My sister and I spent summer weekdays with a dozen other kids at a woman’s house in Upstate New York until the moment I witnessed the woman’s husband launch a rat snake into the sky with his homemade catapult — the shiny black serpent’s white belly glinting in the sunlight as it soared higher and higher before disappearing into the branches of a tree — and murmured “Fuck me,” a little too loudly.
We were henceforth shuttled to the home of my Taekwondo instructor and his wife where no one seemed to mind nine year olds speaking like two-bit Staten Island mobsters. The couple had a son Jimmy a grade above me and a daughter Celeste a grade below my sister. While my Taekwondo instructor spent his days as a Correctional Officer at a local prison, his wife spent hers with a couple of friends on a floral-patterned velvet couch in a smoky, dark living room.
None of us children were permitted in the house during the day except for one bathroom visit apiece. To escape the sun, we hung out in an old, windowless cabin on the property. No matter how much we swept that floor, Celeste’s bare feet always seemed to find splinters and errant slivers of glass. Since the girl refused to wear footwear and her big brother was punished when any harm befell her, Jimmy and I performed small, secret medical procedures on the regular. I always volunteered to fetch the first aid supplies because that was the most dangerous part of the operation, and I needed Jimmy to know I was tough.
“Hey, kid .” Once my eyes adjusted to the dim room, I could see that Janice was alone on the couch. Although we didn’t agree on much, Jimmy and I concurred that one of his mom’s friends looked and sounded just like Janice, the lead guitarist of The Electric Mayhem on The Muppets. We called her Janice, and she was our favorite.
“Hi,” I said and quickly blurted an excuse for why I was exceeding my daily house allowance. “I have to take a shit.”
She threw back her head, laughing heartily and at length. I continued on to the bathroom where I gathered the components of our tried-and-true, pocket-sized medical kit: a pair of tweezers, bacitracin ointment and a bandaid. I didn’t have to defecate, so I snooped through the medicine cabinet for the amount of time I felt was appropriate to achieve a bowel movement.
“Hey, kid, did you take a shit?” Janice was still there.
“You’re goddamned right I did.” She fell back on the couch and kicked her legs in the air, shrieking. She was the first person to find me funny.
I described the encounter to Jimmy while we tended to Celeste’s wound. It was just a matter of time, I told him, before Janice would invite me to sit on the couch like Johnny Carson did with his favorite comedians. Jimmy’s face flushed with jealousy. First of all, he informed me, I wasn’t actually funny. And, furthermore, he said I could just forget about getting any couch time because his mom and her friends were doing cocaine on it all day.
“Cocaine is medicine you stick up your nose,” he boysplained to me.
“I know what cocaine is,” I snapped. “I’m not a baby.”
But his definition planted a seed. I’d been plagued by a chronic ear infection that summer, which my parents attempted to combat with antibiotics. I hated swallowing those large pills and so that night at the dinner table, I covered both my mouth and nose with my hand and managed to stuff the erythromycin capsule up a nostril. I excused myself to the bathroom where I promptly blew the vile pellet out of my nose and into the toilet, then flushed.
This system worked for a couple of days until a pill got stuck up my nose. I tried to coax it out with tweezers but ended up pushing it further up my nasal cavity where it began to melt. By the time I confessed and pleaded for help, it was too late. I’d simply have to wait for the pill to dissolve.
It felt like my nose, throat and eyes were on fire. I howled in agony between bouts of vomiting so that my parents could fully realize what they had driven me to do with these horse pill antibiotics. And I knew right then and there that I’d never do cocaine, not even if Janice herself invited me to do so on the couch. My nose would remain exit only for the rest of my life.
Two decades later, while in line at a deluxe Las Vegas buffet, I eavesdropped on the chic pair behind me as they sniffed from ornate coke vial necklaces. I held my breath when I heard the man ask his companion to describe the most self-indulgent thing she’d ever put in her mouth.
“A loaded Colt Python,” she responded without hesitation.
I turned my head slowly to sneak a peek at the duo and found the woman staring straight at me with gleaming black eyes — her dilated pupils so large and reflective, I watched myself reaching for more crab legs in them.
“I’m talking about a revolver, honey,” she said, not once blinking.
“Oh,” I said nonchalantly, though of course I was impressed.
“How about you?” The man asked me.
I, too, knew the taste of cold metal. After my stunt with the pills, my parents switched me to liquid amoxicillin. If you were sick and a child in the ‘80s, you’ll likely remember that delicious, bright pink, bubble-gum-flavored elixir. We kept it in the refrigerator, and I liked to chill my spoon in the freezer before imbibing.
My parents left me home alone one afternoon, so I grabbed an icy spoon and a bottle of the cold pink stuff and put on my VHS copy of Labyrinth. I just wanted a taste. But the next thing I knew, David Bowie was seductively fondling his crystal balls before using them to cast a sexual spell on a 16-year-old Jennifer Connelly and a 9-year-old me, and the bottle of liquid magic was empty. To my surprise, it tasted even better coming up in tandem with the pint of vanilla ice cream I’d also consumed — a decadent, frothy Bubblicious milkshake.
“A deep-fried Twinkie,” I lied. There’s just no competing with a loaded gun, so why even bother?
When I was a high school freshman, someone called my house’s landline at 2am on a Saturday morning. The ringing in my parents’ room woke me, and my stomach instantly dropped. I thought my grandmother was dead.
I could hear my mother moving quickly down the hall to my bedroom. She knocked curtly before entering and savagely flipping on the light. Clutching the cordless phone to her chest, she whisper-shouted: “There’s a young woman asking for you! I think she’s in trouble!”
At one of her NOW meetings, my mother had underwent past-life regression therapy and learned she’d once been a shero of epic proportions. She knew this because during her session she saw herself dressed in queenly furs, leading a large group of women and children across a Siberian tundra to shelter.
Might it now be my turn to lead? She passed me the phone with raised eyebrows, clearly stunned and a little thrilled that someone had chosen to call upon her mopey 14-year-old in their hour of need. Were her efforts to raise a wise, compassionate, feminist daughter already receiving recognition in the local adolescent community?
She lingered at my bedside waiting to escort my charge and me to an ER for a rape kit, a 24-hour drugstore for a pregnancy test or, at the very least, a Denny’s where I could console and advise this desperate soul over a Grand Slam. She nodded at me encouragingly.
“Hello?” I said.
“I hear you’ve been talking to my man,” said a girl obviously attempting to disguise her voice by lowering her pitch.
“Huh?” I kept my voice neutral, but I could already feel my face getting hot. My mother began gesturing frantically, so I motioned for her to leave. She threw her hands up in mock surrender and backed out of my room, gently closing the door behind her.
“You better stay away from my man,” the girl continued.
“Who is this?” I asked, though I already knew who it was, and she was no friend of mine.
“You better know who this is.” I could hear muffled giggling in the background, and it all made sense. A slumber party had reached its bold climax, and this girl had been dared to crank call her worst enemy… me.
“Who’s your man?” I humored her.
“You better know who my man is.” She and her coven of pubescent witches erupted into unbridled cackling.
I licked my lips, inspiration taking hold. I had, by far, the foulest mouth of all my friends and foes. Once again, I’d been summoned to dive into my deep catalog of derogatory terms for women. And I planned to deliver.
“You whore.” I began with a classic before forging ahead with every heinous slur I could conjure. It took some time as there were so many words to denote a promiscuous, subhuman female — possibly even more words than Eskimos had for snow.
Indeed, attaining my level of expertise was no easy feat. This was pre-Internet, so I had to earn my extravagant vocabulary the old-fashioned way. I religiously read profane library books, snuck into R-rated movies, listened to CDs with “Parental Advisory” labels at Tower Records listening stations, and kept a fine-tuned ear to the streets.
My opponent managed to land a feeble “bitch” here and there but was woefully outmatched. When I finally realized I was wasting my talent on this half-witted hussy, I concluded my impromptu address with my signature “Eat me, trollop” and hung up.
I triumphantly flung open my bedroom door to return the phone to its cradle and found my stricken mother standing there in the dark.
“Who was that?” she demanded.
“I don’t know, some dumb skank.”
“So that’s how you speak to women?”
I shrugged.
“Disgusting.” She snatched the phone from me and disappeared down the hall.
A few hours later at breakfast, my mother continued to berate me for my despicable language while also presenting a litany of excuses for my harasser’s behavior.
Maybe this girl actually needed help and didn’t know how to ask for it, she suggested. Maybe she wanted to be my friend. Or maybe she even had a schoolgirl crush on me.
I quickly tired of this dizzy broad carrying on as if that rank ho contained multitudes. “No, Mom,” I rolled my eyes at her naïveté. “She’s just a plain ol’ bitch.”
My mother sighed. Maybe so, she conceded. But what had possessed me to speak so deplorably?
I knew there was only one way to end this: I told her I’d gotten angry and blacked out, the temporary insanity defense. She seemed satisfied. I wasn’t a misogynist, just a hothead.
Sunday morning, as a peace offering, my mother said she was taking me to my favorite breakfast buffet. But, instead, she shepherded me to an anger management workshop filled with red-faced, middle-aged men likely in attendance under court order.
It wasn’t too terrible, we mostly just worked on breathing techniques. And it was there, while closing my eyes and holding my breath, that I was able to regress into the past. I saw my mother! It was just as she’d said: She was in her stately furs leading us across that frigid tundra. But it was not to safety. This treacherous wench was leading us all to the Gulag.
One hot, humid and downright disgusting week into my first semester of college, and I was already hobbled by injury. I sat outside the Forum (student union) with my leg propped up, icing my knee.
“Jesus, your knee! It’s so swollen,” a Southern voice drawled.
I looked up from nursing my pre-patella bursitis and watched a barefoot girl in a sundress slide into the patio chair next to mine. She set her Big Cookie — a Forum Grill speciality — on her lap and snapped open a peach iced tea.
“What happened to it?”
I told her I’d hurt it playing soccer.
“Playing soccer?!” She exclaimed, her eyes widening in shock. “I haven’t played soccer since I was five years old!” She tilted her head, eyeing me. “How old are you, 18?”
“Yeah,” I said defensively.
“Me, too,” she sighed, unhappily. She looked all of twelve picking up that giant chocolate chip cookie, a dusting of freckles crossing her chubby cheeks and button nose. She broke off a generous chunk and passed it to me before breaking off her own piece.
“Thanks.” I decided to like her. “I can’t believe how hot it is here.”
She shrugged. “Well, I’m from Alabama, so.” She settled back in her chair, sipping her iced tea. I could easily picture her on the veranda of an antebellum mansion, languidly swaying on a porch swing.
I returned to sliding an ice cube over my inflamed flesh. She watched with interest, my knee’s tumescence seeming to stir something within her.
“The boys around here just don’t know how to fuck,” she said.
I immediately abandoned my ministrations and gave her my full attention. The way she said “fuck” was a revelation, drawn-out and rich, emanating from someplace deep within her throat. Until that moment, I’d only experienced “fuck” as short and hollow, mud slung against a wall.
“Now, Southern boys… they know how to fuck.” Fuuuuuccckkk. Like sliding into a warm, soft mud bath. She gazed into the distance with a faint smile.
As I awaited the sumptuous details, I envisioned this teenaged Blanche Devereaux rolling around in cotton fields with thick-necked farm boys, quivering under their callused, expert touch. Then I imagined her enduring the furtive fumblings of soft-handed nebbishes in the cornfields of Iowa. How many had she evaluated in the week since the semester began to have arrived at her appraisal? And where did she find the time?
For me, there was already too much to do — never-ending lectures, reading and paper-writing, science labs and soccer practices, territorial disputes with my three roommates in the smallest quad on campus, (Read Second, room 5213, which has since been declared a triple, damn you, Grinnell). And it was my hot, throbbing knee that kept me awake at night, not a raging, unsated libido.
But this woman, for she was clearly a woman while I was merely a soccer-playing child, appeared unencumbered by academia. With no book bag nor busted knee to weigh her down, she was free to pursue countless dalliances. And she had chosen me to confide in! Perhaps this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
But “I’m just sick of being horny” was all she had left to say to me. And with that, she stood and sauntered off toward North Campus where all the jocks lived. Maybe she’d try her luck with a second-string quarterback — a grateful type eager to learn and desperate to please. I’d never know, though, because I’d never see her again.
A week later, a town doctor drained my knee with a large needle. Skin that had been stretched taut hung flaccid from my kneecap. As my discomfort faded, my thoughts turned to the Southerner. Had she, too, found relief? Possibly on a campus better suited to her tastes?
I could only imagine that shortly after our encounter, a relative had been dispatched to restore her to her rightful side of the Mason-Dixon line, her transfer application already en route to Bama and perchance Ole Miss. Surely, she’d spent her last moments at Grinnell standing in the middle of Mac Field, shaking a fist at the dawn’s early light and hollering: “If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill, as God is my witness, I’ll never be horny again!”
You’re hoping to log ten miles of running toward your ultramarathon training, but you and your sister only make it five in the 100-degree heat before it’s clear that it’d be dangerous to continue. It’s late May 2014, at the height of #NotAllMen and #YesAllWomen, in Nevada’s Valley of Fire State Park.
You, Valley of Fire, 2014
Back at the campsite, you both begin drinking from your cooler full of beer. There is no cell phone reception out here. Your sister forgot to bring a book but she’s one of those people who, when there’s nothing to do, is able to fall into a deep sleep. She sprawls out on a boulder, still clothed in a sports bra and running shorts, and immediately slips into the imperturbable slumber of a young child.
You grab your book and another beer and climb a large sandstone feature behind your campsite that gives you a bird’s-eye view of Arch Rock Campground and beyond. The Valley of Fire is named for its unearthly bright red Aztec sandstone. This is where they shot the Mars scenes in “Total Recall.”
It’s the off season and all of the other campsites are empty. When you first entered the park, you drove through the more popular Atlatl Rock Campground where the capacity was at maybe 50%. “Too many people,” you said and drove on. You both wanted to experience remote wilderness.
You understand why this campground, which commands the same camping fee, is uninhabited. Unlike Atlatl Rock, there are no showers nor flushable toilets, just primitive pit latrines so choked with flies you’d have to squeeze your eyes and mouth shut and plug your nose to use them. Only those seeking solitude would accept these second-rate amenities.
As sunset approaches, a late-model white Mustang with Nevada plates drives past your campsite. It’s the first car you’ve seen that day. A little past your campsite, it stops and reverses then idles in front of where your sister sleeps. You shout to her, and the car continues up the road.
“So?” Your sister grumbles when you wake her. The cloud of dust kicked up by the Mustang still lingers in the air. “Anyway, it’s gone now.” She rolls her eyes when you say you won’t be surprised if the car returns.
Twenty minutes later the Mustang pulls into the campsite next to yours, objectively the worst site of the 29 in the campground. It has zero shade and is strewn with so many rocks it’d be impossible to pitch a tent without putting in a considerable amount of manual labor. Giant rock formations separate this site from yours, giving the illusion of privacy while presenting opportunities for spying.
You wait a bit then walk up the road, past the site. You see a bald white man rooting around in the trunk of the Mustang, his back to you. There’s a suitcase on the picnic table but no camping gear in sight. When you report these findings to your sister, she shrugs and opens another beer. You go to the car and grab the Maglite you keep under the passenger’s seat. You call this Maglite “Marge.”
Marge
You’re blowing air into your sleeping pad when you hear your sister gasp as she exits the tent you’re sharing. “Oh, you startled me,” she says, her voice strained. You grab Marge and scramble through the tent’s opening. And there he is, standing five feet from you and your sister, just outside your tent. Your stomach drops down into your knees the way it once did when you came out of your kitchen and found a stranger standing in your living room. Only that man was just as surprised to see you and darted off immediately.
This man is in his 30s and stands with military erectness. He wears a fitted white T-shirt, khaki shorts and sneakers. The man is short — you are taller than him by two inches — and wiry. His hands are empty and hang inertly by his sides. He is bald by choice, his pink scalp shaved as if prepped for brain surgery. His skull looks as vulnerable as that of a newly hatched chick, and you can’t imagine it withstanding a solid whack from Marge. She’s the heavy-duty steel 4D model, synonymous with police brutality, and you grip her now with the unabashed menace of a mob enforcer.
The man looks at you with no indication that he’s registered the threat — his mouth is fixed in a neutral line, his eyes reveal nothing. But you sense his stillness belies a latent ferocity, an alligator lurking at the water’s edge. Any sudden moves from you now and he’d instantly snatch you up and drag you under while your sister could only watch, frozen in shock. “Hallo,” he says much too belatedly. He is not American.
“What’s up?” your sister says evenly, and you know that she too is on high alert. He asks to borrow some propane for cooking, speaking with an obvious German accent. While your sister fetches the tank, he scans your campsite. His eyes eventually settle on your car. “You from California?” he asks. You continue to stare at him in hostile silence, though he doesn’t seem the least bit unsettled by your inhospitality.
“Where are you from?” your sister responds flatly, clearly trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy. She shows him the propane tank but does not hand it to him. Is she planning on hitting him with it? “Detroit,” he says. He glances at the Colman tank, known to fit all standard portable propane appliances.
“That won’t work,” he says. “Not compatible.” Your sister shrugs. He waits, possibly for a dinner invitation, but no one says anything further. The sun has just set and the valley is ablaze in a red glow. After one more look around your campsite, he leaves. You and your sister watch him until he’s out of sight.
In under ten minutes, your sister packs up the food and beer while you partially collapse the tent and stuff it into your hatchback. You drive away from the site watching for any sign of the man in your rearview mirror. “So, to the other campground?” your sister asks once you’re stopped at the campground’s exit.
You should’ve known this would happen. Of course you’ve been told that women shouldn’t go camping alone, just as they shouldn’t go certain places after dark, or ever, without a man. Yes, going to the other, populated campground is the smart move.
But you have already paid for this campground. And what’s more, it dawns on you, you pay the same taxes as a man! Taxes that support parks like this and other public places and the roads leading to them which, as it turns out, you actually have limited access to if you’d like to remain safe.
Suddenly, you are overcome with beer-fueled rage as you finally understand other people’s indignation when it comes to taxes. Why should you subsidize the lifestyle of an already privileged group while accepting one that is less-than for yourself? Where’s your goddamn tax break? What a fool you are!
You put the car in reverse and pull into the driveway of a nearby campsite. No, this is where you’re staying, you tell your sister. There’s no way the man could’ve seen that you ended up here, even if he’d been peeping. And this new site is away from the bathrooms and hiking trails, so there’s no innocent reason he’d happen upon it.
But if somehow some unfathomable wickedness propels him to you in the night, you tell your sister you’ll kill him. “He was, beyond a doubt, asking for it,” any jury would conclude and exonerate you immediately. You did your duty to retreat and nevertheless he persisted and now the state of Nevada compels you to stand your ground!
Your sister agrees readily, so you amend your statement: “We’ll kill him.” But your sister is not interested in killing anyone, even in self-defense, not when you’re there — you, a slight person she’s accurately described as “bird-boned” all your lives.
You remind her that she’s physically much stronger than you and better equipped for hand-to-hand combat from wrestling in high school, practicing mixed martial arts and doing the prescription weight at CrossFit. Her hands are grappling strong and protrude from wrists that are as thick as your ankles. This woman has no problem opening jars.
Your sister, Valley of Fire, 2014
Although she agrees with your facts, she has her nursing career to consider. Plus, she’d like to marry and have kids. No, there’s no room for any homicide on her record, even the justifiable kind. It occurs to you your sister is not afraid of assaulting this man, she is simply uncomfortable with the repercussions. And she’s deemed you expendable.
At this moment, you can’t see how protecting her reputation should be both of your priorities. But it’s not the time for debate, so you agree to be the one wielding Marge. Sure, you’ll do most of the work, but you figure you’ll both get credit in the end, like with a group project. She’ll be an accessory at the very least, a joint principal most likely. Your sister has never seen an episode of “Law & Order,” and she lives her life like it.
Now that you’ve actually committed to using force against this man, you’ll need to be rational and practical in your approach. You dial back your initial unbridled bloodlust. Full-on murder is worst-case scenario. You won’t deliberately aim to kill, but you also won’t inhibit yourself in subduing him.
Your plan is textbook Cobra Kai — strike first, strike hard, no mercy. Should the man sneak into your camp, your sister will shine her high-beam flashlight in his eyes, and you’ll come from the opposite direction to hit him in the head with Marge.
The first blow must be the most accurate and backed by the most power, especially if he’s carrying a weapon. If you’re positioned behind him, your sister advises you to aim for the base of the skull. If you’re to his side, you’ll swing into his temple or jaw. If you’re in front of him, you’ll break his nose. After that, you’ll continue your efforts with Marge until the man is on the ground, then you’ll kick and stomp him until he stops moving.
Where to strike first, according to your sister
Your sister begrudgingly agrees to come to your aid if the man fights back, and she’ll help you duct tape his hands and legs together once he’s still. She offers to remain at the campsite and medically monitor him while you drive to a ranger station for help. But you explain, not without resentment, that you won’t be able to drive.
Though you’ll grip Marge with both hands, you anticipate your dainty wrists will break during the assault. You could reinforce them with splints made from duct tape and spare tent poles. But surely when you kill someone the police examine your hands and arms, and that might look like premeditation. It’ll all be worth it one day, you assure yourself, when your wrists would ache and you could tell your precious sister’s grandchildren: “Hmm, it’s about to rain. And I once had to single-handedly kill a man because your grandma’s a little bitch.”
After dinner, you set up your camping chairs near some large rocks you can take position behind if you see him coming. The sky is light enough that you’ll be able to spot him from a ways off but dark enough to allow for some stargazing. As per camping tradition, you lament the fact that your parents never taught either of you how to identify stars and constellations. Then you move on to pondering the man’s depraved motives, and your sister describes an elaborate booby trap she’d set for him had she the time and energy.
First, she’d dig a trench around your entire campsite, like a moat. Next, she’d gather sticks and sharpen one end of each into a crude, splintery point. She’d dip these points into the feces roiling in the pit toilets, plant them in the trench and then conceal it all under a layer of palm leaves. When the man tried to get to your tent, he’d fall into the trench and impale himself on the shit-encrusted spears. Your sister surmises he would consequently abandon his original objective and spend the remainder of his life staggering around the Valley of Fire until succumbing painfully to sepsis.
How even a motivated individual could find sticks and palm leaves in this barren desert, let alone dig a trench deep enough, is beyond you. She admits she got the idea from a Vietnam movie — so, yeah, it’s best suited for the jungle. Still, she continues with an edge to her voice, at least one wouldn’t have to stay up the whole night waiting for someone who probably wasn’t even coming. The shit stick moat would protect you both while you slept soundly in your nylon castle.
And with that, your sister proclaims she’s going to bed. “You can wake me if you see him coming” she adds as she zips herself inside the tent. You’ve come too far to turn back now so you spend the rest of the night in your camping chair clutching Marge, dozing off and waking with a start at every noise, until you hear your sister say “Guten Morgen.”
While she lights the camping stove to make coffee, you beat your rolled sleeping bag savagely with Marge. You imagine the white Mustang driving by just then and you making eye contact with the man, like a public masturbator, as you go to town. In your fantasy, the man is shocked to see you there and horrified to realize that you were there all night, waiting for him in the dark. You and big, bad Marge.
My sister and I were at LAX trying to check our luggage when the Delta agent claimed that my sister had never checked in and that it was too late for her to do so — she’d have to pay for a later flight to JFK. We disputed the claim but, you know, the house always wins.
As I sat in my assigned seat, I heard my sister’s name called over the PA system several times. I informed a flight attendant of the situation, and he said she was definitely checked in for the flight. By then, of course, it was too late to get her through security. An off-duty Delta flight attendant traveling standby took my sister’s seat — an exit-row, aisle seat — minutes before they closed the door.
I quickly ascertained that there wasn’t a death in this flight attendant’s family. She wasn’t even en-route for work. So I laid into her. She seemed genuinely ignorant about my sister getting bumped for her and immediately brandished 15 drink coupons. I was two drinks in to her four when she told me that she needed to get to the Upper West Side stat in order to recuperate her belongings from her ex-boyfriend’s apartment while he was gone. Among these items was a mold of her genitalia.
This mold technically belonged to her ex because she had given it to him, just as he had given her a mold of his erect penis. They both travelled a lot for work, she explained. Still, she didn’t think he deserved to keep her vagina. I pressed for more information and learned that the mold was actually of her vulva and did not include the vaginal canal.
Honestly, this didn’t sound like a fair trade to me. The reproduction of her genitals seemed purely decorative, while the reproduction of his had both ornamental and functional value. Had he given her a mold of his flaccid penis — or maybe of just his testicles — it would’ve eliminated the utilitarian nature of the gift and made for a more equal exchange.
She kept the drinks coming, so I politely listened to her wax poetic about her ex’s penis. She promised she’d show me the replica once we deplaned but, in the meantime, she did her best to describe it. Basically, she claimed this penis was perfect in every way — it was a once-in-a-lifetime penis. So I was surprised when she said she was planning to stuff the mold of her ex’s stupendous penis down his garbage disposal.
If this penis was such a revelation, why destroy it? Perfect penises don’t grow on trees. Why not stick one of his prized possessions, like his hookah, down his garbage disposal? (I learned her ex had a hookah to which he was quite attached). But she said she needed the poetic justice that could only be attained by mangling her ex’s penis in his own garbage disposal.
Surely, I thought, there must be a way to clone this dildo. Like how you can make a copy of a key. That way, she could keep the original clone and shove the clone of the clone down the garbage disposal, and no one would be the wiser.
I told her that her ex was lucky to have a garbage disposal. I’ve lived in three NYC apartments, and none of them had one. I guessed he didn’t live in a pre-war building. Her eyes widened. Wait, he did live in a pre-war building, she told me. And she couldn’t recall actually seeing a garbage disposal, she had just assumed there was one. She began to panic. What the hell would she do if there was no garbage disposal?
There were plenty of alternatives, I assured her. For example, she could roll the dildo in peanut butter and birdseed and toss it on the ground in Washington Square Park. The pigeons and rats would handle the rest. But she wasn’t open to suggestions. Defeated, she nodded off and didn’t wake until we were at the gate. And then she acted as if her and I were complete strangers. I was a little hurt that she couldn’t even make eye contact with me. But, mostly, I was saddened by the knowledge that I’d never get to see her ex’s knob.
Ultimately, I don’t think I’d make a cast of my own parts to give to a lover, not when I’m pretty sure that having sex with me is like having sex with a pile of paper clips. Treat yo’self!: Acco Recycled #1 Paper Clips (10,000 Count)
Even if things sour between us and you no longer desire to have sex with a heap of flimsy steel wire, at least you’ll never want for roach clips. And you’ll always be able to access the reset button on your router. Functionality first. But if it’s closure you’re after, for the record, I do have a garbage disposal.
Last summer, I found a lump and had a needle biopsy, and it was diagnosed as a benign breast condition for which my doctor prescribed non-surgical treatment. This treatment did nothing for my lump, and so in November I met with Breast Oncology Specialist “Dr. H.”
Dr. H looked at my imaging, read the pathology report, felt my lump and said: “Nope. This pathologist is getting a phone call.” She was clearly unimpressed by his work, so I asked her if I should leave him a bad Yelp review. You know, the kind that begins with: “If I could give negative stars, I would.” She said “sure” and, also, that the lump needed to come out immediately.
I don’t care for general anesthesia. There are only four people on the planet I’m okay being unconscious around and none of them are surgeons, unfortunately. But Dr. H said she could snatch out my tumor while I was fully conscious, and so I made an appointment for the following week.
That night, I thought about the tumor and also about the multiple lesions that’d been recently discovered on my liver. I summoned my mother (a former hospice nurse) and sister (a current hospice nurse) and had them feel my lymph nodes for the hundredth time. They weren’t enlarged. Still, I thought it a good idea to express my wishes in the event of a worst-case, end-stage diagnosis. And that was to forego chemo and any other unnecessary, painful treatment. Instead, I wanted a big party where I would say goodbye to everyone while no one could tell yet I was sick. And then I expected my mother and sister to help me die comfortably. I felt like people did this kind of thing all the time.
Much to my surprise, the both of them flat-out refused. They were appalled at my ignorance and used the occasion to try and educate me on the tenets of hospice. I was reminded of that scene in “Ocean’s Eleven” when that casino owner learns his vault is being robbed and so he tells his guy to “make the call” and I assumed he had an elite team of badasses that would take care of things, but the call was just to 911. WTF? This guy had to rely on the police just like everyone else?
I was similarly displeased with how my mother and sister — whom I’d always considered to be both professional angels of mercy and the two people closest to me — were going to hypothetically handle a hypothetical late-stage diagnosis. “This is bullshit,” I lamented. “I’d do it for you.” They were unmoved. “I’d do it for you,” I said again. Nothing.
Well, I mused aloud, I could always disguise myself as a dog and call one of those in-home pet euthanasia services and tell them I needed someone to come put down a Mastiff. My mother and sister concurred that I had neither the presence nor the temperament of a Mastiff but could possibly pull off a high-strung Weimaraner. Yet, Weimaraners don’t weigh more than 90 pounds, so they agreed it’d be best if I told the service I needed enough euthanasia drugs for “an anxious, knock-kneed, 140-pound Great Dane.” And that was the end of that conversation.
The following week, Dr. H injected my breast with lidocaine-epinephrine and cut into me. All the while, we chatted in that easy way I’ve heard other women and their hairdressers chat. I watched her pull the tumor out of me, and it was like witnessing a birth. I named my tumor Rio, like the song.
After she stitched me up, Dr. H placed Rio gently in my hand, and I was suddenly overcome with the desire to stop-motion animate it. I had the stop-motion equipment. I even had the sand for Rio to dance on. Dr. H didn’t seem the least bit shocked at my request to keep Rio. She just shrugged and said: “Well, I’m not gonna fight you for it. But don’t you wanna know?” Then she left the room and returned holding a specimen cup containing some other lump of tissue she had removed from a woman that day. It wasn’t going to the pathology lab. It was benign and going in the medical waste bin, she said.
This tumor wasn’t as big as Rio, but it had its charms. It was like a delicate piece of cooked lobster — innocuously smooth and pink on the outside and pearly white where it had been partially bisected. I turned the cup around in my hand and admired it for a few moments. Then I handed it back to Dr. H, thanked her, gave Rio a parting glance and walked out the door.
In the end, my tumor and the spots on my liver all turned out to be benign. And so now I’m left to wonder what became of Rio. Is it floating in formaldehyde? Has it been incinerated? Did someone from the lab take it home to do God knows what with it? My sister, who makes claymation characters, says she’ll one day recreate Rio. But I have my doubts. As I found out, it’s hard to get her to do even the simplest things these days, such as administering a lethal dose of morphine after a boss ass party.
