This is a true story. It’s embarrassing, like most of Neal’s life, but I think both males and females can relate and empathize. Maybe something similar has happened to you.
Neal was having a birthday Saturday. His girl-friend Mitzy wanted to surprise him. What better than a surprise birthday party with about twenty of their best friends? But Neal would suspect, he’d be on guard all day. Friday he wouldn’t be around all day because he had a seminar at work, one of those boring things where you sit all day and drink coffee while some jerk talks about ‘Toyota-style high-efficiency’--in English ‘working harder’--at the company which just cut your pay by 10% for the second time, so that they could save people from lay-offs during the economic crisis without, naturally, cutting pay or benefits for the owners and stock holders. In sum, a day of unbearable hypocrisy.
So Mitzy’s bright idea was to have the surprise birthday party on Friday night. Sounds pretty good, huh? For someone who doesn’t get bright ideas very often, this was a winner. Neal got up and left for the seminar saying he’d be back around 7 or 8 o’clock, suspecting nothing. Then Mitzy and her friends Babs and Jan went to work. They made a devil’s food cake from scratch about two feet high. They made hors d’oeuvres. They mixed punch and arranged colored napkins in circular patterns. Babs brought Martha Stewart magazines for inspiration. They drank the spiked punch and laughed even when there was no joke. It was a beautiful girls day together waiting for Neal. Pop radio on, dancing in the kitchen.
Excuse me, reader, if I interrupt my own story, but have you ever noticed what you never see in films or on television? Unless they’re European or pornographic? Well, you see almost everything, but you rarely see female nudity, lots of tits and asses but little in the genitalia category. That’s fine. Children and the oversensitive might be shocked. But the male apparatus? Ever seen one outside of “Boogie Nights”? Not often, in any case. The penis is alluded to and suggested, but you don’t actually see one hanging there. So my first answer would be the elusive male member. But there’s something even more secretive, more dirty perhaps. Unimaginable but true. Enough suspense already? Breast-feeding. A human mother suckling her young. What perverted morality finds breast-feeding something to hide? Most actresses have done it in real life, but I’ve never seen them do it in a film. Me never.
In Europe and elsewhere, outside the U.S., women will open their blouses and unhook their bras and offer the teat to their babies with no shame or ill-ease. What is it with America that they hide this most beautiful and natural of operations behind a curtain shield or go into a separate room or feel so horribly uncomfortable? I’ve been to parties here in Sicily with mother and child both doing their thing and smiling. It’s nice. That’s what the mammary gland is really for, you know?
Anyway, I digress. Neal is driving home and realizes that he has an urgent need to urinate. It’s nearly unbearable, and he squeezes his legs together to attempt retardance. He’s afraid when he parks under his apartment that he might lose his bladder control while getting out of the car one leg at a time. He squeezes his pants hard enough to cause pain and then carefully steps out. Then he walks on stiff legs and short strides to the door, but can’t find the key. He finds the key. It won’t go into the lock. “Come on, come on, I gotta pee.” He opens the door and gets into the elevator to go up to the fifth floor. “Gotta pee, gotta pee, gotta pee BAD!”
Neal attempts mental distraction, but cannot think of anything except relief. He attempts his theory of absorption, which is that you can use mind-power to command the urine to flow backwards, until, to quote his high-school buddies, “your back teeth are whistling ‘Anchors Aweigh’.” Nothing works, it’s so bad it hurts. He suspects permanent penile damage unless the situation is reversed in the next few seconds. He opens his apartment door, saying out loud, “Gotta pee, gotta pee, gotta peeeeee!!!” Neal unzips his trousers to save time as he takes the last twenty steps toward the toilet.
Now, my friend Neal is, um, let’s say, well hung, endowed. He has above average length, quite substantially above average. When we were younger and took showers together at the gym, all the males would marvel in envy and yearning for what was probably our double. Or more. Aw, that’s not important. Forget that.
So Neal is walking through his front room with his extensive penis outside his pants, actually squeezing with thumb and forefinger to prevent premature leakage, when the lights flash on, and Mitzy, his beloved, and twenty of his friends, including some colleagues from work, scream on command: SURPRISE!
Neal stands frozen in space. He looks at them looking at his penis. They are as shocked as he is. Finally, he whispers, “Today’s not my birthday.” And runs.
Whether he made it or not to his final destination is not essential to this tale. The point is that what was seen was what should have been seen and is never seen because deemed obscene. Next, a story about breast-feeding, but, unfortunately, Neal will not be the protagonist.
Happy trials, Martin
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