Ah, Booty Crickets… We’ve all had ‘em, and those who say they haven’t, are lying. I’m talking here about The Crabs, (i.e. genital lice), and the embarrassing
trail of destruction they leave in their wake. Mercifully, I’ve only fallen
to this most annoying of sexual consequences once. But at least A DOZEN of my
friends have over the years, and tonight, I feel the need to talk about it.
Don’t
worry; I won’t name names, (for those of you who just crapped yourselves). I’ll
use my perpetually amusing aliases instead. Still, you know who you are, and
that’s what you get for fuckin’ with me.
Firstly, the term
“Booty Crickets” is a newly acquired addition to my verbal repertoire that I have Lori, (from the Phil’s
Wedding Story), to thank for. Secondly, my ex-girlfriend Susan is gonna
KILL me when she reads this. In my own defense, I only JUST NOW put two and two
together. And on account of a dream I had last night, no less. Still, she will probably never talk to me again.
Okay, so, I’m
a genius. And by “genius”, I mean I’m smarter than you. But being a powerhouse of intellectual resources isn’t all it’s cracked
up to be, and I’m constantly plagued by cognoscente brain farts that most people don’t have to worry about. For example, I have reoccurring nightmares about me and my brother Eric being chased
through a moonlit desert by pitbulls with no hair and red skin. The beginning
of my first novel, Children of Ascendance, was actually based on said nightmare, but that’s not something
I’m going to get into right now.
A more pertinent
illustration is the way my memory works; how I won’t remember something FOR YEARS, and then, on some random night, I’ll
dream about it, or suddenly have a full-fledged “vision” as I’m cooking breakfast. The WORST is when I’ll hear an otherwise nonchalant phrase, or get a whiff of some bizarre smell,
and totally freeze- my faculties locking up so that I just stand there stuttering:
“Mike? Hey! What’s wrong, man?”
“I peed on
a cake when I was six… and then ate it… Uh, where’s your sister?”
No kidding. That’s a verbatim exchange I had with an old buddy of mine one time at his parents’
house. He threw coffee in my face.
ANYWAY, the only
reason I’m bringing this up, is because last night I had a lucid dream that prompted me to recall an incident ten years
ago during which I might’ve gotten the crabs, and since I might’ve thusly given them to my then and future love
interest, Susan, I gonna describe the tragedy now.
The following actually
happened sometime in 1993 or 94, (though, again, I only remembered it this morning), and it was two days before I met Susan
for the first time.
I was at a Thursday
night party at the apartment of Thad Something-or-Other, and it was me, Jeff Byrd, Jamie Laws, and about five of our fraternity
brothers. There were numerous women in attendance as well, one of whom was a
dark-haired specimen I’ll refer to from here on out as, “Bugsy”.
I’d like to
tell you that Bugsy was a looker, but, in fact, she was what Webster’s Dictionary refers to as a “Butterface”. As in, “Yeah, she’s got a good body… but her face!”
The
party was relatively small, (fifteen people, tops), which is just the way I like it.
You see, I don’t do well in big crowds, but, in a cozier setting, where I can crack jokes and periodically put
rectal lint in people’s drinks when they’re not looking, I rule the Universe of Cool Shit with an iron hand.
Inevitably, the
night degenerated into a spirited round of “Quarters”, which is a college drinking game where participants try
to bounce a quarter off a hard surface so it lands in a glass. If any given participant
is successful, he or she gets to make someone drink. If they miss, they have
to drink themselves.
Get it? Got it? Good…
Despite what I consider
to be a fair amount of hand-eye coordination, I SUCK at this game, and “Drunk Mike” came a knocking within the
first hour. Not a bad thing, as long as my condition is shared. Alas, I was way ahead of the game, and- in an attempt to piss everybody off- I started hurling quarters
like a ninja with throwing stars. If memory serves, one of my more unfortunate
ricochets shot through the bars of Thad’s hamster cage and killed the rodent within.
Luckily, Thad was in the bathroom at the time, and when he finally noticed that his pet wasn’t moving, I played
it off by “admitting” that I’d fed it some beer.
“Mike, you’re
crazy!” he laughed, “I hope Pockets doesn’t get sick and throw up on his exercise wheel.”
“Aw, don’t
worry about it,” I assured him, “I’m a Biology major, remember? Beer
is good for hamsters. It helps ‘em sleep.” (…Forever)
Judging by the answering
machine message I got the next morning, Thad didn’t notice that Pockets had a silver coin embedded in his skull until
after the party was over.
Regardless,
my inability to bounce a quarter facilitated my getting drunker and drunker and drunker, and I lapsed into the most dangerous
stage of intoxication I know… “Satan Mike”. I vaguely remember
Satan Mike (who looks just like me) tapping me on the shoulder and asking if he could take my seat.
“Sure,”
I told him, and when one of our new K.A. pledges asked who I was talking to, I closed one nostril with my finger and blew
snot at him.
Nobody thought this
was funny but me… and Bugsy. I kept noticing her giving me the “goo
goo” eyes; and- as the liquor flowed- I gradually decided that she was the most beautiful girl at the party, (or, the
only one that didn’t hate me. I can’t remember).
The hours drifted
and the drinking continued, the others doing their best to catch up with me…
“Hey Jamie,”
I barked at one point, MORE than loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, “You see that girl over there?”
Pointing my outstretched finger across the table until it was pretty much TOUCHING Bugsy’ s nose. “I bet she wants to go to DescadoLand and try out the log ride.
You think I should buy her a ticket?”
We’d switched
from Quarters to Poker by this time, and Jamie shrugged me off, glanced up at Bugsy, and then looked back down at his cards.
“No,”
he said, “She’s ugly.”
Ah, my beloved Jamie
Laws. Would anybody else have the balls?
Bugsy stormed out
of the room and disappeared into the bathroom, apparently to weep for the hand genetics had dealt her. Two of her friends followed her in there, and the rest of the women, (four or so), abruptly left behind
muttered curses to Thad about how his friends were all “assholes”.
Bereft
of possible sexual conquests, most of the guys soon departed as well, leaving me, Jeff, Jamie, and Thad to play on by ourselves.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER,
Thad looked up and slurred, “Hey! Where’d everybody go?!?”
Now, you might think
that Thad is, well, stupid. But nothing could be farther from the truth. He’s now a commercial pilot, and I know this because I ran into him in the Memphis
Airport the last time I flew home to Mississippi.
Way to go, Thad! (I hope you crash)
I don’t think
any of us noticed at first, but Bugsy and her two friends, (Caroline and Amy), didn’t leave. No, they’d stealthily reemerged from the latrine to take up residence in the living room instead. Huddled there on the couch, the three of ‘em plotted secret strategies in hushed
whispers, their ultimate plan only reaching fruition when Jeff received a call from his girlfriend at the time, Melanie.
“Gotta go,
guys!” Jeff announced in his perpetually jovial way, “Mike? You coming?”
“Naw,”
I replied, “I’ll catch a ride with Jamie.”
Jamie glanced at
me, then at Jeff, before rising unsteadily from the card table and staggering into the living room to hold a 1.5 second conversation
with the remaining girls.
“Mike’s
covered,” he muttered, sitting back down and barking at Thad to deal another hand.
Jeff left. And on the drinking went for another twenty minutes until I proclaimed my need to,
quote, “Take a wicked dump!”
What I encountered
when I came out, took me totally off guard. The apartment was silent- no voices,
no laughter, no music. My super ninja instincts warned that terrorists had broken
in while I was defecating, and thusly murdered everyone but me. Tragic, yes,
but I wasn’t about to let the Iraqi bastards get away with it, and I grabbed a soccer trophy off a nightstand in the
hall to use as a weapon.
Sticking close to
the wall, I stole down the carpeted corridor on the sides of my feet, ponderously sniffing the air. Yep, Terrorists! I could smell ‘em, (because,
to Satan Mike, terrorists smell like stale beer, cigarette butts, and cheap perfume).
“DIE YOU ISLAMIC
SONS A BITCHES!!!” I screamed, charging into the living room with the soccer trophy held high. I swung twice and hit nothing, then glancing over to see Bugsy sitting alone on the couch.
“They left
you alive?” I gasped, instantly out of breath, “Why?”
“What’re
you talking about?” she giggled, “Are you drunk?”
It was
then that I heard muffled voices coming from Thad’s bedroom, he and some female laughing back and forth about a subject
I couldn’t discern.
Hmmm,
perhaps the terrorists had been a figment of my imagination…
“Where’s
Jamie?”
“He left with
my friend Caroline.”
“Shit!”
I cursed, finally lowering the soccer trophy and letting it hit the floor. “Jamie was my ride.”
“That’s
okay,” Bugsy cooed, rising seductively from the couch, “Amy’s gonna stay the night with Thad.” She put her hand on my shoulder and let it slid down to playfully tickle my stomach. “Thad said you can crash here too, if you want.
But I don’t mind dropping you off at the dorm. Well, if you can
stand riding in my Cressida. It’s all dirty from-”
“Take me home!”
I cut her off, then looking over my shoulder to make sure there weren’t any terrorists in the room, “They might
come back…”
The half hour that
followed is a blur, (yeah, like the rest of this story ISN’T), but I remember seeing the flat Delta landscape
fly by the passenger side window, familiar Cleveland landmarks giving way to endless fields punctuated by the occasional farmhouse.
Wait
a minute.
It wasn’t
until we turned off a dirt road and pulled in beside a lone grain depository, that I realized I was about to have sex…
whether I wanted to or not.
“This isn’t
the dorm,” I stammered, “Are you gonna rape me?”
“No,”
Bugsy huffed, simultaneously punching me in the arm, “I just wanted to talk for a second,” …And then she
took her shirt off.
I won’t
belabor the obvious, so, suffice to say, we had clumsy drunken sex. Fortunately,
even Satan Mike had the presence of mind to pull the single, “back up” condom from his wallet and put it on beforehand.
It might’ve
been good. It might’ve been bad.
But Bugsy is the only person who will ever know for sure.
The next morning,
I woke up in my dorm room with NO PANTS ON, my Tommy Hilfiger boxers and purple Polo button up, the only things between me
and my bed sheets. My wallet I later found in the second floor stairwell, but
of my socks, my shoes, my jeans, my undershirt- there were no signs.
My roommate at the
time, Rob “Spoon” Thomas, was merciless in his early morning taunting, (telling me I’d vomited in the Dean’s
mailbox… which I highly doubt… since I knew the Dean’s wife… and she never mentioned it), so I gave
him the finger and stumbled off to go take a shower.
As soon as the hot
water hit me, I felt a very slight, yet very persistent tingling in my crotchial region, but I figured it was nothing more
than some post-sex chaffing, and I paid it no mind.
Two days later,
I met Susan.
To give you some
background, Jamie’s roommate back then was a little guy with a HUGE penis named Timmy Hollihead. I’m mentioning Timmy’s phallus because it’d become somewhat of a legend during his tenure
at Delta State. Rumor has it that one time during his freshmen year, Timmy turned
around too fast in the shower and knocked another guy out with his dick, (the freshman dorm had “group” showers).
Anyway, Timmy and
Susan were plutonic friends, and since Susan had recently broken up with her boyfriend, she and Timmy had plans to go out
that evening, (Saturday). Jamie and I had nothing better to do, so we invited
ourselves to go along, and the rest is Mike history.
I remember
the first time I saw Susan rather vividly, as she was standing beside Timmy’s car when Jamie and I came stomping into
the parking lot. It was nighttime, but there was a single streetlight shining
down for her alone, and I recall smiling for no apparent reason.
Just a wee thing
she was, petite and aquiline, with long, mousy blond hair that hung halfway down her back.
She was dressed kind of like a guy, (jeans and a simple black top), but there was nothing masculine about her. I’ve described Susan before in other things I’ve written, and the term
that always comes to mind is, “fairy princess”. My own feisty little
sprite; that’s what she was to me instantly, what she was to me permanently, what she is to me now…
Timmy made the introductions
when Jamie and I approached, and soon the four of us were cruising the Cleveland backroads drinking ice-cold roadpops. As Timmy was driving, and Susan was in the front seat, the conversation was mostly
contained between the two of them, Jamie and I piping up from the back whenever we thought we could add amusing commentary.
Normally, the two
of us are MASTERS at this, but Jamie didn’t seem in the mood to crack wise, (maybe he had the crabs too), and- without
my wing man- I felt stupid and bumbling. Try as I might, I just couldn’t
get Susan’s attention. She’d turn around and nod politely whenever
I addressed her directly, but my jokes were BOMBING, and Timmy and Jamie were starting to notice. I kept seeing Timmy staring at me in the rearview mirror, while Jamie was shaking his head as if to say,
“Give it a rest, dumbass. She’s not interested in you.”
Heartbreaking…
Soon though, I got
a few beers under my belt, and “Drunk Mike” came to the rescue.
…Let’s
pick up the conversation about an hour in, when Susan was telling Timmy about a medical condition she had that may prevent
her from having children. Funny, huh?
“So it’s
like my, uh, monthly friend, doesn’t completely leave,” she explained, “And the leftovers clog up
my uterus or something.”
“Oh, Susan,”
Timmy groaned, “I’m soooo sorry. But, hey! My mom knows a great gynecologist here in town, and maybe she could pass his number along. What’s your, um, condition called?”
“Endometriosis,”
Susan replied, and I shot forward from the backseat to thrust my head in between them.
Now, what she said
was “Endometriosis”. But, with the windows down and the music up,
I thought she said something else.
“Didelphodon?!?”
I gasped, “Oh my God!!! You’ve got a pre-historic mammal from the
late Cretaceous period in your uterus?!? WHY THE FUCK DON’T THEY JUST TAKE
IT OUT?!?”
I’d been downing
beers so fast, that I was just drunk enough to be serious. But everybody else
thought I was kidding, and the car erupted in a riotous fanfare of laughter.
Thanks, Drunk Mike... By the way, if you wanna learn more about Didelphodon, and other dinosaur-era creatures,
go to www.dothefuckingresearchyourself.dickhead.com.
The best part was
when Susan turned sideways in the front seat and looked back at me; her smile, her laugher, more intoxicating than the frosty
roadpop between my legs, (which would later leave a wet spot due to condensation, so it looked like I’d peed my pants).
I’m a writer,
so you’ve gotta put up with a certain amount of literary window dressing. But
I’m not lying when I say that her smile was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen… and, it still
is. Cute a child’s would be, genuine as a saint’s, Susan had and
has the ability to affect happiness with expression alone, as if her own joy is a tangible and infectious thing.
I wanted her instantly,
and not in a sexual way. No, I wanted to make her smile again, laugh again, perhaps
parasitically. The spell this woman casts over others is truly amazing to see
firsthand, and my own experience was no exception. With those wide unwavering
eyes- so blue they look crystalline when the sun hits ‘em- she inspires pure and simple bliss, and I felt the need to
be close to her… maybe even protect her.
Our tour
of the Cleveland wilderness eventually led the four of us to Rumors Bar and Grill, and Susan and I spent the whole night talking
and gushing and ignoring everybody else, which left Timmy and Jamie to do what they do best: drive women to sexual frenzy. I can’t honestly recall how the night ended, but I do remember the six days
that followed, because Susan and I were together every waking minute that we didn’t have class, and it was one of the
happiest times of my life…
