I wish I could remember how I met Shaun. He was a year ahead of me in school, entering his first year of high school before I entered the 8th grade. I remember we only hung out after school – even when we both went to the same high school, I almost never saw him. He was big into acting and singing and drama class, and I – being a child of a drama teacher – related to him on that front¹. I remember going to movies with him, and taking him to Disneyland with my mom and sister. He lived in this cool 2-story condo and had a CD player, a Sega Genesis, Sega CD, and even a Sega Game Gear in his room. We spent many late nights in that room rocking out to alternative/grunge bands of the time. It was at Shaun’s house that I first heard the entirety of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” CD, and I’d have him put it on pretty much every time I stayed the night. To this day, most early 90s music just takes me back to our all-day and all-night gaming sessions in his room. We also used the TV Tuner on his Sega Game Gear to unscramble HBO/Showtime and watch semi-nudie films late in the night. His mom later added both to their cable package, and we ditched the Game Gear in lieu of just using the TV in his room to stay up watching shitty softcore².

The summer before my Freshman year of high school, maybe 2-3 weeks before school started up again, Shaun invited me to a party. He said “there’s a few kids I know from my summer Drama classes, mostly Shadow Mountain people”. Shadow Mountain was the high school that I’d have gone to had I stayed in the same house I lived in from kindergarten to 3rd grade, so I wondered how many people there I might know from my wayback days.

The party was at someone’s house, in their backyard. There were no parents around. Kids were drinking. And smoking. And smoking weed. I remember thinking “holy shit! this is where the cool kids are! this is what the Big Kids do! I’m at a Cool Kids party!”³

People will heavily debate the “marijuana’s a gateway drug” argument all day long, but I say it is. The caveat being that it’s the fault of anti-drug advertising, not the drug itself, nor those providing it. When you grow up, as I did, with the D.A.R.E. program, you’re told countless times how terrible all drugs are. Alcohol and smoking included, but with the “…until you’re of age” qualifier. They make the illegal-at-any-age drugs seem like a one-way ticket to a life of being a loser, prisoner, shithead, criminal, you name it. As happens exceedingly often, you see a friend of yours smoking marijuana and you say “wait a minute… they’re not a fucking evil criminal loser! maybe the D.A.R.E. people were wrong!” and the hastily constructed “all drugs are evil, bad, terrible things” house of cards comes crumbling down, and – in some cases – all other drugs suddenly become fair game. You’ll be tempted to think “what else were those anti-drug fuckers wrong about?”.

That moment of realization happened to me at this party. I saw Shaun take a hit off a joint⁴, and pass it to a childhood friend of mine, Roddy. It took me a minute to realize it was Roddy⁵, as I hadn’t seen him in probably 5 years at that point. I said “Roddy? Is that you?” and he says “It’s just Rod now, Mitch”. He remembered me immediately. We caught up on life, and I had to check in on weird stories I’d hear about him over the years. That he threatened a kid at school with a gun : “haha! dude, it was an unloaded BB gun. I was just fucking with him”. That he killed his grandfather⁶ : “Ohh.. I wish! That old bag of shit died in his sleep years ago. I woke up happy for the first time in years”. That he was selling drugs : “I’ve had joints on me and sold ’em off if someone needed one, but I’m not a drug dealer – that’s too much work”. It was fascinating to have that brief conversation with him. In the modern age, we’d whip out our phones and be Facebook friends on the spot, but back then it was just “well, hey.. great seeing ya!” and I never spoke to, or heard from, him again.

As the evening progressed, people were huddled off in various corners to have little bowl-toking parties, or makeout sessions, or just catching up. Shaun and I knew almost no one there. At one point, I walked past a girl wearing a shirt with a series of skeletons fucking on it. She had long black hair and, even under the shirt, I could tell had great big titties. I said “I dig your shirt”, and she walked around in front of me. Smiling, she said “oh yeah? which one’s your favorite?”. At that point in my life, I’d only ever made out with a girl – so I didn’t have a “favorite position”⁷. I decided to be a little perv and just point at the two skeleton-couples that flanked her nipples and said “either… that one.. or… that one”.

She caught on immediately. “Ohhh.. I see. Yes.. those two?”, she said smiling. I suddenly felt like a super perv, cause I didn’t know what to say next. Thankfully, she took the reigns. “You like my tits?” – I froze – “Uh.. I.. I mean… well, like… Uhh..”, she cut me off “I’ll let you play with my tits if I can play with your dick”⁸.

Folks… there are moments in life where the stars align and the heavens smile down upon you. And everything is clear as day, and your path is laid out before you. All that’s left to do is smile, say “yes” to The Cosmos, and collect your prize.

But, I’m an idiot. And I was afraid, since no one outside my family had ever even seen my penis, that it was unbelievably small⁹ and I was afraid she’d pull it out and say “ohh jesus! that’s tiny!” and then laugh at me, and share the news with the rest of the party. It sounds insane, I know. But that was my thinking. I was too afraid that I had the world’s smallest dick.

I said “uhh.. lemme get back to you on that…”, and she walked away.

I will regret that moment for the rest of my goddamned life.

On the drive home (Shaun had just started driving about a month prior), Shaun asked me what “Big Tits Girl” said. I tried to come off cool, like “bitch wanted something from me“, but when I said “ohh.. she was like ‘let me play with your dick’ and I just..” — he practically slammed the brakes. “DUDE! She wanted to jerk you off? Why the hell didn’t you go for it?”.

I had no answers. I just put my hands in the air like “oh… is that how it works?” and he yelled various incredulous-laden obscenities for most of the drive home.

So, uhh… hey, if you’re a girl who’d be between 35 and 38 years old as of 2015, and you were a busty 8th-to-10th-grader who lived in Phoenix around 1993 and later went to (or knew people from) Shadow Mountain high school, who offered a handjob to the World’s Biggest Idiot : I’ll take that offer now.

Until then, I’ll just be over here, slapping myself for another 20 years.

1. I’m not trying to sound “cool” here, I was just never that interested in Drama. It had far more to do with being surrounded by it most of my life than trying to avoid being labelled “gay” or “nerdy” ↩

2. mostly on Showtime. HBO has always been just a hair too classy to show movies whose sole purpose was “here’s some boobs!” ↩

3. I did not, at any point, exclaim “whoo! I’m hanging with the cool kids!”, I merely had the thought over and over again throughout the night ↩

4. I mentioned his occasional weed usage in another story ↩

5. I have a lot of stories about Roddy soon to come ↩

6. whom he lived with, along with his grandmother, and who was just a pile of shit of a human – the grandfather, I mean, not the grandmother ↩

7. for the record, I still don’t, but at least I’ve tried a shitload of them at this point ↩

8. I’ve referenced this before in an old “Mitcz : The Expert” video – here’s a link to the exact spot in the video where I mentioned it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=IizKFz1mJrU#t=236  ↩

9. looking at porn mags en masse since you were 9 years old will do that to you ↩