Other Pieces from Inner Monologues: Mixed Bag!

Matteson Perry
Slump buster

I dated the same girl for all of college, but we broke up when we graduated. It was sad, because she was my first real girlfriend, but I was also excited because whenever a guy breaks up with a girl they think their life is about to turn into a cinemax soft core porn movie. I thought I ‘d become a private investigator who’s days are hot, but who’s nights were hotter. That did not happen. What did happen is that I went over a year without dating anyone or even having sex.

I started confidant and thought “I’m only going to get with a girl that’s hotter than my girl.” Then a couple months went by and I though, “I’ll date a girl AS hot as my ex, for sure.” A couple more months went by and I thought “I hope I don’t die alone.”

Once I hit the year mark I knew I had to do something drastic. I needed to find myself a slump buster. A slump buster is a girl that you aren’t necessarily attracted to and who you maybe wouldn’t even normally have sex with, but desperate times call for fugly measures.

So I went to a party searching for my slump buster, and when I’m on the prowl, it’s like my mind is a navy seal unit sent by the government to find and secure vagina (the government is my penis). There’s the scout who’s always checking out women – “I see one. She just touched her hair and looked away. I don’t know, it’s a code I’ve never seen.” And I have my common sense, a grizzled veteran that’s been in country for 3 years. He’s always chewing on a cigar and saying things like “careful boys, I don’t think that’s a pimple on her lip.” And then there’s my libido. He’s the muscular guy that has the big machine gun that spins, like Jesse Ventura in the movie Predator . He says “horseshit” all the time for no reason at all and he’s a shoot first, worry about unwanted pregnancies later kind of guy.

I go to a party one night and my team was locked and loaded. I’d issued a shoot to kill order. And I finally found my slump buster. Now, normally, a slump buster is ugly, but she wasn’t. However, she was big. I don’t mean fat, but literally big. She was 6’1” and proportionally sized. The kind of girl that played power forward on her high school basketball team. Basically she was like Long Duc Dong’s girlfriend in Sixteen Candles. So I started dancing with her, and it was the first time I’d ever danced with someone bigger than me, and it was a little weird, but I felt so safe in her arms.

It’s getting late and she leans in and says, “we should go back to your place.” And I, Mr. Cool say “ oh yeah? Why’s that doll?” And then she said the most forward sexual thing anyone has ever said to me: “well, we can’t have sex tonight, because I’m on my period, but I suck a mean dick.” OH MY GOD. Mr. Cool gone. I blushed like a southern belle – “Oh I do declare, you’ve given me a case of the vapors.” I wished I’d had something clever to say like, “I’ll be the judge of that, my dear, shall we,” But instead I looked at her and I said…“ that’s cool.”

So we went back to my place and she fulfilled her promise. And afterwards, she stunned me again by saying, “We should get together next week, cause I’ll fuck you so good.” All I could manage to say was, “that sounds good. I don’t have much going on next weekend…a couple errands to run, but yeah, other than that, we should definitely fuck me so good.”

We part ways and I feel bad about what happened, and I think there is no way I can meet her next week. I barely know her and I’m not attracted to her physically or emotionally. I’ll break my slump with someone I really like, I think, so when she called on Friday and asked if I wanted to hang out and I said “YES, RIGHT NOW!” It’s impossible for a guy to turn down no strings attached sex. It’s like turning down a drink at an open bar. It just doesn’t happen.

That night we’re back in my house and the Seal team is evaluating the situation. The scout says, “the target is right there and appears to be unguarded. It’s quiet.” And then my conscious chimes in “yeah, a little too quit.” And I think, “yeah, I feel weird about this. Let’s fall back”. But then Jesse Ventura yells “Horseshit!” And he runs in with his gun blazing! The conscious throws his cigar and yells “God damn it, I better make sure this idiot wears a condom!” and he rushes into the fight and the next thing I know we’re up in my room having sex.

It’s awkward first time sex. And I will admit, I was not very good. But, it had been a while. Now, some people say having sex is like riding a bicycle and you never forget how. But, I don’t know if that saying applies when you’re the bicycle.

You can tell a sexual encounter is a mistake if the instant you orgasm, and I mean a split second after you come, your first conscious thought is “Oh my god, what am I doing?” The best way I can describe what happened in my brain is, as usual, to reference a scene from Jurassic Park. There’s a scene when they have to reboot the computer system in order to get the electric fences working and the security back on line. Samuel L. Jackson says “hold on to your butts” and he throws the switch and all the systems come back on line. That’s what happens to my brain. Right after I came my brain powered back up - self-esteem back on line; good judgment, back on line; fear of women taller than me, back on line.

The next day I felt guilty because I thought, well, I had sex with her, so she’s probably in love with me. I can’t just do her and never call again, so I tried to ask her out again, but she never called me back, and I ended up hearing through a friend that I was basically her slump buster.




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A Girl Named Maria
by Elicia Berger

My friend Deema and I are planning on spending our last day of a friend's bachelorette weekend in Miami on the beach. We walk from 6th Street to 12th Street on the sloped sand, and finally decide on a spot that meets our requirements: no children and no hairy, overweight men.
Because we are scanning so intensely for what we don't want, we don't actually see what is right in front of us until we have set our towels down: several very buff men in ostentatious swimwear checking each other out. One has a spandex number that looks like disco meets the Muppets, another looks more bedroom than beach. (Let's just say that this amount of flesh and frill should really be restricted to the privacy of one's own home.) Then we notice the rainbow flag near the lifeguard station. Clearly. A ways behind us, lounging in rented chaise lounges, are three buxom blondes in pastel-colored bikini bottoms. And nothing else. A chiseled man with smooth chocolate skin emerges from the ocean and saunters by in a bikini bottom smaller than any other I've seen, the suit’s posterior revealing buns of steel through wet black lace. I raise my brow at Deema and we proceed to ogle the man's buttocks, because really, even if you're a frog and know you can't get it on with the pretty piggy, she's still pretty and you still want it.
We are excited to have found a great spot for people-watching. A couple of women approach and plop down about ten feet from us. One talks on the phone while she settles in. She is in her early- to mid-thirties, but has the voice of a chain-smoking 65-year-old.
“Yeah, it's Maria. You’ll never guess where I am. South Beach! It’s so nice out here. I’m just calling because I want you to be jealous...Yeah, I’m gonna go topless.”
As Maria finishes her bragging, she removes her top to reveal two nearly bursting balloons with elevator button nipples. Her friend, who has nearly identical breasts—maybe they got a two-for-one?—but slightly larger hips, does the same. Maria, bare chested, puts her dark wavy mane in a pony tail while kneeling on her towel. Looking around to make sure everyone sees her, she proceeds to rub on tanning oil.
“You know, my friends at work tell me, ‘Maria! Why don’t you wear SPF! Why do you wear tanning oil!’ I like to get dark. I want to get so dark…I want my tits to be black.”
She continues to rub the oil, the post-op scars on the edge of her breasts showing slightly. The red rawness of the scars, while only peeking out a bit, contrast strongly with her browned skin.
“God, all these cocks are making me horny. Even though they’re gay.” Her bikini bottoms are a slick black lycra with a thin gold chain draped around the waistline. They tie with strings on the side. She is in full makeup. She isn't not attractive, but let's just say that her face is not the main attraction.
The two settle in. Maria takes a brief phone call from her boyfriend, whom she calls “Sweetie.” It's not the endearing “sweetie” of one lover to another, but more like the “sweetie” the overaged waitress addresses you by at the all-night diner. You know the one. She's got the yellowed fingernails and looks like she'd rather be getting an enema than serve you.
I flip over on my stomach and unlatch my top so that my back tan will be strap-free. I am contemplating the pros and cons of going topless.
“You know, if you do it, I just might have to do it, too,” Deema tells me.
“If we did, it’s not like anyone will be looking at us. People will think we’re little boys lying on our backs. There’s a lot more to look at around us!” Though I realize we are on a primarily gay beach, I do know that gay boys still love boobies!
I do about three flips before announcing, “Alright, that’s it. I’m gonna have to do it.” I turn over onto my back, leaving my top lying on the towel. The sun feels good on my bare chest, and in this crowd of negative-SPF, huge fake jugs, cell phones, and men’s lace bikinis, I feel natural in comparison. The breeze whispers across my nipples and tickles my happy trail.
Two overtly heterosexual men with hair sweaters settle in behind us. Before even dropping his stuff, one of the guys starts scoping. He's not just looking around though, he's leering. He tells his friend to check out the girl with the “dark hair, fantastic tits.” This being South Beach, and not somewhere in New England where it'd be plausible that a girl like me could get such a comment, all eyes are on Maria. I can imagine this is the kind of thing that makes Maria's life worth living.
Deema and I have by now perfected the language of exchanging glances. Maria's head gestures towards me and Deema as she says quietly but audibly, “That’s like what size I used to be.”
Deema and my eyes pop open at the same time and we giggle silently. I can do this because I'm fine with the way I am. It's hard to tell if Maria's voice reveals pride or maybe a tinge of remorse. I do know that it is the quietest thing she says all afternoon. And while my idea of a “perfect” body is not Maria's, and perhaps Maria's idea of one is not mine, I do think her tits would make perfect flotation devices.

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Sew What?
By Bridge H.


My mom was one of those awesome moms in the 80s – she was Charlie’s Angels-sexy, managed to control me, my older brother, and the twins, wombmates who shared a brain.

Mom cooked, baked, cleaned, read stories, and enrolled us in every possible activity, from football to cheerleading to swim team. There were cooking classes, theater camp, Spanish lessons, piano with the creepy old dude with long fingers.

But there’s one area where Mom fell short – and that was dressing us.

No, we weren’t nudists and it wasn’t one of those things where you see a child at the grocery in a tutu and cowboy boots and know that the mother just gave up. No. …my mom insisted on sewing most of our clothing, usually with a box of Fetzer chablis beside the little tomato-shaped pincushion. And so, the unspeakable happened. Repeatedly.

My older brother Terry was the first victim, and since he was born in ’77, he wore lots of thick corduroy short shorts (often as thick as they were short, little cubes of corduroy) and these paper-thin polos on which Mom drew the alligator. The shirts were so thin that his little nipples showed through.

When I was born, a hefty ten pounds and ever-growing, Mom sewed me sack-like baby clothes because, as she told me many years later, “They didn’t make clothes for obese babies in the 80s!”

I strive for excellence when it comes to not looking inbred, but I fell victim to all the bad 80s trends – reversible vests, coulottes, beaded hair wraps that seemed so right on the beach in Mazatlan but not so much sticking out of my pom-pom ski hat in Colorado in February. But Mom felt the need to let me go extra heinous. Which is why she sent me to the last day of second grade in a Coors Light hat. Or why I performed to Kokomo in a neighborhood dance recital, a neon swimsuit and moonboots the only distractions from my limp-wristed jazz hands. (Key Largo, Montego…)

Everyday looks were bad enough, but Mom would really freak out on the holidays. The week before Easter 1989, she called me into her sewing room and asked me to lay down on a bolt of fabric.

“Lay like you’re about to make a snowangel,” she instructed. Then she traced my whole body and sent me away. On Easter morning, I was presented with the outfit I would be wearing to church. It was blue floral cotton, and it was clear that she had taken two identical cutouts of the shape she traced and sewed them together like a pillowcase. Except she’d added elastic at the wrists and ankles – so it wouldn’t fall off? When I stepped into my chintz chalk outline and she zipped up the back, it was like wearing an Easter condom. And air got trapped in the suit all day, and I had to keep pushing it out like in that that Missy Elliot video. The real prize was the straw hat with a band that matched my clownsuit.

But lets be honest -- no one knows what to fuck to wear for Easter. That’s why my older brother was dressed like Freddie Kruger and younger one like a tiny ice-cream man, all in white – trousers, shirt, suspenders, and shoes. And this little genius “accidentally” fell into a big pile of manure on the freshly fertilized lawn on our way in to the church. Now, our family always got asked to carry the gifts to the alter for communion -- and I’m relatively sure it had nothing to do with our good looks and everything to do with the fact that there were six of us – but because one brother was covered in shit that year, we didn’t get to do it. Thus, I didn’t get to model my wallpaper onsie and straw hat for the entire congregation.

Question: What chubby preteen was soon the proud owner of several of these simple-to-cut and sew outfits?
This one.
Another question: Who quickly realized that these outfits had enough room to hide an entire bag of Fritos?
Oh yeeeeeah…

Mom’s do-it-yourself attitude extended beyond sewing. For example, there was the time she decided to give me a new haircut on the 4th of July “by the light of the fireworks.” There was blood involved. (Ear.)

Honestly, the only things Mom sewed well were Halloween costumes. Until I was too old to trick or treat, she measured, pinned, hemmed, and appliquéd some incredible things – if only I could dress as a princess, Minnie Mouse, or pirate bumblebee every day. Our Halloween costumes were amazing.

Until the Barney incident.

At the age of 16, my older brother Terry decided he wanted to dress as Barney the purple dinosaur for the Halloween parade. This was an odd choice for a strapping teenage boy, but my mom was game, sewing him a costume using the same “trace your body” technique she’s invented for my years of fatsuits. Mom constructed him a fairly accurate suit using purple felt, and when my 6’2 brother put it on and zipper up the back, he winced in pain. I noticed that she’d made the rise several inches too short and we were able to see, in great purply-felt detail, the outline of his penis. And…everything else. Just all of it, swathed in Barney purple.

After she finished pissing herself with laughter, my mom promised to fix the costume and a few hours later, returned, confident that it would now fit. Terry slipped on the suit with ease this time but when he turned around, what I saw was maybe worse than before. It seems that, using her sewing prowess, she’d ripped open the crotch, added a rectangle of fabric, and stitched it back up leaving a pouch between his legs. A big purple dinosaur ballsack just hung there, ready to frighten children and arouse the suspicion of the local authorities.

That was the last time my mom sewed anything. None of us would let her near our loose buttons or floor-dragging hems. Until last month, when I was home visiting and cut my finger to the bone while washing dishes. Pale-faced, I asked Mom for help and she dashed upstairs for supplies.

She returned with some gauze and tape. She began to wrap my finger carefully, but the tape wouldn’t stick to anything – not to the gauze, not to itself. As she worked frantically and as blood ran down my hand, I examined the spool of tape she was using.

“Mom,” I said calmly. “There’s a reason this isn’t working. You’re trying to wrap my finger with hemming tape. Unless you have a hot iron at the ready, this isn’t going to work.”

“Ok, I have another idea then,” she said. “Since you don’t’ have healthcare, we can’t take you to the hospital. So I’ll stitch it.” And so she produced a needle and thread.

“No thanks, Mom. I’d rather lose my finger.” (I didn’t.)

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LOST IN OXFORD
by Jennifer Coates

“Baby … I waited on the street for you, every day…"

“Darling,” said the hottest celebrity in England. “10 Downing Street is a very busy place.”

“Oh, Mr. Blair!” I cried “It’s so dirty … I’m your Monica Lewinsky!”

Something hit me in the face. Either Labour’s new Prime Minister was into some very kinky shit, or someone was waking me up. Sure enough, there was sweet Jenna Martin, in pigtails, plaid pants and a Kappa Alpha Theta sweatshirt.

“Why were you dreaming about Monica Lewinsky?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I lied. I really hoped I hadn’t screamed “Oh, Tony Blair,” or something equally embarrassing. Although, according to my dream, Tony was quite well-endowed. I wasn’t happy about the interruption.

“We’re going to Oxford today, and you’re late, girlie. So get that little tush in gear!” Jenna marched off, our Greek letters also displayed on the butt of her pants.

Sighing, I threw together my suitcase and ran downstairs.

“Ah," saluted Robin, my elderly host-dad in Westbury-on-Trym. He reclined on a tweed couch, smoked a pipe and sipped his morning tea. “Did you sleep well, Jennifer?”

“The build-up was great, but I couldn’t quite finish.”

“Right. Jolly good. I hear your fraternity has a reputation for being late.”

“My fraternity?”

“The, er, Kappa Alpha Thetas,” Robin read delicately from Jenna's upturned bottom as she rummaged through her suitcase.

“Sorority,” Jenna corrected like a schoolteacher. I winced; It was so Ugly American. Tony would be so embarrassed.

Tony. Suddenly, I remembered.

"Excuse me," I gasped. I grabbed my bag and sprinted for the bathroom, nearly knocking over Robin’s sedate wife Anne, who always looked drugged on English Breakfast tea.

Slamming shut the door of the loo and ripping off my track pants, I felt for the little string. It wasn’t the British Prime Minister I’d been feeling up there; it was a 48-hour-old tampax that I’d been too exhausted from traveling to remove.

Beyond the point of disgusted with myself, I wrapped the refuse in a mound of toilet paper and looked around for the trash. I knew enough about British plumbing than to try flushing it. I scanned the entire lavatory until I realized that Robin and Anne did not have a trashcan.

Seizing a decorative wicker basket, I shoved the tissue-wrapped tampon inside, pulled up my pants and ran out the door. I wondered when my host parents would discover this little present, and hoped they'd blame it on Jenna.

We barely made the bus for Oxford. “Late again, ladies,” declared Professor Lacey, dumping a flask into his coffee. Lacey, our trip chaperone, reeked of Wild Turkey and malt liquor. I couldn’t believe I was slower than the drunk guy. I needed an alarm clock—or a drinking problem.

I crashed in my seat and flashed back serially to the fact that I had just stashed a used, bloody tampon inside a piece of Pottery Barn furniture at the home of two senior citizens. Not that I'd really had a choice; but I knew karma was not going to be kind to me.

I buried my head in my pillow, jet lagged. What a way to start the trip I’d dreamed of for 13 years. But I was here: in England. I lifted my eyes to the calm, green countryside.

My parents are not big travelers. My mother’s too poor, and my dad works too much. But I have always been in love with England. I used to make my mom buy digestive biscuits at Save-Mart, and then sit on the toilet for hours waiting for them to work. I started listening to the Cure and the Smiths in fifth grade, and then wondered why I needed anti-depressants in seventh. I went to see the Spice Girls movie. Twice.

As the bus pulled into the streets of Oxford, my terrible morning rolled away with the mist. Rowboats practiced on the river. Inside the stone buildings, my favorite writers had tossed weighty ideas in echoing quadrangles. I started a list of places to explore, my spirits rising as we filed out of the coach.

“Now remember, love muffins,” Prof. Lacey called. “This is a guided tour. We don’t want any of you getting lost … and I’ll be here on the bus if you need anything.” I could see a bottle of something in his backpack, and I imagined him and the Scottish bus driver puking on my pillow as I traversed the halls of higher learning.

A British woman in a purple pants suit met us off the bus. “I am Marianne,” she said with perfect, military posture and no facial expression. “Your guide through Oxford University.”

Marianne looked like she could a drink out Prof. Lacey’s flask. We rolled our eyes and followed her through the city streets, praying the afternoon wouldn’t suck.

This street, where the cross is marked in the road, was where they burned the bishops in the sixteenth century,” Marianne announced. “Thomas Cranmer was executed at this very intersection.

“How cheerful,” I said.

I’m afraid that was pretty much the high point. We spent the next hour in the cloister of New College, shivering in the rain, while Marianne prattled on about the college system. As it poured harder, I tried to focus on the one interesting thing I’d learned: that my butt was sitting where Hugh Grant’s butt sat in the 80s, which meant we were kind of rubbing butts, across time.

“Well, that’s it,” Marianne said finally. “We’ll swing by Jesus College and then get you back to your coach,”

“Can I get a picture of Jesus College?” I called immediately. My classmates stared at me. But Marianne looked pleased that someone, for once, was interested in her tour.

I can assure you, that was not the case. But Jesus College was the alma mater of my biggest British crush of all: T.E. Lawrence, a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia. If you’ve never seen the movie Lawrence of Arabia, I highly recommend it. Especially the part where Peter O’Toole gets beaten with a riding crop. Totally hot. Anyway, if I couldn’t see the places where other great minds had studied and lived, I was determined to salvage the tour with at least a picture in memory of T.E. Lawrence. We walked back toward the coach, and Marianne stopped triumphantly.

“Here we are, Jesus College! Dear, why don’t you go inside and get a picture of the quadrangle? Or”— she turned to the class. “We can all go in! How does that sound?”

A group of thirty, wet faces glared at me.

“That’s okay,” I said quickly, feeling embarrassed. “I’ll just run in and take the picture.”

“All right. Catch up when you’re done. We’ll go along the street and to the left.”

I ran as fast as I could, snapped a photo and got out. The mood was totally ruined. I hadn’t even looked at the building.

When I returned, the class was already gone. So I sprinted along to the next street and hung a left.

No one was there.

Where else could they be? I tried to remember my way to the bus, near that stupid cross on the ground. Buckets of rain increased their output on my confused American head. As I wandered from street to street, looking for that one recognizable landmark, I realized that it would soon be dark, and I would be lost in Oxford forever.

I wasn’t even on campus now. I ducked into the nearest shop, which looked like a Hallmark. The main difference was that the cards had lots of topless old grandmothers on them, or pictures of men in women’s clothing, or people with their hands stretched out, flipping each other off. I asked the teenage cashier for directions.

“Sorry, I’m a bit lost. Can you help?”

She nodded, looking with pity at my dripping tourist’s clothes.

“Oh, good,” I said. “Can you please tell me how to get back to the street where they burned the Bishops?”

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“Oh, you know,” I said, “that street with the cross in it, where they executed Thomas Cranmer in the sixteenth century. Can you tell me how to get there?”

“John!” she called nervously to the man at the next register. “Do you have any idea what she’s talking about, some cross where they burn bishops?”

John looked very confused. The two of them backed away slightly, and I realized I sounded like a violence-obsessed lunatic.

I ran out of the store, cursing Marianne for giving us a two-hour tour of Oxford without a shred of real information. I sort of ran in circles, wailing and gnashing my teeth. I think people assumed I’d actually lost my way to Bedlam, or perhaps the Tower of London.

Just as I began to really sob, a big black crow umbrella, shielding a spot of bright purple, flew at me in the wind. There was the bus, parked along the street and waiting.

“Where did you go?” I screamed at Marianne. “I went down the street, and took the first left, and you weren’t there!”

“I said go along to the end of the street and turn left!” she exclaimed.

“That’s not what you said! Since when does ‘go along the street’ mean ‘go to the end?’”

“Perhaps it’s a cultural difference,” she said kindly.

“Oh yeah? Well, perhaps you can fuck off! That’s right, and fuck your culture, too! Take your pudding and your tea and Madonna and John Major’s teeth and your … commie government health care system, and shove them right up your ass!” And flipping her the bird, I turned and boarded the bus.

“Darling,” said Professor Lacey, holding out his flask. “Have a sip of this, and for God’s sake try to be on time for once.” I sat down next to him and buried my head in my hands.

“Prof?” I confessed. “I did a bad thing to a nice old couple today.”