For Love of a Candy Bar

I have this friend. Well, he’s not a friend anymore, just an annoying guy who hovers on the outermost fringes of my life. I haven’t seen him in four years now, but he was always a weasel of a guy. The wrong person would get to hate him in no time. I happened not to be one until much later in life.

We were kids together, he and I. We both liked girls, but this guy was flaky, just flaky! You never knew what was going on in his head. And I had another friend, a friend I always suspected was gay but didn’t know for sure that he was until this episode, which confirmed my suspicions. Through this mutual friend we’ll call “Todd,” I learned something about this weird guy that was even crazier than I thought him to be (we’ll call this weirdo “Jeff”). Are you ready for this? My friend Todd told me Jeff sucked his dick for a candy bar!

The two were walking home from school and Todd happened to have a Whatchamacallit. Jeff was hungry, so he asked to have it. Todd said, “No way. I want it.” But Todd was a carefree fellow, always dangerously ambitious, and looking back, a little whacky. After some back and forth about how much he wanted it, gay Todd decided to have some fun by offering Jeff what to most of us would seem quite the absurd proposition: “Give me a blowjob and I’ll give you the candy bar!”

Not suspecting he would take him up on his offer, Todd laughed, staring blankly at Jeff’s face. In only moments, it became clear that he was serious—he would take him up on the offer! I am told this was on the top bunk bed in a house in San Antonio’s northeast side; the thought of two nasty, sweaty eighth graders who just got out of last period gym class giving or receiving blowjobs is…well…sickening! All these years later, I learned of this from the “giver” of the head! All I can say is, “wow!” I revel in my disgust over the whole affair!

I’m thinking, wouldn’t sucking a dude’s dick ruin the taste of the candy bar? Wouldn’t just the thought of the act make you lose your appetite? Wouldn’t the chewy nugget and caramel remind you of drinking from the male fire hose only minutes before? What was he thinking? Jeff said he didn’t enjoy doing it, and he seems almost ashamed of it these years later. Jeff’s got a hot-ass blonde wife too! But how could he go through with it and just “do it” like a math problem or a tub of dishes? I hope that candy bar was worth it! What kind of a straight guy sucks dick for a candy bar, god damnit!?

But let’s go further and ask, what kind of a guy writes an article about some guy who sucks a dick for a candy bar? Maybe a bigot, a creep, a guy with too much time on his hands? Perhaps, but in this case, just an observer of humanity, someone who can’t get their fill (pardon the pun) of perceived perversity, someone who never ceases to be in awe of the human capacity for reprehensible, unpredictable, and often contradictory behavior.

I am a man of contradictions; I am a germ freak who refuses to let his hands touch his mouth or get saliva on them, but I go out in public and breathe in the same air as everyone else; I love my freedoms, but desire the occasional “spanking” from a hot brunette as I’m tied spread-eagle to the bed; I am a politically and fiscally conservative atheist who doesn’t dig “free love” and careless, unprotected sex, and yet I am a lover of nudism and am comfortable around other naked people. I would love to see the human race and all sentient life in the universe eradicated, but since this can’t happen, I do my part to oppose murder and other quality-of-life crimes. Contradictions, see? Where is the sense in all of this? It’s nowhere to be found.

I need medication—and laughter is the only drug I will take! Mockery and ridicule are my roommates, my closest companions. Without them I would die. I am like the mediocre cool kid in high school – not quite cool enough to hang with the “in” crowd, but cool enough to keep my mouth shut while the coolest crowd ferociously mocks the dorks and dweebs and sticks their heads in the toilet – as I watch on the sidelines and am thoroughly entertained. If I can’t crack up at the jaw-dropping stupidity of myself and others, what good is my life? If I can’t sit back and marvel at the gall of my fellow man, at the stupid mistakes members of my species make, what good is my life? If I can’t have a good, knee-slapping laugh at the moronic beings that surround me, and the painful but hilarious predicaments they find themselves in, what good is my life to me? Tell me that, huh?

(JH)