon Brando-type worm sitting there in my digestive track, scarfing down my food and wallowing in obese self-importance?”

“I think Marlon Brando is dead,” mused Dan. He was inclined to hear only two or three words of whatever I said, latching onto those to form assorted retorts and thereby presenting an unconvincing charade of truly paying attention to me.

“And she thinks you drink like a sailor, but she admires the way you can handle it without getting drunk,” Dan thoughtfully continued in his delightfully offhand way.
“She couldn’t get over the way you drank three double bourbons the other night, and yet managed to be so soft-spoken, articulate, and polite. My people tend to get loud and obnoxious when they drink.”

“SOFT-SPOKEN and POLITE?!” I thundered in my patented roar. “ I certainly don’t remember that. You lyin’ SOB!”

“No, really, she said that.”

“Holy shit, I must have been drunk!”

Mating 102

2005-11-11T17:01:00.000-05:00

My (mis)Education Continues!...

…. So then I got older, and saw my first porn tape when I was 15.

It starred Marilyn Chambers, and she was a bad, bad girl in it.

People don’t believe me when I tell them this, but until I saw this tape, I did not know that there was any movement in sex.

I had never had sex, and mainstream movies at this time only showed sex-bound people in bed together, sometimes on top of one another, occasionally making out. But no thrusting, or none that I recall. If there was any thrusting, it must have gone right over my head, because I wasn’t expecting it.

I don’t recall How You Were Made mentioning any thrusting. The book simply left me with the impression that the erect penis was placed in the self-lubricated vagina, and the participants patiently waited for the semen to make its wacky journey, grinning inanely at one another all the while. The book also claimed that people didn’t always have sex to make babies, but also did it because it was pleasurable. I didn’t understand how it could be, but then I knew that grown-ups could be very weird and unfathomable.

I had seen my slutty cat Snowflake have sex with some sleazy looking tom cat who I know for a fact she didn’t really like, but there was no movement there, either. The tom simply climbed onto Snowflake and appeared to meditate while Snowflake flattened her ears and gazed off into the distance with the same pissed-off look she always wore on her mug. And then the tom withdrew, and Snowflake spit at him and swatted his rump as he loped off, no doubt to go tell his friends about what a skanky whore Snowflake was.

Neither one of them appeared to be enjoying themselves during the entirety of the raunchy proceedings.

I didn’t have a date until I was 19, and that was a disaster.

My co-worker fixed me up with someone who was friends with someone she wanted to go out with, and the four of us were supposed to go on a double date.

Unfortunately, my co-worker was sick on the night of the date, so my date, his friend, and I ended up cruising the main drag in Salisbury, NC to find my date’s friend a substitute date.

I’ve never understood the appeal of cruising. I was bored out of my gourd.

Finally, some girl ended up chatting with my date’s friend, entered the van at a red light, and proceeded to have sex with the dude in the back of the van while I rode up front with my putrid waste of a date, who commenced to throwing sly little glances at the back of the van (from which moans and thrusting could be divined) alternated with knowing looks at me.

I can’t believe that this is my life, I remember thinking. I’m going to kill my co-worker. I want to go home.

When I wouldn’t put out, my incredulous date took me home.

How You Were Made needs an updated edition of the book, showcasing teenagers having sex in the back of a van, complete with thrusting and moaning and all of the stupid shit a lot of people say during sex, *oh damn-damn-yeah-um-yeah-ah-uh*. I would like to see the illustrations accompanying that. Maybe they could title that edition How Trashy People Are Made and subtitle it Thrusting: Yes, There is Movement in Sexual Intercourse!.

“Oh, yeeah, he is just awful, he has a terrible reputation, just a complete horn-dawg,” my co-worker drawled at me later, referencing the guy she had set me up with and his sterling attributes.

“Why did you fix me up with him?” I inquired, even more astounded than my date was when I refused to dish out my virginity to a low-life piece of shit in the back of a stinky van that was driving up and down the main drag of a hick town in North Caro-fucking-lina.

“Waal, Ah just figured he needed a nahce girl so he could straighten out.”

“No,” I countered, “he needs a girl who is as bad as he is, so that he can keep himself occupied and the nice girls can go find nice guys to hang out with.” Sheesh.

Shortly thereafter, I started to attract only gay men, and my life embarked on a thrilling rollercoaster ride of humorous ups and downs revolving around my stubborn virginity, and how it continued to cling to me like a perpetually drunk unemployed loser who constantly tries to borrow money from you and insists on regaling you with long weepy stories of their sorry lot in life, all the while staying uninvited by your side in a cloying simulation of friendship.

Yeah, that was what my virginity was to me.

It was embarrassing having it for some reason I couldn’t fathom, but I was too bashful to try to establish a romantic relationship and have my boyfriend eventually discover - (in what I was sure would be a mortifying blood-soaked event – hell, I couldn’t even use tampons and I was sure that my first time would be painful) - that I was pathetically untouched and pure as the driven.

And I wasn’t about to have a casual encounter with someone whose opinion of me I didn’t give a fig about. Just your classic catch-22, really.

A Skit

2005-11-09T00:02:00.000-05:00

A companion piece to I Would Gladly Eat Any Of You

Alive and Kickin’: The Rescue of Jill
Airdate: undetermined

Setting: A desolate, snow-swept expanse of ground, apparently on the side of a huge, isolated mountain. The wreckage of a plane is half submerged in the snow, and twisted metal and mangled airplane seats are strewn about in a forlorn tapestry of doom.

Human body parts litter the area, most of them shorn of flesh. Broken femurs and humerus bones, emptied of marrow, nestle on numerous patches of bloody snow.

A small figure, wrapped in a torn coat and clutching a box of Hostess snack cakes, huddles on a makeshift bench.

In the distance, several men in thick parkas, their lower faces swathed in woolen scarves, approach the plane. They are carrying walkie-talkies in their gloved hands and various implements of rescue are partly visible from large satchels slung over their shoulders.

RESCUER #1:
[into the walkie-talkie]
We are approaching what appears to be the wreckage of the plane. No sign of life yet, but – wait! I think I see movement!

The rescuers notice the small woman as she reaches into the carton of snack cakes and voraciously wolfs one down in three quick bites.

RESCUER#2:
Carlos, I see a survivor!

RESCUER #1:
My God, it’s a miracle! Let’s hurry!

They both sprint awkwardly towards the figure, hampered by the equipment and their concern. They stop yards away from the woman, who has now struggled to her feet. One of them steps forward and grasps her arm as she appears to stumble.

JILLIAN:
Geez, I’m glad to see you guys. I thought I would die out here.

The rescuers gaze around at the body parts, horrified. One rescuer notices a hand attached to a stump of forearm, skewered on a bent coat hanger and smoldering on top of a nearby fire. Twinkie wrappers speckle the snow underneath the bench.

RESCUER #2:
What happened here?

JILLIAN:
Oh, I’ve just been hanging out. ‘Hanging out and hanging loose’ as they say in the vernacular. I thought I would never get rescued.

RESCUER #1:
Are you the only survivor?

JILLIAN:
Uh, yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty much just me.

She notices the rescuers scanning the carnage, pity and disbelief reflected in their faces. Intestines and other offal glisten in the brassy noon day sun.

RESCUER #1:
Everybody else died in the crash?

JILLIAN:
...Yeah, uh, that’s what happened all right. They, um, pretty much croa.., I mean, died right away. I knew I had to survive so I .. I ate them. It seemed like the right thing to do.

They all pause. A sudden harsh wind sweeps a banner of snow across the crash site.

RESCUER #2:
But the plane only went down five hours ago.

JILLIAN:
[proffering the box to the rescuers]:
Twinkie?

I Would Gladly Eat Any Of You

2005-11-07T02:37:00.000-05:00

"It's like communion - from their death, we live."
--A Survivor in Alive
“Welcome to EatHufu.com, home of Hufu –
The Healthy Human Flesh Alternative!”
--yummy welcoming message from eathufu.com

I once worked at Wachovia Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Wachovia Center is a tall, majestic structure with twenty-nine floors and an unabashedly phallic appearance. Competing banks have given it the rather undignified nickname of The Penis Building, a moniker blithely disregarded by its hordes of poker-faced denizens slaving away within its hallowed and perpetually rigid shaft.

Well, except for me, even though I was careful not to utter it between the hours of 7:50 am and 5:15 pm on weekdays. Only after I had scurried from its base, crossed over to the connecting parking garage (“The Scrotum”) and zoomed onto Main Street did I feel free to poke fun at the big prick.

“We need to getcha an outside elevator in the shape of a big hand,” I cackled at it from the safety of my Mazda early on in my employ.

A sophomoric, marginally ribald comment such as this would cause me to simmer for hours in the warm satisfying juices of my puerile creativity, and I would hasten to share my latest bon mot with any handy non-Wachovian in my vicinity.

They were going to build it out of black marble, but then they would have had to add at least six more stories

I found many willing listeners, as immature as I, who would chuckle along with me as I cracked soft-core one-liners aimed at the architectural folly designed by Cesar Pelli and Associates and erected (hehe!) by… I forget who built it. Fuck it, I just wanted to be able to type erected.

I managed to remain sufficiently professional during working hours, with a few lapses now and then. None that involved me saying “The Penis Building” out loud or anything like that. No, I much preferred to give my co-workers the impression that I was an aspiring cannibal, for example.

"Soylent Green is Baptists!” --me

One bright shiny day, I found myself in a Wachovia Center break room with a flock of my adorable co-workers, casually joining a conversation about the movie Alive which some of my co-workers had recently seen on DVD or cable or something.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to eat me,” announced one of us minions, a devout Southern Baptist.

Characteristically, I rose to the bait.

“But if you were dead, why would you care? It’s not like you’d say, ‘OUCH! Stop that!’” I replied, mentally topping his shiny bald Baptist head with a sprig of parsley.

Now a little background on this guy is in order.

He was one of those bible-thumpers who goes to church two or three times a week, thinks women should only wear dresses or skirts (with the hem below the knees), believes wives must be subservient to their husbands, and is convinced that non-Christians (specifically non-Southern Baptists) are, upon death, going straight to “the hot place” as he so imaginatively put it.

He was my antithesis in almost every way.

Knowing I was a heathen, he considered it his Christian duty to try to “save me” although it was clear that he didn’t relish the challenge. He took to morosely shadowing my flea-bitten hell-bound nubility, and would often show up in a break room shortly after I had made my spectacular and wildly applauded entrance.

No matter how I tried, I couldn’t seem to shake him, short of ducking into a women’s bathroom.

“Does God give you brownie points after the Rapture if you save me?” I asked him faux-earnestly at one point during our acquaintance. “Will he let you sit at Billy Graham’s lunch table when you go to your reward?”

My sarcastic rejoinders to his redundant Christian platitudes and frequent ominous allusions to “the hot place” would leave him with a sad and dejected countenance, bitter failure and dashed hopes glistening in his rheumy eyes.

“There is no lunch in heaven,” he intoned solemnly.

I had no doubt that discussing Alive with this yokel would leave us both chortling with glee and basking in a freshly-minted comradeship. Arms flung around each other’s shoulders; me vowing to trade in my Victoria’s Secret camis and trendy Marshall’s business suits for long sleeved tops and ankle-length skirts; him with a newfound appreciation for biting facetiousness and zestfully amusing wisecracks.

Bewilderingly, that’s not what happened.

“Wouldn’t it be a good thing to be able to keep fellow human beings alive by leaving them your flesh as nourishment? How can that possibly be an evil thing?” I queried.

Baptist Dude (“BD” for our purposes) demurred, naturally, and launched into a long-winded soliloquy about the various sacrilegious aspects of cannibalism, and how it is unacceptable under any circumstances. I can’t remember exactly what he said since I dozed on and off during key points in his speech, but I did get the main thrust: people eating people pisses God off.

“Well, I’m going to Hell anyway, so I might as well chow down on a few corpses if I get the chance,” I shared.

BD rolled his eyes to me in fear.

“But if I was in a plane crash with you, and I was dead, I would think that you couldn’t bring yourself to eat me, knowing how I feel.”

“If the only thing between me and starvation was your dead body, I would eat you,” I informed my unhappy co-worker.

“But, Jillian, I would hope that you would have respect for my religious beliefs and not eat me. I would never eat you if the situation were reversed.”

“Go ahead and eat me. I don’t care.”

The conversation was taking the kind of ridiculous turn that I thrive on. I few of our more daring compatriots in corporate bondage lingered in the break room, relishing the dramatic tension permeating the usually stale atmosphere.

Sensing their electric presence around BD and me, I fathomed that our fellow co-workers couldn’t have been more mesmerized if the two of us had suddenly donned top hats and shuffled through a little synchronized tap dance together à la Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle of Young Frankenstein fame.

“But I don’t want to be eaten!” BD uttered plaintively.

“If I was starving, I would eat you in a heartbeat.”

“I think if it came down to that, you would have respect enough for me and my beliefs to not eat me.”

Given the eclectic nature of my attention span, I was rapidly growing bored. The novelty was wearing off, if you will.

I was also getting hungry, what with all this talk of eating.

“I want to hear you tell me that you wouldn’t eat me!”

“You know what?” I exclaimed, “I’ll tell you the truth. If we’re in a plane together and it goes down and you croak, I’m gonna eat you. Even if unopened cans of ravioli and can openers are scattered about the wreckage of the plane, I’ll still eat you. I’ll eat you first. I’ll crack off the top of your skull and use it as a bowl for my ravioli.”

“And you won’t be able to do a damn thing about it,” I concluded.

Later in the year, BD divorced his wife and married me in Las Vegas. Elvis was our witness. I swear to God.

I would eat those words, but I’m sure they would leave a bad taste in my mouth.

My Breasts, Redux

2005-11-06T02:36:00.001-05:00

"Don't write about your breasts anymore. We're all making fun of you behind your back."

- random 'friend'

They came. They saw. They conquered...

Time passed, and my breasts telepathically demanded that I buy them more boob-appropriate clothing.

Utterly aghast as I did so, I found myself purchasing the type of clothes I normally would not have been caught dead in.

Form fitting bodysuits. Pants with suspenders, which, when worn with a bodysuit makes grown men and teenage boys tremble with delight. Gauzy little camis and tiny cleavage baring tops ordered from a Victoria’s Secret catalog stolen from my neighbor’s mailbox.

I used to make fun of chicks who wore this type of clothing.

“Look at that,” I would sneer, digging my elbow into my buddy, Sam, as a scantily clad vixen sauntered past us at Hanes Mall. Sam was helping me pick out some window treatments at a J.C. Penney’s sale because my then-current window treatments consisted of sheets thumb-tacked to the wall. Sam says that the decorating scheme at my apartment would cause Stevie Wonder to scream in horror.

“What?” said a startled Sam, tearing his eyes away from some firm young male buns.

“That chick that just walked by. Wearing what looks like Victoria’s Secret underwear! As outerwear! What an attention whore!” Sam twisted his head around to look at her.

“Girlfriend, if I was a woman, that is the way I would dress! Why, you should see some of the little outfits I wear for Teenie. You want to see an attention whore? Sweetie, you are walking with one!” Teenie is Sam’s lover. Teenie is not the name his parents gave him, I don’t think. It’s hard to say, this being the South. Southerners do wacky things when naming their spawn.

You would think that a gay man would not want to be called ‘Teenie’. I mean, the connotations. But I digress.

“Girl, we should drop by Victoria’s Secret while we are here and get you something sexy. I don’t know who picks out your dreary little ensembles, but he or she needs to be shot post haste and put out of our collective misery.”

“Go blow yourself,” I grumbled, sending Sam into peals of laughter. That’s one of the things that I love about my gay friends, they pretend so convincingly to find me amusing.

What was I writing about again? Oh yes, my breasts.

I found myself wearing tasteful *cough* little camisoles underneath my boxy business jackets when I went to work. The financial advisors started treating me with more respect, including some of the ladies. All of the men I worked with were married or had girlfriends or fiancés, of course, but I like to think that a few of them fantasized about me.

Inevitably, following my work day when I shed my jacket at Applebee’s or an ‘Alive after Five’ event, I would sense a frisson of antagonism from nearby women as my bosom swelled triumphantly above and within whatever over-priced lace and silly doo-dad bedecked Victoria’s Secret monstrosity I happened to be wearing at the time.

I didn’t really care, since women in general were beginning to get on my nerves. They were all the time telling me that I needed to do something with my hair, and recommending some hair salon which only charged $75.00 for a cut and color. Seventy-five dollars! Do you know how much bourbon and fried cheese that could buy? A helluva lot, that’s how much!

My gay friends did the same thing, of course, but at least they knew when to shut up about it. They sort of figured it was a lost cause. But women… they’ll nag you and nag you until you just want to haul off and punch them in the chops.

And then I quit work and went to nursing school. It was the largest class ever in the history of the nursing program at Forsyth Tech, but there were only five men in it.

From the day I walked them into class, I could sense sadness emanating from my breasts in much the way I imagine Tara Reid’s breasts do all of the friggin’ time.

“Call me Dubay!” boomed the tall black gentleman with the exotic African accent during classroom break the first day, bending slightly at the waist and then straightening up. He reeked of Old World manners and graciousness.

‘Dubay’ was his last name, he explained to me. His first name was an unfathomable conglomerate of consonants. Americans were unable to pronounce his first name, he informed me happily, so he always introduced himself with “Call me Dubay!” in his delightful accent and with his charming little bow.

“I am friends with Frank,” he said to me, indicating a balding dude who was standing on the other side of the class, chatting with some chick and apparently oblivious to us. “Frank and I work together. I like Frank, he help me with my English. Frank would like to examine your breasts,” he finished nonchalantly.

“Say what?” I asked, thinking I had misheard him, since I was pretty much fixated on my breasts all the time. This self-involvement was beginning to intrude upon my more cerebral pursuits, and I often found myself straying to the Victoria’s Secret website and picturing myself in one of their pricey, yet surprisingly flimsy and impractical bras, when I should have been doing my online banking or selling my Lucent stock.

Dubay appeared too dignified and polite to simply blurt out something about a lady’s secondary sexual characteristics.

“Yes!” Dubay assured me gravely but emphatically, “Frank tell me, he would like to give you a breast exam!”

“Ah, well, that’s awfully considerate of your friend to be so concerned about the health and well being of… my breasts,” I said.

“Yes!” Dubay agreed, gazing reverently at the twins. “Frank is a good man!”

Mating 101

2005-10-28T00:29:00.000-04:00

I had a strong suspicion when I learned about the birds and the bees at the age of eight that I would most likely find it difficult to find someone willing to put the boots to my (even then) sarcastic carcass.

Even before my mother got the delightfully graphic book How You Were Made out of the library, I knew (along with my little sister) that babies grew inside a mommy’s tummy, and eventually were discharged from the mommy’s vagina; like a squalling, incontinent, drool-producing ball barreling out of a cannon (at least that is the way I imagined it.) But that’s all I knew.

Baby production did not interest me in the slightest, since I had absolutely no desire to breed, and was confident that the adult version of me would feel the same. At best I found babies to be boring, and at their worst they were downright annoying. All they did was sleep, cry, and poop, and their utter helplessness inspired contempt in my breast rather than protectiveness. Not that I would have ever hurt a baby, I just avoided them assiduously.

My sister, Holly, on the other hand, has always wanted to be a mother, even as a little girl. She thought boys and men were icky, however (in her estimation, the penis she saw on a baby boy was the ugliest thing she had ever seen) so even though she knew she had to get married before getting a baby in her belly (this was a long time ago) she was not going to kiss, snuggle with, or even touch her husband.

She had it all planned at the age of five. At the wedding, when the priest said “…and you may now kiss the bride,” she would share a little air smooch with the groom. No dancing at the reception, because that would necessitate touching. No feeding each other cake.

Cooties, you understand, must be avoided at all costs.

I imagined that the sexes would be separated at the reception, with the girls on one side of the room and the boys on the other, an invisible but respected line dividing the two halves of the floor. And a rollicking good time had by all!

“What are you going to do for fun at your wedding? Play Barbie dolls? Watch Speed Racer?” I deadpanned, already a smart-ass at the age of eight.

My sister couldn’t wait to grow up and start shooting babies out of her cootch. I didn’t want to grow up (I relished not having to work for a living) but did admit that it would be nice to stay up as late as I wanted and to eat dessert before dinner.

When one of our neighbors gave birth to a baby and distributed pictures of the little scrunch-faced rat, I was surprised at its appearance. The mother was blond and fair complected like my mother, but unlike my sister and me, this lady’s crotchling was olive skinned, with a crop of black hair that stood on end like a troll. It appeared to have a mustache. It was the most hirsute baby I had ever seen.

I couldn’t understand how, if the baby grew inside the Mommy’s tummy, it could look so much like the Daddy. I asked my mother about it, and she decided that it was time to let the cat out of the bag and got How You Were Made out of the library.

I found the book fascinating and gross all at the same time. It had drawings of a naked mommy and daddy clutching each other and engaging in a stupendously hilarious act called “sexual intercourse” while gazing at each other in benignly smiling bliss. They both looked calm and composed, not a hair out of place, as the artist caught their aesthetically sterile little romp mid-fuck.

The book went into lurid detail about erections and lubricated vaginas (hee!!), semen and spermatozoa (Yuck!!), eggs, ovulation and fertilization (WTF?!?) among other pertinent sexual matters, and it was all very thorough and excruciatingly illustrated by some dingbat of an illustrator who apparently keeps an unchanging convivial grin on his/her face and never gets ‘hot and bothered’ or fires off a stupid facial expression whilst screwing. You shouldn’t lie to little kids like that.

I remember feeling astounded that the daddy’s urethra carried the semen he was so smilingly spewing into the mommy, because that was the same tube that carried his urine! Barf-a-roni.

Holly’s gonna love this, I chuckled to myself.

As if she were a mind reader, my mother sniffed me out and warned, “Don’t tell Holly about any of this. She’s too young, and she doesn’t need to know yet.”

“Not even about foreplay?” I asked.

“Jill Staci, I’m serious. I promise you that you will be punished if you say anything to her about sex.”

I mulled it over, and made my decision.

I sauntered over to my sister’s room, where she was sprawled on the floor playing with some of her dopey post-toddler toys.

“Get out,” she ordered.

“Okay, but first I want to ask you something. Do you still want to have babies grow in your stomach when you grow up?”

“Yeah,” she replied warily, looking at the cover of the book I was holding as I leafed through it, trying to find the illustration that would be the most illuminating.

“Yeah? Well, before the baby can begin growing…” I flipped the book around and shoved the illustration in my sister’s face, “…. YOUR HUSBAND HAS TO STICK HIS PENIS IN YOUR VAGINA AND PEE ALL OVER YOUR INSIDES!”

It was worth the spanking.

My Breasts Rule, and it’s a Dictatorship

2005-10-27T13:06:00.000-04:00

Apparently, I have great boobs.

I’ve wanted breasts for as long as I can remember.

When I was a wee girl, I used to borrow one of my Mom’s bras, secure it around my pre-pubescent ribcage (using the innermost hooks, it actually fit snugly; my Mom is stacked, but has a very slender ribcage) and stuff the cups with rolls of socks. I’d then don a succession of my shirts and dresses, stand up on my bed so I could view myself full length in my mirror, and pose; twisting this way and that to get the full thrilling effect of my voluptuous 7-year-old self.

Even as a small child I was a pessimist, so I figured I would be a late bloomer. I also assumed that no one would ever want to have sex with me, which has pretty much been the case. I did bloom late, natch.

What I didn’t expect was that my boobs would be spectacular, when they finally arrived.

No, that is not entirely true. When they eventually ‘came on the scene’ so to speak, they were nothing to write home about. They lurked underneath my clothes like a couple of wallflowers at a dance, shy and unnoticed.

But then they evolved.

They came ‘out of their shell’ and asserted themselves, demanding attention and worshipful looks. They boldly promised me that I would never have to pay for dinner or drinks again. They became quite extroverted, my breasts did.

I don’t know exactly when this transformation took place; I think it was sometime in my mid-twenties. It caught me unawares; there I was, minding my own business, slogging away at my job, occasionally throwing a snide comment or two at my co-workers and gay male friends, when Boom! My chest took center stage.

“Can I buy you a drink? I want to buy you a drink!” stammered the cute guy at the Applebee’s bar after I arrived there to order some fried cheese and a double bourbon, neat. He was ogling my tits as if they were the second coming of Christ, and considering that this was smack-dab in the Jesus-drenched South, that is saying something.

I noticed that the five or six other men at the bar also were looking at my chest (I’m not being immodest here; they were definitely not looking in my beady little eyes. Their collective gaze was a good eight inches or so below my clavicles.) The one woman at the bar seemed to be pointedly ignoring me, while simultaneously sneering in my direction. This was new; usually women benignly tolerate my presence, when they aren’t fixing me up with sociopaths.

I looked down at my chest. My breasts didn’t appear to be doing anything unusual, not adding to their repertoire by jiggling about obscenely or blowing kisses. They weren’t clothed out of the ordinary, since I was wearing one of my standard issue 10-year-old blouses; not low cut, not clingy, neutral in color.

I looked back at the man, who was still mesmerized by my ta tas. Damn, he is cute, I thought. Probably gay, I decided, since I attract gay men the way rotten fruit attracts flies. But, gay men never gaze, enchanted, at my chest. Oh, sure, they occasionally look in the general vicinity of my breasts, but that’s only to be able to say, “Girl! What Are you wearing? You Must let me take you shopping for some Decent clothes!”

“You want to buy me a drink?” I asked him, tentatively.

“Yes!” he enthused to my boobs.

“Okay,” I replied warily. “Double bourbon, neat,” I told the bartender, who was also looking at my breasts while wiping a glass. He had never done that before. Look at my chest, I mean; I had seen him wipe a lot of glasses.

It turned out that my new boyfriend had (unfortunately) a girlfriend who was out of town on a business trip, and he was not the cheatin’ kind, bless his heart. I swear to God, every straight unmarried man I meet has a girlfriend to whom he is staunchly faithful.

“Well, it’s been nice talking with you,” he confessed a little sadly to my mammaries, “but I have to leave now. My girlfriend wants me to call her before I turn in for the night.”

“Goodbye, then. Hey, thanks for the bourbon,” I said, feeling compelled to speak for my breasts, which, alluring as they are, coyly insist on remaining mute.

“Are you new in town?” the bartender asked me when my temporary beau skedaddled (after throwing a last mournful glance at my sweater puppies, as if he expected a rebuke from them.)

I had been gracing this Applebee’s bar ever since it opened five years previously. This bartender had served me enough fried cheese and bourbon to make Anna Nicole Smith sob with delight. I was practically on the verge of putting him on my Christmas list.

“Um, no,” I said, trying vainly to remember one of my trademark snide-but-witty remarks, and drawing a complete blank. This bartender is really cute. He has the most beautiful green eyes, which were glued, at the moment in question, to my breastsicles.

We chatted for a bit, and at one point he fetched me some extra marinara sauce for my fried cheese, which was something he had never done before.

“So, do you come here often?” I boldly inquired of him, growing more jocular and confident with each sip of bourbon.

He laughed joyously, as if I were Jerry Seinfeld musing on low talkers. That was unusual, since few people think I am as funny as I think I am.

“You should drop by again,” he said to my breasts. “This place could use some new blood.” My breasts and I had been coming to Applebee’s at least once a week for five years. I could pick this bartender out of a crowd of similar bartenders, even if I had one bourbon-glazed eye closed. He was like a brother to me, almost, even if he had barely acknowledged me until now.

“Bring some friends with you,” he requested eagerly, without the merest shred of eye contact, no doubt hoping that my breasts were friends with other breasts, and that soon, through word of breast, Applebee’s would be awash in ripe, succulent boobs. A veritable coterie of titties. A full-on Breastfest! A Breastavaganza!!

“Do you work here a lot?” I inquired awkwardly. Aside from the occasional sardonic remark, small talk is not my forte. But now I felt as if I could say anything and be met with the type of warmth and acceptance usually only reserved for Oprah Winfrey when she blathers on and on about child molestation; or her favorite nutjob, Tom Cruise; or some horrible book written by Nicholas Sparks (if you haven’t read The Notebook then pat yourself on the back. Who does Nicholas Sparks have to fellate to get his drivel published?)

“I work here too much, actually,” allowed the bartender, instead of rolling his eyes and dismissing me with a flick of his towel, as he was wont to do in the not too distant past. “I’m putting in some extra shifts so I can afford an engagement ring for my girlfriend.”

Drat, foiled again.

Sometime later, I forlornly wobbled the half mile back to my apartment. I don’t drink and drive.

Several wolf whistles and horn-honks followed me as I staggered homeward.

May wonders never cease.