Porn.

Hey Emily! Why did you name it P.O.R.N. if there isn’t any porn?

Today, my friends, you’ll find out why.


I’m going to start by explaining my relationship with porn.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

STRIKE ONE

In fifth grade, the internet was becoming quite popular. Our school librarian caught on to the trend and made rounds of fifth and sixth grade classrooms, teaching us how to use the internet for research. Soon after, our teacher assigned us a theme project – we were to choose a note-worthy geographical feature, and prepare a short presentation, essay and visual display about it. I, being young and naïve, chose Mount Elbrus.

Now, pretend you’re playing Mad Gab and say that name out loud.


It certainly didn’t help that the mountains were actually in the shape of a giant rack.


So when I, little ten year old Emily, got online to find a model for my diorama of Mt. Elbrus, I did not just find the picture above. No. Instead I was inundated with image after image of twisted photography from those with brains so full of sex they had no room left for creativity.

I screamed, horrified and extremely disturbed, and my mother came running, deciding that maybe we should do the research together for the rest of the project. The next day in class, she told my teacher about what had happened, and they spent a good five minutes laughing hysterically while I glared at my classmates, in their unscarred, blissful naïveté, talking and playing as if the world hadn’t come to a crashing, confusing halt in the past 24 hours.


And it wasn’t over yet.


Now I actually had to make the diorama. I set up shop at my grandma’s house, where I stayed with my cousins, Adam and Cory, after school. Adam, being the eldest, was about to start middle school, and being an almost-middle-schooler, he was King of Innuendos. Once he saw what I was making, there was no hope left for my fragile mind.


By the end of the week, I had snapped.

I was no longer a little girl in a sheltered porn-free world. There were boobs out there. And apparently they were hilarious.


So when my teacher sat in the back of the room snickering throughout my presentation, I did not shrink in humiliation. No - I giggled along with her.

STRIKE TWO

As the internet exploded into more than just a research tool, commercials popped up between children’s shows announcing new websites for kids: Barbie fun found at Barbie.com! Watch Nick shows online at Nick.com! Interact with your American Girl doll on Americangirl.com! These commercials, though harmless themselves, were a glowing red path to danger.

During that following summer, I spent the night with my cousin Hillary. We made movies with my ancient video camera, played princesses and aliens, argued with her brother, and ate plenty of pop tarts. That evening we moved up to the attic so her parents and brother could sleep in peace. In the far corner of the room, their computer gleamed like an unwrapped toy.


In seconds we were online and plugging in the names of websites from the commercials. Barbie.com kept our attention for a while, Nick.com for a little more, but soon we were out of ideas. Then Hillary remembered a site her mom had shown her a week before, so we went there. The site was Fun for Girls, and it was at funforgirls.com. Hillary and I thought we’d finally understood this complicated website-naming business.


Apparently, whatever you wanted to see, you just added a “.com” to the end of the word.

We were not just on the glowing red path. We were fucking knocking on Danger's door.


Since we’d exhausted websites for toys and television shows, we decided to try our favorite bands. My favorite was A*teens.


A*teens.com is definitely NOT about the band.


Pop-ups of big titties were blasting at us like they’d already discovered Broadband. They came faster than we could click them closed, and though we desperately wanted to look away, the threat of her parents finding out what we’d done was a million times scarier.


By this point, the pop-ups had pop-ups and so many were flying at us that Hillary panicked and pulled the plug. We looked at each other for a moment in wide-eyed horror and then went back to playing dolls.

And thus my questionable taste in music ruined my little cousin’s innocence.

STRIKE THREE

In eighth grade my best friend and I volunteered at the elementary school’s Art Club. The children in the club were mostly fourth graders.


I know. Glowing red path.


For the spring session, we decided to make a series of murals along the preschool’s playground. One would be farm themed, another would have safari animals, one would take a look under the sea, etc. We split into groups and each chose an animal. Hillary (the best friend, not the cousin) and I begged the teacher to be in on the project, too, instead of just helping the kids. When she said yes, we decided to make a push-me–pull-you to add to the farm mural. A few of the younger students hadn’t seen the original Dr. Dolittle, so I jumped on Google.


I KNOW.


They clustered around as I typed the fated words into the search engine, eagerly awaiting this monstrosity that we bigger kids were so enamored with.


The preview of the image I picked looked innocent. Cross my heart, hope to die. In the thumbnail, it was a push-me–pull-you.

But when I clicked on it… it was a lot more literal… in the pornographic sense.

Hillary gasped and threw her hand over the screen as I hit the back button a million times and hoped to God the kids’ short attention spans were, for once, beneficial.


And they were, thank goodness. But my terrible luck with the Internet had corrupted yet another soul (another Hillary, even!). After Art Club, I apologized and told her about Strikes One and Two. Needless to say we stayed away from Google Image Search for a long time after that.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, WHY did you name it P.O.R.N. if there isn’t any porn?

I guess I didn’t answer the question after all.


But… isn’t it like a bajillion times better to be addicted to my P.O.R.N. than the porn that scars children, turns people into gross horny creepers, scars children, costs money, and SCARS CHILDREN?


PS: I am not very good with conclusions.

Dear Grandma

Recently I went to the zoo with my friends. It would have
been super-duper-fun if it hadn’t have been super-duper awkward. In order to tell you all about it and still keep things PG, I decided to write about the experience from the perspective of Jake, an eight year old who just visited the zoo with his dad. Enjoy!

Dear grandma,

Today Daddy took me to the zoo! We had a lot of fun. He says to tell you he won’t be taking me there during “Matey’s Season” anymore, but I think maybe he’s very tired, because we sure didn’t see any pirates there.

We did see some funny looking elephants though. One of them had five legs! But elephants are very nice. Instead of making fun of the five-legged one for being different, one of the mommy elephants gave him a hug! When I told this to daddy, a group of teenagers started laughing really hard. Teenagers are not as nice as elephants.

After the elephants, we went to the dolphin show. But it was not very fun. There was a baby dolphin in the tank and he didn’t like to be splashed, so the other dolphins were not allowed to do any big tricks.

Then we got a snack and watched the lemurs do yoga and give each other massages, and after that we went to see the giraffes! There were four mommies and only one daddy giraffe. It kind of reminded me of my friend Danny who has two mommies, only it was a lot more mommies and a daddy. That baby giraffe must have a lot of grandmas and grandpas living in Florida. If you see them at the zoo down there tell them he is doing very well.

The gazelle also had a lot of mommies and just one daddy. One of the mommies had a stinky bottom, though, because that daddy gazelle followed her around smelling it the whole time we were there.

Last we went to see the dessert animals! They were in a big round house that was very hot. At the end, I saw my favorite animals, turtles! They were trying to play leap frog, but the daddy turtle couldn’t get over the mommy turtle. He kept jumping up and down but he couldn’t get over her. I started to cheer him on, and daddy was very upset. I asked him why I couldn’t cheer them on, and he said it wasn’t appropriate. I asked him why it wasn’t appropriate, but then he pointed to a very pretty bird and so I went to look at that and forgot to ask him about why it wasn’t appropriate. I think I’ll ask mommy tonight though.

Also, I think when you and grandpa come for Christmas this year I would very much like a five-legged elephant.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO,

Jake

Off-Color Book

 

That One Time I Was Possessed

Before you read this post, I want you to know that I am a good person.
I promise this is the one and only time I ever tortured anyone purposefully. Unless you ask my cousin Lindsey, who claims we locked her in a car seat when we were tiny babes.
Whatever she says, IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.

So enjoy the post, and please don’t call the po-pos.

My friend Martha and I had just gone out to eat, and we needed to stop by her dorm to drop off left-overs before heading out to play zombie tag.

Yes, zombie tag. I judged it too before I played it, only now, not only is it super amazing fantasmagorical fun, but guess who’s going to survive the zombie apocalypse?

Anyways, Martha and I had to stop by her dorm. In order to get there, I had to turn left into a half-circle drive. For this one, you need a map.

Now, I promise that I am a safe, respectable, stereotype-breaking driver. But this was not my best moment. The four glasses of sweet tea I’d had were coursing through my veins like adrenaline mixed with crack, and the steak I’d eaten made me feel like an elderly llamaraptor: tired yet rabidly carnivorous.

So as I turned into the drive, I noticed a young man standing on the curb. Though my car was aimed no where towards him (red arrow), he saw my car hurtling straight for him (blue arrow). He took a step back and panic flooded his face.

What – like he didn’t trust a girl enough to not hit him?!

We locked eyes, and in the next millisecond, I was possessed by a demon.

The next thing I know, I’m overcome by the urge to scare the poop out of this guy.  Half of me screamed out that he was judging me for being a female driver. The other half, the possessed half, just really wanted to torture him. I swung my car so that I curbed it right in front of him, and he jumped ten feet in the air, even though he’d stepped back enough that I was already far from even grazing him.

From his new spot, we locked eyes again. I grinned devilishly. He looked exactly like a deer in the headlights, and I found myself laughing maniacally that the expression was coming to life before me.

I put the car in park and slowly became aware that Martha was staring at me anxiously from the passenger’s seat. Her eyes held a mixture of concern for me and for her own safety.

We stared at each other for a moment, silently.

“You could have gotten ten points, but I’ll give you five for trying.” she said.

It was too much. I burst out laughing, and she must have been possessed too, because she laughed harder than I did. It’s a wonder I didn’t ruin my leather seats after four glasses of sweet tea.

Nick the Awesome Aussie

A couple of years ago I went on a trip with the “Social Studies Club” (aka the club for people who wanted to travel overseas) at my high school. For two weeks we traveled New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii.

We had the best tour guide EVER.

Aussie men are either drop-dead gorgeous or butt-ugly. And the nice thing is that the butt-ugly ones have the best sense of humor I’ve ever found in guys my age.

I want to be Australian.

Nick told the best jokes and he was drop-dead gorgeous. Why he was piddling away leading a group of American tourists instead of simply basking in his own glory, I’ll never comprehend.

I didn’t dare flirt with him, though.  I was awfully shy (I know, *gasp*); and there was the whole he was twelve years older than me thing.

Nevertheless, he made the bus rides worthwhile.

When we arrived in Sydney, we were two hours early. This is better than being late, except for the fact that our hotel rooms weren’t ready yet. The manager stashed our bags in a storage room and promised to keep them locked up until we returned from our tour of the city.

After the tour, Nick called the hotel and they were still short a couple of rooms. My small social studies club decided to separate from the main tour group that was headed back to the hotel so we could go to the SkyTower. Nick told us he would take our bags from the storage room and keep them in his so there was less chance of anything getting stolen.

My friends and I ended up going to a pub for dinner after the SkyTower, and on our way home we passed a grocery store, so we stopped in to pick up some fruit. Before the fruit section, though, we passed the cookie isle, where our need for Tim Tams replaced our fear of scurvy. We rushed back to our rooms to try out the Tim Tam Rush for ourselves. [We’re totally ruled by our stomachs.] It wasn’t for a couple more hours that we remembered that all of our bags were in Nick’s room.

No one wanted to miss out on more Tim Tam time – except for Jill and me. As much as we loved us some Tim Tams, we were more psyched about a chance to see Nick outside of the bus.

On the way up to Nick’s room, we met the child of one of the other tour group members, Sarah. She was headed up for the same reason as us, so I didn’t feel entirely bad about showing up super late.

Sarah walked straight up to Nick’s door and banged on it. She was his best buddy on this trip and I was pretty envious of her.  We heard him yell “one moment” and then he opened the door.



You would have thought that out of all of us, someone would have called ahead to tell him we were on our way.

Jill and I were speechless.

Sarah was not. She looked at Nick, crossed her arms, and said quite patronizingly, “Put some clothes on.”

Nick slammed the door shut before Jill or I could protest.

Five minutes later he opened the door, tossed out our bags, and slammed it closed again.

We couldn’t stop giggling for the rest of the trip.

Off-Color Feeding Time

St. Patrick's Day Special: Celtic Stew

St. Patrick’s Day is a big deal in my family. I don’t know if you’d noticed,

but we’re pretty Irish.


So every St. Patty’s Day we go downtown to this fantastic pub and eatery, The Irish Lion, for their intoxicating atmosphere and mouth-watering food… and the Guinness. I get all dressed up like an Emerald Princess in the outfit I’ve made over the years and hand out goody bags to everyone who walks by.

This particular St. Patrick’s Day, my grandma came with us to the Irish Lion. We waited our usual hour in the foyer for a table to open up. My mom and I were entertained by a bagpiper and the pub owner, who was handing out light-up Guinness tokens and fun hats and such. But my grandma sat silent, eyeing the crowd of people with anxiety.

Eventually we got seated. Our host handed us menus. I ignored them and ordered my favorite dish, Blarney Puffballs. They’re these little heavenly clouds of deliciousness: potatoes mixed with cheese and herbs, deep fried, then served with sour cream. Supposedly an “appetizer,” but who are they kidding. They’re not shareable when I’m around.

My grandma complained about the menu until she found corned beef and cabbage. My mom got Celtic stew with soda bread, and they ordered a pint of Guinness apiece.

A bit of background: my grandmother and booze have an interesting history. She went for years thinking it was the devil’s orange juice, and therefore not touching it with a ten-foot pole. Then, for her 60^th, my mom and aunt introduced her to alcohol. She suddenly changed her tune.

So it was still quite novel to me that she had ordered a beer.

Apparently it was still novel to her, too. Before the meal had come, she’d sucked her first one dry and ordered a second.

When the meal did come, she picked at her food and looked ours over.

“What’d you get, Shelly?”

“Celtic stew, mom.”

“Oh! Well…interesting… what’s in it?”

“Um, potatoes, carrots, and lamb.”

“Hmm.”

And that was that… or so we thought.

We began to have the best conversations. I don’t even remember what all we talked about, but we laughed until my stomach hurt – and normally all my grandma does is complain.

She ordered a third Guinness. The bagpiper came upstairs and we listened to his performance. Afterwards, we were quiet as my mom and I finished up our dinners.

Suddenly, my grandma leaned over, suppressing a giggle, and whispered in my ear.

“Baaaaaaa.”

I was extremely confused, but she had laughter dancing in her eyes. I smiled, and she straightened up, grabbed her glass, and spoke quietly into her beer with a wink to me.

“Baaaaaaa!”

Then my mom stopped chewing, and it occurred to me what my grandma was doing.

“Mom, this celtic stew is really good. I bet you’d like it. Wanna try?”

My grandma shook her head and cooed, “Baaaaa,” trying to look sad but having some serious difficulty.

I started laughing really hard, which only caused my grandma to lose it completely. She giggled and baa-ed continuously through the rest of dinner.

The check came and the waiter cleared our plates. We left, walked back to the car, and I drove us home.

When I dropped my grandma off, she waved to my mom and giggled, “Baa-ye!”



My grandma’s such a cute drunk.

 

Off-Color Car Seat

1000 Views!!!

Drag Show

Last year, my friends and I took a road trip. Our friend Kelsey was going to be in a drag show and we really wanted to see it. Her campus is only an hour away, so after classes ended, we all loaded into the car and headed up north.
At this point I have to explain the company I was with.

Brian is my best friend – we met on an overseas trip in seventh grade and have been buddies ever since. My mother practically adopted him. His little sister, Betsy, is the funniest girl alive. She can turn a story about buying celery into some kind of side-splitting comedy act that keeps you laughing for DAYS. Dannie is Brian and Betsy’s neighbor and our bff. She’s always around, being super clingy and touching your boobs, making inappropriate (and freaking hilarious) innuendos, and callin’ out da biiiitches.

So basically, today had to be epic. There was no other option.

On the way up, we entertained ourselves singing old A*teens songs and chattering away like usual. Dannie taught me the definition of a g-spot and offered to make a map of it for the boys. Brian complained about school, which turned into a competition of what all forms Zeus was capable of “going down on” people in, since he’d seemingly impregnated all of Greece.

And then later, Betsy brought up how in one of her classes, they’d gone around a circle and shared their most embarrassing moment as a sort of ice breaker. This prompted our own exchange of embarrassing stories, and to my embarrassment (irony to the extreme, people), I didn’t have one to share. I raked my brain for something that had set me off with burning cheeks… but nothing came to mind that could possibly compare to the outrageous tales they were telling. So I made up some lame story about using the boys’ bathroom and hoped they’d change the subject soon.

By the time we got to the drag show, we were late and we had to pee. Dannie, Betsy and I flew to the bathroom and ran back out, just in time to see Kelsey and her friends perform “Y.M.C.A.” After the show, we went backstage to hang with Kelsey in her construction worker’s outfit. There was a lot of merrymaking, dancing, and running around like awesome people. Betsy and I kidnapped two purple flags, named them “Broadnipple” and “Bodacious Dick,” and then had a fan dance with them. People were staring at us like crazy, especially me – but I was being pretty obnoxious (mine was “Bodacious Dick” and I didn’t have a problem shouting it loudly) and I figured they were just jealous of our awesomeness and recognized that we weren’t from the small school we were visiting.

After all the fun, we realized we were all pretty hungry. Kelsey had to go back to her dorm to change, so I followed her up while Brian, Betsy and Dannie hung out by the entrance. I waited outside her room while she took off her mustache and hard hat, and then bounded down the stairs in front of her in my excitement over going to get dinner.

When Kelsey walked out the door behind me, I heard her snickering quite loudly. As the others followed her gaze, Brian and Dannie began to laugh and Betsy let out an echoing guffaw. I started to freak out. They were looking at me.

I spun around.

And that’s when I noticed.

Stuck into the waistband of my skirt was a long strand of toilet paper. It was literally dragging the ground.


I threw away the evidence and we got into the car. We sat for a moment in silence.

Then Brian cleared his throat.

“And so Zeus went down on her in the form of toilet paper…”

I finally had a story to share.