I'm Sorry In Advance For This (A Post Not For The Weak of Stomach).

I watched the Ricky Gervais HBO special on DVR last night, with Boy. That man is just freaking delightful* (I mean Ricky, not Boy, though Boy is pretty damn delightful himself). I laughed out loud several times, even though I was in the midst of a bratty argument (I picked it myself!) and even though I was lying on the sofa thinking "I will not laugh. I just won't. That will prove a point" (that there was no point to prove bothered me none). It's that good. You should all watch this special.

Midway through his routine, Ricky told a joke that jerked a memory of mine. Well, not a memory of mine necessarily, but the memory of a story an old friend once told me. A story of something that happened to him...a story that had tortured me for many days and weeks and months and years. My brain was haunted and no amount of brain-scrubbing could remove this yarn from the depths of the cranium.

But then, one day, poof! Oh happy day! It was gone. Until Ricky.

So friends, because I am sure there are so few of you, I will risk telling the story right here. Dare I? Yes, I do dare. So read below if you wish, but you have been warned. No one has ever heard this story without responding with some version of "UGGHGHGHHGHGHGH." Here goes:

Back in NOLA, I had a friend, a friend who will heretofore be known as Red. Red had received an email about an upcoming high school reunion. Red was very anxious about attending, but since his friends were such horrible people who loved to see him uncomfortable in any situation, they (we) made their (our) case for it, and finally convinced him to go.

Right before Red was to leave for the reunion (it was in Houston), he had an apartment-related emergency. The sink exploded, or there was some sort of plague, (bugs, locusts, or frogs, I forget which one). Red was unable to live in his apartment for three weeks, so since he was already going home to Houston, he figured he'd just extend his stay. I think it was around Thanksgiving, anyway, so lots of us would be either with our families (sounds unfamiliar), working hard (closer, but not quite), or too drunk (bingo) back in NOLA anyway.

So Red goes to the reunion. He gets wasted. He sees old friends. He drinks with old friends. He drinks with old girlfriends. And finally, he does the stud-muffin reunion thing that guys everywhere want to do: he begins flirting with the girl he loved from afar, who didn't know he existed in high school (ahh, John Hughes, you would be proud). Eventually, Red asks the girl to go home with him, and she accepts. He takes her back to his parents' house, and is so drunk that they never move past the sofa. Red falls asleep, drooling on the floor, because he wanted to leave the sofa for the girl (oh, the chivalry).

The next morning, Red feels so bad. He wakes up with his head on the floor, mouth open on the carpet, and embarrassed. He's sure he wasn't at all able to satisfy this girl based on how drunk he was, so he wanted to make it up to her. He reaches up to the sofa, pats her on her hand, and says "hi, sweetie, I'm so sorry. Let me make it up to you. I wanna go down on you."

Except she wasn't there. She had left in the middle of the night.

The hand he was holding (but not looking at) was his mom's.

He looked up, realized this, and ran into his room, where he stayed for the remaining 18 days (eventually one of us let him stay at our place).

That's the story of Red. Sorry if I oversold it, but to me, not many things could be worse.


*Our definitions of "delightful" may not synch up. Read the rest of the blog and judge for yourself.