Bill Dawes - August 29, 2006

When I was seven, I got a Stretch Armstrong after much begging and cajoling of the parental unit. I think Santa had fucked up that year and given me a sweater or something, so I whined and stamped until my parents, out of guilt or exhaustion, finally conceded and allowed me an off-season present. They even agreed to chauffeur me to Toys R' Us, my childhood mecca.

In his glossy box at Toys R' Us, Stretch Armstrong looked like the answer to all of my action-figure needs. In retrospect, his black bikini briefs, golden locks, muscular physique and malleable rubber body made him the paragon of steam-bath-loitering Chelsea queens, but at the time, I thought he was salvation. My GI Joes were in bad shape. They had all lost their fuzzy little afros and their patented Kung Fu grips had been reduced to curled and lonely index fingers. The Joes were starting to look like post-Nam vets working at saw mills. But no worries, Stretch Armstrong--with his blonde coif and fresh polyurethane smell--was going to remedy all of that. He would be the toy to end all toys.

Although I usually tried to milk my parents for all they were worth whenever we entered a Toys R' Us, this time I only had eyes for Stretch. I grabbed him off the shelf and bee-lined for the register. I didn't even ask for one of those bouncy "superballs" that I would always desperately want and then get home and throw against the floor and instantly lose under a couch. Nope, I was on a mission.

I marched to the checkout line and my dad gave me a $20 bill so I could make the purchase all by myself. I think it may have been the single greatest moment of my life....

About three weeks later, that sucky shit sprang a leak.

Thick jelly started oozing out from his armpits. It was red and syrupy and smelled like dead frogs. Rips started to develop all over his body: his kneecaps, his groin, his shoulders. Like a white trash MacGuyver, I tried to duct-tape the tears in the rubber. It wasn't very effective; it just looked like Stretch had been held hostage and beaten with a lead pipe.

I continued to try, in vain, to make him do superhuman stretchy things, but he just wanted to lounge around and bleed through his Speedos. I eventually (and begrudgingly) put him in the bottom of a wooden crate that would end up serving as a sarcophagus for the relics of many of my childhood disappointments.

When I think about some of the women that I fell for who ended up disappointing me, I experience almost the exact same blend of wistfulness and remorse with which I recall those childhood moments. Stretch Armstrong was no different. I won't make an analogy about "a tear in the rubber," however. I'm too terrified of getting a woman pregnant - shit, sometimes I pull out during phone sex!

I actually think Stretch Armstrong was my first heartbreak. I don't know what's worse: the fact that my first heartbreak came when I was seven, or that it came at the rubbery hands of a gay doll.

You never get your heart broken like you do when you're a kid, but my last heartbreak feels pretty close. In some ways, it's a similar story.

I met a girl and, after a year blissfully anticipating our life together, she moved in. She lived with me for 2 years, and I gotta tell you - it felt like 2 minutes...UNDERWATER!

Shortly after she moved in, there began a period in my life I like to call the "What did I do wrong NOW, honey?" phase. But the constant apologizing and persecution anxiety weren't the biggest problems in our relationship. Our problem was a little more...intimate.

See, there's this widely-held belief out there that once you get married, your love life is ruined. I'm here to tell you that's one big misconception: you can ruin your love life just by moving in with your partner.

You don't need a big to-do with cake, preachers, and drunken uncles. All you really need to do is share a bathroom on a daily basis. It's so much cheaper than a wedding! And, you don't need to rent a stupid poly-blend tux.

When I lived with her, entering the bathroom every day was like a different episode of "Forensic Files." There would be blood and hair everywhere, weird goopy evidence rolled up in clumps of toilet paper in the waste bin. She'd sashay out grinning and wearing makeup, looking like an angel, but often she would also be out of breath with a hint of perspiration on her brow. On those days, the bathroom would smell suspiciously like perfume and Glade -- clearly a weak attempt to cover up whatever heinous crime she had just committed in there. I was almost afraid that one day I would walk in there and find a chalk outline of a vagina on the floor. I imagined going in to brush my teeth only to have Ice-T slam me against the wall and call me a "Punk Ass Bitch!"

Ironically, it seems, too much closeness just creates distance. I mean, once your girl starts peeing in front of you, you might as well put your balls into storage. Not that communal urination is such a weird thing, but it's the gateway to the more frightening bodily functions.

First, it's silent peeing with you in the room. Next, she feels comfortable enough to converse with you about things like "work" and "shoes." Pretty soon, she won't be able to urinate without yelling through the door to you whenever any inconsequential thought passes through her cranium.

Okay, that's still fine, but here's an interesting fact you may not know: women can be in the middle of a stream, and suddenly decide, Hey, since I'm here, I might as well take a dump! I'd hate to throw away this opportunity for a two-fer! Women love bargains. It's a scientific fact - go to WebMD if you don't believe me.

I discovered this one night when my ex started talking to me in the bathroom as I stared in the mirror wondering where my youth had gone. She was on the standard rant about how work sucked and her shoes were killing her when she paused and said, "Could you please leave the room right now?"

"Why?" I queried, examining my hairline. (I'd recently declared jihad on my receding hairline and was checking to see how the war was going.)

"Leave before it's too late."

"What?... LORD BABY JESUS OF BETHLEHEM! ARE YOU...?! UGGH! That's terrible!" It was gag-inducing. I think the first time she did it, it made my nose bleed a little.

Now, I don't know exactly how pee/poo "switch-hitting" works. I imagine there's some sort of hinge mechanism involved, but I was never really good at structural engineering or Theoretical Physics, so who knows? However, I do know this: I have never been taking a pee and suddenly thought, Let me just turn around right quick and UNLOAD in this here urinal.

Anyanus, after a few of these episodes, combined with the anaphrodisiacal effects of getting to actually know someone, our love life diminished. That's a gross understatement -- if there were a sound effect to describe our romance, it would have been the sound of Pacman dying.

A month passed without any sexual intimacy. Two months passed. Still nothing.

I didn't know what to do about it, so I met with a Dominican friend of mine who had been happily married for 24 years to get his advice. I asked him, "How have you kept your sex life going after all these years?"

He responded, "I'm Latin, man!

"What does that mean?"

"I cheat!"

I swear to God that's what he said. For the record ladies, not all men cheat, okay? All men just want to cheat. Excessively.

Being neither Latin nor completely unscrupulous, I bypassed his advice and decided to get creative with our sex life. Nothing too crazy. It's not like we wore gimp masks and sock puppets, or tasered each other in the nipples. But, at my urging, we did try a little role playing. You know, like the white trash folks do in the HBO "Real Sex" series: Doctor/patient, Lawyer/client, Pizza boy/Pizza eater.

It looked like we might be able to get things spicy again... for a minute.

Then one time I came home from work. Wait, I don't have a job. Okay, I came home from... outside, and she jumped out at me in tiger-print panties proclaiming, "Rawr! I'm a TIGER! Rawr!"

All I could think was...Uh, who wants to fuck a tiger?

I sat there motionless, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. Finally, I said, "Rawr! I'm also a scary tiger! Rawr!"

She got annoyed, "No, I'm the tiger, you retard, and you're the tiger trainer! RAWR!!!"

So I took off my belt, snapped it in the air like a ringmaster, and said, "Well, you better quit stinking up the bathroom, tiger... or I'm going to fuck you?"

She got even more annoyed. I half-expected her to bite my skull, piss on the bed, and jump through the window.

It was pretty much over after that. We walked around silently, almost ignoring each other, like college roommates in an "I can't believe you ate my leftovers!" fight.

People recommended therapy, vacation, a semi-break... but the writing was on the wall and we both knew it.

Within two months, she packed up her belongings in a matching suitcase set. We left our mutual memories in a dozen duct-taped boxes - sarcophagi for the relics of another adult disappointment.

Three years earlier, when I'd met her on a blind date, she was in a Valentino dress with smiling eyes and legs that looked like the answers to all my questions. Her blonde coiffure and new woman smell were going to remedy all of my previous heartache. She was going to be the girl to end all girls.

Too bad that shit sprang a leak.

Posted by Bill Dawes at 6:45 PM