Love and Lists (Chocoholics) (8 page)

“Oh I’m pretty sure your penis has other ideas. He’s like an angry armadillo trying to claw his way out of a bunker right now.”

Staying hunched over, I turn around to face Charlotte, which is a really bad idea. Seeing Charlotte always turns me on. My face suddenly feels hot, and I’m lightheaded because all of the blood in my fucking body is now pumping through my penis. My angry armadillo penis.

“Are you okay? You don’t look so good,” Charlotte says as she puts her hand on my shoulder and starts rubbing small circles there.

“You might not want to touch him right now. That’s probably going to make it worse,” Tyler laughs.

“Shut the fuck up,” I growl under my breath as I try to stand back and wince when I feel my penis shift against my boxer briefs.

“Do you have a stomach ache or something?” Charlotte asks.

“His ache is a little lower than his stomach,” Tyler tells her with a smile.

“I have some Pepto in my car. I’ll be right back,” she tells me before turning away to rush back to her car.

“Mr. Ellis, we’re about five minutes away from the ribbon cutting. The photographer is just finishing setting up his equipment,” Chris Minney, the owner of Minney’s Adult Mart, tells me as she walks up next to me.

Sucking up the pain in my groin, I stand up. Her eyes flash right down to my tented pants.

“Well, um, huh. It’s good to see you’re so excited about our grand opening. I think we have some things inside that will take care of that,” she tells me with a pat on the back before walking away to talk to a few customers.

“Oh this is just awesome,” I complain.

“How long have you had this problem?” Tyler asks.

Looking at my watch I’m shocked to realize just how long it’s been.

“Almost two hours. I think my penis is broken. What if it never goes down? I can’t walk around like this forever.”

“Well, you’ve still got five minutes. Go around back and spank one out,” Tyler says.

“I’m afraid to touch it. What if it gets worse?”

“Dude, you don’t have a gigantor penis. It can’t possibly get any bigger. Maybe it’s stress. I get stress hard-ons sometimes. If The Gap gets really busy and I don’t have time to fold all of my jeans, it can turn into a problem.”

Sometimes I wonder why we’re even friends.

“Fuck. It’s probably those stupid vitamins my grandpa gave me before dinner. I knew I shouldn’t have taken those on an empty stomach,” I complain.

“Pops gave you vitamins? That doesn’t sound like something he would do. He’s not that nice. What kind of vitamins were they?”

I shrug and try to shift my weight to my other leg to alleviate some of the pressure. My penis feels like it’s going to explode. And not in a good way. In a blood and guts kind of way.

“I don’t know. He
said
they were vitamins. They were little, blue things.”

Tyler’s eyes open wide and he bursts out laughing. “Oh fuck, dude, Pops gave you Viagra!”

I shake my head back and forth in denial. “What? No. There’s no way he would just slip me Viagra and not tell me.”

Right? RIGHT?!

“Oh he totally did. But don’t worry, it’s not a problem until your erection lasts for more than eight hours I’ve heard,” Tyler says with another laugh.

“Okay, here’s the Pepto. This should help,” Charlotte says, coming back up to us and handing over the pink bottle while I scramble to hunch back over and dangle my arms in front of me.

“That’s probably not going to help. But I bet taking him around back for about thirty seconds would,” Tyler tells her.

“What?” Charlotte questions.

“Nothing. Just ignore him,” I tell her, taking the bottle of Pepto and swigging some of it for her before handing it back.

“Oooh, look. The photographer is ready to take your picture, Gavin. Make sure both your heads are smiling,” Tyler informs me before putting his arm around Charlotte’s waist and moving a few feet away.

Chris Minney walks back over and puts her arm around my shoulders. “This is so much fun. I’m so glad you were able to make it out tonight and do the cutting for us.”

The crowd gathers close as Chris turns us to face them and gives a little speech, thanking everyone for coming out to the grand opening.

As I move the scissors up to the red ribbon hanging in front of the walkway to the store, Chris pulls me closer and forces me to stand up straight. Right as I make the first cut and the flash of the photographer’s camera goes off, the snipped ribbon falls, draping perfectly on top of my hard-on.

The caption under the picture in the paper two days later reads:

“Employee of Seduction and Snacks was VERY Excited to Cut the Ribbon for Minney’s Adult Mart!”

“Hold his calls for the rest of the afternoon, Ava!”

I look up from my desk to see Uncle Drew barging through my office door with Aunt Jenny right behind him.

“I don’t answer his phone, Uncle Drew. Someone else does that,” Ava tells him from the doorway.

“Aren’t you his assistant?” Uncle Drew questions.

“Yeah, so?”

Uncle Drew rolls his eyes and ushers her out into the hallway before closing the door and locking it.

“What are you guys doing here?” I ask as Uncle Drew walks up to my desk and perches on the edge of it while Aunt Jenny takes a seat in one of the extra chairs.

“Well, I was originally coming here to commend you on an awesome boner shot in the paper the other day, but we have more pressing concerns to deal with right now. Jenny, tell him what he’s won!”

Jenny looks at Drew in confusion. “Did he win something? I thought we were coming here to talk to him about sex?”

Oh my God.

“Gavin, I just found out from your mother that you’ve got a thing for Charlotte. What the fuck, dude? I can’t believe you didn’t come to me first. This cuts me deep, real deep, little man.”

I groan as I rest my elbows on top of my desk and put my head in my hands. It was bad enough that number five on my list actually happened by accident the other day and that I had to jerk off six times in one night before my fucking hard-on would go away. Now I have to deal with this. Aunt Jenny and Uncle Drew consider themselves sex experts ever since they started giving “Spicing Up Your Sex Life” classes at the local community college. They’ve even been approached by a publisher to write a “How To” book, and all of this has gone to their heads. Their sex life is unconventional to say the least. It usually involves props that defy nature and almost always ends in someone going to the emergency room. Why anyone would want to take advice from them is beyond me. There was an incident when I was younger that involved Skittles. I don’t know much about it, but I know that whenever my mom sees a bag of Skittles at the store, she dry heaves a little.

“I hear there’s a list. Why haven’t I seen this list? I should have had major input for this thing,” Uncle Drew complains.

“Should I bring out the condoms and the banana now or do you want to do that later?” Aunt Jenny asks him.

“Let’s hold off on that, babe. First, I want to make sure this list he’s using is in tip-top shape. Do you have ‘tell her she has moist folds’ on the list? That should definitely be on the list.”

Drew reaches into the bag he brought with him and begins pulling out various items: a blender, a wheel of Vermont Cheddar cheese, and a jock strap are the first to land on my desk.

“Eeeew, that’s … no. No that is not on the list, nor will it ever be,” I reply with a shudder.

“It should really be on the list Gavin,” Aunt Jenny tells me seriously.

“What the hell does a blender and cheese have to do with my sex life?” I ask, picking up the wheel of cheese from my desk and turning it over in my hands.

Uncle Drew quickly grabs it from me and sets it back down. “All in good time, little asshole. Leave the cheese alone. It needs to stay at room temperature.”

He continues pulling other items out of the bag that I really don’t even want to know what they’re going to be used for. Seriously? A small United States flag on a stick and a potted fern?

“Tell me you at least have something with role-playing on there?” Uncle Drew puts his hands on his hips and raises his eyebrows at me.

“I don’t think that needs to be on the list. The last time we played with rolls you got a yeast infection in your eye,” Aunt Jenny reminds him.

“Seriously? That can happen?” I ask Uncle Drew.

“You are never to speak of my yeast infection again,” he warns me before turning around to look at Aunt Jenny. “And, honey, I’m not talking about that night with the tubes of Pillsbury dough. I’m talking about the Brady Bunch thing. Where I’m Greg and you’re Marsha and you accidentally touch my penis at the dinner table while Alice serves us spaghetti.”

I’m going to throw up. It’s happening right now.

“Oh, I don’t like that one. The blow-up doll we use as Alice looks at me funny. I think she’s judging me,” Aunt Jenny complains.

“Yeah, Alice is kind of a bitch. I’ll blindfold her next time. Anyhoo, give me the list. I need to make sure you know what you’re doing,” Uncle Drew demands.

“Really, it’s not necessary. I’ve got it under control.”

Uncle Drew laughs and shakes his head at me. “You’ve puked in front of her, wrapped your schlong in a bow, and showed it to the entire city. You don’t have it under control. What we have here is a failure to know what the fuck you’re doing when it comes to chicks.”

Getting up from my desk, he walks over to the dry erase board on my wall and uncaps a marker. He writes
moist folds
in big, black letters across the top.

“Oh my God, erase that,” I complain.

“Fuck your mother, I’m not erasing it. This is important,” Uncle Drew says before writing
role-playing
right underneath it.

“What temperature is your ball sack running at now?” he asks, turning around and narrowing his eyes at me.

“What? I don’t know. Why are you asking me this?”

“Dude, to effectively produce sperm, your testicles need to be at least two degrees cooler than your core temperature. You should ice those little nuggets.”

Is this really happening right now?

“Or he could just stick a pair of sunglasses on his little balls. That would be cute!” Aunt Jenny laughs and claps her hands together in glee.

“Ha-ha, totally! A little pair of Hello Kitty sunglasses and a bonnet for his un-fucking-cool testicles,” Uncle Drew adds with a laugh.

“Can we please stop talking about my testicles?”

“You’re such a buzz kill, dude. Okay, next. Gag the groin ferret,” he states.

“I have no idea what that means,” I complain, watching him write the words on the board.

“Um, hello? Whack off, gag the groin ferret, spank the monkey, bludgeoning the beefsteak, corralling the tadpoles, tweaking the toucan. You should be doing it at least eight to twelve times a day at this point.”

I wince thinking about how I spent my evening after the ribbon cutting ceremony. I’m pretty sure I will never jerk off again.

“Can I bring out the condoms and banana now? Pretty please?” Aunt Jenny begs.

“I know how to put a condom on. There’s no need for that,” I tell her with a roll of my eyes.

“Are you sure about that? Last I heard, you were using them as balloons,” Uncle Drew says with a laugh.

“Oh my God, I was FOUR when that happened. It stopped being funny twenty years ago!” I complain.

“I just thought of another one, Drew. Make sure you do hallucinogenics before and after sex. You don’t want your muscles tightening up on you,” Aunt Jenny explains.

“Are you saying I should take drugs to have sex with Charlotte? I don’t even understand what is going on right now.”

Uncle Drew shakes his head at both of us before turning back to the board.

“She means calisthenics. Although a little pot might be just the ticket for you. If you get really stoned, it won’t even matter that you have a small penis and have no idea how to please a woman,” he says with a laugh.

“Fuck off, old man. I don’t have a small penis. And I know how to please a woman,” I fire back.

“Really? Quick, what are the ten erogenous zones on a woman? GO!” he shouts.

“I love when Drew touches my erroneous zones,” Aunt Jenny says with a sigh.

Ignoring her, I run through every article I’ve ever read in a magazine or online. “GAAAAH! Fuck! Um, neck, lips, feet, inner thighs—”

“BZZZZZZZZZZ. WRONG, FUCKER!” Drew interrupts.

“What? Those were totally right. And I wasn’t done yet,” I argue.

“Those are wrong. Want to know what the ten erogenous zones on a woman are? Number one: vagina. Number two: it doesn’t fucking matter if you’re touching her vagina right!” Uncle Drew shouts. “You are a disgrace. Your mother should have swallowed.”

I give him the finger before he turns back to the board and begins scribbling furiously.

“Jenny, get the lawn darts and the graham crackers out of your bag. We’re sending Gavin back to Sex-Ed. By the time we’re done with you, Charlotte will be eating out of your hand. Literally. Jenny does this awesome thing with Nutella and a lint brush that will blow your mind.”

Before my aunt and uncle walked into my office today, I had sworn off the list that Tyler and I made, vowing to never look at it again. Right now, that list is looking better and better.