Because You Never Asked

(This essay was written around 1997)

      One living in the place I do, in order to have a full ration of Dick Vitale in your life (awesome baby!), must deal with an animal known as the cable company. My cable company has an interesting way of doing business and I suppose it's not much different wherever you are. It goes something like this: Let's say you eat regularly in a restaurant where you always have the spaghetti for $6.00. Then, one day, the menu says you can have the spaghetti and dessert for just $7.00. The waiter recommends this deal, but you say thanks anyway, you'd rather have the spaghetti without the dessert for the usual $6.00. He then informs you that you must have the spaghetti and dessert for $7.00, whether you want the dessert or not. Sorry, that's the deal.

     My cable company does much the same thing when it periodically decides I need more television stations at a conveniently (for them) higher price. They never consult me when they decide to do this, but they send me brochures with my higher bills explaining how wonderful my life has now become, what with 24 hour cartoons, round the clock food news, uplifting Bible studies, or bell to bell coverage of the day on Wall Street. No matter that I haven't seen a cartoon since Rocky and Bullwinkle, don't cook anything more complicated than a bowl of pasta, have a dubious relationship with God, and don't have a credit card let alone a portfolio of stocks. Sorry, that's the deal.

     So now I am privy to a massive concentration of ever expanding TV options, much of it unsolicited, unwanted, and unused. Undoubtedly, the future blueprint for an improved human condition will soon include hundreds of new stations we don't want to watch.

     Included in this cornucopia of ways to ward off boredom are a number of stations known as Pay-Per-View. In order to receive these programs you must call and order them. This having been done, the program solicited will miraculously appear at the appointed hour with your monthly bill reflecting the additional cost of such solicitation. Most of these stations show first run movies no more attractive to me in the comfort of my home than in a movie theater. If I could see them for free in my dreams, I'd probably choose to wake up.

     But the possibilities do not end there. There is an occasionally dubious Don King production complete with sweaty, Nubian gladiators performing at Babylonian venues, plus a number of stations that show "adult movies". These creations are designed to give the sex-with-yourself crowd (which is another way to say men) the opportunity to watch women with the most magnificent, surgically crafted "kabonkers" performing the sexual act. If this particular Pay-Per-View option were for free, it would put an end to TV as we know it. Let's face it, even such culturally misanthropic nerds as myself would have to desert Brain Lamb's Booknotes in the face of such competition. (I was tempted to say "stiff" competition, but showed remarkable restraint.)

     Since I would not pay my asshole cable company one cent extra for anything, these Pay-Per-View options go ignored in my house. The stations where the Pay-Per-View programs reside always show what is known as a scrambled signal, which is what the world would look like if you had an electric cattle prod stuck between your eyes. But we are dealing with technology here and sometimes things go wrong.

     Our modern enslavement to our ingenious technology is usually cause for great inconvenience when something does go wrong --- the power is off, the computer is down, the battery is dead, and yes, the cable is out. But I recently lived a moment where a technological glich actually provided some moments of windfall elation.

     One evening, as I mechanically surfed my bloated wasteland of entertainment possibilities, and for reasons that will surely remain inexplicable --- perhaps a technician who'd just come off a binge had fallen asleep face down on the wrong button; perhaps "El Nino" had slammed powerfully into the western slope of the Andes, upsetting the cosmic balance; perhaps someone was teasing Bill Bennett or Robert Bork (it would be nice to think this was the case) --- I stumbled upon the following spectacle:

     Right before me on my TV screen, as clear as Steve Young being flattened on Fox Network by yet another 300-pound pachyderm, was a well endowed young woman dressed only in the Technicolor so sharply portrayed on my faithful Japanese set. Her position could best be described as being "on all fours", and her head was buried in the lap of a male specimen spread languidly before her in an easy chair. The arm rests of the chair somewhat obscured what the woman was doing in his lap, but as her head bobbed up and down, my well honed, worldly experience soon began to unravel the mystery.

     Not surprisingly, this caught my attention.

     Just in case something like this might seem too ho-hum for the average viewer, in addition to her bobbing head and gloriously flapping "kabonkers", yet another male specimen was hunkered up to her high arching hindquarters, grinding away with a syncopated rhythm equal to that of the bobbing head. As our lascivious trio pumped away like the pistons of a fine tuned engine, our female athlete finally came up for air and began braying like a moonstruck coyote.

     Not surprisingly, this kept my attention.

     Ironically enough, if I had actually picked up a phone and ordered this film; if I had actually sat patiently, eagerly awaiting its scheduled arrival, I doubt if it would have had the volcanic impact it did . but wow! . out of the blue, like a shooting star, there it was and I was not supposed to be seeing it. It was a piece of "forbidden fruit" whose taste was enhanced by its outlaw qualities. Although the experience only lasted two or three minutes, by the end of it I had an erection you could balance a bowling ball on. This being a normal day in the last few years of my life, there was nothing better at hand, so I adjourned to the bathroom where I performed the unspeakable act men of my gender are wont to do in such circumstances. Although I've had many more erotically stimulating encounters with the use of a real woman, this was not only a lot less messy; it was much less emotionally dangerous.

     There is a momentary tendency by those of us who endure the normal frustrations of the average sex life --- the boredom with the same partner; the anxious uncertainty as single people seek their next encounters; the temptation to fondle every spandex ass mamboing down the street --- to envy these Pay-Per-View stars as they seemingly enjoy the sex act with such ease and facility. But once my sexual weapon had gotten out of the way and returned to its more inconspicuous slumber, upon more rational thought, it became evident how pathetic these people really are. They have taken the most genuine, sincere, unadulterated, pure expression of human feeling, the one moment where we truly let down all the childish defenses and masks with which we go through life, and turned it into something so routine, so ordinary, that it is left with all the impact of brushing one's teeth. Ironically, even with their glazed, virile members, and their colossal, shimmering breast-like constructions, they are the closest things we have to modern-day eunuchs.

     I now feel thankful for the horny frustrations of my less than abundant sex life. At least I know I have something to look forward to.

     In closing, as long as I am on the subject, I'd like to say that I am a well-preserved, middle-aged DWM seeking a superficial relationship between the hours of 8 and 9PM every Thursday with any F between the ages of 16 and 17, preferably someone with whom I have absolutely nothing in common. If interested, pleas contact my publisher . if I could ever find one.