I’ve been rather absent from the blog lately, not for lack of things to say—I’m rarely so lacking. I’ve been busy with my job, more interested in reading than in writing, preoccupied with thoughts of house shopping, fantasies on resurrecting a legal career, and starting a business venture, and of course forever chasing my wiley libido with endless porn surfing, insipid chatting with nameless gays, and looking for cute boys to play with. Several topics have come to mind the last few weeks, topics which although interesting to me, just haven’t been enough to get me to sit down and write. Here are a few—ok, just one for now.

Ann recently wrote a little piece listing her top ten most embarrassing moments. I wondered what I could come up with. My problem is that my memory of the past is conveniently sketchy. Even memories of events that ought to be seared into the brain, such as embarrassing moments, fail me. I have nothing special to offer. But let’s see—

In grade school I drafted my mother to take a day off of work to help with a school field trip to the Drake oil wells in Titusville, PA. I was so happy (I was such a mamma’s boy as a child). But when I didn’t get to be in the group of kids assigned to her, I cried. Actually, I don’t think anyone but my mother saw me.

There was a period when I was young when I became very fearful that I wasn’t eating enough before bedtime and that consequently I’d vomit. The reasoning arose out of the neurotic fears of a child which I won’t go into now. But one night I ate so much before bed that, upon walking into my room, I vomited an entire stomach’s contents of toasted bread onto the (thankfully) hardwood floor.

Of course, farting loudly when I started laughing at something someone said at a large family gathering assembled in the living room after Thanksgiving dinner. I was probably in 7th or 8th grade.

There were many moments involving me and my nearly obsessive jerk-off habit. What teenage boy doesn’t have that and the embarrassing moments to accompany it? I DO remember one occasion, though, after burying deep in the bottom of my laundry pile something I’d used to clean up with. At one point my mother and our dog entered my room and the dog immediately started digging at the laundry, smelling the ... well, dried semen. I’m not sure how I covered that up, and I’m not sure if my mother figured it out or not. And of course there are the times when my sister would walk in on me and I’d scramble to cover myself. She never got a good view of my activities, but my obvious embarrassment was itself embarrassing. She surely knew what I had been doing.

I remember once getting a special pass with Jeff Gregg to get out of study hall to play basketball in the small empty gym. What in the world was he thinking by asking me to join him? I couldn’t play basketball! I fell flat on my face at one point, my glasses falling onto the gym floor and me looking like the little twit geek that I was.

I once applied for a clerkship while in law school, and I used the word ‘reframe’ instead of ‘refrain’. I didn’t realize there was such a word as ‘refrain’. I thought everyone was saying ‘reframe’. Hehe Idiot.

Everyday after 6th period during my senior year of high school I’d emerge from class and have to walk the busy hall to my next class with a raging erection in my pants. There was no explaining it, but I swear it was like clock work. Usually I’d carry books in front of me awkwardly. One day my friend Scott saw what was going on and said with a smart-ass grin, “What are you doing there?” He knew exactly what I was doing. That was embarrassing.

I once got into a shouting argument with a Time Warner customer service agent about a bill and realized midway through that I was wrong. That’s boring, I know—scraping the bottom here—but it stuck in my mind.

Of course there are the few embarrassing sexual misadventures, which shall remain my little secret.