Almost Interesting (3 page)

Next was my turn. The mama’s boy. The kid who slept in the same bed with her for three years too long. The one who held her hand in public five years too long. This was me. Anyway, she was the most excited about this present. Her call for me was a white T-shirt with a huge picture of ME in the left corner. YES, ME, FOLKS. The picture was a huge circle. Like monstrous. Underneath, it even said “Dave.” Just so you wouldn’t be confused that
this guy
was
this guy
. The room went silent. Even more silent than before. “It’s a picture of you! On a T-shirt! That you can wear!” She squealed. In case it wasn’t 100 percent obvious what this was, Mom had to make it extra clear. Surely she was concerned about our lack of reaction. Then she goes, “Wear it to school!” And I go, “Yeah, I should! That’d be fun!” because I was a little bit of a fruit, and I didn’t want to hurt my mom’s feelings, and because I didn’t have my dad around to say, “Fuck no, Judy, he’s not wearing that!” (Another reason I’m pissed at my dad.) I just rode on Mom’s wave of excitement. “Yeah, let’s do it!” I literally did everything except make the snaps like the guys did on
In Living Color
.

So come Monday I’m about to go skipping off to school (not a total exaggeration, to be honest) and then somehow at the last millisecond my male chromosome somehow woke up and said to my brain, “Wait! Can we throw a shirt on over this? I mean, maybe a little button-down? Just something in case, worst-case scenario, a selfie on your shirt isn’t the coolest thing on the planet? Just . . . some sort of coverage. Just for me. The male part. I only pop up about once a year. Throw me a crumb.” I thought, Okay, fair enough. So I grabbed my button-down and I headed out the door with my baton. No . . . but seriously, I almost had one, that’s how unaware I was.

So I rode my bike to school. (Yes, helicopter parents, it’s true and it worked just fine. Three miles!) Because it was Arizona, and it was scorching during normal recess time, we played kickball for our first hour of the day. (Trivia!) So I took a breather leaning against the backstop and I was like, “Wassup, gals, what’s happening, ladies? How was your weekend?” Ya know, just kicking back with some small talk, the normal daily drill, little flirting, a little gossip. And in a flash, everyone was back to playing kickball. By the way, I’m actually pretty good at kickball. (I don’t want to talk about that right this second but just FYI, I’m a little bit of an athlete . . . I mean you roll it down I’m going to kick it pretty hard, that’s all I’m saying. Seriously, some guys bounce it, which is illegal, but either way I’m going to whack it. So if you’re the pitcher, might as well roll it so you can sleep at night because you won’t be a cheater and either way you’re going to get shelled. But that’s neither here nor there.) So here I am, I’m kicking back, taking five, and now it was time to make my move. I was ready to unveil the little Spade face on my shirt. This is such a true story it scares the shit out of me because as I write it, I feel the pain. It feels like I’m having flashbacks to Operation Desert Storm. These were the last happy thirty seconds of my life. So I went to (sound effects of unbuttoning shirt) open it just a little bit, maybe one button, just so a tiny piece of my happening Farrah Fawcett feathered bangs were visible. I took a beat. There was no trouble yet, everybody was still playing the game, doing hopscotch, whatever. So I go, hey, everything’s cool. I popped one more button and started to take my shirt off. When it was about halfway off my shoulder, the entire school yelled, in unison, “QUEER!” And I freaked out, having no confusion over who they were yelling at. I buttoned that shirt back up so fucking fast my hands were a blur. I sprinted to my homeroom, dove under the desk, and had a full-blown panic attack. “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, ABORT MISSION!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!” My heart was racing in my tiny bird chest. My BP was like 10,000 over 50 million. Then, the entire school came pouring in, screaming “Holy shit! Spade’s got a picture of himself on his shirt! This is unbelievable!!” “No I don’t! No I don’t!” I screamed. “I promise I don’t!” And then I added this to make sure I was going to hell: “I SWEAR TO GOD I DON’T!”

I was totally up against a wall. “Yes, you do!” everyone screamed back, and then came my second horseshit defense. “They can’t even do that! They can’t even put a picture on a T-shirt. Did you hear what he said? That’s crazy, he’s saying crazy things!”

Meanwhile that’s all they can do to T-shirts, is put pictures on them. I would have gotten killed in cross-examination.

I was out of my mind. So I sat there and they go, “We should put it in the time capsule . . . so in 2020 they can know what a fruitcake you were . . . for posterity.”

Sad. But, I might dig that up. We should go dig that up.

CHAPTER THREE

LOSING MY VIRGINITY

I
t was my senior year of high school. Class of ’82 (’82 drinks more brew!). (By the way, I wouldn’t mention the exact ancient year that I graduated but with Google it’s just a matter of time before girls figure out my age. For a while I tried to only date girls who didn’t have the Internet but that was too small a pool.) I wish I had gotten laid sooner, believe me. I had enough boners that went to waste to fill Cardinals Stadium. From roughly the sixth grade on I had a bone-anza of boners. (Side note to self: Copyright the word
bone-anza
for movies, books, T-shirts, and television. [Side side note: not to be confused with TV show
Bonanza
.]) I had probably upwards of
hmmm
, let me do the math (thinking out loud) 25 rods a day on school days, so times 5, and maybe 10 a day on weekends, hmm, bop bop bop . . . carry the 4 . . . equals 13.6 million pup tents. Of that number approximately 100 percent went to waste or were destroyed by any four pages of
Penthouse.
(Kaboom! Feel the rain on your skin . . . song from
The Hills
.) (Side note: Chicks in
Penthouse
were always somewhat sluttier/whorier than
Playboy.
Guys realize that at a young age. No one is marrying those gals, so they were smart to play that angle. They would also throw in a beaver-munching scene here and there to keep the customer happy. Which it did. Very. With those scenes I only needed three pages before shrapnel was flying.) With three boys, my house had dirty magazines stashed all over. Which made Easter mornings awkward. But finally, at the not so tender age of seventeen, I got some real-deal sex.

Here’s how the beautiful magic went down. Every year, the guys in this club I was part of, called the . . . wait for it . . . The Gents (lame) . . . had a boxer party. We would each ask a girl to be our date and then we would go to the house of whoever’s parents were away and party in our boxers. (Not overly clever but at least it seemed like a decent theme.) We’d get shitfaced and trash the place. This is also the basic premise for
Porky’s 4
(I’m guessing; I’ve only seen the first three). For this year’s boxer party, I asked a chick that I had a thing for. I had no idea if she dug me, though. She was actually pretty robotic, to be honest. Not tons of emotion or deep thoughts going on, but pretty and pleasant enough. That met all the criteria I needed. And she said yes. And she was a girl. Presumably with a pussy. So I was game. All pertinent boxes were checked. Also, in full disclosure, this girl had been nice enough to cough up a hand job about six months earlier so we were already headed in the right direction. She had seen my dick and seemed to be okay with it, so we were in business. (By the way, my prong is nothing to write home about. It’s sort of a shoulder shrugger.)

I had pulled out my sword for her. Nothing.

Crickets.

She just sort of shrugged her shoulders and started tugging, like she was starting a lawn mower. Not a ton of finesse happening, but I wasn’t complaining. I could tell she got bored fast. Luckily we had no cell phones back then, or she would have been checking her Instagram feed the whole time. This amazing moment happened in the backseat of my buddy’s car on the way to Flagstaff with my two buddies Joe and Steve in the front seat. When I finally “finished” (gross term, BTW) it looked like a paint can had exploded on my Lacoste shirt. I hadn’t planned ahead. I just sat there. Didn’t know what to do. There was no Shout-ing it out. I had to take a walk of shame into 7-Eleven and buy paper towels. (Ah, romance.) The 7-Eleven guy didn’t flinch. I have a feeling this scenario had somehow played out before.

So my robotic date and I walked to the boxer party from her house. At this point, I was still wearing my pants. It was good that we walked, since I planned on getting hammered. Not that it would have mattered since there were no drunk-driving laws back then. (Can you imagine? A world where you don’t get DUIs and can drive shitfaced? Again that was back when America was great. Cops didn’t give a fuck, just told you to focus on the road before high-fiving you.) I hit the partay in my Brooks Brothers ironed all-cotton boxers. I was a bit of a preppy asshole at this time, by the way.

So, as all high school dates began, we immediately started playing quarters with shots of tequila. This is a dumb move because you get plowed so fast and you don’t even get to build to a good buzz, but what did I know at seventeen? My buddies and I just wanted to look badass in our boxers in front of these chicks. I was feeling especially awesome because I finally had a date. (My luck with the ladies was pretty limited at this tender age. I had yet to get on a TV show, which makes dates with me at least bearable.) Pretty soon I’d had about seven shots, and my date was going on her fifth. Things started getting flirty and touchy and in the background I hear that Journey song “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’.” This is a Journey song I love. At the end of this song, Steve Perry goes “NA NA NA NA NANA, NANA NA NA NA, NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NAAAAA, NA NA NA,” etc., ad nauseam (it never actually fucking ends) so I said, “Wanna get out of here?” or something equally cool and James Deany. And she mumbled, “Okay.” Or “Help.” I can’t really recall.

So we headed back to her place, which was a tough walk considering my rod, which is hard to hide in boxers. Her parents were asleep and we went into her room. We kiss, major French action. (P.S.: She wasn’t a bad kisser but some high school chicks over-French and it’s gross. Not that I’ve kissed any high school chicks lately or anything.) Eventually, she fell back on the bed and I took this as a written invitation for some action Jackson. I start to pull on her boxers. (Yeah, the chicks wore them, too. We were so cool.) And she lifted her hips! This is the best move in history. Every guy waits for this move, because it means that she’s helping, and it’s green-light city. Underneath the boxers, she was wearing panties. Back in those days, this meant serious mega-drawers. Like five inches of fabric on each side and about twenty in the dumper. And speaking of mega, her bush was sort of out of control, too. It puffed out so much that her panties looked like an airbag had gone off. None of this bothered me a bit, of course, because underneath that airbag was a vajayjay and my ween was hopefully headed for an air strike.

My boxers flew off in .04 seconds. I was so stoked, you cannot imagine. Or you probably can. We started kissing again and I slid my meat mallet in (I should write romance novels, right?) and she doesn’t make a peep. No “Oh shit!” No “Wait, it hurts!” No “Just the first part!” No words at all, just a blank expression. She had the same glazed look as someone sliding their ATM card through the checkout thing at Kmart. Fine, I think. I can’t have everything. I block out her lack of response and focus on the task at hand. And I’m in heaven. We start kissing and we’re going at it, she’s got her eyes closed, obviously loving it. I’m thinking,
Wow! This feels better than I thought! This is almost better than beating off! No wonder everyone’s hooked!
But soon, her moaning stops and I think she’s zoned out. So I rode out the last eleven seconds in my own happy world and then blew fog all over her hips, hair, scrunchie, pillows, walls, carpet, beanbag chair, hallway, and part of the kitchen. Even her dog made that shake move so I think he caught some shrapnel, too. Unfortch. Poor thing. But I’d been waiting for this day forever. My balls were like THIS IS NOT A DRILL!! And they came through. Big-time.

Once we were finished, my date looked at my ween and giggled. I think the sex came across as tickling to her. So we skipped the spooning, but now what do I do? I had no dad around so I knew nothing about sex or what to say after or before or at school or anything. My only thought was, How do I tell my friends? This is front-page news! Using her home phone might be tacky and plus there was splooge all over it. So I did what any gentleman would do. I put a blanket over her and tiptoed toward the door. Then I heard her say, “You’ll get better at this” and laugh. Ouch. Nothing stings like a bad Yelp review.

I drunkenly walked about two miles home, and my feet didn’t touch the ground. I got in about 3
A
.
M
. and crashed in the cruddy two-bedroom apartment that I shared with my mom and two brothers. I did kinda want to wake up Bryan and Andy and tell them, but I was worn out from all that sex, and crashed. The next day I woke up and remembered what had happened. I was so happy. I sat over my Lucky Charms in total pre–high-five mode. Then, of course, I did the gentleman thing and started telling anyone who would listen about how I banged the hell out of this girl and how she loved every second of it. I couldn’t wait for school Monday. Sunday night was like Christmas Eve. Couldn’t wait for morning! I cruised around school like the town crier, all pointy boots and scrolls. “Here ye! Here ye! By proclamation of the king . . .” I never gave an ounce of thought as to whether or not the girl would be on board with my publicity junket. Remember, I didn’t have a dad around to explain to me that if I blabbed, other chicks wouldn’t bone me. Bryan and Andy didn’t care if I got laid. So I started my junket, singing like a canary to anyone and everyone. That was a magical day, almost as good as the actual bone-down itself.

N
ot only did she never do me again, but no other chick in high school wanted to be on my press release, either. Thank God there was no Twitter or Facebook then, or I would have been frozen out by chicks for the rest of my life. I didn’t really understand why she got upset that I blabbed. I gave her rave reviews! All the dudes now knew she was good in the sack! I had given her four stars! But alas, no more action was coming for this little dirtball.