So, I should probably explain just a little bit about this post before I hit “publish”.

I started writing this sometime earlier last year. The previous season of Top Chef had just aired (we’re into the next season on TV now) and I wanted to write a quick post about my love for Top Chef judge Gail Simmons.

Somehow it turned into this… thing. I got about halfway through the story before I hit a block and stopped working on it. Then it sat there for months and months, until last night, when I suddenly remembered it and decided to see if I could finish the story.

I wrote for a few hours last night and a few hours tonight and finished it up.

I should say that I don’t condone or participate in much of the behavior in this post.

I should also say that if you’re uncomfortable with sexual situations (which pop up quite a few times in this story) then you should probably not read much further. Specifically I mean you , mom. If you’re my mom, don’t read this.

Anyway, it’s almost 4am and I’m pooped.

Here’s the post, start to finish.

—

You know, I post occasionally about the glorious splendor that is the monster mams of Giada De Laurentiis.

My unquenchable desire for them certainly no secret around here.

While recently discussing said monster mams, I got involved in a conversation comparing current Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi to first season host Katie Lee Joel. Comparing them in both hotness and hosting abilities.

  

Honestly, I don’t find Katie or Padma particularly attractive. Padma always looks like she’s stoned and hoping that someone made Cheetos.

She is kind of hot in that way that you’re supposed to think women are hot even if you don’t really. She’s got a great body and long wavy hair and big brown eyes and whatever. She’s all exotic and Indian looking and all. But her mouth weirds me out. It’s like her lips move around independently of the rest of her face. She kind of reminds me of Ren Hoek.

Or like a character in Labyrinth. Katie, on the other hand, looked like she didn’t really want to be there at all, and was totally bored. Plus, she just wasn’t very good at hosting. She had no personality.

 

And I wonder if she knows how gross this is.

Anyhoo…

Having just recently watched every season of Top Chef pretty much straight through with Sandra (summer is a bitch for TV I tell you what) and season 4 as it aired, I am comfortable saying that comparing Padma and Katie is kind of a moot point, because they both pale in comparison to judge and consistent hotness Gail Simmons.

Gail blows both of these silly bitches out of the water. She’s got an odd kind of hotness that is hard to exactly explain. She’s not like Giada where she’s like some kind of Barbie caramel apple caricature with perfect round boobies stuck on with glue. She’s more like the hottest Home Ec teacher there ever was. Or maybe an English teacher. Or anything creative really. Like, if you were fifteen and in her class, you’d just sit in class and dream about kissing her all day long. And not only because she’s hot, but because she’s passionate about what she does. And she’s cool. And also because she’s hot. And you’d imagine that she likes all of the same things you do and that if you could only be alone with her for a short amount of time outside of school, she’d see how much you have in common. You know what kind of music she likes because she drives a somewhat beat up old blue early 90s Corolla with a Pink Floyd bumper sticker. You also know that she reads at least one of the same authors you do, because she also has a Hunter S. Thompson for President 2004 - Buy the Ticket/Take the Ride campaign sticker. It never really occurred to you to wonder how old she is, but if you’d thought about it, and you had just a little more information, you’d know that she bought this car, and put these stickers on, when she was not much older than you are now. But you don’t think about these things. You only know that this is the car she drives and these are the interests she advertises with her bumper stickers.

You know this because you’ve stayed late and watched her leave school at the end of the day. You know which car is hers because you kind of followed her. I say kind of because really, you were going the same direction anyway. Besides, it’s not creepy to stay late, because the library is open for an hour after school and you ride your bike home anyway so there’s nothing anyone can say. If you happen to see Miss Simmons on her way out to her car, so what? It’s not like you’re stalking her. You just happen to be in the same parking lot at the same time. Not so weird. Of course, the fact that you’re staring at her and don’t realize it is neither here nor there. Your one hope is that she’ll stumble and drop the box of class work she’s carrying. Not because you wish her ill, but because then you could swoop in and be a gentleman and help her gather her things and carry her box to her car from her and put it in her trunk. She’d thank you and laugh and your eyes would meet and lock for a brief but intense moment, then she’d look away and tuck her hair behind her ear and sigh softly and you’d feel amazing and triumphant and humble at the same time. Then she’d unlock her car door and there would be an awkward but delicious silence where neither of you knows exactly what to say, and so she leans in and hugs you quickly and friendly and then looks in you in the eyes and says “thank you” very honestly, then she’d get in her car and drive away, but not before you see her watching you in the rearview mirror.

But that doesn’t happen. She doesn’t stumble and spill her box. She walks to her car without event and gets in and pulls out. Even if she had dropped her stuff, you’re far to introverted and anti-social to have actually approached her and helped. So you sit there on your bike, feeling like a gross little scab. Then she drives past you, recognizes you as one of her students and gives you a pleasant wave as she passes on her way out of the parking lot. You forget to wave back because you’re so completely awestruck by the intense waves of emotion you feel washing over you. You don’t even know for sure if it’s love or if it’s some sort of fixation. Obsession even. Doesn’t matter. It feels more powerful than anything you’ve ever called love before. Love before has been what you’ve felt for a pet dog or your mom or perhaps a security blanket. That felt nothing like this. There was no longing before. No deep rooted need for even the smallest physical contact. You’ve never even dared to fantasize about her sexually. She’s better than that. You’ve somehow elevated her beyond you usual repertoire of sexual fantasy partners. To put her in with Angelina Jolie and Megan Fox would be to lower her to the level of something to be used, not loved. No, in your fantasies, it’s her smile you see. The way the light reflects off of her eyes. The subtle movement of her throat as she breaths. The way her fingers pass over pages as she flips through whatever text she’s reading from. The sticky way her lips pull apart when she’s about to speak. Something that everyone does but only really looks beautiful when it’s her lips parting. The soft sigh (moan?!) that she occasionally lets slip when she takes a sip of coffee that’s just a little hotter than she expected.

These are the images that float in your mind and take your breath away and make your heart speed up and leave you feeling like a white hot lead ball is sitting in the bottom of your stomach. Standing there on your bike, watching the space where her car was minutes ago. Standing there slack-jawed and impossibly in love with a completely unobtainable woman, you feel totally hopeless. 

But is she? Really? Really that unobtainable?

You’ve seen it on the news. Teachers who love students. Teachers who get arrested for sleeping with teenagers. It seems to happen at least once a year, right? And those are just the ones who get caught and arrested. Who knows how many carry on long, meaningful relationships without getting caught? Probably lots, right? And it’s not like you’re just ANY kid on the block. You’re mature. Certainly further along than the other apes in your class. The other kids who push you into the drinking fountain and knock your lunch over onto the ground. The other kids who are the reason you ride a bike the two miles to and from school rather than taking the bus. The other kids. No, there’s no competition there. With girls your own age, sure. You don’t stand a chance with girls your own age. They’re impressed by a guy with a car and a mustache. A guy who can buy beer without getting carded. A guy who can get away with pushing people around. Guys who always have weed in his jacket and a condom in his wallet. Sure, the teenage girls are all over that guy. But that doesn’t matter because you don’t care about girls your age. You’re so far beyond those girls. They don’t, no, they can’t get you. You’re smarter than they are. Smarter, more cultured and more mature. You’re the kind of guy who doesn’t have time for stupid, vapid teenage girls.

Which is why you can stand there, fantasizing about seducing Miss Simmons and you might even be right. Probably not, but maybe. Either way, it doesn’t matter because you’re not going to do anything about it. You’re far too socially awkward and inept at talking with girls. As much as you think you’re mature enough for a woman (not a girl, a WOMAN) like Miss Simmons, she’ll never know because you’ve barely ever spoken more than two words to her. She’ll never know because you don’t participate in class. You turn in your work and do a fine job, but your class participation is crap because you’re shy and because you’re easily intimidated. The progress reports she sends out on the quarters usually say something along the lines of “Obviously very bright, needs to work on class participation” and it makes you sad and confuses your parents. But on the odd occasion that she’s called on you to provide an answer you react how you react to any teacher who calls on you unsolicited, you mumble “I don’t know” even though you do and you pray they’ll move along and forget about you.

So what do you do?

Nothing. Because there’s nothing TO do. Right? Nothing. You can talk yourself up, but let’s be realistic here. You don’t know anything about her outside of school. You know that she likes at least some of the same music you do and at least one of the same writers you do. That doesn’t make you life partners. Hell, you don’t even know if she has a boyfriend. Or if she’s married. Shit, she might be a lesbian, who knows? You don’t have a clue how old she is. She could be twenty-three or thirty-three. She could be forty-three for all you know. You’ve never been good at guessing ages. Either way, you DO know that she’s old enough for it to be illegal to have a relationship with her. A sexual relationship at least. And isn’t that what we’re talking about? Even though the bulk of your fantasy usually get as far as merely sitting next to her on a couch and watching horror movies and eating popcorn. Maybe she covers her eyes in the scary parts and buries her face in your chest. Maybe she kisses you, gently. Lightly. On the lips. Her eyes open and looking into yours, fully aware of everything she’s doing. Aware and choosing to do it without any confusion or hesitation. She knows what she wants and it’s you. That might be the extent of your fantasy, but you’re not naive enough to believe that that’s all you’d ever want. Or, even better, all SHE would ever want. And that’s where it gets sticky. Legally that is.

But it doesn’t matter anyway, because it’s not going to happen. Goddamn it. It’s not going to happen. You need to get it together. Get on your bike and ride home little boy because all you’re doing right now is setting up more hurt and painful longing. You’ve got enough of that already. No sense trying to talk yourself into something as ridiculous as this. So get on your bike and ride home.

And you do. You ride home and you take your dinner in your room. You lay on your bed and do your homework. You draw and look at comic books without actually reading. You’re brain is too fried for reading. You roll onto your back and stare at the ceiling. At your posters of famous musicians and movies and you wonder if she’d be impressed by your tastes. You’ve got the Dark Side of the Moon poster, so you know she likes that. You look at your Abby Road poster wonder if she loves The Beatles as much as you do. You guess that if she likes Pink Floyd, she probably likes the Beatles. Don’t be stupid. Of course she does. What about Vonnegut? Do you think she likes Kurt?

God you hope so. Wouldn’t that be amazing? To be able to sit in a coffee shop and have an intelligent conversation with an amazing woman about Slaughter House 5 or Mother Night or the stories in Welcome to the Monkey House? You close your eyes and you imagine it. And it’s wonderful. She smiles and you smile and she says smart, witty, adult things and she laughs and looks genuinely interested in what you’ve got to say, which is also smart, witty, and adult of course. You hold hands and smile and that’s as far as you’re willing to take it. That’s as far as it needs to go. Any further and it’s spoiled. It becomes just another spank fantasy and she deserves better than that.

And that’s how you fall asleep, dreaming about intelligent conversation with the woman you love.

—

That night you dream.

You’re sit in the backseat of her car. Bulletproof glass separates the front and back seats, like in a police car. Miss Simmons sits in the driver seat. A faceless man sits in the passenger seat. Miss Simmons leans over and presumable goes down on the man. You attempt to open the car door and leave but the door won’t open. You scream for them to let you out but no sound comes out of your mouth. You bang on the glass with your fists but it makes no noise. They can’t hear you. All you can do is sit back and try not to watch Miss Simmons blowing this guy. You wake up in the middle of the night, the dream forgotten, but you’re angry and sad and don’t know why.

—

In the shower the next morning, you jerk off to stock images in your mind of unrelatable, faceless women.

—

You’re on the road earlier than usual. Because you woke up early, you didn’t even think to look what time it was. You just showered, got dressed and left. Looking at your watch you see that it’s just past six am. You don’t have to be at school for another hour and a half. You ride around the neighborhood, seeing what there is to see.

You never expected to see her. But there she is. Sitting in her car, eating a donut. She takes a drink from her thermos that you know contains coffee. She’s beautiful in the way that only a woman who doesn’t know she’s being watched is. Completely unassuming and unselfconscious. No pretension or posturing. Just pure HER.

You walk your bike behind a car and crouch down, only your head peaking out over the hood and watch. She sits in her car and sips her coffee. She’s reading a book and you desperately want to know what it is. She takes a bite of her donut without looking away from what she’s reading. You think you might recognize the cover but you’re not sure. You squint and try and make it out but you’re too far away.

That’s when you realize she’s looking in your direction, no longer reading. You dive to the ground and lean against the car you were parked next to. Your heart feels like it’s going to explode. Did she see you? Oh Christ, did she see you?

After a moment of building up courage, you peek over the hood of the car. She’s reading again. She probably didn’t see you. Probably not. What difference does it make anyway? There’s no law that says you can’t stand across the street. You afford yourself one last glance before peddling off. She probably didn’t see you. Definitely, right? Besides, who cares? Right?

You peddle faster towards school and for some reason you can’t stop your chest from hitching and tears from spilling down your cheeks. You don’t even know why you’re crying. It gets bad enough that you have to pull over and sit behind a city mail box and get yourself under control. It makes no sense but it hurts so fucking much anyway.

—

You get to school twenty minutes before the first bell. You ride past her car parked in the employee parking lot. You try to be subtle because other teachers and staff are pulling in and walking into school. But you slow down enough to see the book she was reading sitting on the passenger’s seat. Suddenly you understand why it looked familiar. The book is Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. You recognized it because the cover of the book features the same image that was on the movie poster when you saw the film. You didn’t know that there was a book. The movie was enjoyable but you weren’t entirely sure if you understood it. The most exciting thing about seeing that book, knowing that she was reading it, is that it’s such a sexual book. At least the movie was. Suddenly that theme is officially brought into the equation. Confirmation that Miss Simmons is at least aware of (and apparently comfortable with) sex. Of course, there was never any doubt of this, but the confirmation is important. It feels exhilarating.

Your new mission? Get a copy of this book and read it. You’ll do that first thing after school. You’re almost tempted to skip school and go get the novel and read it all day today. But you’re not that bold. As much as you dislike school, you’re generally a good kid. You don’t do things like play hookie. Even if you’re antisocial, you aren’t defiant.

So you roll your bike into the bike racks and make your way to home room.

—

As Miss Simmons’ class approaches you start to get nervous. What if she saw you this morning? On the surface there’s nothing wrong with her catching you looking somewhat in her direction. That’s not weird. But diving behind a car when you realize you might have been seen? That’s pretty fucking strange. What if she saw you? What if she thinks you’re crazy? Or even worse, stupid?

—

You enter class and take your seat at the back of the room. You do everything in your power to avoid eye contact. Never in your life have you appreciated being ignored as you do for the next hour. Luckily for you, it’s a fairly slow and uneventful period. You may as well have been invisible and that’s just fine by you.

—

When the bell rings you hustle out as quickly as possible. She never even looks at you, much less asks you why you were staring at her while she ate her donut outside of the coffee shop this morning. You’re in the clear and you sigh as you walk towards your next class.

—

That afternoon you go to three different book stores before you find a copy. The only edition you can find is older and ends up costing you almost thirty bucks you were saving, but whatever.

—

By the time dinner rolls around you’re already halfway through the book. It’s good. Slow in parts but good. Better than you thought it was going to be. You skip homework and spend three hours sitting in the tub, reheating your water every time it chills beyond bearable. You finish the book at just before two in the morning and crawl into bed.

Your brain is taxed and you’re body is exhausted, but you can’t sleep. You’re way too excited. It doesn’t even make sense, but somehow you feel like you’ve got a secret connection with her now. That you’ve actually worked towards getting to know her in a way that no other student in your class has. Possibly, you suspect, that no other person has. You now have something to talk about. Something that perhaps no one else she knows can intelligently discuss with her.

Now you’ve just got to come up with a way to get into that conversation. It’s a ridiculous idea, but a nice fantasy nonetheless. You close your eyes and imagine biking to that coffee shop tomorrow morning and getting a table. Getting a table and having your copy of Perfume sitting next to you, drinking a coffee and waiting. She might come in and buy her morning coffee and donut and see you sitting there, innocently enough, and recognize the book. She’d say “Wow! That’s so weird! I’m reading that right now as well!” and you’d act surprised and amazed at such a crazy coincidence.

She’d sit down and you’d discuss the book and at one point she’d put her hand on yours and act like it wasn’t a big deal, and you’d act like it wasn’t a big deal, and then it might not BE that big of a deal when she kisses you goodbye and says “I’ll see you at school”. Then you’d have this one little secret. Nothing REALLY big enough to feel like you even need to talk about the secret, but it would be a secret anyway.

You’d sit in class and she’d look over at you and smile and you’d smile and look down at your work and there would be that little secret passing back and forth between you all through the hour and you’d have to carry your book bag in front of your lap as you left the room. You’d have to decide really quickly whether or not you’d draw attention to yourself and expand on that secret. At the last minute you’d shift your backpack as you walked past her desk and shrug, giving her just enough information to know what was going on. And she’d smile and almost laugh and cover her face and that would be it. You would have crossed that threshold into serious flirting. There would be no question about intentions. You’d know and she’d know that you were now joking about sex, or at least sexual things, and once you’d crossed that threshold there’d be no going back really, would there? The relationship would be changed into something else. You’d no longer be just student and teacher. You’d be friends and potential lovers.

You still can’t sleep. You roll over and pull your notebook out of your backpack and start to write. Dear Miss Simmons.

Fuck.

You still don’t even know her full name. Fuck it. You put your notebook back and get your laptop out. After a half hour or so you figure out that she’s listed on the school’s staff page. You find her name. Gail. Gail Simmons. Gail. Nice. Gail. It sounds like a force of nature. Gail. Winter Gale. The Gales of November came early.

There isn’t a picture but now that you know her name you think you might be able to find one somewhere. At least you hope. The first place you look is MySpace and you find her almost immediately. Gail Simmons. Profile set to private, of-fucking-course. There’s a little tiny picture of her. An icon.

And who the fuck is this guy?

Seriously? Who is this douchebag and why is his arm around her? Maybe it’s her brother. Or her dad. Or her gay friend. Or a celebrity of some sort who she met. Maybe it’s Frank Black or Fred Durst or Rob Halford or any number of bald celebrities. Howie Mandel. Fucking Joey Lawrence. Anyone but a boyfriend. Or a husband. What if she has a husband? What if this asshole is her husband? This bald fuck? Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter because it just doesn’t. Nothing’s going to happen. It’s a fantasy but WHO THE FUCK IS THIS GUY?

The next two hours are spent trying to hack into her myspace (as well as her facebook, which you also find) with no avail. Eventually you pass out on your bed at three-thirty in the morning without any answers. Only more questions.

—

That night you dream.

You stand in the locker room showers. Every shower sprays hot water. Steam fills the room. You stand alone in the center. She enters, naked and confident, and walks toward you. For the first time your mind is willing to visualize her in a purely sexual fashion. It feels uncomfortable and exhilarating at the same time. She steps up and presses her body against yours, her breasts against your chest, her leg sliding between yours. She takes your hand and puts it between her legs. It’s soft and warm. Always you, never him. Never anyone but you. She whispers in your ear. Almost immediately she’s on her knees in front of you, her eyes never leaving yours.

—

You wake up at six with a hard-on and for some reason you feel like either crying or punching a hole in the wall. You don’t do either. You get dressed and leave for school.

—

Within twenty minutes you’re parked outside of the coffee shop. Your spot is a little more carefully chosen. This time you’re in an ally between two buildings across the street, crouched behind a dumpster. You wait for forty-five minutes but she never comes. Eventually you bike to school.

—

Cruising through the staff parking lot you notice that her car isn’t here today. You lock your bike up and go to school.

—

The morning is spent mostly fantasizing about how exactly you’re going to approach her. There has to be that initial approach. The coffee shop “coincidental” meeting seems a little too staged you decide. There needs to be something else. Some other way you can get into a social conversation with her.

Mr. Allen, your American History teacher, calls on you to answer a question and you have no idea what he’s talking about. You’ve been lost in your own little world. He’s frustrated. You apologize and try to pay attention, but you can’t.

Suddenly an idea comes to you. A way in. You spent hours last night trying to guess your way into her Myspace account. It never occurred to you to look into the profiles of people around her. Other staff members. Mr. Allen for instance. Any number of teachers really. They’re all on the staff page of the school website. You know their full names and surely some, if not most of them have Myspace accounts.

You’re tempted to just get up and go home right now. You don’t even know why exactly it’s become such a crusade to peek into her profile. Just the fact that it’s set to private. Something hidden. Not just unknown but specifically hidden. You’re suddenly very excited. It could work.

—

By the time Miss Simmons’ class rolls around you can barely contain yourself. For some reason you’ve latched onto this MySpace thing. It’s a safe way to voyeuristically peek into the life of this woman you’ve become so enamored with. You’re surprised to find a substitute instead of Miss Simmons. You uncharacteristically raise your hand and ask where she is. The substitute doesn’t know, or at least isn’t saying. Just that she’s not here and you’re stuck with him for the day, hardy har har. Your mood sours quickly and you spend the rest of the day moping. It’s strange how much you’ve come to depend on that hour with her for your daily shot of joy.

—

When school lets out you haul ass home and rocket upstairs to your room. It takes almost no time to find Mr. Allen’s MySpace. You figure he’s the best bet because they tend to take their lunches together. It never occurred to you to suspect that they may be romantically involved, because you always assumed Mr. Allen was gay. You also suspect that he’s not nearly as careful about his password as she is. You begin tentatively guessing what that password might be. You know he has pictures of his cat on his desk and that his cat’s name is Socks. You try “Socks” but it doesn’t work. MySpace passwords require a number in their passwords. Add 1965 (the year he was born, according to his profile) but that doesn’t work. You also know that he’s a baseball fan. Specifically, a fan of the Red Sox. After some basic deduction you figure out that his cat’s name is actually Sox, not Socks. You try sox1965. Fucking bingo.

As soon as you log into his myspace your heart leaps into your throat. She’s there. Top friends.

You hover over the link to her profile for a good couple of minutes. Suddenly you’re very aware that you’ve stepped into the realm of invasion of privacy. Not just in a technical way, but in very deliberate and frankly, creepy way. Never mind having broken into Mr. Allen’s profile (whom you find out is, in fact, quite gay) but you know that there’s a very real chance that you’re about to stumble into a world of information regarding this woman that she would never reveal to you of her own volition.

Whatever, fuck it, you click.

You let out a jagged sigh (moan?) of relief when you read that her status says “single” and that she’s looking for “Friends, networking, dating”. You sit there for a good five or ten minutes just staring at the screen and smiling, not even thinking. Your brain just spins. Eventually you click up on the pictures. There’s not much in there. A couple of nice shots. The bigger version of the small picture of her with the bald guy reveals that he’s actually Tom Colicchio, a chef in New York and something of a celebrity in the cooking world. Apparently. He’s got some kind of show on the Food Network or something. She’s apparently a fan. You don’t really pay attention to that kind of stuff. Whatever. He’s not her boyfriend or her husband or anyone else who’s putting his dirty fucking mitts on her. That’s all you care about.

There’s a few other basically pleasant pictures. Nothing too exciting.

 

Looking at her pictures kind of makes you feel bad. The person in these photos is a different from the woman you’ve come to love. This woman looks fragile and delicate. She looks easily bruised. This is Gail. The woman you love is Miss Simmons. Miss Simmons is confident and authoritative and graceful and perfect. This woman could be all of those things, but she has layers. Miss Simmons was a fantasy. This woman is a reality. This is who she is when she’s not teaching. When she gets in her car and pulls away from the school. This is the woman you glimpsed outside of the coffee shop, eating her donut and reading her book.

What was once infatuation has become something more. Something much more serious. Love? If this is love, than whatever you thought love was is nothing comparatively. This is all consuming. This is a raging fire, eating everything in it’s path and leaving nothing but black ash and burnt death.

What you find next keeps you occupied for at least another two hours. It’s everything you could ever possibly need to know about her. Good and bad. Everything. Down to the most meaningless and insignificant facts of her life. All of that is in the “blog” link.

A healthy mixture of substance and fluff (but oh so significant fluff!) her blog is full of both traditional diary style entries and seemingly pointless “surveys”. The diary entries typically detail her day to day existence (mostly outside of work) as well as bits and pieces of her history. Her life story, written in little fragments every other day or so over the past three years. You skim the blog quickly at first and are both hurt and glad to find no mention of yourself. You’d like to believe that she’s noticed you enough to have brought you up to her Dear Diary but at the same time you know that if this thing actually works out (and more and more you’re beginning to believe it will) it would be best if there were no paper trail.

The surveys are what you’re most interested in. And there are a lot of them. She’s been quite prolific with the surveys. The fifty question surveys. The “which blank are you” surveys. The Yes or No, True or False, 1 to 5 surveys… she’s done them all. Multiple times. Some are guarded but most are surprisingly frank. Many are sexual. By the time you’re done you know her favorite positions. You know the music she likes to listen to while having sex. You know her definition of the difference between fucking and making love. You know how many sexual partners she’s had and what she’d never do and what she’d be willing to try once and what she loves to do and what she feels she’s the best at. You know how many of her previous partners have been able to bring her to orgasm and you have a loose idea of what they did to accomplish that.

More important (if that’s possible) than the sexual information is the dating information. You learn that she appreciates confidences, spontaneity and a sense of humor. You learn that she doesn’t believe in coincidence. That she believes in fate and a divine plan. This works extremely well in your favor. Nothing says fate and destiny like a meticulously planned surprise accidental encounter with a strapping young (and eager) man. Like, say, in a coffee shop before school.

As you read on and on and absorb more and more you begin to build the person you must become if  you’re going to successfully woo her. Make her notice you. Make Miss Simmons love you.

—

That night you dream.

In your dream she sits at her desk, writing in a notebook. You approach her and peer over her shoulder. She writes “no no no no…” over and over. Very quickly you grab her by the hair and pull the chair out from under her. You push her over the desk. Her hands claw and tear at the papers on her desk, ripping apart the notebook as she pants “yes yes yes” repeatedly. You didn’t intend on making it an enjoyable experience for her, but you’re glad to see that it apparently is. That’s a happy little accident.

—

If you’d remembered your dream after waking, things may have gone differently. You aren’t that person. You don’t want to become that person. You just want to love and be loved. That’s all you want.

—

You don’t bother riding past the coffee shop this morning. In fact, you don’t even wake up early. You sleep a little later than usual and end up rushing out the door to school. You only ended up getting about three hours of sleep.

Miss Simmons car was back in the lot again today. You slow down enough to see that there’s nothing particularly interesting about it. She’s still reading Perfume.

—

In Mr. Allen’s class you can no longer NOT notice how gay he is. You find it kind of endearing but also find him kind of pathetic in a sweet way. Mostly because you hacked into his profile so easily. He’s a simple, sweet, trusting man and you feel just a little guilty having exploited him.

Just a little.

—

Miss Simmons’ class is an exercise in self control. Armed with your extensive knowledge of virtually every nook and cranny of her sexuality, it’s nearly impossible to contain both your loopy grin and raging boner. You do your best but when she calls on you for an answer and you not only answer (confidently answer no less!) but answer correctly and with a grin, you catch her off guard and she tilts her head slightly, quizzically. You only shrug and smile again. She agrees with your answer and carries on and you feel amazing.

As class is letting out you Miss Simmons calls to you. She asks with a smile where this sudden enthusiasm came from. You say that you finally feel like you have something to contribute. She smiles and says “Whatever it is, I like it! Keep it up!” and you smile and are suddenly completely struck silent and introverted again. You nod and quickly leave, only to duck immediately into the bathroom where you start to hyperventilate with joy. Once you’ve gotten yourself under control (well after the second bell has rung and everyone is settled into their next class) you exit the bathroom and begin to spin, arms out, in complete and utter ecstasy.

—

You spend the evening reading her blog. Taking in the longer entries that you only skimmed before. You download all of the music that she’s listed as favorites. You continue to familiarize yourself with every nook and cranny of Gail Simmons that you can find.

—

That night you dream.

In your dream you’re driving a red Corvette through a city street. You slow down at a corner and see Gail standing under a street lamp. She wears a mini-skirt and thigh high fishnet stockings. A tube top. You can clearly see her nipples through the material. She approaches the passenger side window and you open the door. She asks you if you’re a cop and you laugh and tell her that you aren’t. She asks you want you want and you tell her that she already knows what you want. You want what she wants. She tells you to drive and you do.

You’re driving. Gail’s head rests in your lap. She’s either finished or hasn’t started yet. For some reason your brain has decided to edit that part of this dream out. You feel perfectly content as you stroke her hair with your right hand, your left hand guiding the wheel.

She tells you to pull over and let her out. You ask her if she can’t stay and talk for a while. You tell her that you enjoy her company. She says that she has to get back to work. The dicks won’t suck themselves, she says. She sits up. You keep driving. She suddenly screams at you to let her out of the car. Your heart races and you’re furious. You drive faster, giving no sign that you intend to stop. She takes a cell phone out of her purse. You snatch it from her and throw it out of the window. She looks scared.

You shake your head, disgusted and heartbroken. She asks you to please let her out. You look at her and say no, softly.

The wheel turns under your hand and you guide the car into oncoming traffic. When the Corvette collides with a pickup truck you wake up, shaking and crying.

—

It’s four thirty in the morning and you’re still awake. You only remember fragments of your dream. Little more than the feeling of it, but it’s enough to keep you awake.

On your laptop Google brings wonderful and exhilarating information. Especially the “people finder” function. Especially the part that gives you her address.

—

At six fifteen am you’re staked out at the corner, half a block from her house. You had to guess which way she would turn when she left for school. Twenty minutes later you find out that you guessed correctly, when you see her beat up little Toyota chug up the street and away in the opposite direction.

Cautiously you walk your bike towards her house, trying to look casual and inconspicuous. In her driveway you lean over and untie your shoe. As you slowly retie it, you take a good look at her modest little house. An hour early you rode past and saw her car parked there. You had to be sure.

Now she’s gone and the house is empty. Completely empty.

You look around. The street is dead. It’s not exactly the best part of town and the people here generally keep to themselves. Quickly, you push your bike up the driveway and along the side of her house.

You don’t even bother with the front door. It’s too visible. Instead you go around back. It takes you a good couple of minutes to work up the nerve to even try turning the knob on the backdoor. Not that it matters because it was locked anyway. Feeling more confident (and determined) you go to the kitchen window. It’s slightly ajar.

You push the window the rest of the way open and slide the curtains aside. Inside the house is dark. You poke your head in and listen. Quiet. Somewhere a clock ticks. The fridge hums.

Pulling out, you look around one last time to see if anyone is watching. No one is. Quickly, before you lose your nerve, you climb inside and close the window.

You turn around and wipe your footprint off of the counter with the sleeve of your jacket.

Something makes a loud clumping sound behind you and you almost scream. Spinning around, your heart beating up in your throat, you realize that it was only the ice maker in the fridge kicking out a fresh batch. Almost passing out, you lean against the counter and try and compose yourself. All of a sudden it hits you just how far you’ve taken this and you’re scared. Scared of getting caught and even more scare of how easily you crossed line after line.

You almost climb back through the window right then. But you don’t. You’ve made it this far. You may as well get something out of it.

That’s when you realize that you don’t even know WHY you’re there. You don’t remember ever even coming up with a reason for this violation. You just wanted to do it, so you did. And now you’ve done it, so you better get something out of it.

Cautiously you creep through the house. In the living room is a small TV. A shelf with DVDs and CDs neatly sorted alphabetically. Nothing too surprising. You already know all of her favorites.

The hallway is lined with framed photographs. Presumably family. At the end of the short hall is a bathroom on the left and the bedroom on the right.

The bathroom is boring. Typical. Shades of gray and blue. You pop open the clothes hamper, almost without looking in. But you do look in and there, sitting on top of wet towels and a pair of PJ pants is a balled up pair of thong panties. Light blue with a little flower bow on the front waist band.

You pick the panties up and hook your thumbs in the stringy elastic of the sides. Not five inches from your face is a microfiber dream come true. You turn them over in your hands, looking at them carefully.

But your curiosity about the bedroom is too strong. You stuff the panties in your pocket and head across the hall.

In her bedroom is a queen sized bed, a dresser and a desk with a computer on it. Next to the bed a night stand. You open the drawer but find nothing particularly exciting. A couple of books, a bottle of prescription sedatives, a dusty candle, various seemingly random bullshit.

You sit down on the bed.

HER bed. Where she sleeps and dreams and (presumably) pleasures herself.

Your eyes fall closed and you lay back. The bed is unmade and you pull her pillow over your face. It smells just like her. Like strawberry scented shampoo. You inhale deeply and for a brief moment you’re in heaven. You stretch out on the bed, your face buried in her pillow.

Her headboard has sliding doors. You casually reach up and slide the left drawer across.

Inside the little cabinet in her headboard is something wonderful.

The vibrator is small and red. You giggle when you turn the switch and it purrs to life in your hand. You turn it off and just sit there looking at it. Unfortunately when you smell it you only get the plastic smell of silicone based lubrication. And it tastes exactly like it smells. Plasticy.

You get a small amount of pleasure in finding that, when holding it next to your own erect dick, you’re a little bigger than the plastic imitation.

Inside the headboard you find a couple of well worn, pocket sized issues of Penthouse Forum. A crumpled paperback copy of House of Incest by Anais Nin. A small bottle of Liquid Silk, which you assume is the source of the frustrating plastic smell. And a small USB thumb drive.

Wait, what?

You take the thumb drive out and look at it. Your eyes are wide as you stare at it dumbly. Quickly you jump up and go to the desk. You flick the mouse and disengage the screensaver. Sitting down, you smile at the cute puppy that adorns her desktop wallpaper. You plug in the USB drive and hold your breath as you navigate through the computer to the contents of the drive.

On the drive are two folders. One marked “pictures” and one marked “videos”.

Your jaw hangs open as you navigate through the pictures. There are hundreds of them. You can’t browse through them fast enough. Gail in the shower. Gail in a hotel room. Gail in her car. Gail sitting at this very desk, in this chair. Gail on her bed. On her hands and knees. On her back. On her belly, her ass up in the air. Her fingers exploring and exposing. You keep flipping through the pictures, too amazed to be aroused.

Very suddenly you feel like you can’t get out of the house fast enough. The hugeness of it is on you like a black cloud. As fast as you can you dig through your backpack and find your own USB flash drive. The one you use for transferring homework to and from school. You plug it in and start copying files.

Five minutes later you’re almost in a panic, running back to the kitchen. You climb up through the window and push it closed it behind you. At the last second you run back and pull it open to approximately where it was when you found it.

As you peddle away your brain races, desperately trying to remember anything you might have left skewed or out of place. You can’t think of anything. But you’re freaking out regardless. Terrified. Completely unhinged. Your eyes are wide and watering from the wind. Your breath hitching in your chest from the effort of your legs pumping the peddles as fast and hard as you can. You feel like you forgot something. The books and vibrator went back in the headboard. The computer returned to the desktop, all windows closed, the screensaver running. Your footprints carefully wiped away. The window left in the same position. The flashdrive put back-

Wait.

You almost crash your bike when you remember the flashdrive plugged into the front USB port. You jump down and quickly check your pockets. Nothing.

Oh Jesus.

Okay. It’s okay you tell yourself. You’re already ten minutes late for school.

You turn around and ride back towards Gail’s house.

This time you don’t even bother looking. You ride directly to the back of the house. You’re through the window and inside as fast as you can go.

In the bedroom you see both hers and your flashdrive poking from the front of the computer. Your face contorts in anger and self hatred as you yank them both out. You shove your drive into your pocket and quickly toss hers back into the headboard. You don’t bother with the window on the way back, instead leaving through the backdoor.

You’ve never cursed someone as much as you curse yourself on your ride to school that morning. But at the same time, you’re doing mental cartwheels at the idea of owning the copious amounts of self produced Gail pornography. It was more than you ever could have dreamed of finding.

—

School that day is an exercise in paranoia. At first you feel cocky and powerful. You got away with something incredibly risky and it paid off. Big time. You constantly finger and play with that flash drive in your pocket. It feels good to know that you’ve got this hugely secretive stash. This little drive full of Gail’s most private moments. It’s a connection. It’s powerful too.

But as the day goes on you keep going over the time you spent in her house and it’s eating at you. The whole thing is a mental blur now. You can barely remember going in and or out. It all seems like it happened so fast, even though you know you were in there for at least a half hour. What did you forget? There has to be something. At least twenty times you pull out your flash drive, sure you grabbed the wrong one. But no, it’s yours. Your trusty flash drive full of homework and ill gotten dirty pictures and videos.

By the time you get to Gail’s class, you’re a sweating, paranoid wreck. You shuffle back to your desk and try and make yourself as inconspicuous as possible.

But as soon as she stands up and speaks a strange and unfamiliar feeling comes over you. Watching her teach, you feel strong. You feel powerful. You feel invincible. All of that paranoia washes away as you watch the shape of her body move under her clothes. You know her body now. Those images burned into your mind. You know the color of her nipples (pink, with areolas about the size of a silver dollar). You know the shape of her pubic hair (shaved or waxed down to a small strip about an inch and a half thick, and trimmed short). You know she has a small mole on her butt. You know she has a scar, probably surgical, along the crease of her hip, leading down to her crotch.

Sitting there, watching her, you can’t help but smile, knowingly. Sitting in her class, fondling her little blue panties in your pocket, you feel like The Man.

About halfway through the class you can’t take it anymore and you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom.

Inside of one of the stalls you jerk off, Gail’s panties wrapped around your cock, your head leaned against the wall behind the toilet. It doesn’t take you more than a minute to cum, dousing her panties. You just stand there, out of breath, leaned against the dirty wall, sweaty, your heart beating a thousand miles an hour.

Someone comes in and you clean up the panties with toilet paper and stuff them back into your pocket. You wash your hands and return to class.

—

By the time you get home you’re paranoid again. If she was going to notice something off or find some evidence of your invasion, you’d probably hear about it that night. You sit in your room by the phone. It’s dark except for the harsh light of your laptop. The first thing you did when you plugged the drive in was look at the videos. They’re mostly what you expected. Videos of Gail doing the same things she was doing in the photographs. Gail masturbating. Gail playing with her tits. Gail doing dirty, dirty things with cucumbers and bananas. Gail getting off on the handle of a hair brush. And of course the little red vibrator.

Looking at the date stamps on the pictures you figure out that they were all taken over the last three years. Most of them in that house.

You begin to wonder about who they were for. Were they for strictly her own amusement? That seems pretty unlikely. There aren’t any pictures of her WITH anyone. They’re all of her by herself. They had to have been for someone. Random guys on the internet? One special guy? A few close friends? Her myspace said that she was single. It seems like if she was in some kind of long distance relationship her online status would have indicated that.

You log into Mr. Allen’s myspace account and look at her profile again. Seeing those innocent online pictures knowing what you now know makes her that much more attractive. You want her more than ever now. Not only do you want to know her intimately, now you’re filled with this overwhelming desire to own her. In a way you feel like you already do own her. You own this part of her.

And isn’t that what you really wanted all along? That romantic kissy face “I want to watch movies and cuddle” bullshit was never the end result. That was only a step. Ultimately, you’ve always wanted to HAVE her. To know what she was yours and yours alone.

You get an intense temptation to upload one of two of the photos to Mr. Allen’s myspace. Change his default picture to one of Gail sitting at that computer desk, the handle of a hairbrush buried in her pussy, one hand tugging at one of those cute little nipples, her face pointed directly at the camera. A picture so clear and so obviously her, and oh so revealing. Just about as intimate a photograph as you can imagine. Online where everyone can see.

No one would know it was you. How could they? You even pick out the picture you’d use. It’s perfect.

But no. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to over play your hand.

Getting up from the bed you close your laptop, cutting yourself off. Thinking like that is what’s going to ruin this. You’re losing sight of the mission. You don’t want to embarrass her. You don’t want to make her upset or uncomfortable. You certainly don’t want to hurt her. Once you’re outside and on your bike, you can’t believe you even considered doing that.

For a brief moment you wanted to tell the world what you had done. You wanted to share your power with the world. That feeling of owning this piece of Gail Simmons. You wanted people to see what you had.

But no, rationally (haha! Part of you is fully aware that we’re way beyond rational now, but whatever, we’re here, deal with it) you know that you don’t want to share that power with the world, just with her. Even more so, you want her to GIVE you that power. Now that you’ve got the pictures and the videos and the panties, you almost don’t want them anymore. Not like that. Not the way you got them.

What’s the point in having this part of her if you had to steal it? That’s not what you wanted at all. You just got greedy and impatient. No, you want her to GIVE you her panties and tell you she wants you to jerk off in them. You want her to take dirty pictures for YOU, not some silly fuck on the internet or some silly fuck she used to date. And of course anyone she may have taken those pictures for must be a silly fuck, because they either weren’t good enough for her to keep dating, or they dumped her. And who other than a silly fuck, or an incredibly stupid, emotionally retarded person wouldn’t do everything in their power to keep her?

No, you want to do this right. You already feel creepy and weird and guilty for invading her privacy the way you have. But how else could you have done it? You’re a kid for Christ’s sake. You would never have a chance otherwise. You can justify the invasion, but you still feel shitty for it.

As you bike through the neighborhood, a million thoughts spin in your head. Most of them revolve around what to do next.

Of course you ride past her house. You’re incredibly curious (and still quite paranoid) about whether or not she’s figured out that someone was in her house. You know, logically, that there’s very little that you’ll be able to tell by looking at the outside of her house, but you go that direction anyway.

As you cruise past her house your heart jumps into your throat and you almost scream. You ride away as fast as you can. Parked outside is a police cruiser.

Oh Jesus! Oh my Jesus fucking Christ! You peddle as fast as you possible can, crying in huge walloping jerks deep in your chest. A few blocks away you jump off of your bike in a playground and fall onto the slide, your teeth clenched together, yelling into the cold metal. You punch the surface of the slide once… twice. The second time you feel something in your hand break and you scream in anger and fear and intense pain.

Defeated you roll off the slide and into the grass and just lay there, almost catatonic, staring up at the night sky, tears slipping down your face. Caught. Busted. It’s fucking over and it never started. Never mind the legal issues and possible arrest for a B&E, but you’ve gone and fucked any chance you had with Miss Simmons. It’s done. It’s over. It’s over and you never got close. Hell, you never got any closer than you were before you started this little crusade. It’s just fucking over.

But is it? Really?

You lay there for at least twenty minutes, looking up at the sky, cradling your throbbing hand and thinking. You’ve stopped crying and now you just think. Maybe it’s not over. Okay, so maybe (just MAYBE) she knows someone was in her house. There’s no reason she could ever know it was you. It’s not like they’re going to bring in the guys from CSI to pick apart her house for drops of spit or microscopic fibers from your jacket. Worst case scenario she knows SOMEONE was in her house. There’s nothing there to tie you to the scene. Nothing at all. The only thing you can think of that might even remotely implicate you is the contents of your flash drive. It was connected to her computer, and it had your homework on it. But it’s not like you copied your drive to her computer. All you did was copy from the other flash drive to your drive. Your drive didn’t give, it only received.  No. You’re safe.

Worst case scenario still leaves you untouchable.

Getting up, you realize that you’ve really hurt your hand. It’s swollen now and you can’t close your fist. But that’s okay. That you can deal with.

You get on your bike, one hand cradled against your chest, and you ride casually back towards Gail’s house.

The police cruiser is still parked out in front. Who knows, maybe it’s not even there for her. Maybe the cop is visiting friends across the street. Shit, maybe he LIVES across the street.

As you ride past, her front door opens. You quickly peddle up past a parked van and stop, out of sight. You creep around the front of the van and watch.

Gail stands in the front door, talking to someone inside. She steps out. A man steps out, presumably the cop. You watch, eyes narrow. They kiss. They talk for a minute. They kiss again. He walks away, cheerily jingling his keys. When he gets into the cruiser you bike away too stunned to think.

—

At home you’re calm as you walk up to your room. You’re as cool as a cucumber. When your mom asks you where you were you mumble something about 7-11 and you make your way upstairs.

Worst case scenario my ass. You had no fucking idea. By the time you get up the stairs you decidedly less cool. You gently close your door and stand in your room, looking at all of your possessions. All of that stupid fucking stuff. Stupid fucking stuff that belongs to a stupid fucking fuck. All at once you rip your bookshelf from against the wall and across the floor, spilling books and cds and dvds. You flip over another shelf that holds the model cars and space ships you spent hours meticulously and lovingly gluing and painting. They crash to the floor in pieces. You slump down on the bed in the wreck of your room.

As you hear footsteps thumping up the stairs you shake your head, angry at yourself. Knocking on the door. Your dad’s voice. He wants to know what the crash was. You ask him to please leave you alone. You try your hardest to keep the tears out of your voice. Please, just go away.

The door opens and he stands there, looking at you. You’re a wreck and you look it. Your hand is swollen and ugly. He looks from the turned over shelves to you sitting on the bed, miserable.

‘A girl?’ he asks.

That’s not at all what you expected him to say and you nod slowly. He nods and looks down at the mess of your room.

‘You want to talk about it?’ he asks after a long, awkward moment. You finally break and tears slip down your furious face. You shake your head no.

‘You’re gonna wanna put some ice on that hand. Is it broken?” You look down at your hand. You try to close your fingers but it hurts too much. Finally you say ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

Your dad holds up his hand, the one with the wedding band on it, and points out a small, leathery scar between to knuckles and says ‘1976. Julia Webster.’ and smiles. You never knew where he got that scar.

‘We’ll get you into the doctor tomorrow. I’ll send your mom up with some ice, okay?’

You close your eyes and nod. ‘Thanks’ you manage to mumble. Then at the last minute before he goes you say ‘Don’t tell mom, okay? Please?’

‘No problem big guy. You wrecked your bike, right?’

‘Right.’ you say, nodding.

‘Right.’ your dad says as he closes the door.

You fall back onto your bed and you sob and sob and sob. You cry until your eyes feel like they’re going to bulge out of their sockets and there’s a long string of snot hanging out of your nose. Eventually you fall asleep in your clothes, your pillow wet and slobbery.

—

That night you dream.

In your dream you stand outside of Miss Simmons’ house. You look in through the window. That fucking song is playing. That song that played over and over a couple of years ago. Mr. Brightside by The Killers. You watch through the window as she sits on the couch with that cop. That fucking pig. That piece of shit fucking pig. He lights a cigarette and gives it to her. You watch as she runs her hand along his jaw line. His shirt is off. His chest and stomach are perfectly chiseled. She’s touching his chest now, and she runs her hand down his stomach. You almost cry out when she starts massaging his crotch through his slacks. They both laugh. She takes another drag of the cigarette. He pulls her dress up over her head and takes it off. You shake as you watch, furious. And you just can’t look. It’s killing you. But you can’t turn away either. It has control of you. She’s naked except for a pair of semen stained blue panties. A small bow on the front. She pulls her panties off and tosses them at the window. They bounce off the glass in front of your face, leaving a smeary mark, and you’re screaming. Screaming and screaming but no sound comes out. You try and punch the window but it doesn’t shatter. It doesn’t even shudder. You have no strength in your arms. You try and pound on the window but your arms are weak and limp and you can barely manage to bring them up high enough to hit the window, much less break it. He’s on top of her, his pants around his knees, and he’s inside of her and she’s laughing. Laughing and laughing. And she looks at the window and sees you and you realize she knew you were there the whole time. She knew and still she laughs. He pumps against her furiously and she still laughs, looking right at you. She takes another drag from her cigarette, smiling at you as he thrusts into her, pieces of her hair stuck to her sweaty face.

—

The next morning your hand hurts like a motherfucker. You get up and try and put your room back together again, but you can’t seem to get the energy together for it. You get the shelves back up and end up just kicking their contents under your bed.

—

You tell the doctor the same thing you told your mom, that you hurt your hand when you fell off your bike. You chipped one of your knuckles and sprained two of your fingers. You get a metal splint and some Tylenol 3s and a day off of school.

Thank god for small miracles. You’d already decided that you were going to skip school if they tried to make you go today.

—

Your mom drops you off at home and asks if you’re sure you don’t need her to call into work. You tell her that you’ll be fine, that you’ve got homework to catch up. You could use the alone time. She goes to work and you sulk back up to your room.

With the help of a little codeine you’re feeling more lethargic than upset. Depressed to be sure, but you’re no longer furious and crazed. You slowly and methodically put your room back together. You put your books and CDs and DVDs back in their proper places. You salvage the models that you think you might be able to fix, and trash the ones that are broken beyond repair. 

Finally you sigh and sit down on your bed, turning on your laptop. You thank god for the little bit of common sense you managed to retain last night when you didn’t smash your laptop. You plug in the jump drive and look at the pictures. A small memory of your dream floats to the surface when you see a smiling picture of her, but it flits away before it takes hold. You still feel a sharp hurt the pit of your stomach though. Her face. Her smiling, happy face. Her knowing face. Looking back over her shoulder as she arches her back in the video. She knows exactly what she’s doing and even though she’s somewhat clumsy and awkward looking on camera, she’s also very obviously fully aware of the feelings she’s arousing.

You’re disappointed when realize that it’s your jerking off hand that is now splinted up and throbbing. You give it a go with your other hand but really, you don’t even want to do that anymore. You just want to stare and process.

You turn the volume up higher and close your eyes as you listen to the soft hum of her vibrator and the increasing depth of her breathing. Every little moan grabs a hold of your heart and squeezes. You take out the panties from under your pillow and hold them to your lips and watch the video.

—

The next couple of months are uneventful. You go to school and you’re just as quiet and introverted as you’ve always been. Even more so really. You keep to yourself at the back of the classroom and mumble “I don’t know” just like you always did when called upon to answer questions. Only now you really don’t know, because you haven’t been paying attention at all. You just don’t care anymore. Not that you particularly cared before.

You still watch the videos and look at the pictures, but it’s becoming boring. It feels peculiarly like watching someone else’s family home movies. It isn’t for you and you honestly just don’t fucking care anymore. Those pictures and videos aren’t for you, and they never were. Maybe they were for her cop “friend” but probably not. They were for some guy you’ve never met and will never meet. They were for some guy in some girl’s life. People do that sometimes. They take sexy pictures of themselves and send them to people they wish they were fucking at that particular moment. But not to you. They don’t send them to you because they don’t want to fuck you. And that’s just how it is.

In Miss Simmons’ class you no longer pine. Not because it doesn’t hurt anymore (it does, very badly) but because you’re pretty much back where you started. There was a brief period of time where you convinced yourself that you had a shot with her, but that’s over now. And not even because she’s dating some cop (it’s official too. You logged in the other night and her Myspace status was set as “in a relationship” instead of “single”) but because you never had a chance in the first place. It just wasn’t going to happen.

Sure, you were angry. Furious for a while. At one point you had to talk yourself out of going over there and burning her fucking house down. Not that you ever would have done that, but the fantasy of it was somewhat gratifying. There was a time where you considered printing out some of the more choice pictures by the hundreds and taping them up all over the school. But that wouldn’t fix anything. It wouldn’t alleviate your pain. It would sure as shit hurt her, like the way you felt she hurt you. But eventually you came to your senses. She didn’t hurt you. She barely knows you exist. She’s just living her life. She didn’t do anything wrong, especially not to you. The only crime she committed was not noticing you. Not noticing your pain. Not noticing your love. And that’s hardly a crime at all, is it?

—

In Miss Simmons class you sit in the back, drawing on your class work. It’s getting close to the end of June and school is going to be out for the summer soon. It’s been three or four months since you broke your hand and by this point you’re mostly disinterested in the whole affair. You haven’t looked at the videos or pictures in weeks. They don’t do a damn thing for you anymore. That’s completely gone now. It’s just nothing. You’re back to jerking off to the usual suspects. Models and musicians and movie stars. People just as unobtainable as the fantasy you once held about your teacher.

You notice her sitting at her desk. She’s taking a sip from her coffee. It’s a little too hot and she moans softly. You smile just a little. The rest of the class is distracted by their work. She seems to be taking a moment to collect her thoughts, sitting there in the quiet. Her cell phone vibrates on her desk and the sound of it reminds you of the little red vibrator and you smile again, oddly nostalgic. She picks up her phone and looks at it. She looks worried. She gets up and excuses herself from the class.

Casually you get up and go over to the window. No one even looks up at you. You’re that invisible.

Looking outside, you see Miss Simmons pacing in the grass in front of the classroom. She looks upset, talking on the phone, her hand on her forehead. You watch as she paces. She’s talking in that controlled kind of yelling that you do when you don’t want other people to hear how pissed off and upset you are. She hangs up the phone and walks over to the bench facing the class and sits down, looking defeated.

You walk to the door and open it. She doesn’t see you come outside.

‘Miss Simmons?’ you ask. She says ‘What?!’ quickly and sharply before looking up.

‘I’m sorry…’ you say and open the door to go back inside. She stands up and looks apologetic.

‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Is everything alright in there?’ she says, trying to compose herself.

‘Yeah. I mean, it’s okay. Are you okay?’

She frowns, seemingly unsure if she should say anything at all. ‘I’m okay.’ she says, sounding very not okay. You walk closer.

‘Bad news? On the phone I mean?’

She nods. ‘Yeah. You could say that.”

She sits back down on the bench and you sit next to her.

‘Do you, like… want a hug or something?’ you ask, surprisingly not nervous at all. It breaks your heart to see her like this. You’d almost forgotten what you did and remembering it tugs on the guilty part of your conscience

She starts to say something but seems unable to speak. Her eyes are wet. You lean over and awkwardly put your arm around her shoulder. She sighs heavily and leans her head on your shoulder and cries softly. You squeeze her a little.

It’s the briefest of moments and is over in a flash, but that feeling warms your heart.

Then she’s up, straightening her skirt, looking flustered.

‘I’m so sorry. That was completely inappropriate. I was over the line.’ she says, trying to force a smile back on her face.

‘It’s okay,’ you say, ‘It’ll be our secret.”

Her smile seems more genuine.

‘Deal.’ She says, offering you her hand. You take it and stand up. She looks at you and smiles again, then leans in and hugs you in a far less intimate and more casual kind of way.

‘Thank you.’ She says. ‘You’re a good kid.”

Letting go you smile, sad.

‘No I’m not.’

She pats you on the shoulder and says ‘Sure you are.’ and you go back inside the class room.

—

The flames glow in the barbeque as you stand there watching the blue panties burn. You flip them over with a stick and they fall apart, dripping melted microfiber into the charcoal dust below.

—

That night you don’t dream at all.

Big Bopper’s Casket For Sale - Only Used for 48 Years

‘Big Bopper’s’ son auctioning Dad’s casket
Rock ‘n’ roll’s most macabre historical artifact will go on the block when the family of the late 1950s pop star J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson auctions his casket on eBay sometime in the next few weeks - almost 50 years after “the day the music died.”
Images
The Big Bopper’s 16-gauge steel casket was exhumed last year from his original grave at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Beaumont, Texas, so it could be moved to a more visible location with a life-size statue and historic marker. The disinterment also offered forensic experts a chance - with his family’s blessing - to examine the pop singer’s unautopsied remains after his death in rock ‘n’ roll’s first great tragedy.

On Feb. 3, 1959, Richardson died at age 28 in the crash of a small plane in a field near Clear Lake, Iowa, that also killed 1950s rock stars Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens and sent a shock wave around the world. The accident was immortalized as “the day the music died” in “American Pie,” an early-1970s hit song by Don McLean.
Richardson was buried a few days later in his Beaumont hometown with great fanfare, including tributes from Elvis Presley and others.
Jay Richardson, the Bopper’s son, plans to sell the empty casket on eBay to raise money for a musical show about his father and to keep the Bopper’s memory alive. Born three months after the crash, Jay, who lives in Katy, Texas, never met his father in life - but saw him for the first time at his exhumation.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to bring Dad back to life?” Jay, 49, said recently from Canada, where he was touring with a tribute act to his father, Holly and Valens.
“I have no personal use for the casket,” he said. “When you get down to it, it is just a metal box. … Even though it was Dad’s resting place for 48 years, it’s also a unique opportunity to learn more about the early years of rock ‘n’ roll.”
The exhumed casket is in surprisingly good condition after 48 years in the muddy gumbo of Southeast Texas. It bears minor rust spots and a white lime stain showing where several inches of water once leaked into the surrounding vault, but there was no evidence water had ever seeped into the casket itself.
Inside, forensic examiners found the Big Bopper’s well-preserved corpse, dressed in a black suit and a blue-and-gray striped tie. He wore socks, but no shoes. Most remarkably, his thick brown hair was still perfectly coiffed in his familiar, 1950s flat-top.
After the 2007 autopsy found he died of crash-related injuries, the Big Bopper was reburied in a sleek new casket donated by the Batesville Casket Co., which made the original. Since late last year, the old casket has been on public display at the Texas Musicians Museum in Hillsboro, Texas.
The Big Bopper died right as he was hitting the big time. The happy-go-lucky Texas DJ in a leopard-skin jacket would sell a million records but never see a dime from his greatest hit, “Chantilly Lace.” He also wrote the George Jones hit, “White Lightning.” Tom Kreason, the Texas Musicians Museum’s founder, admits the casket is macabre but says it is a “priceless” artifact of a historic moment in music. He approached some auction houses about selling the casket, but “they all seemed confused,” so he decided to reach for a wider audience on eBay. The Texas Musicians Museum will receive an undisclosed share of the sale, he said.
How much could a used celebrity casket bring on the open market? A handful of memorabilia dealers shied away from guessing, largely because a used celebrity casket has never been offered for sale.
“Certainly there’ll be some distaste, but I think this is a piece of history that is very special,” Kreason said. “Even if it doesn’t sell, we’ve made a point about the historical value of J.P. Richardson. No matter what happens, he wins, historically.”
source

It’s really sad that he’s trying to act like he’s doing some kind of noble thing. “to learn about the early years of rock n’ roll” Of fuck you dude.

I can’t believe they did an autopsy. I wonder what killed him? Could it have been an overdose? Or a heart attack? Or maybe it was the fucking plane crash he was in. Surprise, it was the plane crash!

This is just… disgusting.

“No matter what happens, he wins, historically”

Jesus Christ.

If my kid sold my coffin on ebay, I’d haunt the shit out of him.

It’s not a model. It’s a toy. Though it’s only a toy in that it fits into the “Action figure” category of the toy store. Ever since Todd McFarlane decided to make action figures ten million times cooler, they’ve kind of stopped being action figures and started being these kind of sculptures. Sometimes, like with this one (and my kickass Elizabeth Bathory figure) they’re more like little dioramas.

Anyway, yeah, I want that Nightmare on Elm Street one, like, WAY bad. WAY bad. I talk good!

That scene with Nancy in the tub and Freddy’s hand coming up out of the water was fucking brilliant.

There’s a couple up on Ebay. I think that as we get closer to my birthday, provided there are still some up, I will have to get one.

You know how John Travolta has an autistic son named Jet that John pretends doesn’t exist, because the magic that is Scientology doesn’t allow him to treat his autism?

Yeah, Jet fucking DIED.

John Travolta’s Son Dies

Posted Jan 2nd 2009 3:10PM by TMZ Staff

Rand Memorial Hospital in the Bahamas tells TMZ the son of John Travolta died today.
We’re told 16-year-old Jett was vacationing with Travolta and wife Kelly Preston. We do not know the circumstances of his death.
There have been reports that Jett was autistic, though Travolta has denied it, saying he suffers from Kawasaki Syndrome, a condition which often leads to heart disease.
Story developing …

Update from Access Hollywood
The actor and his family were on vacation at the Old Bahama Bay hotel on the Grand Bahama island, when Jett fell and hit his head on the bathtub, a source told Access on Friday at 10 AM PST.
Following the accident, Jett Travolta was taken to Rand Memorial Hospital in the Bahamas.
AH
Update from Reuters
Jett Travolta, 16, suffered a seizure at his family’s vacation home at the Old Bahama Bay Hotel on Grand Bahama Island, attorney Michael Ossi said.
Attempts were made to revive him, but he died at the scene, Ossi said.
Jett, who had a history of seizures, was the eldest child of Travolta and his wife, actress Kelly Preston. They also have a daughter, Ella Blue, who was born in 2000.

That’s what fucking happens when you pretend that you can treat severe illnesses with fucking barley water and theton cleansing. Where is your Xenu NOW Travolta?

Look, I don’t mean to be crass about someone’s kid drying. I don’t enjoy the fact that he died and I’m sure the Travolta family is in massive amounts of pain right now. But Jesus man, can we please let this be the wakeup call you need to realize that Scientology is a fucking scam. A scam that plays with life and death. A scam that fucking KILLS people, in addition to robbing and brainwashing them.

I made it myself. All by myself with no help at all. I drawled the pictures and I writed the words. Writed/Drawled by Joe and Joe alone.

Don’t ask me what’s going on in it. If you don’t get it, then it’s because it’s going over your head and you’re not as smart as me.

Sometimes I get stuck on a phrase, or a sentence, or just a part of a sentence, I mumble it to myself over and over and over again.

Like, for instance, I was just in the shower, and for almost the whole duration of the shower I was talking to myself and saying “Guitar legend Peter Frampton” over and over. Then, as I was getting out, I started in with “Attention please, if you have the time, I’d like to blow your MIND” from the Mr. Show sketch Jeepers Creeper Semi-Star. But that only lasted a couple of minutes and I was back to “Guitar legend Peter Frampton”. I continued to mutter that phrase as I was just out smoking until I realized I was doing it. Then I thought that it might be some kind of weird mental illness.

Ben, do I have the OCD?!

In unrelated news, I just found another, different Silent Hill nurse model. Only slightly different. But still. I kind of want this one too. I think the one I actually got is better though. Her left hand looks weird on this one.

And they have a bust as well (that’s a bust alright! Hardy har)

Remember a while back when I was all bummed because the guy who sculpted this awesome Pyramid Head model broke the mold and wasn’t able to make anymore?

Well….

Someone else has sculpted a NEW Pyramid Head model. It’s not QUITE as cool as the other one, but it’ll do.

 

I still have to build my Silent Hillary model. And that’ll take me a little while. But it’s nice to know that this one is out there.

I’m probably going to define the colors a little more than this person did. I mean, it’s a cool looking paint job, but it kind of all blends together into one muddy color.

The person who did the new Pyramid Head model also did this Nurse bust.

Which is also kind of cool looking.

Or, surprisingly not different. Gnarls Barkley doing Space Oddity by Bowie.

Speaking of Bowie and Space Oddity, have you seen this?

It’s the original promotional video for the song. Bowie looks so YOUNG in it. And thank god he rerecorded it before it went on the album because this version of whack. I’m guessing this was pre-Ziggy Stardust, though I’m certainly no music historian.

And, just since we’re on the subject:

Here he is with some serious Robert Plant hair.

—-

A little bit ago I started digging through my computer for one of my older scripts. There was a scene in it where the main character is kind of going inside and driving this non-stop cross country road trip. Anyway, he hasn’t slept in like, days, and he’s driving through Texas in the middle of the night and falls asleep at the wheel listening to Space Oddity. Then there’s this whole Space Oddity dream sequence where his car turns into a space ship and launches off into space and it’s like a weird little music video inside the movie. He is jerked out of the dream at the end of the song when his car rolls through the desert.

So yeah, I went digging through my computer looking for that script. And it’s not there. I dug deeper. Not there. I did a wildcard search for any word documents, and it’s just not there. It’s gone.

My only hope for recovering it is a stack of random ass CDs that I’ve got. Hopefully, at some point, I backed them up. I hope so.

I was looking up information about the “Skinless Julia” resin model kit from Hellraiser 2.

I found out that that particular model was sculpted by a dude named Paul Komoda. So I looked him up and found his website which has pretty much nothing on it other than his contact information. Then I found the gallery portion of his website (which isn’t linked off of the single page that’s up as a splash page) through another link.

In the gallery is a sculpture that I can only assume is the “Skinless Julia” original.

Though there’s nothing saying so. It’s just labeled as “Vertebrea” (SIC).

But also in the gallery was this:

Which I want a model of VERY badly. It’s based on an HR Giger painting. And it’s just… awesome.

I emailed the guy asking if there was any chance anyone had cast it for reproduction. I hope he writes back.

There are a lot of awesome Hellraiser models out there. The Skinless Julia is my favorite though.

 

She’s here doing the CNN New Years Eve special with AC, and someone starts heckling her and she yells “SCREW YOU BUDDY! I’M WORKING! I DON’T GO TO YOUR JOB AND KNOCK THE DICKS OUT OF YOUR MOUTH!”

 

      

NEVER.

This is my contribution.

So can we all agree that 2008 was a totally fucked up, retarded year? And that 2009 is going to ROCK?

The logical part of my brain says that tomorrow is just another day, just like any other day. But then the rest of me says “Fuck you logic, 2009 is going to KICKASS”.

I has to be better than 2008. There’s just no other options as far as I’m concerned.

That when I read this inspiring quote from Jay Z

“Rosa Parks sat so that Martin could walk. Martin walked so Obama could run. Obama is running so we all could fly” – Inspirational slogan on several thousand T-shirts. Attributed to the rapper Jay-Z in October

The only thing I could think of was

MARTAAAAIIIIIN MARTAAAAAAIIN

They should really bring Clint Howard back for this new Star Trek movie. He should be the villain.