I know there was a lot of shit going on in heaven this past weekend, what with Jesus busy preparing the Papa Hem suite for Christopher Hitchens while simultaneously arranging for Kim Jong-il’s ferry ride to hell. But the good lord totally dropped the ball on number one fan Tim Tebow, who suffered a streak-ending loss to the New England Patriots.

Full disclosure: I would bang Tim Tebow with the intensity of a thousand suns. This amuses me because I find him absurd in just about every facet of his life, from his fervent religious belief to his home schooling to his colluding with pro life organizations. But that didn’t stop me from imagining what it might be like to go on a date with him.

My Date with Tim Tebow

Tim Tebow would pick me up in his maroon Ford F-150 exactly five minutes before he was due. He would saunter up to my door in pressed blue jeans and a polo shirt. He’d have on some kind of mirrored sunglasses.

Tim Tebow would wear Cool Water or something similar, because Drakkar Noir sounds foreign and (he thinks) only gays wear Calvin Klein. He’d probably use too much gel in his hair, but I would overlook this because holy shit, he’s Tim Tebow.

He’d take me to a steak house and ask if I was Jewish. He would sigh with relief when I said no, but would tighten up again (albeit to lesser degree) when I informed him I was Greek.

“Aren’t Catholics, like, you know,” he’d gesture at the side of his head with his finger, “weird?”

“Oh, I’m not Catholic anymore, I’m an athei–,” I’d stutter, remembering that atheism and Tim Tebow go together like Israel and Palestine.  Then, recovering:  “I’m kind of between religions right now.”

“Well, Jesus is great,” he’d tell me, reaching across the table for my hand.

Tim Tebow would talk exclusively about football and Jesus, the topics almost interchangeable. I’d nod politely while wondering what he’d look like naked and covered in blood. (Oh shit, did I just think that? Regroup, Stacie, regroup.)

“So…” I’d say, wiping my hand over the menu. “Appetizers?”

“I can’t eat shrimp,” he’d whisper across the table. He’d then cite the corresponding biblical passage forbidding him from doing so.

We’d order the same cut of steak. I’d try to tame the typical vacuum-like configuration my mouth takes on at steak houses. He would tell me about the time he circumcised a bunch of boys in the Philippines just as I was excising a piece of gristle from my otherwise glorious cut of beef. My hands would freeze in place as I rolled my eyes up to him slowly.

“Say what now?”

He’d explain that during his stay in the Philippines the ministry his father worked for decided that the best thing for these impoverished boys would be to take knives to their peckers in the name of the lord. I’d drink some water to keep from gasping.

“Totally, totally legit,” he’d assure me.

At the end of the night I would try to pressure Tim Tebow into doing it in the cab of his F-150. He’d look uncomfortable and decline my offer.  “Come on,” I’d groan.  “Jesus doesn’t care.”

But Tebow would hold firm, removing my prying hand from his thigh and placing it gently back in my lap. He’d then invite me to bible study the following week, referring to my complete lack of morals as “worrisome.”

“Jesus is my go-to guy,” he’d explain, citing his many championships and awards, all of them won with the kind assistance of the son of god. I’d mention offhand that I always took Jesus to be a Patriots fan. Tebow’s normally placid face would then twist into a mild sneer. He’d lean across my body to open my door and suggest that we call it night.

“What about bible study?” I’d cry out as he sped away.   And then, pathetically:  “I’m a sinner!  Let’s bone!”

The rest of the night would be spent in an increasing state of drunkenness, crank-calling Tim Tebow’s cell phone, pretending to be the holy spirit. After about three tries, he’d catch on and block my number.  And that would be the end of it.   For the rest of eternity, we would never speak to each other again.

To devote your life to art you have to be a little loopy, so it stands to reason that most entertainers are half insane. That’s your soul up there onstage or on the big screen, and it takes a lot of balls and maybe just a touch of madness to even try to pull it off.

Of course I make no claim to the actual mental states of the following performers. But if allowed to indulge my latent arm chair psychologist, here are a smattering of musicians who toe that narrow line between ingenuity and insanity.

Hi, I’m Stacie and I might need professional help. Sometimes I get really bored and end up writing fake excerpts from fake books written by authors I’m not overly fond of to a hopefully humorous effect. Like so:

Excerpt from a completely made up book that Ayn Rand could have written –

Tawnie Fipplestein surveyed the vast grey parking lot in front of him. It takes a man, a real man, to look at an empty lot and say “I’m going to put a horse-meat factory there!” And that’s exactly what Tawnie intended on doing.

He kicked at a small pebble on the ground. Insignificant stone! With its feminine curves and weak nature. He stepped on the stone and it crumbled under his Sperry loafers with an exciting pop. “I’ll crush all the stones,” Tawnie thought to himself, “I’ll leave no stone unturned.”

Behind him was Christabelle, sitting on a park bench and admiring Tawnie’s round yet manly buttocks. “It’s takes a real man to look at an empty lot and say ‘I’m going to put a horse-meat factory there!” she thought to herself. As though he read her mind, Tawnie set his arms akimbo and flexed his cheeks. Christabelle sighed lustily and fanned herself with her kerchief.

Excerpt from a completely made up book that Stephenie Meyer could have written –

I rose from my bed and groaned groggily, the night before still sour on my mind as I trudged towards my pink perfect bathroom. Mother insisted.

“All girls love pink!” she’d said, making my eyes roll so far back in my head I thought they might get lost. I raised my tooth brush, also pink, to my white, straight teeth and thought of Elton. Laurie introduced us the night before. Everyone knew of him, but no one really knew him, as evidenced by Laurie’s halting introduction.

“He lives in the old Manor house. Now, I always thought that place was condemned?”

“No, it’s…beautiful,” he replied, his blue eyes, the color of freshly cleaned toilet water, trained on my face.

Raining again, of course, I thought to myself as I regarded my foamy-mouthed reflection. It always rains here in Spooner, Washington, where I was born and where I still lived. No one ever left Spooner. It was an inescapable place.

I piled my luxurious raven hair atop my head and pulled on my favorite pair of size two jeans. “Sardonica, breakfast!” my mother shouted up the carpeted stairs. I gulped a breath and padded down to the kitchen.

Excerpt from a completely made up book that Dan Brown could have written –

Dr. Bone Inquisitor, Esq. surveyed the scene; one dead woman, covered in cornbread dust, a hanged Pomeranian, and a door stop. What could it mean, he thought moodily.

Chief Inspector Hannibal C. Blount entered the room. He looked around quickly, summing up events, as was his way.

“What we have here,” he started, picking an errant blond hair off his impeccable suit, “is one dead woman covered in cornbread dust, a hanged Pomeranian, and a door stop. What do you think it means?”

Bone knelt over the woman and took a whiff, waving his hand upwards to drum up more of the scent. “Smells like…”

“Maple syrup,” Inspector Blount offered with a snap of his fingers. Bone nodded perilously.

“Exactly,” he said, putting his pen in his mouth. “Maple syrup.”

Excerpt from a completely made up book that Chuck Palahniuk could have written –

This dude, the one who’s blowing me in the alley, he takes my floppy dog from between his dick-sucking lips, looks up, and says,

“Did you know Houdini died from a blow to the torso?”

Keep on sucking, I tell him. He wraps his fat hairy hand around my dong and strokes it as he goes on.

“No, it’s true. Houdini challenged a strong man to punch him in the gut and the guy did it before he was ready. He had to brace himself for the blow.”

“Less talky, more sucky.”

“Marcel Proust was a mama’s boy, it’s a proven fact.”

I push the dude’s face into my crotch. The rest of his words were garbled by my dick and ratty pubic hair.

“Genghis Khan had tiny feet. Marilyn Monroe was really a guy. The colon can hold ten gallons of dung before it explodes.”

Little did I know just how right he was.

I went to Berlin on vacation a year ago. Because it was my first time in Europe I did all the typical touristy things, including indulging in the city’s numerous museums. I occasionally went high brow (i.e. giving devil horns at the Altar of Pergamon), but much of my time was spent at places that offered maximum thrills and minimum thought.

At some point I wound up at a sex museum. I was greeted first thing by a wall of plaster genitals, both male and female. While I was led to believe they all belonged to humans, I’m not entirely convinced. Surely no man could fit a ten inch member the width of a soda can into a normal pair of pants. But there it was pointing at me in the hall, along with several other startling configurations.

Berlin is unabashedly sexual. Ads for couples’ sex clubs were all over, porn played free on the hotel television, prostitution is legal and generally not frowned upon. The sex museum was no exception. I was embarrassed for half a second, until it occurred to me that I should probably abandon my puritan mores at the plaster dongs if I wanted to enjoy myself. From there I took it all in shamelessly, snapping pictures with abandon, laughing at slide shows, inspecting ancient sex toys.

My boyfriend and I came to a display that asked visitors to find the respective g-spots on mannequins representing either sex. The idea was you prodded the sweet spot on the mannequin’s body, then the thing would let loose with some prerecorded howls of pleasure. My boyfriend had the female mannequin wailing in seconds flat. I wandered over to her male counterpart.

“Male g-spot?” I asked myself aloud, before remembering where it was, or at least where it was rumored to have been.

This is not something I have a lot of experience with. Most American men don’t appreciate a finger in the bum. I remember a girl confiding in me that, after reading some ill-advised sex tips in a woman’s magazine, she tried this on her boyfriend. He commanded her to remove the offending digit and asked her to leave, even though it was in the middle of the night and they lived together.

While the female mannequin appeared multi orgasmic at the hands of my boyfriend, I could not find the male mannequin’s g-spot. It was just a smooth piece of plastic and the ins and outs of anything’s asshole, including my own, remain thankfully mysterious. But I finally found it. Boy, did I find it. The female mannequin was subdued in comparison, this thing went off like a land mine.

“OH YEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” it echoed across the quiet floor, causing everyone in ear shot to whirl around and find me knuckle deep in a mannequin’s asshole. For a moment they all just stared and my previous lax attitude vanished. I could see it now; dumb American girl gives mannequin ball shattering orgasm, gets kicked out of Europe. Or so I thought until everyone in the place started cheering, including my boyfriend.

A group of British guys came over to congratulate me on my apparent sexual prowess, giving me high fives and patting me on the back as they did. One dude jokingly held his hand up to his ear and whispered, “Call me.” I was the hit of the sex museum, which is saying a lot for a place featuring a 3 foot golden dong.

I left my new friends and walked on to some other exhibit, still laughing about what happened. On the way I could hear the orgasmic moans of the male mannequin, now quaking at the behest of the British tourists. While many other awesome things happened in Germany, this remains my favorite. How many girls can brag that the made an inanimate object come on their summer vacation?

I hate you, Kevin Smith. I’ve hated you ever since Dogma. While I didn’t hate Dogma initially (the movie caught me at a particularly weird time wherein I was just awakening to my lifelong, yet at that point latent, atheism and the movie’s freewheeling religious message left me feeling uplifted and secure in a tepid belief in god), in retrospect I think the movie was a cop out, an attempt to please both believer and unbeliever alike. Conversely, Red State, Smith’s latest and hopefully last film, failed for the opposite reason.

My common law stepdaughter decided she too wants to be a writer and I can’t help but feel a little proud, like it’s because of me. This nice and very human feeling is quickly overshadowed by jealousy; what if she ends up being better than me? What if she makes it and I don’t? Yes, I have professional jealousy of an eleven year old. That’s pretty pathological.

I’m typically jealous of everyone everywhere at all times. This probably stems from insecurity. I’ve occupied about every position on the social stratosphere as you can imagine; I’ve been sought after, ostracized, ridiculed, praised, told I was beautiful, assured I was ugly. I was approached by two drunken men one evening. The first declared I was pretty, one of the prettiest girls he’d even seen, while the other was less than impressed with me. It’s telling that I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was basically the polar opposite of his buddy’s heady acclaim. 

Now what would you make of that? I mean, how do you process that information? Does one cancel out the other? Are they both right? The opinions of strangers mean less and less as I get older, but still that anecdote is a pretty good summation of my life. One part praise plus one part ridicule. Earning your begrudging respect one word at a time, if at all. It’s a constant uphill climb and I am a lazy asshole.

It’s a cliché but people really do either love me or hate me. There is no middle ground. I’ve had people (parents, teachers, peers, etc.) hate me on sight, and many of the people I’ve counted as friends confided that before we became close they too hated me. I take this as a source of pride. Anyone can be pleasant and kind and have people like them. To take someone with genuine ill feelings towards you and bring them around seems like an accomplishment I didn’t think I was capable of. But it’s also a bit depressing. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I’m not all that likable and charm is far out of my realm of capability.

After reading Hitch 22 I decided to take the Proust Questionnaire (which you should take as well: http://hoelder1in.org/Proust/fill_questionnaire.html ). The second to last question asked my current state of mind and I wrote ambivalent. After thinking it over I decided I’m in a constant state of ambivalence. I’m in love with the world and hate it miserably. I think humanity is awesome and grotesque. I think I am the worst person in the world while also believing that I’m better than everyone else. Is this inability to choose an indicator of severe mental illness or a healthy way to cope with an ever changing, fluid life? I’d have to say it’s both.

I was a copy writer for about eight hours this week. I was employed by a content farm. I would produce weekly blogs for clients at about $15 a pop. After I established myself as a viable content farmer I would be given larger assignments, at $50 to $75 per piece. You can see where this is going. My first assignment was sort of a test run, to see if I was up to it. I had to produce roughly 300 hundred words on hair extensions. Hair. Extensions. … Here’s how that turned out:

Most famous celebrity haircuts for men

The Bieber – I propose we start calling this one ‘The Skywalker’ because that’s really how it all started. Want yourself a Bieber? Just swear off hair cuts for about six months or so. Every man has had a Bieber, whether intentional or not.

The Clooney – Why is George Clooney famous again? Because of that one hair cut in the 90s, a period in time when we really seemed to care about fictional character’s hairstyles (see also The Aniston). Consider that Clooney hasn’t had a bona fide success since, then behold the power of stylish hair. It can even garner you cultural relevance when none should be afforded.

The Levine (aka The Smug No-Hawk) – Adam Levine is semi famous for being a judge on a talent show called (in my mind) Sing Song Ding Dong, otherwise known as The Voice. He sports a vague Mohawk, or No-hawk, thusly ensuring mass appeal. Whereas a more traditional Mohawk might frighten old ladies, Levine looks like a guy you can take home to your mother. But that doesn’t mean he’s not cool. A quick muss job and suddenly he looks like one of the kids again, albeit unduly smug for someone of his status.

The Pattinson – Robert Pattinson is known for his messy, just rolled out of the coffin hair. Women shriek in terror when he even thinks about lopping off his windswept mane. The bum down the street has the same hairstyle, yet no one seeks his autograph. Odd.

The (oil slicked) Jersey Shore – This one’s been around a lot longer than the show with which it shares its name. It’s achieved by dumping a vat of gel into one’s hair then spending hours rolling it between your fingers into little pin-like spikes. Also used as a defensive strategy, good for head butting in bar room brawls.

Now, up to that point it was pretty rough going. I almost started the blog ‘I remember when hair extensions used to be for skanky women and whores…’ After that I said fuck hair extensions, let’s go balls deep on this concept until it’s begging for mercy. Which I did, and thusly wrote myself out of a job.

To say I’m desperate for money is an understatement. When you start considering the ‘jiggling titty cam’ to make ends meet you know you have a real problem. So when I came across this content farm thing I thought, fuck, why can’t I do that? Before the ink dried I felt like a failure. I heard Bill Hicks in my head. He was saying,

By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising…kill yourself. Thank you. Just planting seeds, planting seeds is all I’m doing. No joke here, really. Seriously, kill yourself, you have no rationalization for what you do, you are Satan’s little helpers. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now.

To think that Hicks (PBUH) was looking at me from somewhere in the cosmos, offering a stank eye, that was too much to take. But I fought it off. Hicks didn’t have my money or legal problems. So I forged ahead. I gave the best copy I could muster. I wrote the shit out of that copy.

While everyone agreed what I wrote was funny, it was not marketable, as they say. Clients would balk at my tone, my language, and just about every other variable. It was too edgy. I had to be drier, less of an individual. I’m a writer, surely I could do that? Well, apparently not. Who the fuck wants to read a hair extension blog anyway?

To stave off the inevitable existential collapse that typically accompanies unemployment, not to mention looming middle age, I’ve begun taking my mom’s dog for walks.

It’s sort of Zen like, in that the sole purpose of said walks are finding my dog a nice place to shit. That’s all that matters, finding Lucky a velvet lined tree stump to shit behind. Because he refuses to shit just anywhere, and that’s fine, that’s his prerogative. But after blocks of prime real estate he still refuses. He looks me in the eye and lifts his leg, and I swear he’s fucking smirking, as if to say, ‘not this time, bitch.’

But I’ve become reacquainted with the town I live in on our very long walks, and I’ve made a few observations:

Pittsburgh is the filthiest city on the planet. At my local park there is a varied assortment of litter. This includes paper plates, a curious number of empty mini muffin packages, syringes, empty beer cans (usually Iron City, in keeping with tradition), children’s shoes, fast food bags, make up, used diapers, and so on. The litter makes its way into every patch of grass and wooded area in the city. It’s thrown from car windows and tossed into the street from front doors. There is no need for garbage cans in Pittsburgh, just patches of grass, where every degenerate mother fucker will happily dispose of their trash.

Another way of getting rid of trash here, and we’re talking the larger items, couches set ablaze because a beloved sports team either won or lost an important match, towers of tires reaching skyward, existing to only entice the alarming amount of fire bugs and amateur arsonists in the city, is to just dump said trash down the slope of hill or at the culmination of a dead end street. Almost every dead end street has a collection of trash, sometimes neatly stacked and arranged, and usually said collection is older than me by a few years.

Everyone in Pittsburgh is a hoarder. They don’t hoard cool things, like guitars or books. They hoard things like carpet remnants and bricks and other useless junk that only an idiot could look at as a good investment. Everyone who isn’t a hoarder (or a writer or a musician) is a roofer. Despite this, every single roof in Pittsburgh is on the verge of collapse.

No one here can speak English. That’s not some xenophobic slight. I’m talking about the native English speakers. Pittsburgh has an accent all its own, it incorporates the gruffness of Jersey and New York, with the apparent upbeat naiveté of the Midwest. It’s literally one of the most ridiculous accents in the United States. If you don’t believe me, please see this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEyJjAAPy38

For the record, I don’t sound like that. However, my voice sometimes twangs peculiarly on my Os, which I’ve been trying to combat for years and will probably never undo.

Pittsburgh is teeming with lovable psychos. We recently lost the crown prince of functional insanity, a guy by the name of Steve, who was famous for standing in the same spot on the avenue all summer and hosting his own private dance party. Upon Steve’s untimely death, it was found he put a lot of time into making collages, which I believe is probably a good indicator that said person has a crawl space and isn’t afraid to use it. Another guy rides around Pittsburgh on a bike exclusively. Well, that’s not very weird, is it? No, what’s weird is that this fellow decided to strap a car bumper to the front of the thing. He even took the time to loosely affix blank CDs to either side, in a nod to headlights. Why does he do this? Fuck if I know, I’m not getting within ten feet of that crazy fucker.

In the last ten years the city has been overrun by hipsters. I could go into a prolonged self righteous speech about gentrification and how they’re ruining everything, but they’re really not. These people all have jobs, they put money into the city, they’ve stemmed the hemorrhage of young people that steadily increased year to year in the past. If they want to walk around dressed like assholes and play pan flutes, well I say have at it.

What I can’t tolerate is the recent influx of crust punks, or squatters, or crusties, or whatever you call them in your locality. Think hobos with a better sense of the aesthetic. They sit on street corners with their mangy dogs (because the first thing I would do if homeless is acquire a pet) holding crudely made signs asking for money.  Most of the time these people are from well off families looking for a little adventure in the form of lax hyigene and casual drug use, which is all fine and good. Unfortunately I have hard enough time financing these pursuits for myself, so there is no way I’ve giving Caleb a fiver just so he can purchase yet another six pack of Pabst.

Do I like the place I live in? I don’t know. I regard Pittsburgh as I would an embarrassing friend or loved one. I feel loyal to some degree, but I also can’t spend a lot of time and energy defending it. I think the best thing for us would be a trial separation. Maybe Pittsburgh would look more appealing with a bit of distance between us.

First come, first serve. One per person. No returns.

• The Hypnic Jerks
• Riff Medusae
• Harumph!
• My Share of the Dildo
• Animals for Feminist Research

“Electric guitars are proof that Satan loves us.” – Some Guy

I’m a whore for musicians, let me just get that out of the way. Some girls like painters or writers or construction workers; I like musicians, specifically guitarists.

I love hearing about guitars, watching guys tune their guitars, explaining why one is better than the other, why these pickups are better than those, what pickups even are, how this pedal favors this style of music, etc. I also enjoy hearing men talking about cars, motorcycles, beer, football, and all other things I don’t have a true interest in until some handsome, knowledgeable man begins telling me about them.

How is today different from yesterday? Well, to begin with, yesterday I had a job, and today I am unemployed.

I only got my job because I have a huge ass. I just realized this recently. Despite the four years I spent in college (where I majored in film; yes, I know, laugh it up), my super impressive bachelor’s degree, and winning personality, these are not what secured my job. It was my huge, fat ass and the fact that the person who interviewed me was a sex addict.

I spent most of the first year cringing in horror when this dude would make a pass at me; laughing loudly and protractedly when he asked me if it was true that young women preferred older men; ignoring comments about going to bars and the state of my underwear and whatever else drifted into his sex-addled mind. Finally asked if he’d appreciate me phoning his wife.

“Stacie,” he drew out, “I wasn’t serious, of course. It was all just a joke.”

“Yeah sure,” I said, jabbing my finger in his direction. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

OK, maybe it wasn’t exactly like that. But it was pretty damn close. It didn’t happen again, but a lot of other stupid shit did. One day I came to work to see the SEC (that’s the Securities and Exchange Commission, for you dreamers out there) raiding my building. I rolled down my window as a stern-faced officer made her way to my car.

“I work here,” I told her apologetically.

“You should probably go home,” she replied, not bothering to explain why. When a federal agent tells you to go home, you go home, no questions asked. The next day I called work to see if I still had a job. Surprisingly, I did. Even more surprising, I fucking went.

Another time I got into a huge fight with the owner, and he fired and rehired me in the span of five minutes. This guy was fond of calling people cock suckers and once stopped me in the hall to point out that Jesus Christ himself had chosen to etch his image into the engineer’s office door. Stacie Adams, smiling politely. I also worked with a guy who assured me that a race war was bound to happen within the next few years. He eventually had to go back ‘underground’ as he put it, which meant that he was finally caught in the one of the myriad of illegal activities in which he was involved, and this entailed him fleeing the state to avoid jail time.

Last week I received a pay check from the owner’s personal bank account. “Oh fuck,” I said to myself. That’s never good. I cashed it first thing, while he still had sufficient funds. Today he sat me down, took on a dour expression and said,

“Look Stacie…” I brought my head to my waiting hands.

“Oh god,” I moaned.

“It’s just for a week,” he insisted. Bankruptcy is never just for a week, I told myself.

“I can’t believe this,” I chanted over and over, until he wrote me another check.

So now I’m on the dole, like the British say. I’m a member of the non-working poor. I can do a lot of shit, just none of it officially. I’m what they used to call a dilettante, or, I guess even more hilariously, an autodidactic. I’m also a polymath, I know because I took a test on the internet.

I haven’t been out of a job since I graduated college. I’m still in shock. Some people tell me I should go back to school, and I refrain from slapping them because I’m a charitable person. I have no interest in adding to the already massive debt I accrued spending four years jawing about mise en scène and whether or not Charles Foster Kane was supposed to be a sympathetic character. That information will totally help me when I’m cold calling for Verizon or fighting with drunks in a bar.

I had a plan yesterday. Well, not a plan as much as a routine. Today is wide open, just waiting for me to take a running leap and fall right on my fucking face. My job sucked, but I had my own desk tucked way in the back where I could listen to Mr. Bungle and Queens of the Stone Age and Khanate, where no one gave me shit. I could wear whatever I wanted. I could flaunt my rat tail and tattoos and nobody thought twice. Those days are gone. Here come the fake smiles and awkward handshakes and bullshit questions about goals and strengths and weaknesses that no normal human being could answer with a straight face.

I was talking to my boyfriend about it. “Imagine what I’m going to look like by the end of next week,” I queried. He had a vision of a bedraggled, old-faced woman in a stained bath robe, with a massive dildo jutting out of the pocket, brandishing a glass of liquor at all times and crying mascara, lamenting the ‘good old days’ when the daily 9 to 5 didn’t entail fudding yourself insane to Maury Povich.

Is this destined to happen? I can’t say. I promise you, if it does, I will provide pictures.

When I decided to write a book, just after deactivating my Facebook account in a fit of pique, I also decided I would act like a professional writer, even though I wasn’t one yet. To me this entails reading everything I can get my hands on, writing every free minute of the day, and drinking heavily. I decided I wouldn’t curb my alcohol intake at all, at least until the book was finished.

My earliest childhood memory is stomping across the stage of a Polish party hall lip synching to ZZ Top. On back up were my best friends at the time, twin boys named Bobby and Tommy, who were pretending to play guitar and drums behind me.

We were celebrating their older brother’s catholic confirmation and late in the evening everyone agreed to let us take the stage, probably at my urging. I can’t remember a time when I saw a stage and wasn’t inexorably drawn to it. I remember looking out at the crowd as they laughed along, no doubt finding it funny that a five year old girl in her best Sunday dress was acting out Bon Scott poses for her friends and loved ones. I wasn’t aware of Scott at the time, nor of the myriad of rock legends from which I would glean inspiration, but I do remember that it felt damn good on that stage.

Today I bring you a subject that’s very close to my heart. And by heart I mean sex organs.

I’m a 31 year old heterosexual woman who is appalled by the lack of male nudity in movies. Tits and girl ass are legion in film, and that’s OK, I don’t mind it. But, in the interest of this equality I hear so much about, perhaps we can add some rock hard pectorals and v-shaped abdomens into the mix? Some chiseled male bums? A quick shot of the little guy?

Remember when action movies always had that scene of the anti-hero crying into his refrigerator, or gun, or eight ounce glass of whiskey over his dead dog, or kid, or wife? And remember how in these scenes said anti-hero would always be without pants and have an ass like Michelangelo’s David?

Well, those scenes were put there for women like me. That’s what got women like me out of the house and to the theatre to see some shitty action movie we would have avoided otherwise. I recently saw Battle: LA, because I love disaster flicks, everything from The Last Wave to Independence Day, and let me tell you that film could have used some dick. The manliest thing about it was Michelle Rodriguez and she certainly isn’t packing. There was lots of chest thumping, lots of ‘take one for the team’ pep-talkery, lots of male bonding, but no actual glimpses of protruding maleness, which is my fancy way of saying no dick at all.

I realize an unsheathed dick on film is an instant NC-17 rating, and that means most theatres will refuse to run your movie, but is that really sensible? Don’t most of us see dicks on a daily basis, either your own or a loved one’s? Will the world end if you see a comely young actor’s wang flopping around? I don’t have many causes, but I think I just might take this one up.

I remember watching To Live and Die in LA and just about fainting during the scene where William Petersen is standing there completely naked, full view of the junk and everything. While the rest of the movie didn’t really do it for me (save for the car chase scene) I would recommend it heartily if only for that brief view of a hot man’s member. That’s what the well-timed addition of a man’s junk can do to your film, it can take a lackluster plot and OK acting and catapult it cult status.

When I tell men about my little theory many come back with objections, the main one being shrinkage. It’s probably cold in that studio, and nerve-wracking too, what with all those key grips and burly work men watching you cavort with some actress in her physical prime, biting into hot dogs from the craft service table, saying, ‘what’s the big deal?’ I used to have a thing for Viggo Mortensen, and really, who could blame me? Here we have a handsome, rugged, seemingly intelligent man, once married to Exene Cervenka, for fuck’s sake. Then I saw Eastern Promises.

“That looks like a button on a fur coat,” my boyfriend cried out during the steam room fight scene, and I sadly agreed. Now every time I look at Viggo I think Fur Button. And that’s not fair, you know. But life is cruel.

So obviously it’s risky for a man to show all, perhaps more so than for a woman to do the same. Because a woman’s naked body is all art and beauty, while a man’s is all action. You actually have to put that thing to work, and it has to look like it can do the job nature intended. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a man. That dong shot will live in infamy, either getting you laid for the rest of your life or laughed at and pitied.

Let me tell you a little story. Perhaps it won’t be very compelling or important, and perhaps the opinion of one slightly unhinged free lance writer means nothing, but the truth is I never voted in my life until 2008.

Everyone at the polling place knew who I was voting for, due to my age and demeanor. There were a shit ton of us, all there to put a vote in for Barack Obama, which really rubbed the old folks raw. These were the people who voted every election cycle without fail, and now had to contend with a wave of urban hipsters and other artsy types. A man walked in behind us and barked ‘Bliss, Republican!’ at the little old ladies working the polls, all of whom puffed up their chests and yelled back that he needn’t be such an ass about it.

Come on, we were all excited. It’s not that I thought racial harmony would dawn or that Obama was anything other than a politician. I just thought that his election was a sign of things to come, i.e. people finally abandoning all the nonsense ideas about the completely bullshit concept of race. Also, Sarah Palin scared the fuck out of me.

So I did it, and I only felt good about it for a little while. Because things went bad soon after. Obama was about as predictable as any other politician, meaning he sold out everyone who put him in office almost instantly, which is depressing enough without taking into account the way most people reacted to him.

He’s a Muslim socialist. He’s a Muslim and a socialist, say the people who have no fucking idea what either word means. He’s in a sleeper cell! I saw him snort a whole baby off a hooker’s ass! He’s making Lil’ Wayne Secretary of State!

Anytime you support anything it becomes your problem. Now, just because I voted for Obama (also, please consider that a working class atheist with psychotic tendencies has no business voting republican), suddenly it’s like we’re talking about sports; ‘your boy’s really tanking in the play offs, your team sucks.’ Everything he does is my fault.

They’re not my team, OK, I don’t have a team. I’m trying to affect that whole lone wolf, out on my own image, and it doesn’t help when I have democratic fundraisers calling my house asking me to help them out again. Seriously, it was just that one time, I was drunk, he told me all kinds of nice things and I foolishly believed him. My voter registration card says ‘no affiliation’ which I am irrationally proud of. It doesn’t say democrat or republican or independent (which actually means ‘democrat or republican who has pissed off their respective party’).

But as the presidential election swings around again, I’ve begun asking myself what I should do this time. I stayed away for the midterm elections, because I wouldn’t elect most of those people to municipal dog catcher. But this time I feel obligated, if only to prove everyone wrong who claimed that those who voted for Obama last time will stay home the next. So I’m voting for the dead guy.

Not Aleister Crowley, thought it’s tempting. I’m writing in Hunter S. Thompson. He has prior political experience, he’s progressive, he’s a doctor of divinity. Did I mention that he’s dead? Oh who gives a fuck, republicans would posthumously nominate Ronald Reagan if they could, and he was dead for most of his two terms.

We need a man like Hunter to sort us out. Someone who can espouse the level headedness of progressive principles while also not taking any shit from anyone. Because, let’s face it, while democrats most often are on the right side of the argument, they tend to lose ground to the mewling hordes of conservatives and their well practiced indignation. We need a man with an elephant gun and a machete on his hip, a man who takes a cattle prod to a casual setting and isn’t afraid to use it. We need a man who says things like, “Play your own game, be your own man, don’t ask anybody for a stamp of approval,” (from Fear and Loathing in America: The Gonzo Letters, Volume II, 1968-1976) which are words to both live and die by. We need an artist who also appreciates high power weaponry and fortified compounds, a patriot in the true sense of the word.

Thompson didn’t espouse that stupid ‘my country, right or wrong’ brand of patriotism that is so popular in this one note world. He despised the government and figures like Richard Nixon, whom he considered repellant. But he recognized that those of us who are lucky enough to be birthed on American soil have a responsibility to uphold the principles of the democracy. Which are sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Well, they should be.

This opens up a whole new world of voting. My spouse and I have considered voting for each other. I could write in Bill Hicks or Socrates or Rowdy Roddy Piper. I could write you in. What about it, would you like to be president? If enough of us get together we could vote in a table lamp or a hunk of cheese. Surely this would be preferable to whomever the tea party picks.