Belinda and the Bus

It was over a glass of delicious, delicious vodka and over a bag of scrumptious, scrumptious pork rinds and a dish of tasty, tasty donuts one Tuesday morning that my ex-wife endeavored to discourage me from my admittedly unhealthy lifestyle with what she would describe as an interesting story from her childhood.
    “There was a girl named Belinda,” she started, and though I wanted desperately to go watch television, I was breathing pretty heavy, and sweating through my “2 Sexy 4 You” tee shirt. Which is to say, I wasn’t going anywhere. “She was always the fat girl, and the kids would make fun of her so. Oh, it was all so cruel, and for the longest time, she would comfort herself with food. It got really bad, it really did.
    “But one day, she decided that she’d had enough. She went straight home and threw away all her favorite foods, started working out, every day. By the end of our junior year of high school, she didn’t look like the same person. She told me on the last day of that year that she was just 15 pounds from her goal. ‘Just wait,’ she told me. ‘Come the first day of next year, I’m going to be the prettiest girl in school.’”
    She stopped.
    “Well?” I said.
    “What?”
    “Well what happened? Did she do it?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. She got hit by a bus that summer. Killed her dead.”
    For most of the rest of the morning, as I huffed and puffed, unable to get up, I pondered the story. When I finally did emerge from that chair, I reckoned that the story had a moral. Something about looking both ways before crossing a street, something like that. Yeah, that's it.

The Negotiator

    “Let’s go out drinkin’,” Pete said. “It’ll be fun.”
    “No, I’m going to stay in, tonight.”
    “Come on.”
    “No.”
    “Do it.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “Don’t be a fag.”
    “I’m tired.”
    “I want to drink.”
    “Then go.”
    “Come with me.”
    “Naw.”
    “Dude, you’re being so gay.”
    “Eh.”
    “Come on, dude.”
    “Bah.”
    “I’ll buy you”--he checked his pockets--“three beers.”
    “Yeah, alright.”

    It was after this conversation that I recommended my friend Pete to my superiors down at the station. Pete had been out of work since college, where he questionably chose phrenology as his major, and the squad was looking for a new hostage negotiator.
    One might question the morality in fudging a friend’s resume and helping him to a position for which he is dangerously unqualified, but one can suck it; it’s not as though, in our town, the hostage negotiator was an oft-used weapon of the police force. Really all we do on a day-to-day basis is make routine traffic stops, tell the kids in the schools to stay there and help old women cross the street. Well, that and bust meth labs. Meth labs out the yin yang down here. Can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a meth lab, they say. Fredrik Wagner, a German immigrant, started our first meth lab back in 1888, and really, the town hasn’t looked back since.
    Anyway, that’s another story for another time and place--namely, our Meth Lab Museum on Main and 8th, Monday through Friday from 10 AM to 5 PM, weekends 10 AM to 8 PM.
    I was whistling my way to the station one morning, swinging my keys on my finger and winking at girls of questionable legality when my walkie talkie began telling me something about a jumper on the roof of our Best Buy. It was Pete’s first day, and he, and I by association, were being tossed directly into the fire.
    The scene was one of great intrigue. Cars passing through the lot slowed, merchandise trumpeting “I Survived the Best Buy Jumper ’09” was distributed from tents, and swarms of nerds giddily skipped about, though it was hard to tell if they were riled by the jumper or some new video game.
    “Outta my way, nerds,” I said, elbowing my way through the crowd. It was then that I got my first glimpse of Pete the Negotiator.
    “Come on dude,” he said. “Jumping off that building would be totally gay.”
    “I’m gonna do it,” the man shouted back.
    “May I ask why?”
    “I’ve got nothing to live for.”
    “Wow, really? Nothing? That sucks, bro.”
    “They shut down my meth lab, and my girlfriend left me for another guy, whose meth lab is still in business.”
    “Bummer man.”
    “Get out of my way, I’m gonna do it.”
    Pete looked at me. “Damn, dude, I think he’s gonna jump.”
    “No,” I said, “you have to convince him not to jump.”
    “I don’t know man, he’s pretty convinced suicide is the way to go.”
    The man stepped forward, toeing the ledge now.
    “Do something,” I implored Pete.
    “Alright, alright, DMY bro. Time to use a little something I like to call reverse psychology.”
    Pete looked back up and spoke into the megaphone.
    “Me and the boys are going to pack up and leave. It’s clear you’re too much of a pussy to do it, so we’re gonna go get drunk at Friday’s.”
    “What?” The man yelled.
    “Yeah, we’re gonna go, puss-boots.”
    Pete looked back at me confidently. “He’s starting to crack,” he said, and looked back up.
    “You’re--”
    Pete was interrupted by the sound of the man hitting the concrete. The crowd sat silent for a moment, until the man dusted himself off and walked away. It was a pretty small Best Buy.

The Survivor

    The bad news is that we’d been waylaid by some African pirates. The good news, that instead of killing us, they just cut us with their knives a few times each and left us to die on a raft at sea.
    As we join my story, I’m hungry and trying to convince the rest of the survivors that we should probably kill and eat Doug who, I thought long before the pirates ever even boarded the ship, looked pretty tasty--”Look at his fat face,” I heard myself saying. “Imagine how tender that meat must be.”
    The rest of the survivors looked at me in disgust. Doug chimed in that he had snuck a box of energy bars aboard, that there were twelve of them, easily enough to keep us alive for maybe a week if we ate strategically. “Shut up, Doug,” I told him, which sounds harsh. But by that point, I had had enough of his one-upsmanship-- “We shouldn’t slow down to see what these pirates want, we should drive to safety;” “we shouldn’t grab all the booze, we should grab food, supplies and water;” “we shouldn’t eat me, we should eat these energy bars, here.”
    “And another thing,” I said, “Who the fuck likes energy bars?”
    Doug stared at me blankly, and I drank some of the whiskey I had brought.
    “You really shouldn’t,” said Doug. “Alcohol is a natural diuretic.”
    “Alcohol is a natural diuretic,” I said in a stupid voice, to mock Doug.
    “It’ll dehydrate you, and you’ll die.”
    “I’m going to eat your fat face,” I said, quietly.
    “What?”
    “Nothing, stupid.”
    We pretty much just floated around for a few hours, and, with nothing but the ocean to look at, I sipped my whiskey and mentally undressed Molly, the only female on board. When that got boring, when I grew tired of her nagging--”Stop staring at me;” “Honey, say something;” “Pervert!”--I passed out in my own considerable filth.
    Of course, I didn’t recall dreaming what with the boozin’, but apparently, I had--vividly so.
    I woke up to Molly and her husband’s faces, stricken with terror, staring out at the sea, which was red now. “What’s with the red sea?” I asked. They told me that, in my sleep, I had been thrashing around and knocked Doug overboard. A group of great white sharks then tore him to bits while the couple watched in terror. There was more, but I drifted back to sleep.
    The second time I woke up, the happy couple was gone. Knocked overboard by my thrashing, I suppose. Anyway, no point in dwelling on the past, so I enjoyed an energy bar. Then the coast guard saved me. Nice bunch, those coast guard types. They gave me some hot wings.

Remembrances of Banana Hammocks Past: My Life as a Male Stripper

When I look back on my days of dousing myself in glitter and baby oil and donning themed banana hammocks on a nightly basis, the thing I miss most isn’t the sweaty, glitter- and baby oil-covered dollar bills, the schnockered old women, for whom no never means no, or even the prescription pills, which flowed like water down at the Hung Haus; it’s the men who, like me, cast aside doubt and all but a shred of clothing, and said, “Here I am, world! Here’s my junk, you sassy octogenarian, you! This is me, jiggling and jangling about like so many car keys, you dangerously intoxicated bachelorette!”
    The likeminded group of men who think that history could stand to be sexed up a bit: “Here’s what Crazy Horse might’ve looked like if, instead of rebelling against the encroaching US government, he had rebelled against pants and the common laws of human decency;” “Here’s what Abe Lincoln might’ve looked like if, instead of freeing the slaves, he had freed the James-Younger gang (What I call my knob and berries);” “Here’s what Genghis Kahn might have looked like if, instead of clubbing women with a club, he had clubbed them with his bell end.”
    The men who faced the tough questions:
    “Should I shave my chest hair into a big arrow pointing down at my dong?”
    “What are the moral ramifications of ramificating my wiener into the face of someone’s grandmother?”
    “Where’d all those oxycontins go?”
    And so forth.
    The men who know every word to “It’s Rainin’ Men,” and tear up for nostalgia whenever, and wherever they hear it.
    The men who aren’t afraid to question generally accepted social mores: “Who says getting a boner in public is a bad thing?”
    The men who look past all barriers, social, economic, age, etc., and say, “Gotta dollar? Wanna tuck it near my junk?”

Pitching A Commercial Idea To "Bertolli"

(Scene: A husky Italian chef is standing in front of his family in a dimly lit living room. He is visibly upset, his chef's hat in his hands, his eyes cast down at the floor. He is explaining to his family that his Italian restaurant has gone out of business, and that the tastiness of Bertolli frozen dinners is to blame.)

Man: So I’m afraid that we’ll have to split you kids up and send you to live with some distant relatives. Also, honey, I spoke with the bank today, and... (He begins to cry, his voice growing shaky.) They’re going to take the house.

Woman: What?

(Man nods his head, wipes tears from his eyes.)

Woman: That’s it! I’m leaving! I’m taking the kids to live with your brother Ernesto, who, I should tell you, I’ve been sleeping with for the past four years!

Man (tearfully): But... but...

Woman: But nothing. And trust me, you could learn a thing or two from Ernesto. Both in the bedroom and the kitchen, Johnny Comequick.

(Woman goes out with children, leaving the man standing alone in the living room. Cut to man’s feet, standing on a stool in a shadowy basement. He can be heard sobbing.)

Man: Damn you Bertolli!

(One foot kicks the stool over. The man’s legs dangle, his body sways gently, ominously.)

Man (chokingly, tearfully): Damn you, Bertolli!

(Pan to family living room, where a man (Ernesto) is having sex with the woman in the pile-driver position.)

Voice-over: Bertolli: Responsible for the deaths of 43 Italian chefs in 2009 alone--so you know it’s good!

The Unsightly Death of Gen. Tobias "Big Butt" Whitaker

From the unauthorized biography, “The Biggest Butt: The Cheeky Tale of General Tobias “Big Butt” Whitaker:

“... In 1816, Whitaker led a platoon of 30 men deep into Seminole Territory. Of course, this was a mistake; Whitaker’s orders had been to secure candy mountain, which, at the time, was occupied by a small group of vigilante yokels armed only with pitchforks and what President James Madison would describe in his memoirs as ‘A fucking killer ass sweet tooth.’
    Whitaker’s men were said to have corrected Whitaker on this blunder several times, some of them doing so as they were being hatcheted to death by angry Seminoles. “General,” they’d say, bleeding to death. “I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to be at candy mountain, fighting yokels. Not in Florida, fighting these stabby fellows here.”
    But Whitaker, always a stalwart man--and, it should be noted, in the depths of a four-year ether binge--would just wander off, whistling dixie, huffing on “Tanya,” his favorite ether rag, and yelling, “Man, I loooove ether!”
    When Whitaker finally came down for a few hours, he realized his mistake and in a panic, hid behind a tree.
    ‘To properly understand Whitaker’s life--and certainly his death--one must consider the sheer immensity of his buttocks,’ says Buckly C. Jackson, a professor of history at Cambridge Community College in Hoboken. ‘That ass was what Black Rob might describe as ‘like whoa.’ Like two Christmas hams, and this is a conservative image I’m painting, shoved into a pair of standard issue union trousers. It must’ve been quite a sight indeed.’
    As it turned out, it would also be Whitaker’s undoing.
    With around half of his platoon dead, and half hiding in trees, covering their eyes with their hands, the Indians noticed Whitaker’s buttocks jutting out from behind a tree. They captured the general, and demanded that he either surrender his men, or be pelted with pebbles until he was dead. Naturally, he chose to surrender his men.
    ‘There’s one,’ he’d say. ‘There’s another.’ ‘See that bush there. It’s not really a bush. Shoot it. See?’
    Whitaker had escaped death, and was invited into the Seminoles’ casino to take in some drinking, gambling and a variety show hosted by Robert Goulet.
    However, back on the ether, Whitaker made his final mistake when he bet his car on a hand of No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em.
    He lost the hand, and when payment was demanded, told the Indians, 'It’s 1816, dumbass. I don’t have a car.'
    Incensed by Whitaker’s ruse, the Seminoles hanged him, changed their minds, hatcheted at him for a while, and hanged him again. Over lunch, they decided that hatcheting was the way to go, went back out to the makeshift gallows and cut him down. Then he was hatcheted to death and, though already dead, hanged again.
    On his tombstone, Whitaker’s last words are immortalized: 'Geez, make up your mind you filthy redskins.'"