Authors: Grant Stoddard
Working Stiff (28 page)
“Well, there's plenty of R and R to be had out here. We could go horse riding one day,” I offered.
“Really? That'd be so cool. Okay. Thermometer says it's almost the right temperature. Are you ready?”
“Yeah, I think soâ¦.”
“Well, it looks pretty hard to me,” she said. She batted my hand away and pushed the tip toward the floor with her index finger, felt the resistance for a second and released, my penis snapping back skyward like a ruler on the end of a desk. I half anticipated that
ber-doi-oi-oi-oinggg
sound.
“Let's do it,” I said.
Jamye handed me the mold and I plunged my unit into the tepid ivory-colored slime.
“Oooohhh. It's a bit chilly!”
I had to maintain my erection for two minutes. Jamye kept an eye on the microwave timer as I conjured up lewd images in my mind. The last ten seconds or so, I definitely sensed that the lukewarm mixture was taking its toll.
“Okay, that's two minutes!” Jamye said and helped my pull off the mold. With some effort on her part and a slurping, sucking sound, the mold finally came off, and after a few more minutes we filled the void with a rubber solution and put it on a shelf to harden overnight. While I took a shower Jamye washed the mixing bowl we'd used for the plaster so that I could mix the eggs, cream, chives, black pepper, pancetta, and parmesan for the linguine carbonara recipe that I'd perfected during my tenure at the ranch.
The next evening, immediately postcoitus, I looked over my shoulder at my penis as it proudly jutted forth, spent yet unflagging from between Jamye's legs.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I lied as I tried to reconcile the vulnerable and empty feeling my penis's clone had left me with. “I think I just need to lie here for a minute or two.”
“I'll get you some water,” she said and walked to the kitchen, dismantling the harness that held the prosthesis to her body.
Michael said that he'd continue to call on me to write freelance bits and pieces for Nerve, but the real end of my career there was ushered in with Jamye's final pelvic thrust. My ass, like my whole future, was up in the air. It was at this moment that I began to experience the sensation of freefall I'd gotten every time I'd taken a leap out of my ever-expanding comfort zone, the fear and exhilaration of the unknown. Any pang of shame I might have felt from the circumstances was overridden by the question I asked myself over and over. I'd always told myself that in this day and age, my being a former sex worker would not be a strike against me in an interview situation, but now that I would presumably be putting this to the test, I was suddenly less secure in the assertion. When I began writing the column I was too concerned with having a roof over my head and a little pocket money to think about my time as a gonzo sex columnist being a great dirty stain on my résumé. Where would I go from here? How long could I coast before having to make some possibly difficult decisions.
Over the next two weeks Jamye and I hung out and worked on our respective projects while I counted down the days until I would eventually leave the rustic idyll of the Circled W ranch and get back to New York. I'd missed it immensely and found myself constantly daydreaming about my return: the plane's wheels touching the tarmac, the frigid February air filling my lungs, treating myself to a cab back to Manhattan. I felt that the new me, sans column, already resided there, and I was eager to get back to Manhattan and see what he would be all about.
Many thanks to Ross and Jordana Martin, Lisa Carver, Michael Martin, and Nerve, my agent, Claudia Cross, at Sterling Lord Literistic, Kelly Harms, my editor, Jeremy Cesarec, Jeff O'Connell, Drew Reed, and Antony Topping for your largely undeserved patience and support.
Love and thanks to the entire Stuehler Family, my boys, David Fateman, Chris Apostolou, and Bran Battjer, for keeping me fed, clothed, housed, and inspired during numerous rough patches. You are the personification of good old American hospitality. Thanks to Jennifer Choi for your thoughtful guidance and tutelage.
A very special thanks to my family for their love, support, and promising never to mention that they've read any farther than this page.
A Conversation with Grant Stoddard
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Talk Like the Author!
Useful Phrases for One's Stay in Essex
A Conversation with Grant Stoddard
How did you first learn about sex?
It was when I was eight or nine. This kid found a dirty porno mag under his dad's bed and brought it into school and disgustedeverybody with it because it was, frankly, grotesque. These sorts of hirsute, rotund continental women and super sleazy guys. So this kid shows this to a group of third graders! We all saw it and freaked out and he informed us that that's what everybody's parents do, and I was forever traumatized. It was eventually confiscated by the headmaster. I don't think I got any real parental talk. Maybe two or three years after that, by which time I saved them the trouble and told them I'd seen it all, and then some. In our school we had a lesson called P.S.E., which stood for personal and social education. It was taught by our gym teacher, this little Welsh dynamo named Mr. Power. He was my favorite teacher even though I routinely disappointed him in football, rugby, tennis, trackâ¦everything. He eventually threw me out of the P.S.E. class when I couldn't keep it together when required to put a
condom on a banana. I remember my report card saying that I didn't possess the maturity to deal with the subject of sex and adult relationships. Prophetic.
Me, about three years old, suffering from advanced malnutrition
In high school did you know this would be your destiny?
Umâ¦no. I strongly suspected I would die a virgin. I really did think that. Up until it actually happened the prospect of actually having sex was becoming more remote by the day. It didn't help that I looked like Garth from
Wayne's World.
I wish that someone would have staged an intervention back then; made me over into a less vile prospect as a sexual partner.
When did you lose your virginity?
I was around eighteen. She worked at a stable and smelled of horse shit half the time. It was a group of firsts. First kiss, first everything. It all came at once.
Was that when your destiny became clear?
Not at all. I was actually kind of underwhelmed by the experience, as I'm sure she was.
So you went to college and lived with this ancient womanâDid this arrangement preclude sexual adventures?
It would be easy to use Mrs.Montague as a scapegoat. I think I did a thorough job of staving off any prospects on my own. I just had no game. I really felt awkward in my own skin, and people pick up on that immediately.
At twenty-one, perennial virgin G
RANT
S
TODDARD
came to the United States in pursuit of true love. Within eighteen months he was a couch-surfing ne'er-do-well, scavenging scraps of food and living in danger of being deported back to England. His saving grace appeared in the form of his winning an online trivia competition, resulting in his appointment as New York's most intrepid sex columnist, despite having little experience in either sex or writing. He lives in New York City.
How did the metamorphosis come about?
Your line of questioning assumes that I somehow changed at some point. I really don't think that's the case. When I go home, I automatically snap back into that mode. It's being here that gave me a chance to leave a lot of that behind.
So you were corrupted by an American girl, and then America was your destiny?
Yeah. I always kind of had, from family vacations to the Midwest when I was a kid, the amount of oohing and aahing over me. People actually took an interest, which was very novel. I felt like I was included.
What was it about you that got you out of Essex and to America?
This is going to sound dumb, but years ago in England there was this TV commercial for British Airways, or maybe it was Virgin Atlantic, I'm not sure. Anyway, there's this guy and he's walking down the street and someone's lifting a grand piano into an eighth-floor apartment and the rope breaks and the piano comes hurtling toward him, and just prior
to impact, the action freezes. Then the viewer sees all these fast cut vignettes of him in exotic locales, running along a beach with these beautiful women, hanggliding over Rio, going nuts at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, on a camel in Morocco, etc., doing these crazy death-defying things, and the tag line was something like; “When your life flashes before your eyes, make sure you have something to watch.” As corny as that is, it stuck with me. I guess I just wanted that; I wanted to stockpile adventures. When my friends and I were around eighteen or nineteen we went through this period of doing things based primarily on how good a story it would be when we recounted it at the pub.
Sharing yet another secret with my mother
Me in the colors of Herd Lane Primary School
You wrote in the book about your encounter with Lisa Carver that led to a position with
Nerve
and, later, the column “I Did It for Science.” You described it as very much accidental. But it takes a special kind of person to do that.
By that point I'd learned that the very occasions when I just throw caution to
the wind and hope for the bestâthese are the moments when it all seems to work out fantastically well. Where I'm from, people aren't conditioned to take giant leaps of faith or stray very far from a predetermined life path. Various members of my family have, however, and I suppose they were supportive in breaking out of that mold. So with regards to the column it was just another opportunity that plopped into my lap that I felt compelled to take. All the other interns at Nerve would have given anything to get their writing published and I just thought it was funny that that the only intern who had no aspirations to write is the one who ended up with the opportunity to do so. I would never have had the guts to do any of those things under my own steam. Some of the “experiments” that the editors were suggesting were actually things that I had an interest in doing. Having it be my job made my feel less creepy and disgusting about it because I was required to do it. It was a great alibi to have. It also kind of allowed me to play catch-up for all the years that I was a wallflower.
My hair as birth control
Are you an exhibitionist? Some might say you're the very definition of an exhibitionist.
No. I dunno. I always imagined an exhibitionist would revel in it. During everything I've ever done I was nervous to the point of nausea. I was always hoping that somehow I wouldn't have to go through with it, right up until the last moment. I always thought an exhibitionist would feel some sort of joy. I was terrified about doing everything. A friend of mine said it's not an adventure until you're wishing that you were back at home tucked safely in your bed, and there's probably some truth to that.
My life in heavy metal
Would it be fair to say that without Lisa Carver's praise of your oral sex skills, you would not be where you are today?
I think she was just being nice. I dunno. Whatever skills I had then I think I've lost since. But I dunno, she recommended me for a job based on little else, so I suppose I did
something
right.
Did IDIFS make you more or less saleable on the dating market?
It was certainly a great icebreaker. It's one of the most insane jobs, practically untoppable at a dinner party: “I'm paid to have bizarre sex with strangers and write about it.” In addition to being a great icebreaker, I suppose it gave me more confidence. There was a period in which girls who were fans of the column were making it extremely easy for me to have sex with them. I certainly couldn't have foreseen that happening.