Balls and Walnuts
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Category Archives: Sex
A Birthday Wish List: Part 3
This is it, folks. The home stretch. Soon, you will be privy to my most intimate hopes and dreams.
It’s still not too late to click over to Boing Boing, where you can treat your eyes to Flying Spaghetti Monsterotica. Hey, there’s a reason why Boing Boing is number one: they give you guys just what you want to see. In this case, a naked woman (I think) clothed only in Saran Wrap and spaghetti.
On the other hand, all I have to offer is the warped Woody Allen-meets-John Waters schtick that runs through my head. Here ya go.
#4: I want my body back!
A couple years ago, I decided that a man really ought to be able to see his penis when he goes pee. Is that so much to ask? At the urging of a doctor-friend, I plunged into the Atkin’s induction diet and discovered the wonders of bacon, eggs, cheese, and more bacon, with a few more eggs for good measure.
The weight came off, I had to buy a new wardrobe, but I still felt crappy. I had no energy. I felt like I had Crisco for blood. When I tried a more reasonable diet (South Beach), the weight came back, a pound a day. I realized there was nothing for it: I needed to add some carbs back to my diet, but the only way I could do that was to exercise.
I used to laugh at my hospital colleagues whenever they’d been injured biking or doing something else vaguely athletic. “No one ever broke or sprained anything sitting on their couch,” I’d say. That’s how much I hated exercise — I made lame jokes to excuse my torpor. But a year ago, desperate to feel like a normal human being again, I joined a gym.
I surprised myself by sticking with it. And, you know, I found out something surprising: I’m a mesomorph. I put on muscle with relative ease.
I began to look pretty damned buff.
Then, about a month ago, my gym closed. Just for a few days, the manager said. We have to bring the plumbing up to code. Four weeks later, they’re still closed.
And now, damn it, I can’t pass the pinch test.
What I dream of:
Looking like this again.
What I’ll be satisfied with:
Avoiding a return to my fat clothes’ drawer.
#3: I am such a whore for brains, beauty, and fame.
It’s true. If a woman has all three, I’m lost. There was a time, a very brief time, oh, for maybe a few months after I saw Beetlejuice, when Winona Ryder did it for me. The fact that she was tribe, well, that only added spice (Winona Laura Horowitz — you figure it out). But then she got all klepto for Dolce & Gabbana black leather purses and Gucci dresses, and, you know, I’ve never looked at her the same way. (Click the link to find out what else Winona had in her trench coat!)
I mean, she might be able to play smart women for the movies, but how smart is she really?
Y’all know about my jones for Olivia Hussey and Jacqueline Kim, but honestly, I don’t know much about either woman. Not in the brains department, anyway. On the other hand, 10,000 Maniacs’ Natalie Merchant has it all, and damned if she doesn’t choke me up whenever I see her on TV. Now, if only she would jam with Trent Reznor, I’d be in heaven.
Ah, well. I can only pick one perfect dame for this particular birthday wish, so I’m gonna choose Cintra Wilson.
If any of you aren’t familiar with Ms. Wilson, you might begin by checking out Bookslut’s interview with her. Karen and I own both of Ms. Wilson’s books, and we read her weekly column in the Bay Area’s Freep, The Wave. (Note: to read Cintra’s column, The Dregulator, online, you’ll need to download the pdf — see link in upper lefthand corner of The Wave’s home page. It’s worth it. You’ll get to see Cintra’s newest photo, Cintra in dark lipstick, gggrrrahghglllrlll.)
Not only is she beautiful, but she looks like a different beautiful woman in every photo she takes. Don’t you see? She’s a one-woman harem! And oooh, is she ever smart. I especially loved her snark on the Bush Campaign in the last election, saying that Bush’s only plank was “the strengthiness of strengthy strength.”
Arguably, Cintra’s master work is her collection of essays (A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-examined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease, and other cultural revelations). Here’s a quote from her rant on Los Angeles, which is sort of a latter day nonfiction version of what Nathanael West had percolating in his brain when he wrote The Day of the Locust:
“L.A. is the place where Satan squats with an enormous ladle and dips deeply into his black cavity to extract huge soiled wads of cash, which he then pitches at the heads of the inhabitants below with such speed and force that they are rendered first unconscious, then punchy and depressed. This affliction causes them to overfeed the Dark Lord a-more with their incessant compromises in the workplace, and He devours and digests their creepy and self-negating decisions by day, and befouls them anew with the sooty issue of their moral failures each evening.”
Karen and I chortled when, in the middle of Terminator II, the Wrath of Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton‘s character dreamed of a Los Angeles devastated by nuclear holocaust. (And, yeah, a lot of folks in the theater just sorta stared at us.) So you know where we stand with respect to Cintra Wilson’s take on L.A.
(Hmm. I wonder, though, if there’s a neutron bomb which would leave Sahag’s Basturma Sandwich Shop and all the great Chinese restaurants and sushi bars untouched.)
What I dream of:
An evening of dinner, dancing, and sparkling conversation with Ms. Wilson. We have one of those nights where we are both on, you know what I mean? We play off each other, our comic riffs building to feverishly trenchant heights.
Afterwards, she touches me on the hand — a light touch, but a lingering one — and says, “Call me, any time,” and with her lusciously dark mouth gives me a chaste but emotion-packed kiss full on the lips.
What I’ll be satisfied with:
I bought Karen some Max Factor “Black Cherry Truffle” lipstick. I have a well developed imagination.
#2: A night of male bonding.
Just so you know I’m not a total cooch hound, there are some guys out there I’d like to know better. I suspect Dr. Otter is a great guy, and probably has a few stories to tell, and if DHH doesn’t want me, I might as well experience things vicariously through Doc Ott. I’m also intrigued by guys that seem quick-witted and brainy, like MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, and it would be a blast if I could pal around with some of my favorite directors, like John Carpenter, Sam Raimi, Tim Burton, or David Cronenberg.
But if I had to pick one all-around great guy to bar-hop with, it would have to be Bruce Campbell.
I know him and love him from the Evil Dead movies, especially Army of Darkness, but Bruce has also had great bit rolls (from The Hudsucker Proxy to both Spiderman movies) and, hey, I happened to like him as an obese, elderly Elvis in Bubba Ho-tep. But there are two things you need to know about Bruce: he answers emails from his fans, and he has a heckuva writer’s brain, too.
We’ve bought both of Bruce Campbell’s books, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way and If Chins Could Kill. The first is sort of a blustering guy version of Carrie Fisher’s Postcards from the Edge, in style, if not in content. The second is Bruce’s memoir. Karen and I just got it from Barnes & Noble, and it’s a fine read.
What I dream of:
Carousing Hollywood with Bruce Campbell, getting only drunk enough to enjoy myself, but not so drunk that I can’t remember every moment until I’m too old to care.
What I’ll be satisfied with:
Watching Army of Darkness for the umpteenth time.
And . . . drumroll . . . my number one birthday wish (you knew it had to be about sex, didn’t you?) . . .
#1: An evening of exquisite torment at the hands (and whips) of Lydia McLane.
She’s bad. She’s beautiful. Performance artist and model Lydia McLane has been my wicked dreamgirl ever since her centerfold for City Slab (Volume 1, Issue 4: buy it!), wherein she wore nothing but a pair of devilish horns. Subscribe to The Slab and you’ll be treated with loads of Lydia, frequently in nasty vicious mean dominatrix garb, and not much of it.
(By the way: those of you who follow my Tangent Reviews know I loves my City Slab. Urban horror at its finest.)
Lest you think I’m some sort of shallow, testosterone-hypercharged vehicle for balls, I’ll have you know that Lydia is one smart cookie. From her website bio:
“Lydia is currently a student working towards her Masters of Clinical Psychology and is employed part-time with an agency that specializes in chronically mentally ill individuals. She is a trained Hospice volunteer. Lydia enjoys literature, Opera, all animals, live music, dancing, and other life enriching activities.”
See? She likes chronically mentally ill individuals and all animals. Lydia, I’m yours.
What I dream of:
Lydia, make me your bitch!
What I’ll be satisfied with:
How do you like the new outfit I bought Karen?
Don’t forget the spiked heels, Karen.
D.
A Birthday Wish List: Part 2
#7: A wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Sometimes, bad things happen to bad people, and the spirit of Schadenfreude takes hold. Like the feeling you get when that jerk in the Trans Am who cut you off three minutes ago gets pulled over for speeding, you know?
When we were kids, my brother and sister had this odd habit. If my brother got punished, my sister would rub her hand over her breastbone and say, “Aaaaaah.” She pronounced it with a guttural flare, as if the sound came from deep within her viscera. If my sister got punished, my brother would return the favor. Since I had a cast iron ass, they got little satisfaction in seeing me punished, and any “Aaaahing” from them would be met by my laughter.
It seems to me that as adults, we get to say “Aaaaaah” far too infrequently. What better birthday present could there be than to see a rich and powerful hypocrite brought low?
What I dream of:
George Bush caught on tape telling us what he really thinks about the displaced poor of New Orleans.
Pat Robertson indicted on child pornography charges.
One day, at a press conference, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says, “You know, folks? This is all bullshit — I mean, I could tell you stories that would knock your socks off. Aw, hell. No time like the present.”
Rush Limbaugh . . . wait. He’s already shot himself in the foot so many times, what else could happen to the guy?
What I’ll be satisfied with:
Photoshopping rude images of Ann Coulter.
#6: The perfect father for just one day.
Remember the sitcoms of the 1960s? In Father Knows Best, Jim Anderson was, like a modern day Odysseus, never at a loss. No matter what you threw at the guy, he handled it with sensitivity and style. Princess having boy trouble with those creeps from the local frat? Jim would bust a cap in their ass and dance a jig on their graves. Kitten having menstrual cramps? Jim would give her a few tokes from his pipe and teach her the secrets of Far Eastern meditation. Bud busted for having the neighborhood’s first methamphetamine lab? Jim would post bail and buy his son a trampoline so that the boy can channel his energy more constructively.
I want to be that kind of dad, if only for a day.
You know. The kind that never raises his voice, solves every problem, and finds himself at the center of every group hug.
What I dream of:
A day wherein I’m the perfect father to my son.
What I’ll be satisfied with:
Not raising my voice above 80 decibels, and not making the kid cry.
#5: The great discovery!
As a kid, I used to fantasize about black ops agents coming to my school and spiriting me away from my classmates. “You’re far too important to our nation’s security to waste your time here,” one would say. Then the other would chime in: “We need a four-foot-tall boy genius to man our special space ship. This craft will make you the master of space and time. Do you think you can handle it?”
And I’d think: Can I handle it? Fuck yeah!
Only I wouldn’t have used the F-bomb back in elementary school. I’d heard it once or twice, soon learned it wasn’t in the dictionary, and was the only word guaranteed to put my mother in shock. Oddly enough, the word “frig” seemed to have the same effect, even though I was certain I’d made it up. Guess not.
Nowadays, I don’t particularly care to be the master of all time and space. As I learned in high school from watching the movie Laserblast, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I’m already a corrupt son of a bitch.
No, I’d be content if someone else discovered me.
What I dream of:
Some big agent, say Neil Gaiman‘s agent Merrilee Heifetz, finds my blog and sends me an email dripping with praise and wishful solicitations. Then comes The Phone Call (cue Scarlet O’Hara’s vocal inflections): “Oh, Dr. Hoffman, Ah am evah so hopeful that you are unrepresented, because it would be mah honah and privilege to be your agent.”
Don’t know if Ms. Heifetz has a Southern accent — actually, I kind of doubt it — but that’s part of the fantasy. I’m sure she’d oblige.
What I’ll be satisfied with:
Getting my damned sitemeter to top 100 for the day. Where the hell do you people go on the weekend? Don’t tell me you have lives.
D.
The fundamental frequency of guy thought
From Monica Jackson’s blog, The Way There:
“Okay, tell me the truth. Do you ever go to the grocery store or somewhere like that, and count the guys you’d possibly sleep with in a ratio to the ones who are ick, and work it out mathematically—and figure out when is the highest likelihood of the greatest concentration of fuckable men at particular grocery store at any one time?”
Thank you for asking this question, Monica. Why? Cuz I never would have guessed that women think this way. Guys, yes. Beginning at puberty, sex never leaves our brains (except for a thirty minute interval after each orgasm).
Quien es mas lindo?
One Saturday afternoon in 1982, I watched The Sting with Karen and her two roommates, Kira and Suzie.
“So,” I said, “who is cuter, Newman or Redford?”
Take a moment to answer that one for yourself. Even if you’re a guy. Especially if you’re a guy, cuz the point of this exercise . . . well, hell, let’s not get too pedantic just yet. Guys? Ask your wife this question. Try to predict what she’ll answer.
I figured it had to be Newman. Those blue eyes, that chiseled facial bone structure. (Great bones do it for me every time. I still have wood with Lauren Bacall’s name on it.) But, no. All three picked Redford.
Even then, twenty-two years ago, Redford had a white raisin thing going. And now look at the two of them.
Newman first.
It still baffles me, this question of what women find attractive or unattractive in certain men. Miss Snark has femwood for George Clooney. Maureen’s nipples go stiff over Al Pacino. Meanwhile, the Bitches keep ripping on poor Fabio. (See, Beth? I worked in a Fabio reference!)
This question is important to me, since I enjoy writing strong female characters. These female leads have been mutant parakeets and giant spiders, but eventually I mean to get back to Homo sapiens. When I do, I’d better have a grip on the feminine mystique.
So, help me out, y’all. Here are some pairings of famous duos. Tell me who is cuter and why. To keep from prejudicing things, I’ll save my opinions until the end.
Say what?
During my second year of ear, nose, and throat residency at LA County Hospital, one of our chiefs (call him el Jefe) did a study on ear foreign bodies. Very simple study: he reported on the first one hundred ear foreign body patients to walk in our clinical door. It took el Jefe only three months to rack up 100 cases. If you’re easily grossed out or still have nightmares of the Night Gallery earwig episode, skip the next paragraph.
The number one foreign body? Not earwigs, but Blatella germanica, the German cockroach. But don’t freak out. LA County Hospital’s patient population can’t be generalized to the world at large.
Here’s my favorite ear foreign body story. No bugs.
“Why are you putting rocks in your ears?” I said in my not-half-bad Spanish. “Little children put rocks in their ears. You’re an adult. What’s the matter with you?”
What is this damned thing? I thought as I looked at his ear under the binocular microscope. White. Hard. Wedged in pretty tight.
“I can’t believe it,” I said, still in Spanglish. “A grown man putting a rock in his ear. What were you thinking?”
My patient started talking a mile a minute to my nurse’s aide, and he started laughing.
“No, Dr. Hoffman. Not a rock. A rock of cocaine.”
Aha. Well, that explained it. (In case you’re thinking Huh? These folks stuff the rock in their ear when they think they might get busted.) This solved my problem, though. I irrigated his ear with alcohol, dissolving the rock.
My patient was not a happy camper. He’d expected to get the rock back.
My attending physician asked me to do a pelvic exam on a sixteen-year-old girl with vaginal discharge. “It’s her first pelvic,” my boss said, “but don’t worry. From the sound of it, she’s been very active.”
So what if she’s sexually active, I thought. This is her very first pelvic exam . . . it’s bound to be stressful. I vowed to put her at ease by speaking slowly and calmly, doing my best to reassure her and let her know this was all very routine, nothing to be afraid of. I’d tell her in great detail what I was about to do before I did it.
After explaining to her the general idea of what we needed to do, I held up my gloved and lubed hand, my index and middle fingers standing at attention like proud little soldiers, and said,
“Voy a poner dos piernas en su vajina.”
To save you from having to Babelfish that one:
“I’m going to put two legs in your vagina.”
Ever hear the expression bug eyes? We somehow managed to sort out the misunderstanding, and to her credit, she let me go ahead with the exam.
And, yes, I used my fingers.
D.
Lester’s Tantric Sex Guide for Teens
“Oh,” I said. “I see.”
Anyway, since my sexual history is rather more cosmopolitan than his, I happily agreed.
“. . . when MTV surveyed 14- to 25-year-olds to find out what subjects they’d like to learn about most, tantric sex topped the list.”
— From tantra.com
Teenagers often say to me, “I don’t understand Dr. Doug’s success. How is it that a 3′ 6″ hobbit like him has women vying to have his hairy hobbity babies?”
“It’s simple,” I say. “In high school, he mastered the subtle secrets of tantric sex. Women sense this about him. They know he can bring them to the cusp of sexual enlightenment and beyond.”
“But, Mr. Wormfriend. I’ve read that tantric sex requires many long hours of meditation, ritual dance, and tandem breathing exercises. How can I get my boyfriend to do any of that, when he spends less than five minutes talking to me?”
“Oh, ho, ho,” I laughed heartily. “You may not realize it, Tiffini, but you and your boyfriend are already skilled practitioners of tantra.”
“We are?” she squealed.
“Sure. Think about it. The essence of tantra is that you stimulate one another, sometimes for hours on end, without ever reaching climax. You’ve done that, haven’t you?”
“Well, necking in Otis’s Ford pick-up, but . . . ”
“See? And after a while, don’t you feel a certain tension rising up your spine towards your head?”
“No. Mostly I feel sore as hell from Otis mashing my boobs like he was juicing lemons.”
“How about Otis? Doesn’t he feel a certain tension rising –”
“Well, duh. He keeps rubbing it against my leg all night long, and then he bitches about how much he’s hurting, and how he needs relief.”
“And there you have it. Tantric enlightenment, the culmination of hours of less-than-satisfying stimulation.”
“Um . . . Mr. Wormfriend? That’s not enlightenment. Otis calls it blue balls.”
“Blue balls, stone ache — enlightenment by any other name.”
“Gee. I never really looked at it that way.” She looked thoughtful for a long moment, then sighed. “Thanks, Mr. Wormfriend. I think.”
“And remember, Tiffini. The essence of tantra is that you prolong the stimulation indefinitely. The best way to do that is to keep your clothes on. Many, many layers of clothes.”
L.W.
Sex, but not the good kind
I woke up with a headache this morning, then made it worse by working on my NiP for four hours. I’m deep in editing hell (fixing plot holes, setting up deus so they ain’t ex machina in the last fifty pages, that sort of thing). Fortunately, the manuscript will, by tomorrow afternoon, be up to snuff.
No, that does not mean I’m sending it out. It means I’m willing to print it out so I can begin my hard copy edit. Yippee!
Bottom line, I had serious literary brain freeze a moment ago trying to come up with a topic for today’s blog. My best idea was to take the top ten search topics at Technorati and use them in my own version of the Aristrocrats Joke*. The trouble with that idea is (1) I really don’t want to exploit Cindy Sheehan, and (2) the Aristrocrats Joke is filthy enough that I would surely alienate half my readership or more. (I think I’d be down to Maureen and Gabriele ;o)
Instead, I asked Karen, “What old story of mine haven’t I told yet?”
Without one second’s pause: “Male pelvic exams in medical school.”
God I love her.
Rummy Exaggerating
If you’re in the mood for edification, Karen will soon be posting the first installment of her capsule history of Afghanistan.
Has everyone left who is going to leave? Good. I’m assuming the rest of you want to hear about the teaching of male pelvic exams to naive medical students.
First, let me assure you that we did not practice on one another. Heavens, no. We’d never be able to look at each other afterwards. Homophobia is rampant among male medical students, as my tale of Fred has previously demonstrated.
Instead, the school enlisted the assistance of a corps of seasoned men, doubtless gathered by trolling Polk Street with a bullhorn. Heterosexuals do not volunteer for this job. Undoubtedly, this boosted the anxiety of Fred and a few of my other friends, but they sucked it up (so to speak). Like other medical students, they well understood the meaning of the phrase “requirement for graduation.”
We divided up into mixed-sex groups of four and met privately with our volunteers in small classrooms. One by one, we pulled on our gloves and practiced palpating our volunteer’s penis and testicles. (“That’s my epididymis. That’s normal. If you feel any other bumps down there, that would be bad.”) We each finished our round-the-world journey with a visit to Mr. Prostate. Our volunteer was great; Fred Rogers was never this patient.
Afterwards, we compared notes. Fierce howling and gnashing of teeth from Fred’s group told me that something special had happened there. I approached and heard the story retold for everyone’s benefit.
“He . . .”
“Yes?”
“He . . .”
“Go on!”
“He said . . . he said, ‘Oh, my. Look at that. I have a little drip.'”
Yes, we all recovered from the trauma.
D.
*If you simply must here a version of this joke, follow the link, and download the South Park version. As I understand it, this is one of the least offensive versions of the joke, but you will still be offended. You’ve been warned.
Sociobiology of Boobage 101
In 1983, Vincent Sarich taught a course at Berkeley called “The Evolution of Human Behavior.” He let us know on the first day that the class was experimental. He had some rough ideas about course content — some things he wanted to talk about, a handful of ideas he wanted to share.
Sounded like good clean fun, and we really did have a blast, too. Professor Sarich (that grizzly teddy bear on the left) was good to his word. He talked, we listened — and argued with him, of course.
For a final exam, he asked us to write three short essays on topics of our own choosing. They had to be somewhat relevant to the course, but beyond that, we were on our own. My three topics:
Genius, a maladaptive trait
Why are hiccups contagious?
The Road Warrior: a sociobiologic perspective
I got an A+.
Funny thing, though. I’ve only retained two things from that class. One is a concept: the Tragedy of the Commons (see the Wikipedia article here, or the original article here), which suggests that folks will always choose their own self interest over the common good, even to their ultimate detriment. If you’re curious about this, I recommend you start with the Wiki article, since it is shorter than the original article and has considerably more perspective.
The other thing I learned in Professor Sarich’s class is why men love cleavage. “I want to talk about breasts today,” he said, except that with his slight speech impediment it came out “breashts.” “Why are they so appealing?”
The traditional sociobiological interpretation is that large breasts are desirable because they translate to well fed babies. Sociobiology was big back then. Still is, for all I know. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, here’s the basic idea. Our behavior is ruled by our genes, and in particular, our genes’ desire to pass on more of themselves to the next generation. “But,” you argue, “genes are not sentient.” Pshaw! Genes don’t have to be sentient to find ways of furthering their own interests.
Back to boobs. Professor Sarich contended that the sociobiologists were wrong. Men don’t love breasts because they want well fed babies. Men crave hooters because of a cross-wiring problem. You see, men get boobs confused with butts:
always gave me wood.
It’s gotta be true.
D.
Sex Ed, self-taught
I was never what you would call slow. Dense, maybe, but not slow. I chased girls at two, stole kisses at five, and copped feels at eight. Despite my forwardness, I didn’t understand what it was all about until high school.
At three, I asked my mother where I came from. “Ask your father,” she said.
My father has never been one to lie, but he’s never been a talkative cuss, either. When I asked him, he pointed to my mother’s middle and said, “From there.”
Huh? From her belly?
Back to my early misconceptions in a moment. My Dad never sat me down for the Big Talk. Instead, when I was eight, he took me to the library and pointed me in the right direction. I checked out David Reuben’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* with my father’s blessing.
The trouble with this book: it assumes its reader has a decent fund of sexual knowledge to begin with. In those days, you couldn’t find words like cunnilingus and fellatio in the dictionary (not our dictionary back home, anyway!) Masturbation sounded like a worthwhile avocation, but damned if I could figure out how I was supposed to do it. As for cunnilingus, I only knew about one hole Down There, and it baffled me why anyone would want to get his tongue anywhere near it. (In my ignorance of the vagina, I had discovered the rim job.)
Some time in junior high, I learned about vaginas. No pictures, mind you. I gleaned additional useful information from Xaviera Hollander‘s book Xaviera! (sequel to The Happy Hooker). My sexual education would have been complete if Xaviera! had had pictures.
Somewhere along the way, I acquired some very romantic notions about sex. Intercourse would have to be with a girl I loved. We would spend all night together and wake up in each other’s arms. I also vowed that I would not see my first vagina in a nudie magazine (we’re not talking bush, by the way — I’d seen that in the movies when I was five). Rather, I would see my first vagina in the, erm, flesh.
Stubborn as I was (I made good on those promises), I refused all opportunities to examine hard core smut magazines. Still, I was curious as hell. This led to some uniquely twisted dreams.
You women, you don’t know how lucky you are. You’re surrounded by phallic images. You probably learned to recognize a penis before you ever examined your own package with a mirror. I’ll bet you never had a nightmare wherein you pulled down a man’s pants and discovered . . . fill in the blank.
Among other things, I dreamed of broken lightbulbs, sliced watermelon, pigeons. A baseball. Or maybe it was a softball.
Back to three-year-old me. My Dad has just pointed to my Mom’s belly. “From there.”
“From there? From where?”
“Down there.”
“From her belly?”
“Yeah,” he said. “From her belly.”
“But there’s no hole there.”
“Sure there is.”
So I racked my teensy brains. What hole? The only hole I knew about was the belly button hole. I’d discovered it not long before, and found out I could seriously tweak my parents by coloring in my belly button hole with a ballpoint pen. My father even tried to spank me for it, and stopped because I kept laughing. He dubbed me “Iron Ass” after that.
The belly button hole? I had to protest my disbelief.
“But it’s too small!”
“It gets bigger,” he said, and left it at that.
At last, I knew where babies came from.
*But your father wouldn’t tell you.
More hot spider action
This is Karen’s favorite tarantula mating story, which she learned secondhand at the ArachnoPets forum.
When tarantulas mate, the male needs to have access to her epigynum* in order to do the deed. This orifice is on the undersurface of her abdomen, so he needs to get beneath her in order to inseminate her. Good technique (from the male’s point of view) requires that he also restrain her fangs with special hooks on his forelegs. Restrained fangs are safe fangs.
Once, a male got beneath his intended and began to push her up and back. Everything went swimmingly — he had her fangs hooked, he had great access to her epigynum — so swimmingly that he got a bit overzealous and kept pushing.
I want you to imagine, for a moment, the first step in building a house of cards: one playing card tilted against another . . . so . . . precariously.
He overbalanced the female. She fell on her back, and he fell atop her, and I’m sure they would have had a good, long chuckle over it, told stories about it to the grandkids, maybe even exaggerated a detail here and there, but for one sad fact: the female, surprised by the fall, flashed her fangs, impaling her hapless lover. The rest, as they say, is dinner.**
D.
*Or, in tarantula-speak, ruby fruit jungle.
**A few of you will recognize this story from my NiP. Bare Rump is still recovering from the emotional scars of that fateful encounter.