I’m kind of a shitty American. Which, for the record, is different than being a dick. Dick is a state of mind; shitty is a bit more circumstantial. Shitty is assigned rather than boasted.

So why am I a shitty American? Well. I don’t shop at Wal-Mart. I can’t stand reality TV. I think Hillary Clinton probably would have made a pretty good president. I think Dane Cook represents the death of American comedy. And I’ve managed to make it through the last 15 years without having watched a single episode of Friends, Lost, Desperate Housewives, or anything featuring Ray Romano.

But the real reason? I really don’t care all that much for football. It’s not that I hate it. It’s just that I don’t think it’s all that much fun.

1. it’s too impersonal. I like being able to see the faces of the athletes. Not because I give a shit (I don’t); it just heightens the drama. What would you rather see – a glistening, grass-stained helmet, or a close-up shot of a pitcher with the bases loaded who looks really constipated and scared out of his mind?

2. it’s too controlled. One might even go so far as to call it rigid. There is very little deviation from the standard operating procedure of Large Men running into other Large Men until the field is littered with piles of Large Men stacked atop one another like chunks of color-coordinated meatloaf. For something so violent and impact-driven, it’s a lot like the Ritalin of sports.

3. the coaches. There is no creature more humorless in all the world than a football coach. They grimace with faces so weather-beaten you’d think you were watching an army of aged Marlboro men stalk the earth. And let’s do a little compare-and-contrast on them. They’re mostly old, mostly white, and mostly douchebags. It’s as if the NFL buys ‘em by the pound down at the local GOP Douche Surplus Store.

4. the fans. Ever stare into the stands at a football game? It’s like staring directly into the sun. Every look around reveals a gang of flag-waving, beer-bloated, belly-painted, jacked up and gacked up, shrieking monkey-ass yahoos – it’s a red-statey nightmare 80,000 deep. There is nothing more conformist, more borderline alcoholic, more meanderingly meat-headed than the American football fan. Now I know what you’re saying – you’re saying, ‘hey, that’s not me! I’m a pretty decent dude! I just likes me some football!’ No; sorry. You’re gay. You dedicate one day a week to watching Large Men parade about in frighteningly tight pants. Remember – pro football is only half a rung up on the evolutionary ladder from pro wrestling. It’s the same Peter Principle in action:
- gather a group of Large Men
- adorn them in really tight pants
- compel them via pharmaceuticals or strict training (or, most likely, a liberal combination of the two) to violence
- hire more old white dudes to fix the Large Men when they are inevitably injured
- sell a lot of beer
- watch the re-boot of American Gladiators

5. bitterness. I’m a Bills fan. Yes, a Buffalo Bills fan. Go ahead and laugh; get it out of your system. I’ll wait.

…

…

…

Done?

…

…

…

Okay then. Anyway. Being a Bills fan isn’t a whole lot of fun, unless you really enjoy mental anguish, and are possibly Catholic. Rooting for the Bills is like sixteen consecutive weeks of being punched, bumped, kicked, kneed, stomped, clomped, stabbed, bludgeoned, battered, fricasseed, and hammered in the balls. I don’t know why anyone would voluntarily submit to it. Fuck, even male submissives have certain limits, don’t they? Yeah; maybe not so much. Poor little fellas.

I used to have a friend named Brenda. Brenda was a butch-dyke from Buffalo. Kind of like me, but she had bigger breasts. And while she was male-friendly, every bit of her appearance screamed I Am A Big Ol’ Butch Dyke And Thanks For Playing. So imagine her surprise when years ago, she was hanging out at Bills’ training camp, looking much the same as she does today, and being hit on incessantly by WR Andre Reed.

I mean, I don’t want to come right out and say that she’s ugly, but…well. She’s really kind of ugly. Sorry. Most Western New Yorkers are, if that’s any consolation. And not in an Ugly-But-I’d Still-Do-You sort of way either. She was just kind of craggy. Like a youngish Walter Matthau. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that I expect better pussy-selection abilities from my star athletes. It’s like play-calling – you gotta know who’s best suited to score.

Never mind that I ended up having sex with her after a long night of Bills-watching and a joint consumption of alcohol so copious as to call it death-defying. And never mind furthermore that when her femme-ish girlfriend found out about it, she came over to my apartment and kicked my ass. In lipstick and high heels, no less. Never mind that I was beaten into a gooey lump of heterosexuality gone terribly astray. The point here is that I am establishing a double-standard, goddamnit.

And that’s what life is all about, folks. The establishment and re-drawing of double standards. Thus I don’t really like football. And I particularly don’t like football fans. But if the Bills ever make it back to the Super Bowl in my lifetime?

Okay. I’ll probably hop the bandwagon then.

See? Double standard.

So maybe I am a good American after all…

The Bush Doctrine

n.

1. the law of relative sex-non-positivity stating that in order to keep a man, a woman must shave her bush

2. conversely, the law of relative sex-positivity which states that in order to be good, supportive, sex-positive feminist men, men must not only accept thick, full bushes; furthermore they must fetishize said full, thick bushes. This once again proves the relative law of sex-positivity, which is that sex-positivity is simply what sexually liberal (in the Reagan Democrat sense) white chicks dig.

3. something that seemingly everyone but Sarah Palin knows: “to what extent, Charrrrrrlieeeee?” Well, to the extent of actually knowing what unilateralism and pre-emptive colonialism are.

And once again, the wet-dream humidity of August is slowly giving way to a tempestuous Autumn. Yeah; tempestuous. It used to be that Autumn was a time of repose and reflection; a time for long walks and leaf-turning. It was the season that poetry invented when all the poets ran out of metaphors for spring. Because you know that a poet’s never happy unless he’s got his cock stuck in a tomblike glory-hole. Kind of like having sex with a Republican.

And you know, it might be autumn. But the thing is, Autumn’s not what it used to be. Global warming isn’t just a tsunami or the Category 4 of soundbytes; it’s a state of mind. It’s a perfectly natural thing that Autumn jumped the shark. Because if August is the wet-dream, Autumn is its spread-eagled reckoning, its well-fiddled-with g-spot ready to squirt. These days the butterfly is flapping its wings electronically – and look the fuck out when it does.

‘Cause it’s like Dylan sang: “a hard rain’s-a-gonna fall”.

And bring it on. Because nobody reads poetry anymore, and why should they; Autumn’s all about excess. It’s Always Inamorata.

 

 

Programming note: I just received an email from Xandra the Honorably Marked Slut of Mjolnir:

(lowers eyes)

Greetings, Lord Misanthrope;

I trust this humble missive finds you well.

(lowers eyes)

It is with a heavy heart that this little one must inform you of some sad news. Master Mjolnir, the Honored Master and Ruler For Life of this unworthy one is in the hospital. The Honored Master had an accident at work in which a pallet fell on top of Him. Honored Master has suffered a great many injuries, many of them to His Spleen, His Ribs, and His Whipping Arm.

(falls to floor and kneels; lowers eyes)

Unfortunately, Honored Master will not be able to provide this week’s Ask A Gor Master column for You and Your Readers as He is still in ICU, and He is quite drugged-up at the time of this little one’s humble writing.

(lowers eyes)

It is the Great Hope of Honored Master that He will be able to write for You again soon. But for now He requires several additional surgeries, as well as a formal investigation both by the police department as well as Target, who are claiming that Honored Master’s accident was no accident at all; that He purposefully toppled a pallet of toys onto Himself, and in doing so, pierced His Perfect Spleen with a GI Joe action figure. i think it was a Snow-Job. But i am not sure.

(weeps profusely; lowers eyes while weeping so the tears can travel further)

i am very sad. But the upside is that when i drink the pee from Honored Master’s bedpan tonight, it will be laced with morphine.

(smiles weakly)

In Honored Service,

xandra the Honored Slut of Mjolnir

i.e., crap to do when you know you won’t be getting laid for awhile

 

Without going into the sordid details of it, let’s just stick with the basic irrefutable fact of the situation. I will not be getting laid for awhile. At least not until my significant other’s vadge grows back. This leaves me, a sex-blogger and undisputed Sex-God, to contemplate a fuckless weekend.  So until I do indeed get some again, I’ll be providing a valuable public service to the blogosphere, and even the world, as I detail all the ways both nefarious and multifarious of how a boy can entertain oneself without pussy.

 

Thing to Do Number 1:  Explore the Wonders of Polyamory.

If John Edwards has taught us anything, it’s that the best time for you to experiment sexually with new partners is when your primary partner is convalescing. It works out well for everybody – she’s too doped-up to mind/realize that you’re sticking your dick in every gloryless hole this side of an RNC fundraiser; and you not only get to stick said dick in said holes, but do so without looking over your shoulder the entire time.

After all, isn’t that what polyamory is about?

To that effect, I have written and posted an ad on Craigslist’s Casual Encounters board. Here is the ad for you in its entirety:

 

Hi there! I thought that instead of employing the art of deceit as is so common here on Craigslist that I’d just shoot straight with y’all. So here goes:

I am a professional sex-blogger. I am one of the 10 most famous people on teh internets. (The other 9 are a motley collection of porn stars, drug addicted chanteuses, and whomever’s got the top-rated viral vid on YouTube this week.)

Anyway, I’m in something of a bind here. You see, my significant other is feeling a bit under the weather, and thus cannot have sex with me. And with me being a sex-blogger, I quite frankly cannot exist without sex. Fucking is my job – as well as writing about it.

So what I’m looking for is a woman of extraordinary taste (and tastiness) for a good old-fashioned NSA throwdown of the sexual variety. Any and all applicants should enjoy at least three of the activities listed below:

- fellatio

- cunnilingus

- anal sex

- spanking

- bondage

- exhibitionism

Yes, I am going to write about it. I won’t use your real name, of course, so no worries there. I will rate your sexual prowess and proficiency; and quite honesty, you’ll probably learn a lot about yourself this weekend.

What you will gain from spending a weekend fucking me:
- you will get to have sex with one of the 10 most famous people on teh internets (starfuckers rejoice!)

- you will have at least one post on the world’s finest sex-blog dedicated solely to you in all your sexual luminescence, making you somewhat famous by proxy (at least anonymously)

- you will get to spend time around a man who is, well, kind of a dick. But it will be a character-building experience. And it will keep you from wasting yet another weekend in this shithole of a town shopping on Wendover or Friendly. This will be even more enriching for you both intellectually and emotionally.

- I am one of the finest lays on the east coast. Granted, my penis is quite small; furthermore, I am not what one might consider ‘attractive’ (in fact I am quite trollish in appearance); however, I deliver where it counts the most. In your vagina. Also, you will learn hundreds of new sexual techniques this weekend, which will serve you well for the rest of your life.

- I will not bother you again after this weekend. Once Sunday comes, it’s over. Kaput. Buh-bye. Seeya. So if you too are already in a committed relationship, you needn’t worry about a questionable aftermath, as there will not be one.

 

I’m hoping that the ’small penis’ thing isn’t going to keep all the Totally Hot Chicks away. Maybe I should’ve posted a picture of someone else’s giant cock…

Either way, I’ll keep you updated as to the results. Keep your fingers crossed!

PART III. ENCORE: I’ve seen my future and I’m scared to close my eyes *

A few bed-ridden days later, and there was a Drive-By Truckers show to attend. My genitals were still a mineral-rich deposit of, well, stones. It felt as though my cock was a rickety Pez-dispenser. But the rest of me was well-lubricated with equal parts Vicodin and bourbon.

But, you know, fuck it. I was hell-bent on going – I hadn’t missed a DBT show in years, and besides – if anyone deserved to rock out with his cock out (pejoratively or otherwise), it was totally me.

We – we being me and my then-girlfriend, a lovely girl who was sort of a vanilla girl Friday to my sexually carefree Cary Grant – went to a crummy little rock club called Ziggy’s. Now to call Ziggy’s a shithole is to insult anuses everywhere. Let’s put it this way. If you took CBGB’s, converted it into a chicken coop and then peed all over it, well…Ziggy’s would still be far, far worse. Which made it a perfect venue for a Rock Show.

They opened with “The Tough Sell”, which seemed entirely apropos for my physical state. I spent much of the show hanging onto the third-tier railing for dear life. That is, until Dr. MacKenzie and her husband strolled over. I noticed with a trace of sadness that Mr. MacKenzie had a somewhat bow-legged gait.

“Hey!” yelled Dr. MacKenzie, handing me a beer. “Feeling better?”

I slurred something incomprehensible, grateful to be consuming more alcohol in my quest to feel no pain. She laughed, and proceeded to tell Girl Friday all about how I took it in the ass several days prior. This tale was met with an explosion of guffaws, belly-laughs, and gasping for air. It was such a hit that it began to draw a crowd of its own, drawing attention away from DBT, who were throwing down a mighty gauntlet of rock which was going unheeded.

“Isn’t there a little thing called doctor-patient confidentiality?” I asked.

“Yeah, but who’s paying any attention,” laughed the good Doctor.

“Well, the band, for one.”

It was so noticeable in fact that at one point the band stopped playing. Mike Cooley threatened to come back to where we were situated and kick our asses. Which he totally could, regardless (or perhaps aided by) the degree of his shitfacedness. Then Shonna gave me a look that said I was about to be scrawled onto her shitlist.

Let me again state that when the Drive-By Truckers come to town, they do so without pretense, pomp, or circumstance. They come to kick ass. In bulk, by gross, by the pound, and by the foot. And then drink all the liquor and kick the asses of all the stragglers. And then, like smoke – they’re gone.

It just wasn’t a very good week. In the span of three days, I had to deal with
1. the possibility of dying from ball-cancer
2. getting cornholed by my nice lady-doctor friend
3. the worst pain EVAR
4. a starry-eyed re-introduction to my ages-old painkiller addiction
5. and now the Drive-By Truckers wanted to beat me up for fucking up their totally awesome Rock Show

So I did what any reasonably inebriated fan would do were they in my shoes. I started calling out set-list suggestions.

“Steve McQueen!” I shouted, jumping up and down.

The band was not impressed.

So Dr. MacKenzie and my Girl Friday took matters into their own hands. Or breasts, as it were. They flashed the band. And suddenly everything was all right again with the world. Because nothing diffuses a tense situation like titty. To which the band responded with a polite round of applause before launching into “Heathens”. It seemed kind of apt.

Well, at least it wasn’t “Buttholeville”.

And then I felt the earth move. Not under my feet – I felt a sickening surge moving up my penis like I was going to pee-vomit all over the place. So I quickly skedaddled to the men’s room. Which was when things really went downhill.

Ziggy’s is one of those old shithole rock-clubs, that, having apparently grown tired of cleaning up broken toilets and defaced urinals, decided to treat the Patrons of the Rock in the way they probably deserve. By installing pee-troughs. Three of the four walls were lined with giant pee-gutters, and nearly every space was occupied by a large southern man.

Oh, and the floors are wet, too.

Yeah, I’m a libertine in some ways; but in other ways I’m pretty old-fashioned. For instance, I like to pee in toilets whenever possible. And I really prefer doing it in private. And when I’m trying to pee-vomit a giant rock out of my penis, I’d totally like some privacy.

Wasn’t happening. So I sidled my way up to the starboard pee-trough, elbowed my way in, and surveyed the scene. The troughs were ostensibly obstructed with some foreign object, because they were approximately two inches from spilling onto the floor as well as onto the pee-ers themselves.

And I was ready to drop a rock in there.

Which I did, with a mighty ker-plop.

And that sucker was big, too. Big enough to shoot out of a gun, big enough to put an eye out, and big enough to cause every other pee-er along my pee-trough to bring to a standstill their own pee-streams. Roughly thirty-two penises hung in mid-air, frozen like sausages in a blast-chiller. And roughly thirty-two heads all turned to me as one. And not a one of them looked the least bit pleased.

“Dude,” one of them murmured to another. “Did he just pinch one in the trough?”

Before I could answer the charges leveled against me, my kidney stone did the same thing to the pee-trough that it had done to me – i.e., it gummed up the works. Suddenly a cascade of urine began issuing from the trough, onto the floor; and in some cases onto the pee-ers themselves. Fortunately for me, DBT fans are generally loud, lurid drunks, meaning that it takes them an extra few seconds to figure out just what’s happening to/around them. Which gave me just enough time to beat a hasty retreat out of the men’s room and back to my Girl Friday and the MacKenzies.

Or so I thought. The men’s room followed me out as an angry, beer-rich, pee-soaked mob intent on vengeance. Dr. MacKenzie was the first to note my impending destruction.

“What’d you do?”

“I shot my kidney stone out into the pee-trough.”

“Ohhh…and they think you pinched one off?”

“Yeah. And pee got everywhere.”

“We should go now.”

And thus we collectively beat a really fucking hasty retreat as the pee-mob pursued us. Meanwhile, the Truckers seemed to be serenading us on our way out.

Sometimes I’m lower than the company I keep

On the ride home I received a thorough talking-to from Girl Friday about why I should not cause riots. As if this was a recurring problem throughout our relationship. Well, not a constant problem, anyway.

I made a full recovery from my kidney stone, and as a bonus, I still had a handful of Vicodin left for future merriment.

I changed doctors, and as such I never again saw Dr. or Mr. MacKenzie.

Girl Friday, after my inadvertent causing of yet another Rock Show riot, unceremoniously dumped me in between sets at a Tragically Hip concert. Fortunately, Tragically Hip shows are rife with cute drunk Canadian girls, so it can be said that I rebounded both safely and quickly.

And as for the Drive-By Truckers…well, they’re still out there, kicking ass by the pound and the foot, and keeping up their rep as the best rock ‘n roll band in America.

Regrettably, they do send me a cease-and-desist order each time they play within a 100-mile radius of my whereabouts, meaning that I can only go to their shows in disguise. So the last time, I went dressed as one of their old guitar players.

I got my ass handed to me pretty good for that.

But that’s okay.

After all, it’s just rock ‘n roll.

 

Morals to be gleaned from this tale:

1. kidney stones suck. Carol Burnett once said that having a baby is a lot like ‘taking your bottom lip and pulling it over your head’. A kidney stone is a lot like that as well. Except that in addition to pulling your lip up over your head, you are simultaneously being whacked in the nut-sack with a hammer.

2. ass-fisting sucks too. Boy howdy, does it ever. Aficionados, your Kink IS OK, but seriously. Ow.

3. Vicodin however does not suck at all.

4. do not under any circumstances piss off the Drive-By Truckers, because they will fuck your shit all up. This one should be somewhat self-explanatory by now. If not, I’ll offer up another example: I attended a particular DBT show, where, toward the end of a song, a fight broke out in the crowd. Mike Cooley, the singer of this song, paused both playing and singing to offer his own special brand of Jim beam-fueled commentary on the fisticuffs: ‘kick his ass! I don’t care who done what to who; I just wanna see somebody get his ass kicked!’ at which point Cooley cleverly finished his song with this too-good-to-be-coincidental line: ‘I ain’t got no good intentions’…

5. avoid embarrassing situations at your neighborhood pee-trough whenever possible

6. if you are a man, be nice to those who let you fuck them in the ass. Seriously. Believe me on this one. Karma is not only a bitch; karma is a bitch with a really thick forearm and no bedside manner whatsoever.

 

* “The Company I Keep”; the Drive-By Truckers

 

The internet loves me. It really, really loves me.

 Thanks, Dee!

Can’t get enough TSM? Of course you can’t – I can’t get enough of me, and I’m me.

And if you do need more me, then click-clack over to Eden Fantasys and read part one of my epic new essay Sex-Ed in the 1960s. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry; you’ll find out where all your sexual hang-ups came from. That goes for you too, sex-positivist polyamorists.

Yeah, it’s true – Eden Fantasys, those fine folks who bid you to reDiscover Sex, have teamed up with yours truly, the Most Powerful Name In Internet News Politics Sex Humor Gossip Douchebaggery – and the result is pure magic.

So what’re you waiting for? Go on, now – read it. And let the love flow.

Are you a go-getter? Are you wise, technically proficient, and comfortable with your own subservience? Then Junkbuzzed wants you!

I – your darling Snarling Misanthrope, am looking for Naked Interns. That’s right – Naked Interns. This is a wholly unpaid position, but O! what a position it is!

Applicants should be proficient in:
- programming. WordPress and HTML, and possibly some good hacking skillz.
- editing skills. Because I kind of treat language like a soccer match between sufferers of Restless Leg Syndrome – it’s sorta messy, and there are always balls in play.
- coffee-fetching. If you are too good to keep caffeinated my brilliant personage, then please do not apply.
- patience. I am kind of a dick. You must enjoy being around a dick.
- nakedness. When I say Naked Intern, I mean Naked Intern. Your ass is naked. Because nothing fuels my creativity more than watching naked people padding around my hut. So be comfortable with your body; also you should be comfortable with ogling, pinching, random ass-smacks, and all other forms of ‘sexual harassment’.
- cooking. I like it when naked people cook for me. It helps me relax. And when I’m relaxed, I write better.

And while this is a wholly unpaid position, I do offer some other benefits:
- valuable experience. Employers will be impressed by your ability to both be naked and fetch coffee, while simultaneously cleaning up all my goddamned messy code.
- whippings. Ask my friends; my way of showing gratitude or affection is through a good, sturdy whipping. If you’re not a pain-slut (or at least a pill-addict), you might not want to apply.
- being in the presence of greatness. Watch the master at work. Observe his moods. Learn from his carefree usage of the English language and its grammatical imperatives. You just might learn something.

So join the Junkbuzzed Family. It’s a lot like the Manson Family, without all the killing and Satanism and swastika-carving. Because those things just aren’t hot. But a single recluse with three cats, a near-encyclopedic knowledge of all things pop culture, a pronounced sadistic streak, and a messianic complex –  now, that’s hot.

I’ll be waiting.

 

 

In case you missed part one (and shame on you if you did), you can play catch-up here.

 

PART II. And I’m Scared Shitless of What’s Coming Next*

It was at this time that my life began to flash before my eyes. My life of being a master of all things Ass, that is. It had been noted to me many thousands of times by scores of women that I was not the kindest of men when it came to the act of anal sex. It had been explained to me that there were a series of unspoken but sacred anal imperatives that must be strictly adhered to. These rules included, but were not limited to:
1. please use lube, as the alternative is just not very pleasant and will probably necessitate a lengthy hospital stay
2. please be generous with the lube, because most girls don’t want to end up looking like the Goatse Man
3. please observe the Three-Second Rule: upon initial entry of the dick-tip into the ass, wait for a period of three seconds for the girl to catch her breath, relax, and physically/emotionally prepare herself for the anal rampaging that is about to commence
4. by all means, enjoy your stay – but please don’t stay for too long, because it gets kind of hurty after awhile

Of course I had spent much of my life playing fast-‘n-loose with all life’s rules and regulations, particularly the anal imperatives. And now my reckoning had come two-fold:
A. I was about to die
B. before I died, I was going to get a taste of my own ass-flavored medicine

When your ass is sticking up in the air and you cannot see what is transpiring back there, your other senses are suddenly heightened. The sound of Dr. MacKenzie unscrewing the cap of the lube-jar was like the movement of the earth’s plates. The sound of her fingers (fingers???) easing into the lube-jar was like a fat kid belly-flopping into the community pool.

“So,” she said, mack-grabbing one butt-cheek for leverage, “what song do you think the Truckers will open with?”

“Um…” was this really the best time to nitpick over set-lists? I was pretty sure that it wasn’t. “I dunno; I hear they’ve been changing the opener every night. It’d be pretty cool though if they opened with ‘Ronnie and Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee –“

Insertion. Collision. The capsizing of my masculinity. I gasped sharply – no – it wasn’t a gasp; it was every bubble of oxygen being sucked out of my body as if my ass had been jacked up and dropped into a zero-g vacuum. And then blowed-up but good by a devastating series of photon torpedoes.

My thoughts at that precise moment were exactly as follows, and I quote: ‘O heavenly God, even though I am an atheist and a really huge dick – please, O God, please make her follow the Three-Second rule…’

She didn’t. I completed my sentence in a fashion that was less voluntary than yelping response-reflex.

“’eeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllll!!!”

“Yeah, that’d be pretty cool,” she said rather nonchalantly. Like fisting some dude’s ass while talking about the Drive-By Truckers was an everyday occurrence. At this point, I was pretty sure that I had become the Goatse Man, with the flaps of my freshly-violated anus pooched out and flopping around like daisy-petals waiting for a gentle breeze to blow them away.

“Patterson Hood is a really fantastic songwriter,” Dr. MacKenzie continued, digging a bit deeper into my cavity. “He should put out more solo stuff. Did you hear Killers & Stars? Epic, man. Just epic.”

“Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it; especially ‘Uncle Disney’,” I sniffled, trying to keep my man-weeping to a bare minimum. Meanwhile, she seemed to be enjoying herself a little too much, as it felt like she was punching me in the liver.

“Hmm,” she mused, as if she’d just found something funny in there, like a traveling garden gnome or a stray LOLcat.

I decided that now would be a good time to man-up. I mean, if I was gonna die, I might as well do it with my boots on, irregardless of the fact that my pants were still wadded up around my ankles. “And I think Shonna really adds a lot to the band dynamic – her bass-playing is fucking wicked – “

And then she started to sing. Now I’m no expert on these matters, but I’d like to think that when butt-fisting a dying patient, decorum calls for there to be ABSOLUTELY NO SINGING WHATSOEVER. To make matters worse was the song she sang – “Steve McQueen”:
Steve McQueen, Steve McQueen
When I was a little boy I wanted to grow up to be
Steve McQueen, Steve McQueen
The coolest goddamn motherfucker on the silver screen

I of course took her choice of song as an unforgivable slur on my already teetering sense of machismo. Because if you’re going to break into song during an anal imposition, it shouldn’t be a song about what a man Steve McQueen was. It’s like kicking a guy when he’s down. And then setting him on fire. And then dropping a tank on him. It’s just bad form, is all I’m saying.

And then, without warning (the whole thing was without warning), she shook her arm free of my colorectal calamity with what sounded like a balloon slurping out all its air in a bathtub filled with Crisco. She discarded her gloves and washed up while I wept softly into the plastic pillow of the exam table.

“The good news,” she began, toweling off, “is that everything appears to be in order…up there…” As if she’d expected to find me growing a vegetable garden around my pancreas.

“And the bad news?” I sniffled, slowly shuffling my pants back up.

“Well,” she said, and I braced for the worst. It’s totally going to be cancer.

“You have a kidney stone.”

“Huh?”

“Yup; it’s just a kidney stone. You’ll just have to pass it.”

“So I’m not going to die?”

“Uh…what?”

I quickly explained to her my testicular fears. Which she found amusing, as evidenced by the several minutes of uninterrupted laughter that followed.

“Okay, do if I have a kidney stone, then why do my balls hurt?”

Before we go any further, let me first caution you, dear reader (citation needed): when going to visit the doctor, it is a good idea to have at least an elementary grasp of your anatomy, so you don’t end up saying something that is going to make you come across as being a fucking retard.

“Well,” Dr. MacKenzie said, “your kidneys process URINE…” She nodded a couple of times for emphasis, as if to say ‘you get it, right?’

Actually, I didn’t.

“Wait – I thought kidney stones came out of your – “ I half-twisted, pointing to my ass, which at this point felt loose enough that I could probably pass a 27-volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica.

“Um,” she said. “Are you a fucking retard? You pee it out!”

“But how do get a stone to come out of…” I looked down, trying to imagine what sort of distress awaited my penis. “This is gonna be bad, isn’t it.”

“Yeah, probably,” she said, grabbing her scrip-pad. “They say that a kidney stone is the closest a man can ever come to knowing what if feels like to give birth.”

That wasn’t terribly reassuring.

“Don’t worry – I’m giving you a scrip for a boatload of Vicodin. So you probably won’t feel too much of it.”

Actually, I felt way too much of it. I swallowed enough Vicodin to kill half of Central Asia, yet I still spent the remainder of my evening in bed, shrieking like, well…a pregnant woman. I didn’t know what was worse – being forced to let my friend Dr. MacKenzie cornhole me with her arm, or my present predicament of having to pee a rock. My then-girlfriend was sitting with me, nodding along to the haunting dirge of my screams while she surfed the internet.

“Want some soup?” she asked.

“NO – I WANT YOU TO MAKE IT BETTER”

“Want me to call Dr. MacKenzie?”

And that’s when I passed out.

 

* “Angels and Fuselage”; the Drive-By Truckers

 

Tomorrow, the trifecta:  drugs, pain, and the Drive-By Truckers come to town.

Okay - I’ve been promising a piece on Little House/Nellie Oleson for awhile now. There’ll be another one in a week or few. But for now, sit back, relax, enjoy - and see if you don’t have an eerily similar tale…

 

I have a tendency – a first-hand second nature, a force of habit, a sharp inclination, a niggling necessity – a penchant, if you will, to dislike most nouns in the literal sense, regardless of propriety. Hence my nom de blog. And this isn’t a new thing, either. It goes right back to my childhood. Yeah, I was a Mikey-hates-it kinda kid.

Above all else, someone who hates things will indubitably reserve the most hatefulness of their considerable hate (yes, there are gradations) for those instances of Not Getting What They Want. This also applies to the Not Getting What You Want’s two most trusted henchmen, Not Getting What You Want When You Want It, and Not Getting What You Want the Way You Want It.

The gradations of hate for a little boy can best be summed up in three categories:

I COULD TOTALLY LIVE WITOUT THIS
Mom
English muffins
Falling off my bicycle
Poison ivy
Hagar the Horrible
Baths

I DON’T LIKE IT; PLEASE TAKE IT AWAY AND/OR MAKE IT STOP
Dad
Doctors
Clowns
Canadians
Large dogs
Marmaduke
Bedtime

OOH, I REALLY FUCKIN’ HATE THIS AND IT IS MAKING ME WANT TO DIE
The robot-dog from Battlestar Galactica
Granola
Vegetables
Falling off my bicycle when no one is there to see me fall or take care of me/feel sorry for me
Family Circus
Cleaning my room
Siblings

The problem with having siblings is that you never get attention when you want it; but when you just want to be left alone, you’re the star of the show: ‘Why is your baby brother bleeding from the neck?’

But perhaps the worst part of having siblings is the forced relinquishment of the family television. As first-born, I exerted my male dominance over the boob tube as much as I could get away with it, meaning that in my house there was a lot of Tom & Jerry action going on, along with any and every superhero-oriented show. But nothing exemplified sibling animus better than the precise moment each and every week (until syndication, at which point the moment happened on a daily basis) when my sister would snap herself out of her middle-child funk and exclaim, ‘time for Little House!’

Little House on the Prairie. An American institution; my family shaming. You see, I was (and am) a boy. And amongst the boys there were few rules, but the ones we did have were strictly adhered to:
1. girls kind of suck
2. Star Wars is awesome
3. Little House is for fags

Keep in mind that at our age, nobody in my peer group knew what ‘fag’ meant. All we knew was that being a fag, as well as its resultant faggery, faggotry, and faggothood, were things to be avoided at all costs.

So it was without fail each week that when my sister screeched ‘time for Little House!’ my ass was outta there. No big deal – I was not a fag; and besides, there were always wars to wage between my Star Wars toys. I’d lock myself into my bedroom and do the things that little boys do when they’re pretty sure nobody is watching:
1. play with Star Wars toys
2. read comic books
3. after reading comic books, practice drawing huge bulbous male musculature
4. look at the latest stack of porn mags you stole from your dad
5. playing with yourself
6. play the classic game of ‘hey, I wonder how many holes I can stick my finger into’

But invariably something very peculiar would happen each week during this cherished boy-time boobery. I’d hear a sound coming from the family room that was queerly enticing. It sounded like the sound of one thing hitting another with equal amounts of leather and ass-cheek. I’d pay it no mind; besides, I was usually up to too much no good to be terribly bothered with much of anything.

Nevertheless the sound kept reappearing most weeks. And what’s worse – the sound was manifesting itself both in my dreams, as well as in my sacrosanct playing-with-myself time.

One week it just became too much to bear. I had to find out just what was happening out there. So I crept out of my room, trying to be as stealthy as I could possibly be – because if caught watching Little House, even if only for the briefest of moments – I would find myself banished to everlasting faghood.  Right around the corner from the living room, I poked the top of my head out, getting a quick glimpse of the TV.

And then magic happened. A guy with big bushy black hair (Michael Landon) was talking to a balding shopkeeper about some matter of shenanigans between their respective daughters. The shopkeeper told the bushy-haired man not to worry; he’d take care of it right there and then. He grabbed a massive leather strap from the wall and started marching up the stairs, promising to whip the Holy Blue Fuck out of some chick named Nellie.

Chemicals within me began to churn; there were explosions, waterfalls, fire-falls, eruptions, and, quite frankly, one of the first boners of my memory. And a really insistent one at that. It was at this precise moment I knew that a large portion of my future would involve me administering as many spanking, paddlings, and whippings as I could possibly find the time (and acquiescent ass-cheeks) for.

So this is what it means to be a fag, I thought. Well, fuck it. If this is faggothood, then sign me up – because I am officially a total fag for whippings. I didn’t quite understand what all the hubbub was about = it seemed like a perfectly fit and fine thing to me. Nonetheless I felt it might be best for me to keep this wonderful new revelation under my hat, at least for the time being.

I sent the next several years watching Little House from behind the corner of the family room, carefully cataloguing each whipping – particularly those which featured everyone’s favorite blonde-tressed brat, one Nellie Oleson.

Nellie was – well, Nellie just was. She was less a character than the construct of an idea. In my mind’s eye she is the girl with the shimmering blonde curls, neat and proper blue dress, and a sly smirk that says, ‘yeah, I know I’m gonna get it. But I’ll make sure to get my money’s worth first.’ And she was unquestionably a gateway drug, it could be argued in hindsight. Because it was during this period that, in addition to my stolen-subscription to my dad’s by-the-numbers porn mags, I also began cultivating a deep and abiding interest in Penthouse Letters. Specifically those rare, Rosetta-like issues which contained an account of a good whipping.

Things I learned from Nellie Oleson:
- whippings are good
- always keep a nice thick strap around just in case
- blondes do have more fun, provided they enjoy a good whipping
- Willie was such a little shit
- Nellie was a bastion of feminism, as she never learned her lessons: that was the point, and why women everywhere admire her tenacity so; although, a closet full of pretty frocks probably does take the sting out of at least some of those whippings

But as I got a little older, certain things began to slide away. Nellie Oleson began to fade from my frontal memory banks, replaced with girls of greater availability, age-specificity, and costuming (namely big hair and UTI-tight jeans). Meanwhile, the whippings had already begun, and they were showing no signs of ever slowing down.

At the same time, I finally found out what a fag was. Turns out we were all wrong on that one. Not that it mattered much; a few years later, the word had been snatched back by Gay America and pleasantly co-opted into irony. Which is probably where it’s best suited, all things being equal and what not.

These days, my hairline has receded a fair bit back – not quite as far back as Nells Oleson, but it’s good enough for my regularly-scheduled re-enactments. And Nellie? Well, there’s a lot of grown-up Nellies out there. I have personally found and whipped 487 of them.

But I’m still searching.

Nellie?

PSI

n.

1. Porn-Star Injury: a wound to the genitals sustained solely through sexual congress

2. Pussy/Penis-Scene Investigation: the necessary follow-up to a PSI, where the PSI is so bad that its bearer has to take it to the doctor

3. Pounds per Square Inch: the relative force with which a man can possibly fuck, based on the size of his penis; also, the number of pounds/thrusts a man can deliver based on penis size, equating back to the adage the harder they come, the harder they fall