This is actually a two part post.
First, an announcement about a piece I just did on Bitterlawyer, “Dear Philalawyer: Is Practicing Law a Scam?“ Yes, but that’s curable, and I offer a solution:
Many argue the best cure for the studied inefficiencies and intentional redundancies that make modern litigation the ridiculous process it’s become is to eliminate the billable hour. That’d be nice, but it’s not going to happen fast enough. The better fix is the simplest: Throttling the revenue stream. Slap a strong “Loser Pays” rule on corporate litigants, and they’ll think twice about filing dubious cases against one another. A smaller inventory of better cases—ones clients actually intend to take all the way to trial, rather than use to hold money or bleed a competitor—would reacquaint lawyers with the actual practice of law and the provision of value instead of “legal widget” production.
Read the rest here. If you have comments, kindly place them on Bitterlawyer. Thanks.
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The second part’s an out-take from Happy Hour about sex. Specifically, that moment after a mindless fuck, when the two of your find yourselves sitting there, thinking Damn. I wish I had a newspaper, or a sandwich. And was halfway across town from here.
* * *
“Maybe you should fuck me in the ass.”
“Did you just ask–” Her comment caught me off guard. Too polite, and no one ever asks – not in a tone like that. It’s always a cajoling thing, or a necessity situation. Somebody’s got to be swayed. Never a vanilla How about…?
“Is that a no?”
“No.”
“’Yes’ no or ‘no’ yes?”
“Wasn’t sure what you said. I hear things sometimes.” That’ll happen on a half bottle of Johnny Red.*
“We don’t have to.”
“No– Just making sure.”
“I am.”
“Let’s just see where it goes.” Horrendous. A porn writer couldn’t have farted a worse pun into the moment.
“Pick. Go in my ass, you stay there.”
At first I felt a pang of insult. Did I come off as green as that? An absolute fucking beginner?** But I held back on the lurch to offense. It wasn’t an unexpected caution. Every guy’s heard it before, like the rule on imbibing brew and spirits – “Liquor before beer, in the clear; Beer before liquor, never sicker.” You can start off as the Lord intended, then shift mid-fuck to the Back Door. The converse, however, is verboten, for reasons no one need explain.
“Do I look like I’m in high school?”
“Hygiene standards vary… wildly.”
“A chimpanzee wouldn’t do that.”
“A man might.”
“Me?” Really? If what attracted you to me, what got us here naked in bed — If that didn’t clue you to the fact that I’m not unskilled in this arena — Not some idiot frat mook who doesn’t know the rules on these things… You haven’t paid any attention. Some men in that spot would have felt used, perhaps even hurt… the kind who need a good slap.
“Yes, ‘you.’ How well do we know each other?”
“Five drinks?”
She rolled her eyes; that said enough.
I didn’t fuck her in the ass. Not because I wasn’t curious, but exactly for the reasons she’d noted. I didn’t know the woman’s past, and she seemed a little too eager. That and I’m a selfish man. I’ll try anything in bed, but my favorite act’s old school fucking. Mom, apple pie and Chevy… Baseball, Norman Rockwell and penis-in-vagina sex. Call me a hopeless nostalgic. I like it better than blow jobs, hand jobs, and certainly more than ass fucking. As I said, that’s more a boredom fix – what you do when you’ve tried everything else, or can’t do anything better.
I’d make an awful queer. And that’s a shame. Because if I weren’t straight… If I hadn’t spent my almost every hour obsessing over how to fuck women, most of whom made it a “chase” (or at least made it feel that way, even when the process was short), I might have gone on to med school, possibly cured some disease.
Did I just say that? Who the fuck am I kidding?
Where were we? Fucking, right. We did that a couple times, and as that tends to go, the process would peak and end. And then we’d just sit there, looking around.
So… How about Princess Di? Think she was offed?
You’re getting semen on the comforter.
Is that– What do they call that?
Paisley.
Strange moments when you’re done screwing someone you hardly know… A random hook up, even a liquored one, is charged with frantic energy – tearing off the wrapping, attacking the merchandise. But by the end of it, the exertion’s driven you sober, lucid enough to realize you’ve no interest in doing anything but getting as far from each other as possible… until you’re up for fucking again. Yet you feel like you’ve got to say something. Dialogue seems in order. You can hear yourself prattling on, and imagine what she’s probably thinking. Son of a bitch… Another Bolero-length refractory period. Where are the two minute Ramones’ single guys? Trust me – we’d love to shut up. But your TV’s in the other room, and if we don’t talk, you might.
“This is a… really… nice place.”
“I guess.” She fiddled with the nightstand lamp.
“I like the… espresso machine.”
“It’s not mine.”
“Whose is it?”
“The machine?”
“The apartment.”
“My firm does work for this developer. I sublet it from him. It’s cheap. He used to see his mistress here.”
“His ‘mistress?’” I didn’t ask the obvious follow-up.
“If his wife found out, she’d sue him for everything. She has cancer on her vagina.”
“On it?”
“That’s what I said. They can’t have sex because the tumor’s in the way. Awful mess for him. She’d take his bank in a divorce.”
It wasn’t a “Scooby Doo Ending” explanation, connecting all the guilty parties, but it was pretty obvious who’d given her a taste for ass fucking, and where that person had gained his.
“Interesting…” The moment seemed optimal for a bathroom run.
“Sorry. Did I say she had it on her ‘vagina?’”
“Yes.” I don’t hallucinate that obscurely.
“I meant ‘vulva.’ It’s on her vulva.” She shifted across the bed to grab a beer – breasts, ass, pussy, all rotating in the light. Man’s a visual creature, and with that, this’d be a short refractory period. Shorter than Blitzkrieg Bop. “You’d think I’d get that right, you know? Considering I have one.”
“You’d think.” So she’s nuts… They’re all nuts in this fucking business. The bigger issue was whether I could piss straight with a new-found emerging hard-on. Never miss north of the bowl, or half-soak the roll of toilet paper. She’ll know, and it’s terrible goddamn form.
* For years, I’ve also hallucinated cats. Probably because, since the earliest childhood I recall, wherever I’ve lived, there’s always been at least one in the house. I assume this is a trick of the mind, a laziness the brain develops over time. Instead of bothering to take the moment necessary to analyze what some errant shadow in the corner of my office might be – a cloud or a plane flaying between the sun and window of whatever anonymous skyscraper in which I happen to be ticking off the hours – the mind defaults to what similar shadows have been in the past: felines, lurking in corners, staring… cleaning their nails and laughing to themselves. Run along to work, monkey. Earn some more money so you can bring back take-out sushi, of which I’ll demand my scraps. White tuna and yellowtail… Fuck that greasy mackerel shit. Then I’ll recall my surroundings, that I’m thirty stories in the air, in a building I have to assume has the staunchest prohibitions on pets.
Perhaps these visions should be troubling, signals of a mind going rotten. But then what brain in front of a computer scanning legal dicta isn’t? I’m just glad I never had Bichon Frises, Chihuahuas, or any other breed of those insufferable “yip yip” dogs growing up. Visions of that would kill me. I shudder to consider the suicide note they’d find tacked to the screen after I’d thrown a chair through the window and swan dove into traffic below… Some awful Colonel Kurtz madness: “The barking… the barking…”
** An underrated Bowie classic.
Oh man…hallucinating cats…I don’t know which one of these is weirder:
In my undergrad apartment, I used to always think I could hear a cat right outside the door of my bedroom. Of course, our apartment didn’t have a cat. Then, over the years, multiple people who had crashed in our living room reported hearing a cat roaming around inside. We had a few strays that lived outside, but this was all people hearing something brushing against furniture and stuff. I don’t believe in ghosts, but it’s just bizarre to have several people think your apartment has a ghost cat.
Then, as a summer associate I got really really drunk at a firm after-party and went home with a female associate. At some point during the night while fooling around with her I started thinking I was a cat. Not like just being silly or roleplaying or something. I was totally tripping balls and thought I was a cat. I didn’t do anything weird, like crawl around on all fours and try to lick my own ass. I was just absolutely convinced I was a cat that needed to have sex with this girl.
PL: Did they serve mushroom tea at that event?
You don’t want to act out the full cat thing with any chick. When cats are done copulating, the male’s penis causes the female an intense pain. This causes her to tear off and run away. You’ll get laid, but it’ll never be more than a one night stand.
I can’t touch the ghost cat thing. I’m just going to leave that to stand for someone else to address.
This is a good one, but I think I can see why it didn’t make the cut for your book–I think your anal story from Happy Hour, the one called “Chapstick” definitely set the bar pretty high. I only remember it because of that one line, “Katherine would cram an assembly line of cock in her cornhole before she’d find a man willing to marry a woman of her girth…” One of the funniest lines I’ve ever read. Scarily, I think we all know at least one or two girls exactly like this “Katherine” person.
The footnotes are solid on this one, though. That Bowie tune is unreal–I’d never heard it before. But, for my money, it doesn’t get any better than his 1976 album, Low. You gotta love Bowie, especially because he was so gone in the ’70s he has no recollection of even recording Station to Station, not a bad record in its own right.
PL: It didn’t make the cut because we were overloading the book with the crass stuff at that point and it needed to be balanced. The list of odd fuck stories anyone can tell rolls on endlessly. The average person could probably write a book of nothing but them.
The more I read your writing, the more I’ve come to accept the fact that human behavior is easily explained once you disavow yourself of any notion of us existing on some higher plane of existence. We’re all just a bunch of shaved apes who learned to talk. Understand that, and you understand people.
PL: I’m surprised there was a doubt. We’re but a few chromosomes away from the primates we keep locked up in zoos. Check out Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape: http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Ape-Zoologists-Study-Animal/dp/0385334303
No mushrooms involved. Though, I’ve read that some people (especially heavy drinkers) can hallucinate while sobering up or going through withdrawal. And yeah, I wouldn’t want to act out the cat thing. I didn’t try to do any cat-stuff, just really really thought I was a cat, but a cat trying to have normal human sex.
PL: I’ve drunk heavily and seen those swirly things in my eyes the next day, and heard shit. And I still see cats, sober and drunk, but a ghost cat? And wanting to act out Cat People (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_People_(1982_film) with a chick? That’s some fucked up shit. I’m jealous of your reaction to ethanol.
Yeah the ghost cat business is creepy…
Anyhow, it’s funny that you bring this topic up because I was going to submit a somewhat related question to you on the Bitterlawyer.com Q&A. About a month or so ago I somewhat accidentally picked up a cougar lawyer at my local watering hole and it wasn’t half bad. I’ve read the famous Tucker Max partner/internship/firing yada, yada, yada story and I’m starting to think this might be an overlooked demographic of chick. She was divorced, no kids, owned a decent pad and was quite reasonable and professional (in an adult, not hooker sort of a way) about the whole thing. So I’m wondering is this a rarity in the legal world? I mean she was a decent looking 50 y/o (I’m in my early 30s), sans kids, and knew what the CFA was to boot. Most the time I’m banging marginal looking broads in their mid/late 20s looking for their turn on the marriage/baby go-round who get wet at the sound of MBA (for some strange reason). I think the honesty of it all was a breath of fresh air and a shocker coming from a lawyer. You know, not a 22 y/o body but a better lay and none of the B.S. that goes with the twenty something chick.
On a related one night stand side note, although I have her number I can’t for the life of me remember her name. The next morning I hunted around for a piece of mail or something with her name on it to no avail. I’ve forgotten names before but always had a friend I could discreetly ask.
PL: I’m going to ask BL is I can take this one over there.
I feel like this could have been left in the book for its similar humor to that intended by the real authors of The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs. Poop jokes can never be bad.
Keep it up!
And connecting the guilty parties back to her love of the assfuck, it makes me wonder about all those sorority girls that were into anal in my college days.
PL: I’ve asked, and been told the nerve endings there are a “different” kind of pleasure. I’m no one to judge… I’m sure they have their reasons, and whatever a sorority girl wants, she gets. I know this. I’m hitched to one.
(Well, except a useful husband.)
Did this really happen? I just find it hard to believe, being a female and discussing this topic at length with other females.
The cat thing is bizarre. When I’ve hallucinated it’s involved situations where I convince myself that the wallpaper fruit is coming at me or I’m hanging out with Frank Zappa instead of some random Really strange dude.
Ghost cats sound creepy.
PL: Yes, and this is one of several times women have specifically requested that act. If I threw every story about this subject into the book it would have been Herman Wouk length. Chicks who like it seem to like it a whole lot. Some like it so much they try it on you with their finger. That’s an eye-opener.
“WTF? Why’d you do that?”
“You don’t like that? I thought guys liked that.”
“Who?”
“My ex loved it.”
“I’m not your ex. Did you think maybe you might have wanted to ask before you did that?”
In fairness, however, I have male friends who claim it is enjoyable. Again, call me a provincial, but it’s just not my thing. I’ve no interest in revisiting the awkwardness of high school physicals.
Make sure the girl has neat, trimmed nails. French tips are a no-no, and fake nails are an absolute deal breaker.
Just…throwing that out there.
PL: Whatever works…
As a general thing on nails, however, I never minded getting scratched by a chick. Kind of like it.
Still lovin’ your writing. I think one of the most defining features of your style is the dialogue amidst a busy or odd-circumstances scene.
You probably don’t know this, but months, maybe a year back, you directly and indirectly convinced me to try shrooms. Half a dozen trips later…I just love this shit. I love it to fucking death. Man I know chicks who’ve done coke and think it’s inferior.
PL: Stay away from coke. Just… avoid it. Nothing gained there.
Mushrooms are the shit. Best substance of all. In and out in four hours, loads of laughing, bunch of insights… Smokes taste great on them, beer even better, and there’s no hangover. The only thing you’re left with is a pile of odd recollections of the gibberish, and occasionally really clever shit, that flew through your head.
BTW, if you haven’t noticed yet, they go best with peanut butter.
I’ve yet to have any that taste worse than tea leaves. I found this study a while ago doing research for a story http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6474053.stm . I try to take everything I see with a grain of salt, but I find it hard to ignore. Who would’ve thought Ecstacy and GHB would rank so low?
PL: Ecstacy always struck me as overrated.
Speaking of tea, you can grind the fungus up and make it into tea. Gives you more of a “body” buzz than eating them.
I hate getting scratched by girls. But, I have a very low threshold for pain. Not a low tolerance, but things that shouldn’t hurt are really painful, scratching being one of them.
And apparently this thread is just going to become a clearing house for every weird thing about me.
PL: You haven’t been drinking hard enough before sex, or with a chick who gets you into the act enough to give you that sex high that’s kind of like runner’s high… The one where she could slam a hammer across the side of your head and you’d just keep driving her up and down on the mattress.
off-topic, but david bowie looks like he has an ideal nose for coke. thin, open, and businesslike, with no errant bits to get stuck in the nosehairs.
PL: Part of that might derive from the fact that he did a fuckload of coke in the 70s, enough to probably have caved in a whole lot of connective tissue up there (See also: Stevie Nicks). The other part of it is he just happens to have one of those fine, thin English noses. They’ve rotten teeth, but the British nose is a nice feature.
I’ve definitely drunk enough before sex, though I definitely haven’t gotten the sex-runner’s high.
One time a girl slapped me in the middle of sex. She then said she did it to get me to last longer. No shit I’m going to last longer, because I had to stop and ask why the fuck I got slapped in the middle of sex.
Never screw a woman in the ass after she’s had a big meal. You’ll wind up with a broad with an upset stomach, and possibly worse if she hasn’t crapped for a while.
If you want to have back door sex, have the woman exercise heavily the day before, take her out for a little fish, and then sleep with her without anal. After she wakes up, she’ll crap and after that, you can hump her backdoor, because she will be emptied out by then.
I thought I was a clever writer until I read this. When my unemployed lawyer ass has a spare dime, I’ll definitely pick up the book.
PL: Thanks. I hope you find a job that makes it a minimal expenditure, but should you not, check the used copies on Amazon. It can be acquired for next to nothing there.