As Meg and I mentioned during our Elephant in the Room fit of honesty last month, we’ve been invited to speak at Yale. Let me set the
scene: we were working on the most recent book, which was, hands down, the most
difficult thing I’ve ever done. I can’t speak for Meg, but for her sake I hope it was the most difficult thing
she’s ever done. As of Friday, I’m too old to be drafted unless the homeland is
invaded, and barring unwelcome advances in technology I’m unlikely to give
birth, so I think writing It Seemed Like A Good Idea… will stand for a while as the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
You know how when you have something unpleasant or draining
ahead of you, you start doing everything in your power to avoid it? Well,
unfortunately, I’d already done all the niggling little tasks I had to do while
postponing writing my graduate thesis “Laughing at Hitler: Nancy Mitford in an
Age of Extremism.” Actual title, and I got a good grade on it. Not only did I
get a good grade, I’d been so reluctant to sit my ass down and finish it that I also had a clean
refrigerator, resumes uploaded to multiple job websites, an organized recipe
file, and my Christmas card list made. So with all that done, all I had to do
to distract myself during the tearful orgy of obscure pop culture references
that was the writing of It Seemed Like a
Good Idea… was obsessively check my email and the Amazon sales rank of The Misanthrope’s Guide to Life, back
and forth, over and over, like an epileptic terrier. I’d gotten no email in six
hours and Misanthrope’s was
persistently hanging out at a “respectable” level and so I was more or less
doomed to start working when we got an email with the subject line “Possible
Reading/Book Signing at Yale?” If you can imagine, this managed to distract us
for a solid hour, for which I’m almost as grateful as I am for the invitation
itself.
This started me thinking. Before I was officially the Other
Bird and was just an occasionally recurring character, Meg, Ex-Co-Blogger Eddie, and I got together in Philadelphia and I may or may not have (but
definitely did) streak a dorm at Penn. It was empty for the summer, so I’m
fairly sure the only people who saw me were Meg and Ex-Co-Blogger Eddie, both
out of the corners of their eyes, but still. With this head start, what if I
just did a hijink, one single hijink, at each Ivy? I liked this idea so much I
made myself a scorecard, with the seal of each Ivy, a check box, and a blank
spot to write in a summary of the hijink. I couldn’t figure out how to do it in
Paint or Photoshop, so presented here is your VERY OWN WORD DOCUMENT Ivy League
Hijinx Checklist, so you can play along at home.
On the off chance I run through all the Ivies before I
outgrow this idea, there’s always the Seven Sisters. If, in six years or so,
you pass a hitchhiker in Massachusetts carrying a crate of whoopee cushions and
a cardboard sign reading “Mount Holyoke or Bust,” pick me up. We’ll have some
fun.
You asked for it...(for some ungodly reason, you asked for it.) So once again, it's time for the great Dr. Reuben's Q&A of the Day! Today I give you: The Best of Dr. Reuben on VD.
If these diseases are so terrible, why aren't they better known? Unfortunately these conditions affect primarily two segments of society, neither of which carries much weight. Most victims are Negroes or homosexuals.
Ohhhhhhhhhhh, Dr. Reuben. Good morning to you.
(RE: the fact that VD will become widespread.) That sounds impossible. How could something like that happen? The recipe goes something like this: Take a sexually vigorous young lady of twenty-two, add birth control pills and maybe a little marijuana. Stir in some false confidence, a dash of hippie philosophy, and a lot of immaturity. Put all ingredients into a snappy new car that goes into some swinging neighborhoods, and mix thoroughly. Incubate for ten days and the infection that results will be astounding.
...According to that recipe I'm two years, ten days and a snappy car away from having a scorching case of gonorrhea. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't appreciate the fair warning.
What about the mayor's daughter or the black call girl? A variation of the same recipe. Let's say the call girl has a white customer, maybe a shoe store manager whose wife doesn't understand him. (About twenty percent of the customers of black prostitutes are white anyway.) He gets one of the underground diseases from her. A month later he spends the night in a motel with one of his customers, the young wife of a law student whose husband doesn't understand her. Now she comes down with it. Obviously her quest from understanding doesn't stop with the gent from the shoe store. Six weeks later at a party she pairs off with one of her husband's friends from school, a nice boy who's just had too much to drink. Guess whom he is engaged to? Two months after the party the mayor's nineteen-year-old daughter notices a vaginal discharge and a lump in her groin. With a few detours, it only took six months for the infection to get from the vagina of a call girl to the vagina of a debutante. Where else it has gone in the meantime is anybody's guess.
I swear to god, I sat down at my desk this morning, opened my book, pointed to this question and then, out loud, said, "You had me at black call girl." Here's my first question about this answer: how emo was everyone in 1969 that they ran around town being unfaithful because their spouses "didn't understand them"? What was going on there? I imagine husbands running up to their Robert Pattinson poster covered bedrooms, slamming the door in their wives faces and shouting, "You just don't understand me! NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME!!!!!1" as they angrily shove a bunch of Greenday t-shirts into a Jansport backpack, climb out the window and promptly go fuck a black call girl. 1969. The year of love. Perhaps people would understand their spouses a little better if they weren't getting married at 19-fucking-years-old (mayor's daughter―I'm lookin' at you.) The thought of getting married at 24 is enough to give me a panic attack, nevertheless 19. What was I doing at 19? Wearing velour track pants and Von Dutch t-shirts. Of course nobody understood me. I looked like I got my clothes at Goodwill directly after Ashton Kutcher and the costume department at Desperate Housewives made donations. That's not marriage material. That's drive into a swingin' neighborhood all hopped up on marijuana and false confidence material. (And I was and I did.)
Isn't it possible to get syphilis without having sex, like say from a toilet seat? Certainly, if you're an acrobat.
BEST. MEDICAL. ANSWER. EVER.
[The sores start at the] site of infection? What does that mean? Depending on who you are, it may mean a lot. Just as Sherlock Holmes could tell a man's occupation by the calluses on his hands, the doctor can tell the patient's sexual inclinations by the location of his syphilitic sore. In the average man a syphilitic ulcer occurs on the penis. In the average woman, it can be found on the labia minora. In those with an inquiring mind, the sore can appear on the fingertip. The female breast is also a common location. Lips come in for their share of infection. In homosexuals, the sore can be found on the mucous membranes of the anus. Once in a while an adventurous gentleman turns up with syphilis of the tonsils.
"In those with an inquiring mind, the sore can appear on the fingertip." That has to be my favorite sentence in the history of the English language. I'm not 100% sure I know what it means, I'm just 100% sure I like it.
Also, Dr. Reuben, in regards to the "adventurous gentleman," Webster's dictionary defines as a "gentleman" as the following: 1.) A man of noble, or gentle birth 2.) A man belonging to the landed gentry 3.) A man who combines gentle birth or rank with chivalrous qualities 4.) A man whose conduct conforms to a high standard of propriety or correct behavior
Nowhere on that list do I see ball gargling as a very "gentlemanly" activity.
Does that still happen? Fortunately about the time that men's hats went out of fashion, so did catheters.
Best out-out-context question and answer ever?
How can sterility not be bad? If you're talking about a prostitute, it's not bad. Gonorrhea is sometimes known among professionals as "the hooker's friend." To a lady of the evening pregnancy is embarrassing, inconvenient, and expensive. Before birth control pills, the risk was much higher. Gonorrhea helped bring down the odds.
Ok, ok, ok, so let me get this straight: adventurous ball garglers are "gentleman" and hookers are "ladies of the evening," whereas black people are "Negroes" and homosexuals are "fags?" Sir, do you play croquet with flamingos? Have you swum in a river of tears? Because this is some ass-backwards Alice in Wonderland shit and I don't recall ingesting any mercury this morning.
Why are these infections common among homosexuals? Homosexuals are capable of prodigious promiscuity. Simply by the laws of probability, sooner or later a wide-ranging white homosexual will come in contact with a similarly inclined black homosexual. The infection then passes to both their partners and their partner's partners and their partner's partner's partners and so on.
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