It’s four o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon and I’m anxiously awaiting my meeting with yet another disgruntled customer in the tragic pose I always find myself in before these weekly disasters: hunched over a bar, staring into a pretentious beer I can’t afford, wondering how I got here and how much this is going to hurt. While one hand swirls suds, the other is clenched and desperately in need of a cigarette. Alas, there will be no smoking. Heaven forbid I pollute my lungs while my blood pressure’s rising and the brews break down my brain cells.

I have never been a full-time smoker and I’ll probably never be like the dad who can’t walk his daughter down the aisle in that mortifying anti-smoking commercial, but I do enjoy the occasional puff after a long day breaking my back. At the end of each week when I’ve spent all of my money on taxes, bills, and the beans, canned corn, and iced tea mix that keep me nourished enough to repeat this cycle every two weeks, I’d like to think I’m due some kind of vice, lungs be damned.

Anyway, social smoking has been great to me. In high school, the kids who smoked cigarettes were also the same kids who were interested in the counter cultural music, books, and ideas that would come to be my greatest hobbies. They were intelligent and cool and smoked, maybe, because yeah, they wanted to be perceived as such. Some of them became my best friends in both high school and college. By endeavoring to appear bitter, crass, and intellectual, they succeeded. Think of it as The Secret…with a side of cancer…I know I do. In any event, my social life taught me one thing. Smoking is cool.

This continued well into college. At SUNY Albany, cigarettes were a great icebreaker when meeting girls and a great stress reliever during long nights spent doing papers. There was something psychologically gratifying and comforting about tobacco that fresh air could simply never duplicate.

Despite all the social beneficence cigarettes showered upon me, there’s always been that elephant in the room. Those things are fucking killers. Clearly. Different people have different tolerance for smoking, and that’s clear, but they leave you with lungs like leather. Still, some people smoke a pack a day for thirty years and get hit by a garbage truck. Some people smoke a pack a day for ten years and get tumors. At the end of the day, how bad are the consequences of this free decision made by reasonable, conscious adults and teenagers armed with all the facts? For comparison, imagine your shelf life if you drank 20 shots of whiskey a day, or ate 20 cans of tuna? Is it that bad?

“WORSE!” they’ll tell you.

Again. And again. And again.

They never stop telling you.

Here I find myself after 27 years, living in my own apartment(barely) and away from the grasp of my loving parents, in my sixth year as a full fledged adult in the United States of America, working ten hour days and coming home only to be bombarded with television advertising warning me about the dangers of smoking. Shouldn’t this crap be confined to the schoolhouse? After the age of 18, shouldn’t we be able to make our own decisions, after reviewing a decade of horrifying commercials telling us how bad cigarettes are and seeing for ourselves?

I think so, and I’m calling bullshit. Here’s some of my least favorite cigarette advertisements, and why they’re so incredibly atrocious.

Down the Aisle

How it Goes:

We are greeted  by a trailer for the kind of terrible movie people in relationships as dead as Michael Jackson go to see. A father must come to terms with the fact that his little girl is all grown up and he has to give her up on her wedding day. But WAIT…Trick-er-ation ensues! The shot pans out, and we see a father hooked up to an IV, a respirator, and all kinds of monitors. He can’t walk his daughter down the aisle, because he smoked cigarettes, and now he’s going to die!

Why It’s Crap: While the father might not be able to walk his little girl down the aisle at her wedding, it’s only because he worked the kind of backbreaking job makes a man need a pack of cigarettes a day and some suds that she’s paying for these nuptials! If not for daddy, she’d be married by a justice of the peace behind a gay man and his illegal immigrant friend and two idiots on a meth bender.  If anything, the sad spectacle of father, in wheelchair, being rolled down the aisle to give his daughter away, would make for a heroic profile in perseverance. And a much better film. As in Casablanca, cigarettes enhance the production.

Focus on the Positive

Film- In Michael Moore style a bunch of ethnically diverse, hiply dressed teens(lead by the indispensable light skinned black kid with dreadlocks- of course) walk into a tobacco building and start asking executives why they don’t tell people cigarettes contain arsenic. A musical breaks out. A bunch of kids who failed to make the cast of High School Musical take their anger out on the tobacco industry. We’re told to focus on the positives of cigarettes, and ignore all the health issues. We’re told that someone dies from smoking every 8 seconds.

Why It’s Crap- Cigarettes have warnings on the pack, and they’re meant for consumption by adults. Tobacco companies have to count on the government that they’re paying all those lawsuit damages to for law enforcement and education. But besides that, as a 19 year old adult in a society with public education who has spent the a dozen years in the school system and the rest of his/her waking life viewing advertisements telling them smoking is for losers who do it just to be popular. What part of “smoking causes cancer” tattooed across the pack don’t people understand. Anyone who grew up around a single person who died from smoking knows this. It’s a fucking terrible way to go. And they smoke anyway. After 18 years on this planet gathering information, you should know any of the lies perpetrated by the tobacco industry are crap, unless you’re a waterhead.

But that’s not all. For years we’ve been told that people smoke cigarettes because of “peer pressure,” because they’re desperate to be cool and fit in, and that’s wrong. Be yourself, be strong was always the appeal, and it was pretty damn resonant. Cool on your own terms. Great until 8^th grade; Then you get to high school, and you realized that if you’re not particularly wealthy, good looking, or athletic, there’s not much you have to offer the outside world and you better fucking smoke! After all, it’s one of the few avenues you have to make friends. So what does the anti-smoking lobby do?  Onnnnnly now, when it’s clear that smoking actually IS cool, do the anti-smoking advocates decide to dress their jackboot hipster tween cast up in the Urban Outfitters catalogue and put on a high school musical. “Quit smoking and you’ll be cool too!”

The moral of this story: “Don’t be a fruity tool. High School Musical is lame, and so is your health. Cigarettes are punk rock. Smoke cigarettes. Live fast, die young. Fuck it.

The Brazilian Dead Baby Ad

The Premise: Ummm…here

Why It’s Crap: Babies can’t smoke. Especially dead ones. DUH! Besides that, society can’t expect to account for the retards that still don’t know you shouldn’t smoke during pregnancy. But nature can, and does, as is possibly evidenced by this picture. If one less dolt who smokes during her pregnancy ends up NOT procreating….? I fail to see how that’s any sort of tragedy.

Look, cigarettes are bad for you, but so is life. Divorce is bad for you.  Taxes are bad for you. Booze is bad for you.  Whores are bad for you. A combination of these things is likely to kill you, although sometimes, a combination of these things will leave you feeling absolutely phenomenal (well, not taxes).  At the end of the day, if you want an occasional cigarette, have one, and if you decide you want to die hacking up the half of your lung that’s left, God bless you too.

“25 grand is simply not enough money for me to get shot dead in some ghetto.  I will call ‘em back when they raise the starting salary back to a living wage.”

This is what I told my mother when I was fresh out of college, waiting tables for cash and a 3.30 an hour paycheck at a local greasy spoon and pretending to apply for jobs post-college.  I was twisting in the wind, failing to land publishing positions and uninterested in selling insurance, knives, or the Yellow Pages (yes, people still do that).  I had just taken the NYPD test because I figured it provided an opportunity to ward off my parent’s exhortations that I make a career decision pronto.  I simply wasn’t into it. As far as I was concerned, waiting tables and drinking Negro Modelos on the public beach at 3 o’clock in the afternoon after a day shift was all I needed in life, until I decided to write the next classic American novel. After all, it worked for Kerouac and Thompson.

Anyway, I could never be a cop. Cops get drug tested. Cops wear stupid haircuts. Cops berate kids on the beach just looking to have a good time for drinking a couple of beers and starting a bonfire. Cops are “that guy.” No one wants to be “that guy.”

Fast forward to 2009; I’m a salesman, like every coasting, middle class American male my age who never made a decision. I sling telephone systems and voicemail systems to small and miniature sized businesses in the five boroughs. Because of the recession most of my business has been the latter, and so I carry my demo set wherever it takes me in hopes of convincing customers to buy five to ten phones at a time from me so that I might be able to afford groceries this month.  Five sales a month keeps me in the black, and I’ve got two knocked out for the week, as I proceed with cautious optimism to the grimiest sections of Brooklyn to meet with some non-profits of note that have cash to burn in the immediate future.

Meetings one and two go on without a hitch and I’m soaring in my head. I realize that while the next month may be another one spent eating Chef Boyardee, spaghetti, and peanut butter and jelly, September will be prosperous. I will be able to go out regularly like I did pre-recession without bean counting, and maybe I will even develop a weight problem to worry about as a result. I never thought that would be welcome.  Things are looking up!

I quickly exit the subway station at Rockaway Boulevard and realize I’m not in Kansas anymore.  A short view of the landscape reveals a few crack heads and welfare moms. I am somewhat unphased, because I’m a 6-4, 200 pound man who has taken a beating or two in his lifetime and I carry a large screwdriver that I might use as a weapon should trouble approach. None seems to be approaching. I pull out my iPhone and discreetly begin checking the GPS, and in moments I arrive at my destination.

After a quick survey of job site 1 I begin searching for directions to job site 2 and I find them. I proceed west only to find a structural disconnect between the maps direction and the way the streets flow. I hold my phone up in front of my face and being proceeding like one giant sore thumb towards the intersection.  Somewhere, a “lost white boy” signal must have alerted the neighborhood.  Across the street, two elderly men sitting in front of a garage beckon me. “Say hey whiteboy, don’t be walkin over there, dem brothas is trouble” is what they say, and unfortunately, I continue walking , and what they say doesn’t register until one of the four fine young gentleman across the street screams “ayyo white boy, let me git a look atchyo phone.”

It is in moments like these when the shitpile that is my worthless lower middle class mid 20’s life reveals itself to me.  Here I stood on a corner in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, outside of Crown Fried Chicken and across from a community garden built where no one felt it worthwhile to erect a building after the last one likely collapsed, demo phone kit in my bag. I am holding up an iPhone that I could never afford were it not gifted to me in celebration of my 27^th year of mediocrity on this planet and might as well be screaming “rob me, please,” and wearing a pink shirt that says “easy mark.” I am quickly, predictably, approached by four “urban youths” in doo rags and team caps whose only occupation seemed to be beating down white stiffs like me. So… I did what any red-blooded, 6-4 200 pound American male with an improvised weapon in his possession would do in the face of such odds…

I sprinted to the subway station 5o yards away and didn’t look back until I was safely seated next to a friendly looking old woman on the C train with the grandma glasses and the white knit sweater over her shoulders.  I called the customer and relayed the afternoon’s events to them. They were not sympathetic. “What kind of a retard stands on a corner in the ghetto sticking his PDA up in the air for all to see?” Needless to say I did not get the sale as a result of my inability to survey “Site 2.” Another wasted opportunity.

You can mock me for my behavior, and you could call me less of a man, and you’d probably be right.  I’ve been kicked around and my life hasn’t turned out the way I wanted. I have a job I hate and bills that I can barely pay, and I visit the bank of mom a little too often for my liking and I can barely afford to take my girlfriend out for ice cream. I haven’t authored the great American novel and I probably never will. This is nothing more than another sad event in what’s been a fairly underwhelming life, and I guess you can say I acted rather predictably; you can say all that, and you’d be right, but in the end, I can hold my head high knowing that I’m a man of principal, because I stood by my pledge:

“There’s just no way I’m getting shot dead in some ghetto for 25,000 a year.”

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Dear Julia,

I am sorry I made everything so awkward the other night when we were watching Rock of Love Bus and you were laughing and I tried to kiss you and then pretended like it was nothing before I kinda ran outta your house crying. I am kinda kooky like that sometimes…lol…

I understand and am totally cool with the fact that you don’t want to date me. Your friendship is as valuable to me as it is to you, and I sincerely mean that. Although it will be very difficult for me to sweep aside the way I feel about you and I know you’ve had a tough time getting over the emotional scars of your ex boyfriend, I will do what makes you happy. If you ever need anything or want to talk I want you to know that I’m totally here for you and down for whatever…no awkwardness here…I just want you to be a part of my life, whatever that means!

I just wanted to know something else… for myself. If I was a total douchebag, do you think you might consider dating me? Because, you’ve always said that what I mean to you as a friend is something you’d never jeopardize by dating me. So I’m just wondering, I guess, about the criteria here. I mean, I know your last boyfriend, Todd, was a real prick and he banged your sister and showed up drunk to your grandma’s funeral, but you DEFINITELY had sex with him…. soooo… I guess what I’m asking is if I were ever to do something kind of nasty to you, do you think that there’d be like, any hope of me getting to maybe kiss you, for like a second? I’m just kinda putting that out there, and if it sounds weird, forget it, I am totally cool with driving you to the mall and watching you shop like we usually do every weekend.

Julia, you are extremely important to me and I hope that everything works out for you in life. Like remember that guy Steve you called me about, that time who drove you home when you were blackout drunk that time and shoved your head into his lap? You told me what a prick he was as if that was a bad thing, but then like, two weeks later at Dave’s house you tried to swallow his dick whole in the laundry room, and then he never called you again. I really hope he calls you back. Not that I’m jealous or anything, but like, just floating another totally hypothetical question out there.

Again, if I am crossing the line, please let me know.

Anyway, if I were a real prick to you the next time you call me on the phone to “vent” about your shitty day and the “shortage of nice,single guys,” and said something like “bitch, I’ve got your nice, single dick right here…”

Would you touch it?

I would NEVER say anything like that, but I’m just slightly confused by your criteria.  What exactly do you mean by nice?

Julia, you are very dear to me, and we’ve been through a lot together. When Doug dumped you to go out with Heather and told everyone you were a desperate slut and you lost twenty pounds and I had to drive you home from all those parties when you passed out and made a fool of yourself in front of a dozen people because of what an asshole Doug was for dumping you even though you let him put it in your butt…never mind- what I mean is- I didn’t mind cleaning you up all those times, wiping away your tears,  making you dinner, or sleeping with you(in the most literal terms possible) when you felt alone or anything, because you’re my best friend, but I was just wondering…If I were to drop the pretense, quit this whole act, and treat you like the dirty whore you are, would you let me put it in your butt? I mean really??!! What does a guy have to do to get his dick wet??!

All my Love,

Your Best Friend Tom

I’m 27 and I spent the better part of my life in an upper middle class home surrounded by the rich and middle class alike. So it was with much chagrin that I embarked on this project known as adulthood, bill paying, and technology sales.

I had spent the first several years of my post-college freedom having a pretend college isn’t over pity party and I was left without the all important safety net.  I had traded a foundation for booze, bud, and adventure.

It was all worth it. For a month or so. Then the long haul set in. For four months I lived the dirt poor life. Here are the things I learned.

Cans Are Pretty Worthless
When my wallet was fat and the bills were nil, I threw back quality brews like Sierra Nevada and Arrogant Bastard. The idea of drinking the canned swill that made me wake up with a fuzzy head and a blanket full of swamp gas seemed as unacceptable as Larry the Cable Guy.

When my two week budget was reduced to two digit numbers, I quickly regained my affinity for the can, under the inane rationalization that somehow I’d be getting some value back for all the slop I was slugging.  All I got was a pair of man-tits, some saddlebags, and, after every wasted weekend, enough money to buy the Post and a cup of coffee on Monday. If the environmental lobby really cared about recycling and the poor, they’d put a 25 cent stamp on those cans.  You know that homeless schmuck on your block pushing the garbage can? He’s angling for two Double Quarter Pounder with cheese meals at McDonald’s, a coffe, and the New York Post. There are no Aluminum Astors.

Nutrition is for the Wealthy
Certainly this is a point that’s bound to be disputed by the Brooklyn art set, but after six years of working in restaurants and dining on expense accounts, it’s not so easy to transition to beans, sprouts, and cheap tea.  After scoffing at obese poor people for years I quickly began to understand the method to their morbid obesity. Fatty food fills you up like nothing else, and on the cheap side, it can trigger a catatonic couch ride where the only thing you’ll be doing is watching cable television(or the bastard ass channel guide if you’re unable to pay that bill, teasing you with some obscenely good movie schedule that only exists when you’re out of service!).  You can only eat tuna so often before you get sick of it, but those free donuts at your office can fill you up until at least 4 o’clock. The high quality cuisine of the poor man is peanut butter and jelly with bananas, and spaghetthi with store brand marinara. A Baconator washed down with a Slurpee is the dinner of kings.

Material Possessions Ship Well
When your paycheck isn’t cutting it and you don’t want to resort to the bank of mom, look to your possessions. My library lined the walls like asbestos in NYC elementary schools. When the bills came knocking, manila shipping envelopes stripped me of my books like Strip Tease stripped Elizabeth Berkley of her dignity. I shipped off 90% of my library. The only reason I didn’t ship it all was because people weren’t interested in copies of The Nazi Germany Source book or beat up copies of Tropic of Cancer. I was left with a collection more paltry than NYC’s public library. I don’t think I could have sold those books to the homeless as kindling; either way, I wouldn’t find out because my bills were paid for that month.

Your Parents Love You Again
When I moved out my parents saw right through the whole freedom and maturity thing. I wanted to drink without being asked if I planned on driving somewhere in the next century. I wanted to wake up in the morning and smoke pot while watching Sports Center. I wanted to fornicate loudly without being walked in on and utterly emasculated.

When I walked in to my parent’s house for a home cooked meal they knew exactly what was up. There was no money for booze and bong hits.  Women are not attracted to the gaunt fellow with his pockets turned out and the Natty he snuck into the bar.
All of a sudden I was mommy’s little boy again and my dad couldn’t wait for me to go to church with him or talk about how Hollywood is full of soft nancy boys. They knew I needed their bucks and so there I sat, watching Steven Segal movies and listening to the hot church gossip.

You Can Live on Twenty Dollars For Two Weeks…

Assuming you work in an office and have more than a half a tank of gas, it is entirely possible to get by on this paltry sum.  I had three days worth of one meal in my refrigerator, some canned beans, one can of soup, and a few boxes of spaghetti. Some dubious bread, some passable jelly, and a big jar of peanut butter.  That added up to two weeks worth of dinner.

I still had a job and a suit that separated me from the homeless methadone addicts outside of my office, and so I still had access to an endless supply of watercoolers.  My hunger lead to a quick discovery: a half dozen cups of water an hour is both an extremely cleansing and extremely filling experience.  For lunch, a banana downstairs cost 75 cents if it looked a little dubious, and that, coupled with the free flatbread that they hand out would get me on the train, in a malnourished slumber, at 6 o’clock.

My social life was equally as ghetto.  With my supply of cans and my bank account equally pathetic, I turned to old, reliable two for four dollar Budweiser 40 ouncers.  I would chug as much as I could and put the cap back on and re-fridge it for the next night. I couldn’t even afford the luxury of pouring a single drop in memory of my dead homies. Even worse, I’d follow up said blasphemy by being the skeevy guy who shows up at parties without bothering to ask “you want some money for this beer?” Nope. Just slugged ‘em back in the corner hoping my financial situation would improve before people started referring to me as Dirtbag Bob.

Ultimately I made my way out of the financial doldrums. A loan from a mom, a loan from my grandma, and a sugar mamma girlfriend who refused to accept Ritz crackers and Carlo Rossi on the couch as “a night out on the town” helped me get my sad little act together and now I can proudly say that I one day look forward to having a bank account more substantial than my nickle collection.

Anyone got a quarter to git me started?

We’ve all gotten sex advice, some good, some bad, and lots of it is easy to ignore on the basis that “it will never happen to me.” I can say that the heat of passion has led me down the path of ignorance on more than one occasion, and quite frankly I’m still breathing.  Because you are likely as hardheaded and incompetent as me when it comes to ignoring the immediate gravitational pull of your penis, I will offer firsthand advice that I trust will prove invaluable to anyone on the where, when, and why of fornication. Should you ever find yourself in these situations, don’t do what I did:

Don’t Fornicate On a Public Beach
Because one night a lady friend and I had one of those “why not?” moments after one too many vodka drinks we decided to venture down to the local beach and see where it went. It went to dirty sex. Since, I’m a gentleman and no gentleman allows a woman to get a vagina full of sand, I suggested an aquatic experience. This had two benefits; first, the weightlessness the water affords allows for a variety of positions that would be physically impossible for those of us who were not born into the Circe Du Soleil; second, because I was shit housed, and needed a refreshing dip in order to remember how to properly use my penis.  Correct on both counts, things were going well until I instinctively looked behind me and saw two dark strangers approaching in the moonlight.  When I realized that they were local police officers with flashlights and my clothes were twenty five yards up the beach, I decided the best strategy was to pretend I had just escaped Alcatraz.  I filled my partner in on the plan and we immediately began a two minute plan of evasion that made the shoreline officers believe they were playing a game of flashlight whack-a-mole.  While my partner decided her best strategy was to attempt and swim around a nearby rock pile, I decided I would wait it out until the officers hopelessly relented to my superior powers of seclusion. I realize now that this was moronic considering they were standing on my jeans.  The officers realized rather quickly that we were not porpoises looking for a meal.

Cop: Hey, get outta there!
Me: Uhh
Cop: Stop diving, we see you!
Me: Thinking: (Just us dolphins in heat)
Cop: Get outta the water.
Me: Sir, I can’t because I’m naked and you’re standing on my jeans. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

The officers did me the dignity of walking to the top of the staircase that led to the beach and allowing me and my partner, who had nearly evaded capture, to clothe ourselves before sentencing.   The look on their faces suggested they did not share my enthusiasm for marine sexual physics. We approached the staircase as if we were French revolutionaries approaching the guillotine.

Cop: What the fuck were you doing!?
Me: Uhhh, we figured no one was down here so we just figured…uhhh.
Cop: Don’t do that in there. People swim in there.

And here I was tempted to say “and fish shit in it.” I wanted to say “I can see the shimmering motor oil of the boats in the moonlight…I think that sterilizes it.” Instead it came out:

Me: I’m sorry, yessir, you’re right….have sex in my bed yessir sorry sir…sorry…uhhh…sorry?
Cop: Go home and do that.

If you want to avoid a DWI after ingesting a dozen drinks, my advice to you would be drive to the beach immediately and get busy in the water. The cops are funny about breathalyzing someone they just saw bare ass naked. If you want to explore aquatic sex without the likelihood of a public indecency hearing, DON’T FORNICATE ON A PUBLIC BEACH.

Don’t Fornicate Six Feet above Your Mother
When I was a college guy living at home on my summer vacations, I’d typically wait until my parents were out of the house to invite my girlfriend of the moment over for sex.  On one particular evening, my parents were running late and girlfriend of the moment arrived ahead of time.  While my mother patiently waited for my father’s turn in the shower and prepared me a tasty meal, girlfriend of the moment and I headed upstairs. Because we had an entirely sexual relationship and very little to talk about, we couldn’t contain ourselves and decided to get down to business.

This was problematic on so many levels.  First, the bed I slept in until about three years ago was a converted bunk bed that had become rickety with age.  It was designed for a 60 pound 12 year old to jump on, and made no guarantees about supporting the weight of a 200 pound man and the 110 pound girl spread eagle below him. Further complicating matters was that it lay on a portion of the floor where the carpet met the hardwood; any and all motion caused it to slide between the two rather audibly.  Lastly, it was strategically positioned six feet above the kitchen where my mom had installed some kind of cabinets that magnified the sound to an inconvenient degree.  As we progressed beyond foreplay and I did my best to pummel this poor girl through the mattress (as young men are wont to do) the aforementioned variables coalesced in a perfect storm of embarrassment.  My mother, who was in the kitchen lovingly preparing my meal had no doubt gotten an earful through her cabinet grapevine and approached the staircase as if it were Monday morning and I was late getting up for high school. Shit.

Mom: RRRROOOBBBBBIIIIEEEE!!!!!
Me: WHAAAAAAT???!!
Mom: Your dinners ready, come down, what are you doing up there??!!!
Me: Nothing!!! I’ll be down in a minute JUST LEAVE IT!!!
Mom: RRROOOOOBBBBBIIIIEEEE!!!!!
Me: WehaveamicrowaveIwillheatitup!!!!! WHEN ARE YOU LEAVING??!!! LEAAAAAAAVE!!!!
Mom: RROOOBBBBIIIEEEE!!!!!
Me: WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?!!!
Mom: THIS ISN’T A DORM ROOM!

At that point I fully expected my mother to march up the stairs and wash my mouth out with soap. The only way I would have gone flaccid faster was if I realized my partner had morphed from nubile teenager to Barbra Streisand.  There is nothing more mortifying than getting caught having sex by your mother and being told so in no uncertain terms…while you’re balls deep. Besides having to stop and say “OKAYYYY” and go downstairs sweaty and flushed to consume your lovingly prepared meal with blue balls. That was worse. I immediately realized that this is why people who live at home after a certain point move to the basement and I realize now why I began throwing hundreds of dollars a month down the black hole called “rent” every month as soon as I had an extra dollar to spare. Now my floor slamming is my landlord’s problem. DON’T FORNICATE SIX FEET ABOVE YOUR MOTHER’S HEAD.

Don’t Fornicate When Your Friend is Passed Out Across the Room…He Isn’t.
I used an opportunity to visit a friend at college as an opportunity to reconquer the dreamland I had left behind two years earlier, where women and men behave in a fashion that is considered reprehensible elsewhere in any other theater of society.  I met a lovely young English major who shared my enthusiasm for the classics of Western literature and orgasms, but unfortunately lived in a dorm room that required ten forms of identification to enter, one being a student ID.  With this option off the table, we were forced to relocate to the best available couch, located approximately twenty feet from where my roommate was allegedly passed out in a La-Z-Boy and dreaming of supermodels.

Because the floor was hardwood and the couch was about three feet long it was generally impossible for a gentleman of my six foot stature to navigate.  She climbed on top of me and removed her clothes.  Because I have the attention span of a 34^th street crack head we eventually explored all of our limited position options.  Because I’m tall, many of these positions involved me standing in all kinds of creative ways and it must have looked like a porno about a figure skating duo.  When all was said and done we pulled the cushions off the couch and fell asleep in sweet embrace on the floor. I walked her to the door and she told me to call her or don’t.  There is something about that the confidence and whorishness of that phrase that makes a man fall in love.  On the car ride home I recounted my conquest to my friends and they recounted their own.  As I puffed my chest like Scipio standing over the ruins of Carthage, my buddy exclaimed “man, I got a look at that girl when she was riding you…she had some nice tits!”

There is nothing that takes the wind out of your sails like realizing your friend was across the room watching you do your worst, eyes wide open…hands under the blankets.  Whether he was or he wasn’t…he was.

All men talk about their desire to be a porn star.  Clearly this is based on the desire to have sex with many, many impossibly gorgeous women.  No one ever says “I’d like to be a porn star so lonely men can beat off to watching me.” DON’T FORNICATE WHEN YOUR FRIEND IS PASSED OUT ACROSS THE ROOM… HE ISN’T.

Don’t Fornicate With The Officer’s Daughter
Because I looked like I was 12 until I was about 15, I didn’t meet my first girlfriend until I was about 16.  Because I had spent the first two years of high school humping my mattress and making love to the glossy girls that graced Playboy Magazine’s monthly midsection I was eager to play catch up.  A late night phone call after about a month or so (ok, maybe I wasn’t THAT eager) lead to my first innocent nude encounter and a little hands on contact.  I was surprised to learn that I was packing heat and overjoyed that the relationship was moving in a sexual direction.  Girl and I recounted our experience on the phone that evening, careful to make sure we didn’t hear any clicks as her nosy Italian mother had a habit of listening in.

What I did not know was that her nosy Italian mother didn’t need to pick up the phone in order to listen in.  This was because her father was a police officer and possessed one of those high-end listening devices from “There’s Something About Mary.”

Girl: I never did that before.
Me: I can’t wait to do it again.
Girl: It was weird to hold it like that.
Me: It was kinda cool.

I was not a wordsmith at the time.  Had I known mom was listening in I would have expounded on the virtues of chastity and obedience and her profound imitation of the blessed Mary ever virgin. Instead, I continued on my merry, awkward teenage way, asking if it was a good size and plotting my next move in the ongoing quest to corrupt her virgin daughter.  The next day at the breakfast table said girlfriend reached for a banana and her mother began laughing uncontrollably. She broke the news to me, and my first reaction was simply to be both glad and confused that my penis reminded her mother of a banana. I fully expected the SWAT team to break into my house in the middle of the night from a windowless van they had parked around the corner; I had visions of her father beating me with his nightstick and dumping me somewhere outside of LaGuardia airfield. I got off easy. Dad was aloof; Mom was not so kind with me. “Robert, we need to talk.” While she didn’t throw the book at me, I received a detailed speech about how teenagers can get pregnant by simply being naked and looking at each other.  How sperm had a way of traveling.  How babies are a big freaking deal, and how her father kept the shotgun in the front hall closet.  Most of all Big Mother was ALWAYS listening.  Should I ever have a daughter, I will repeat that speech verbatim to her boyfriend. DON’T FORNICATE WITH A POLICE MAN’S DAUGHTER.

Don’t Fornicate Remotely Close to Her Period.
On one occasion I learned the hard way why it’s a big deal to avoid sex during a girl’s period. When I was a young buck on a winter break from college, a certain paramour of mine accompanied me for a night out on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.  After dinner and dancing, drinking and more drinking, we retired to her friend’s apartment and had ourselves a celebratory romp.  Because booze sometimes blurs the line between horny teenager and jackrabbit for me, I woke up an hour or so later and decided it was time for romp number two.  My strategy was soft persuasive kisses up the thighs trending upward and inward and my strategy paid off.  Even though I was too drunk to talk I am the kind of guy who takes pride in his work and I was surprised when my lady friend grabbed my head and pulled me on top of her rather assertively.  I thought nothing of it, got down to business, and passed back out.

When I awoke I headed to the bathroom in search of water and aspirin.  I took a look in the mirror hoping to see my typical hair askew, Nick Nolte mug shot morning face in the morning and instead saw a gentleman who looked as if he had gone five rounds with Mike Tyson.   A beard of dried blood stretched from my nose to my chin.  I quickly backtracked and remembered that I had not picked a fight; my nose was not bleeding, and I had not feasted on live animal flesh as I had been known to do in my sleepwalking on vodka days. I then recalled the moment where my hair was nearly ripped out of my head as I was face deep in lady friend.  The clinical term for this is “Red Wings.”   I awaited the vomit reflex.

Admittedly it never came.

It was not that bad.  I think it was the immaculate vagina or the overwhelming taste of alcohol in my mouth.  I couldn’t imagine having the same luck again; what appeared to be a pint of blood staining my face without me happening to notice.  I laughed off my resemblance to a Depression era hobo and washed it off to spare her the embarrassment-because I’m a gentleman like that. While I was lucky, I realize that periods are disgusting and are probably the cause of the Black Plague.  I’m lying.  I realize I know nothing about periods because the thought is enough to make me cringe.  I am only glad that I met the beast head on and somehow escaped alive, and it’s a chance I’ll never take again. DON’T FORNICATE REMOTELY CLOSE TO HER PERIOD.

So I hope this was informative, and I hope you didn’t vomit. I hope you had a laugh at my expense; most importantly, I hope you learned not to fornicate like I fornicate.