Orgasms are Entertaining

When movie director Joe Christ came to town, he was jonesing for some weed. He’d rolled his last joint and stared at it for two minutes before he lit it. It was a very thin joint, made from the bottom of the bag.

We were in Miranda, my girlfriend’s, apartment. I was talking to Amanda, the actresses who starred in Joe’s latest movie, Amy Strangled A Small Child. I was talking to her about what it’s like to be into the whole goth and industrial scene in the deep south, and suddenly she gets this strange look on her face, like I’d just done something disgusting, or she had a bad itch on her back. She closed her eyes, put her hands in front of her face and sneezed. Then she shook her head and wiped her hands on her jeans.

“I love sneezing,” she said. “It’s the greatest feeling.”

“And it’s terrible,” I said, “when you’re about to sneeze and then you don’t.”

Joe Christ blinked at us through a thin trail of smoke. “Do you guys want a hit?”

“Sneezing gives you such a feeling of release,” Amanda said. “The only things comparable are urinating when you’ve waited a long time and you’re about to burst, or taking a really good shit. It’s all such a good feeling.”

I looked at her and waited. I looked at her and waited a bit more. Finally, I asked her, “Didn’t you leave one thing out?”

She laughed and lit a cigarette. “I wouldn’t know, I’m a virgin.”

A virgin? I thought. But she used to work at a tittie bar in Arkansas! And in Amy Strangled A Small Child there was a terrible rape scene, obviously not real, but it’s hard for me to imagine that a virgin would agree to do a rape scene.

“It’s no sneeze,” I said, “I’ll grant you that. But orgasms can definitely be entertaining.”

My girlfriend, Miranda, was on the phone in the bedroom. “What was that? Did you say entertaining?” she said.

Amanda and I laughed.

Joe must’ve heard us laughing, because he leaned forward on the couch and opened his eyes. “What’s funny,” he said. No one answered. “I met a guy in Tennessee,” he began, “that had the most violent sneezes….”

Amanda offered me a cigarette and leaned towards me. “Joe never tells short stories,” she said quietly. “When he finally gets to the end, it’s always such a relief.”

“Like a sneeze?”

“Exactly.”