Everyone is a genius at least once a year. Yeah, right.

I am unwell.
(cough)
Sigh. I am being a big goddamn baby about it, too. I have the flu. Could be H1N1, could just be old-fashioned “influenza”, but damn, I am really sick.

Started Monday evening, during the span of one conference call: from fine fettle straight into chills and fevers and coughing and sweating and all the flu stuff by the time I hung up.

It is now Thursday night, a little after 10:00 PM. I am in bed typing away on my little bitty Acer Aspire and I can feel another wave coming. It just never ends.

I'm such a goddamn baby.

Seriously. I dodder around the house like a little old man looking for his lost dog. I stare at food with total revulsion and say (like a five year old) “I am so hungry,” and don't eat a bite. I have that pathetic, blameless little cough – not that big fat productive phlegmy hock-up-a-pound-of-bloody-mucous kind of cough, more like the prissy stupid apologetic one you cover up in church at your niece's christening.

Now on the cool side of things, my voice, normally on the tenor side, has gone a combination of both a totally radical out-of-tune tuba and Barry White on me. I leered at my wife in the kitchen tonight and said (about 6 octaves below middle C) “yeah, baby, oh yeah. You know I love you, baby. Y'all know I'm gonna make slow sweet looooove to ya now.”

And of course she laughed and said through a bite of carne asada: “sounds very sexy. Execution, not so much.”

Ah, well. Another time.

If I die there's enough life insurance for an urn, a hot fire, and a new car, so she's all good. I hope I don't, though. Not today. I got things to do.

I guess I'm saying I feel a lot like DP letter writers sound: whiny and whimpery and like big fat babies. Wah.

In we go. The breach awaits.

***

Just Curious – whoa, little missy. See, vibrators and sex and masturbation and all the fun stuff is coffee table conversation these days, so nobody's all that stunned by your query.

Let's recap: You are 16, a virgin, want to stay one, and want a vibrator. You don't know what to do with it when you get it. You want to talk to mom about it.

My daughter? 8 years old. She's up to speed on penises and vaginas and sperm and babies and all that fun stuff, and she watched me deliver her brother on our bedroom floor. I don't believe in telling my kids that whole “mommy and daddy called the stork” 1950's fucked-up retarded chicken shit line about where babies come from. It's not a difficult conversation to have.

She's yet to mention vibrators, though. Might be a little more tricky to talk about. You know. With a straight face and all.
cough)
When she does, I hope she's at LEAST your age and from the sound of your letter, as smart as you. Meanwhile, you are on the right track: nurse or not, go talk to mom about it. If you think she's “the type” you can talk to. I don't even mind the thing I usually HATE about these letters: writing to goddamn Dear Prudie with questions. Offers a nice anonymity for you. Good thinking.

Meanwhile, just follow your gut, Young 'un. You'll be fine.

And see? Lookit! Lookit!!! made it ALL THE WAY through a post about vibrators and didn't crack up once! NOT ONCE! I so clever, am I.

***

In the Know – Is he just the absolutest wonderful, absolutely? Wow, this simply reeks of a Prudie form letter, some passive voice thrown in for good measure.

Whatever. Recap: Groom to be's balls all are fucked up. This up-fuckedness may be non-unfuck-upable. You wan't babies, anyone's, even if you have to rent or get takeout You want Super-Absolutely-Groomy-pie to whack-and-tickle his little veiny purple helmeted meat popsicle into a plastic cup so some lab tech with one of the worst goddamn jobs on the whole planet can count the little swimmers just so you can know if he can plant whatever is above and beyond his presumed paucity of seed into your womanly folds and loveliness and hope they take purchase in natural and appropriate fashion as to produce a little bit of heaven for you to push around.

That it? (cough)

Well, I dunno. I thought about this a little, and personally I don't find that an unreasonable thing to ask. Note that some guys don't like people to know they've been tugging their milky man-seed out of their perky pepperonis though, 'cause it's kinda embarrassing. Me? Hell, I'd do it on 42nd during Christmas rush hour in the middle of a crosswalk, you pay me enough. Better: I'd ask my hot, gorgeous, and perky little MILF to work over my always-in-tune skin flute on first base at Yankee goddamn Stadium during the seventh inning stretch for a thousand bucks.

Well.

Ten thousand. I'd split it with her. Honey? Tuition!

This is a non-question really. Just ask him, Lovergirl. Let him know they usually allow significant others (that's you) to enter to room and participate in the turgid-meatal-tuggification exercise.

Happy spanking. Spanks a million. Let's all give spanks. Spanks for the memories. I so do have a funny.

***

Stupid Teen, Now Regretful Adult – Well now, you really fucked THAT one up, didn't you?

Bummer.

By the way, I get no vibe on your gender, none at all. For a rare change, I did something I have not done in a few years now: I read Prudie's response. She was equally well edited and non-gender-specific. And wrong.

I shall call you Pat!

I bet you tell great stories at parties.

Sorry you had such a shitty childhood. Divorce can make people's heads do some really screwy stuff, from the parents to the kids and the grandparents and neighbors and whoever else sticks their noses in it.

Although I've been divorced I have no comparable basis to talk to you from – my first wife (the Anti-Christ – you may have heard of her. Real famous way back) and I were childless (good thing – think “Damian”). My folks got married, made four babies, and after we all moved out they turned our rooms into weird shit like the “sitting room”, which was my room. Had an old Eames chair and a TV and a VCR that had a cord on the remote in the closet and a layer of dust 17 inches thick on everything because they (cough) never, ever went in it. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2007. Couple weeks later my dad died. There was that whole “'til death do you part” thing in living color for you.

You? I'm thinking I might not want to hear from you either. I mean, I guess it might be a good time to heal and group hug and sing Kumbaya and all that, but frankly, that whole booby trap injury sequence above there kinda freaked my shit, and now all I can hear is then violins from “Psycho.”

So, sorry. Looks like you have to pay for your own wedding after all.

***

The New Girl – oh, my, goodness, gracious, me.

Can you hear it? That sound? Damn, loud enough to shatter glass. Massive, explosive, and possibly able to cause permanent, insanity-inducing tinnitus.

It's...it's...whining. Yes, that's it. Whining. Like a jet engine at 110% on the verge of failure. Like worn out brakes on a hundred old school buses. Like a thousand barn doors slowly opening together for the first time in ten years.

Like a single little princess not given her appropriate respect.

Recap: you rule. You are awesome. The people who were there before you all suck goopy donkey ass, not because they actually do, but because they don't fall all over themselves and genuflect upon your arrival each day. You are the best worker, employee, person ever to step foot in this dump, and to top it all off, that old fucker leaves his icky socks out for you.

Yeeeah.

Listen up, Sister Snot Rocket: I know you are the best employee ev-er and you are a very modern and empowered wom-an, and you are ALL that and a bag of whatever snide little assholes like you eat out of a bag, but I want to point out a few things.

You told the boss. He ignored you.
You told the socks guy to put the seat down. He ignored you.

Wanna know why? You aren't going to like it.

They ignored you because they have absolutely no respect for you whatsoever, because if you hung the moon, if you cured cancer, if you parted the Red Sea with a wave of your staff, if you invented plastic storage containers that didn't get stained when you put tomato sauce in them, and if you walked on water thrice daily you would be, and apparently always have been, an entitled snotty little asswipe of the first order.

I recommend you (cough) quit and let these people be. They (cough) don't need your shit. Your boss will probably take this crap from you as long as it pays, then finally fire you when the noise gets unbearable. Fast food, retail establishments and malls, the DMV – that's the ticket. These are the kinds of places that thrive on employees with your lousy attitude.

Thank God I don't eat fast food. What an asshole.

***

You know what? Theraflu isn't so bad. And I have rediscovered the wonderment and miraculousfulness that is a cup of lava-hot Tetley's decaf with honey and lemon.

Time I stop whining. Fare you all well, and until next time, ta taa, all that.
(cough)
Ciao.