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THE EMBARRASSING-MEMORY MURDERER

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

`There is only one memory from my life that I have both cried thinking about and jerked off thinking about,' I said into the microphone. `I am, of course, talking about how I got dumped halfway through losing my virginity.'

It was late 2009, and I had descended into the bowels of an old building in Greenwich Village in New York City to perform standup comedy for the very first time. After well over a decade of being quite likely the shyest human being alive, I was about to do perhaps the most daunting thing I could imagine.

CB's Comedy Club was surprisingly packed, the crowd mostly made up of fellow rookie comedians, and I had decided that for my first performance, instead of telling a bunch of made up jokes, why not just go all in and share a humiliating story I swore I would never tell another soul.

After nervously sitting through a plethora of performances by shaky-voiced rookies telling jokes to a room full of shaky-handed rookies waiting to take their turn—meaning that pretty much everyone was far too worried about their own upcoming set to be in a position to laugh at anything at all—suddenly my name was called.

My knees trembled as I made my way to the microphone, and I was worried that when I tried to talk nothing would come out. I considered fleeing, but instead screamed inside my brain. `Just fucking do it!' and my mouth opened, and my embarrassing story began to flow out.

As the above opening line left my tongue, something truly amazing happened; laughter rose up from the audience. Not belly laughs, mostly snickering, but I had officially earned my first ever stand-up comedy laugh. I looked out over the audience and noticed that faces were now looking up from their notepads. The rookies' attentions had been grabbed, and it was up to me to deliver.

I paused for a moment, and then told the following story:

On this fateful day, I was two weeks shy of my twenty-first birthday, caked in so much acne I looked like a burn victim, finally going through an awkward growth spurt and only part way to losing the excessive chub that had plagued my teens, as shy and timid as any human has ever been before and the only way I could have been more of a virgin is if Jesus suddenly plopped out of my genitals. I'd only even had my first kiss earlier that same year, and at this stage the most intimate thing I had done involving a girl was probably listening to one peeing through a bathroom door, thinking, `Wow, a girl's vagina is exposed on the other side of that wood.'

The girl, on the other hand, was an impossibly gorgeous teenage blond, with a smile so amazing a mere glimpse made the skin melt off my body, and she was well practiced in the celebrated art of allowing men to stick their dicks in her holes. We'd been dating for around two weeks, by which I mean I'd make horrifically awkward phone calls to her every couple of days, and she refused to tell her friends about the time we'd made out once, or be seen in public with me.

Then one day, out of the blue, she called me. It was a stinking hot summers day and she called to say that she had consumed a few alcoholic beverages, that her dad was out of town, and she was bored and wanted to know if I'd like to come over. `Maybe she wants to have sex' I joked to myself `ha ha, you crack me up Dave, as if you'll ever have sex', then I had a minor panic attack about the thought of trying to make conversation, having already used up all thirty seconds of my repertoire talking to her on the phone, however failing to think of an excuse to get out of it, I decided to go.

When I arrived I found her at the door in a bikini top and short skirt. She put on a movie of some description, but we began talking over it. At this point of my life I had picked up a hobby of trying to learn new words and pepper them into my conversation in a pathetic attempt to impress people. With pathetic the only tool in my toolbox, this was the tactic I used now, and so I uttered some word new to me, but probably not new to most people over the age of twelve, something like `zenith', `plethora' or `obviously trying too hard you moron' and then I proceeded to immediately give her a highly pretentious definition of my fancy word. This pissed her off immensely `I don't need a fucking definition, do you talk to all your friends like that or do just want me to know that you think I am stupid?' She snapped at me, and I apologized profusely, and then decided to let her raise the next topic of conversation.

Perhaps because she wanted to prove her age and experience to me, or perhaps because it was her plan all along, she chose the topic of sex. And perhaps because she wanted to prove her age and experience to me, or perhaps because it was her plan all along she now gave me a far too detailed description of her sexual history to date.

I was shocked to discover that although she had participated in numerous sexual acts, she had yet to receive oral sex. Being a gentleman, and well because the only thing I could think to say in this moment were insults towards the assholes that had got to her before me, I assured her that if she'd allowed guys to have sex with her, and given them oral, and they hadn't even offered to reciprocate, then they were assholes. I went on to say that I would go down on her anytime, anywhere. She told me that I was sweet, then she accepted my offer, and I threw up in my mouth a little, and took off her bikini bottoms.

I approached this task, which was a first for me also, full of panic, and with the strategy of a man in his twenties who has seen it done a million times in porn, but with an inkling that in the non-porn version I may have to omit jamming my entire fist inside her, and instead try to be gentle. Somehow, this approach actually proved successful; she moaned a lot, and then pulled my face to hers and she spat at me, `Bullshit you've never done that before!' At that moment I swelled with, among other things, considerable pride. Also, having performed my oral duties, and having had them received so well, I knew that if I didn't to go for that `penetration' maneuver I'd heard so much about now, then I would remain a virgin for life.

Shocking myself monumentally, I did in fact go for it; I believe I actually asked for permission, as sweetly as I could of course, `may I, now, um please, um if you don't mind, you know, um, fuck you now'. Given an enthusiastic yes I grabbed at my football team adorned Velcro wallet, and pulled out an extremely old condom, purchased in a grimy convenience store bathroom, unwrapped it awkwardly and then I rolled it on.

I did actually know how to do this, as I had done it several times previously; girls practice kissing on their female friends (apparently, and don't let me watch) and I sat at home practicing putting on condoms before falling asleep crying at the fact that I'd eventually have to pull it off without it being inserted into anything other than the hole in a melon! (Actually, I never tried this. I did have a special teddy though).

I was about to have sex. `OH MY GOD I'M ACTUALLY GOING TO DO THIS!!!' I was thinking, as the inevitable HUGE problem became clear. It was a stinking hot summer's day, and I'd refreshed my thirst many times in the preceding hours, and my bladder decided it might, at some point in the very near future, need to be emptied. While my testicles swelled with semen, my bladder was putting up a stiff argument as to which liquid would emerge from my penis first. I had a quick debate. Risk her changing her mind while I was in the bathroom, or risk urinating inside of her?

I shoved him right on in.

Two seconds later, I had pulled off something I wasn't sure if I was capable of; I did not cum within the first two seconds. Two minutes later, I had achieved my second goal; I had not cum within the first two minutes! I was doing it, I was doing sex, and I was doing it better than hordes of laughing girls had suggested most guys do on their first time. Holy shit! And yes I was watching a clock the whole time. Holy romantic.

Six minutes later and my joy was dissipating; now I really, really, no doubt about it, desperately needed to piss—like really needed to. After making the two-minute mark I promised myself I'd focus on just enjoying it, but I began to panic that I still hadn't had my orgasm, and I needed to wee, and one now seemed far more likely to happen than the other. I had numerous options:

• Fake an orgasm, even though I had never had a one near another human and wasn't sure if I could pull off an accurate portrayal even upon having a real orgasm

• Fake a cramp in my left testicle (always the crampiest of the two)

• Say `oh my god is that your dad coming in' and sneak off to pee while she frantically checked the door and his parking spot

• Make her cum so hard that SHE would have to take a break (ha ha, you crack me up Dave)

• Claim the condom had broken and run to the bathroom to check only to come back and say `false alarm, and now where were we, and why do you look white with fear like girls who have a teenage pregnancy scare look like?'

• Proclaim to be Jesus reincarnated and say `sorry, Dad says it's bad for me and the human race to waste my seed'. Or the worst of them all:

• Tell the truth

Like a trooper, I kept going as long as I could, but in reality there was only one thing I could do. I had to raise the white flag. I just HAD to stop. Yes—I literally had to pull my penis out of a beautiful girl's vagina, the first that had ever allowed me inside it, and then I whispered into her ear the sexiest combination of words in the English language: `I'm just going to the toilet.'

I needed to pee as quickly as possible and get back to that beautiful naked girl fast, but here I faced more problems. My penis was pointing at the ceiling, and the toilet was down at my knees, and worse, it had one of those toilet seats you have to hold up with your hand. I hate these goddamn things! Whoever designed toilet seats like that deserves to sit on a seat covered in urine every time they ever go to the toilet, ever again, you bastard! I got about two drops of urine in the toilet; the rest of it covered everything else in the room.

I couldn't leave it like that. What if she came in here before I had a chance to come back and clean it up? What if she discovered that I had stopped mid sex to go and piss all over her bathroom wall? What kind of a perverted psycho would I look like then? So I used about two rolls of toilet paper to clean up every discernible droplet of urine I could locate. This took, understandably, a considerable amount of time.

Eventually I returned to her, with a second condom in hand, ready to resume where I had somewhat abruptly left off. Unfortunately, she had other ideas. I found her far less than prepared for a resumption of affections; in fact, she had gotten dressed, and she was sitting on the edge of the sofa looking mightily displeased, completely clothed, and certainly no longer naked.

`What's going on?' I asked forlornly.

I stood there naked, with a still-raging hard-on, having failed to even COMPLETE my first attempt at sexual intercourse, it was now, in this humiliating state, that she coldly said to me, `I don't think this is working out—I think it would be better if we were just friends!'

I pleaded my case, but she would hear none of it. It was the end. I was being dumped. Dumped, while being rejected, still erect, HALFWAY through losing my virginity, just like it always happens in Disney movies.

Once we had finalized the niceties and resolved to be firm friends forever more, I eventually slunk away to my car, where I proceeded to burst into tears.

Not content with this slight, a couple of months later I managed to win her back, but only long enough to fall in love with her, for her to cheat on me, and then dump me—again—for another guy.

The attraction to my rival was understandable; he stole cars for a living, unequivocally raising him up in her estimation so highly she was compelled to choose him over me. I loathed her for what she had done to me. I would have done anything to make her feel the hurt and shame she had thrust upon me. But there was nothing I could do; you can't hurt people who don't have any feelings for you, and she loved this other asshole, and he probably didn't even need to urinate while they made love.

Then one day, I heard, he physically beat her. So despite his admirable bladder control, the guy turned out to be all kinds of scum. In the succeeding years, I have wished terribly awful things to befall him, but unfortunately I haven't heard any stories of a guy fitting his description who, while trying to climb over a barbed wire fence, accidentally got his testicles ripped open, leaving him trapped there, where he bled to death over an excruciating year and a half. But, you know, some stories aren't `newsworthy'; so there's always hope.

The kicker, though, and really this is the part of the story that made me carry this pain around for years on end, was that she dumped me for taking a piss mid sex, and yet she didn't even dump his ass for beating her up! This was a memory that would weigh me down in all sorts of painful ways for many, many years.

Of course, in my stand-up act, I now realized that I had ended my story on a super downer, so I fumbled around with my bits and pieces of paper and pulled out an actual joke, to go out on a high note: `When I pick my nose and have nowhere to wipe it, I put the booger right back in my nostril—I guess I'm just a neat freak.'

It was by no means a perfect comedy set, or even a particularly funny one, but my story, which was all horribly true, got at least some laughs throughout, especially when I became animated and physically acted out things like trying not to urinate on the poor girl's wall. And as the night wore on, several other comedians who were bombing spectacularly claimed that I was so good for a first timer that I must have been lying about never having performed before, which was about as big a compliment as I could imagine, even if delivered in a backhanded kinda way, you assholes, it's not my fault you can't achieve mediocre like me!

But mostly, I was proud of myself, I had done something awesome; I had taken one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, something I had literally never told another single soul in the world, and laid it out for a room full of strangers, and perhaps foolishly my new girlfriend of just two weeks, who was sitting in the audience, and I had used this humiliation to make people laugh. And by making people laugh it seemed to make it all better.

This was good.

`Wait, am I now happy I have lived though so many humiliating moments?' I thought `Maybe I should share more of those uncomfortable stories? Of course I should!' I said to myself `And awesomely I have shitloads of them'!

INTRODUCTION

When I was young, my family had a cat named Frosty. I loved Frosty enormously and growing up with him left me a life-long cat lover. Frosty was a cat that spent the night outdoors, and seemingly spent his evenings hunting, and running all around the neighborhood and, I hope, having the time of his life. Sometimes though, like most cats, he would want affection—something I was usually more than happy to provide, because Frosty was awesome, and because only a really evil person would have a problem showing such a loving creature as a kitty affection, as I am sure you would agree, right?

One evening after Frosty had been put out for the night, and as I was ready to go to bed, I noticed he was sitting at the glass sliding door adjacent to our family room. I could see he wanted some attention, but I was tired, and didn't feel like going out into the cold to give him some petting or hold him in my arms. `I'll do it tomorrow,' I distinctly remember thinking to myself.

When I woke up the next morning, Frosty was still in the same spot. He had died overnight. Right there, in that spot, wanting some love. Knowing that I had considered giving him the affection that he needed and then had made a conscious decision not to, out of pure laziness, crushed me, made me hate myself, and is still the single biggest regret in my life. Also did you agree with me above? If not you probably feel pretty fucking guilty now, right?

Cut to January 2010, and now several years after finally overcoming a couple of lazy decades of crippling depression, and things are actually going really great for me. My career feels as though it is about to take off, I spend my days and nights laughing, making people laugh and doing the things that I love, I have friends I truly care about, I am feeling attractive and healthy, and I am confident and happy, full of direction and optimism, and mentally and emotionally sound like I have never been before, and I haven't even been dumped in favor of a complete scumbag who punches girls in years. It was pretty sweet. And when things aren't broke, why try to fix them, right?

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE EMBARRASSING-MEMORY MURDERERby David Tieck Copyright © 2012 by David Tieck. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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