by Mike Stangle
It was right about this time that I was gaining some confidence with the fairer sex. Have you ever seen those signs outside factories that say IT HAS BEEN 64 DAYS SINCE OUR LAST ACCIDENT? They just keep adding another day on that red number to let everyone know how safe they are. It had been sixty-four days since my last really embarrassing sexual encounter. For my factory, that was a record! Confidence was high, sexual morale was trending upward, and I was feeling good. It was right about this time that I met Team Player. Team Player and I are in touch to this very day. She’s a great gal. When she found out about this book, she made me swear I wouldn’t write about her. Yeah, right! Come on! This story isn’t even your fault, TP. Everything else was, though.
Team Player was a little sexpot. She was a sultry five feet two, DD, freckled shoulders, strawberry blonde smoldering temptress. She was really something. TP was way out of my league, and a year older, too. Bonus points on that one. I had known TP for a few months and been into her for exactly that long. I knew she thought I was at least cute, maybe because there was such a height differential between us that she couldn’t really see the details of my face? I always get a bump from short girls, and I never understood why. They are basically just looking up my nostrils. I’ll take it, though.
I had been working on a slow play with TP since day one. A night came when we were together and I was just feeling it. For one reason or another, I had a good showing when we were together at a bar that night. Maybe I was wearing a cool shirt or she saw me yucking it up with the bouncer? Maybe I had just trimmed my nose hairs and she noticed? Who knows. Somehow I impressed her enough to put it out there that I thought she was just swell and I’d like to set up a second (sober) meeting a couple of nights later. She agreed! People don’t go on dates in college; that’s just ridiculous. What was a sober meet-up? It was a school night, and she wanted to watch a movie . . . and you know what that means. I was in like Flynn! The only problem was I hadn’t had sober sex in months. It was college! If you’re single, when is the last time you had a 100 percent sober sexual encounter with someone brand-new? If it was recently, I’m jealous. If you pulled this off in college, I’m green with envy! Most sex outside of a relationship is drunk, especially in college. I’m supposed to work up the balls to perform without a buzz on? Are you nuts? If I had sex sober, I tended to think about things too much. I’d finish too quick, I’d get too concerned about how it was for her, or I’d become distracted by things in my room that I never noticed before, because I had always been drunk. Hey, when did I get a cactus? Drunk sex just took all of that off the table. It didn’t afford me the opportunity to overthink it. Now I was facing the Mount Everest of sober sex. TP was totally and completely sexually intimidating. What could I do? I was a goner if I didn’t come up with a game plan. Christ, don’t panic. What are my options?
First, use a condom! Safety first. That’s always my motto. Well, that’s always my sexual motto, anyway. I actually don’t apply it to anything else in my life. In fact, I sort of disregard it if we aren’t talking about my penis. People protect what they naturally love. I don’t have a son. I don’t have a dog. My penis is all I’ve got. So I went to the condom store: Wal-Mart. After a ten-minute distraction in the frozen pizza section (happens to the best of us) I made my way over to the condom area with a couple of DiGiornos in tow. The condom section isn’t really that big compared to something like the snack isle, the shampoo section, or even the frozen pizza section. People spread out when shopping for those items, because there are so many options. You can fit all the condom options on one five-foot shelf, top to bottom. This makes everyone shuffle into one spot, shoulder to shoulder. Guys give each other nods and looks like Yeeaah buddy, you too? All right! Gals? They just circle the section and pretend to be shopping for tampons or something until the coast is clear.
After exchanging knowing glances with the fellas around me, I started to browse through my options. Textured, tantric, ultrathin, shared pleasure, flavored (cool!), glow in the dark (whaaat!?), spermicide (gross!). Naturally, I had my sights set on some lambskin condoms, because lambskin is classy and gals like luxury. That was until I noticed a pack that said extended pleasure written across the box like a fucking Lite-Brite. I was so intrigued. Could this be the answer to my prayers? Extending our pleasure was literally the exact goal I was looking to achieve. I was saved! I did a quick read of the information on the box, none of which I actually paid any attention to, and I was sold.
Team Player was waiting for me at my place (ballsy move, love it) and looking foxy. She had the comfortable Sunday casual look down like you wouldn’t believe. Dresses, bikinis, tank tops—those are easy to make look sexy. You just put your boobs into the fabric that holds the boobs, and BAM! Fellas be staring. But when you can make your lying-around look turn some heads, you’ve really got it going on. Team Player had it going on. She was definitely wearing that Victoria’s Secret body spray all the gals were wearing back then. Where do I sign?
I popped a DVD into my laptop to get movie night started. Lion King. It was Dave’s go-to movie to watch with a gal when he was in college. I will neither justify nor defend this move. Say what you will about his tactics, but it works. I don’t think Mufasa had even held newborn Simba up for all of the animal kingdom to behold before Team Player and I started doing some serious necking. I was so confident with my purchase that all of that sexual anxiety had gone right out the window. I was a champ! We were about to have some extendedly pleasurable coitus. Flip the factory sign to 65, folks! I started really putting some moves on her. We took our time; I guess you do that during sober sex. We did some hand stuff. We warmed up. We got the blood flowing. It was nice. Soon, we were ready for extended pleasure.
Is there any more vulnerable moment a man can have than when he is putting a condom on? The act of putting a rubber on is just so unnatural. It creates a really annoying break in the romance, plus, they are smelly! I always feel like the gal is looking over my shoulder, judging my technique or something. I did the best a man could do to maintain sexual flow while seamlessly fitting a piece of latex around his dick. I thought I had done a pretty good job on all fronts, but once this extended pleasure condom was on, I instantly knew something was wrong.
Very wrong! Oh my God, just writing this is taking me back there! What was happening? What was this feeling? The condom was . . . what was it doing? What is this? No! It was making my wiener go numb! NUMB. As in zero feeling. Think about when you get Novocain at the dentist, and you can’t really talk because your mouth is numb, so you just spit and drool instead of forming real words. What if that happened right before you had to give an important speech? That was what was happening with my penis! My penis all of a sudden became a stuttering King George VI addressing the British at Wembley!
Set the sign back to 0 DAYS SINCE OUR LAST ACCIDENT. I hadn’t thought this whole “extended pleasure” thing through. You guys probably picked up on that at least a few paragraphs ago, right? Well, I didn’t, because I was an idiot, okay? I was panicking; extended pleasure, how did I get the interpretation so wrong? How did I just instantly believe that if I wore this particular condom I would just last a long time and everything would be great? Sex wasn’t a cell phone contract I could just extend. Wear this condom for unlimited nights and weekends! So what does “extended pleasure” really mean? Oh, let me tell you, the condom company just coats the inside of these bad boys with fucking Novocain! When marketers say, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” they are 100 percent referring to Mike Stangle buying condoms in a Wal-Mart while distracted by a combination of sexual anxiety and frozen pizzas. Okay, deep breath, Mike. Assess the situation. My dick was completely numb, but somehow still hard. This was a blessing. Considering my past luck, I just automatically assumed numbness meant I would very quickly go soft. No need to totally panic—ah shit, now it went soft, too. Panic! Sexual anxiety combined with Novocain? I didn’t stand a chance. Plus, by this point, Mufasa had just been stampeded by a herd of gazell
es. Shit was hitting the fan.
It didn’t take long for Team Player to pick up on the problem. She knew something was going on, and it didn’t take her long to ask about it. How was I supposed to explain? No way. I was silent. At first, she was concerned it was something she did. That always surprised me about gals, that when a guy can’t perform, the gal immediately thinks it was something she did? Little hint for you ladies: It’s never something you did. Gals don’t make boners go away, ever. Typically, if it isn’t because we wore a DICK-NUMBING PIECE OF LATEX THAT TRICKED US, it’s some other problem with us, so keep your head up. I assured Team Player it wasn’t her fault at all, then scampered and quickly did a fake look at the condom package and pulled something like an Ohhh shit, these are extended pleasure? What the hell? Must have grabbed the wrong pack at the store move. It was my only option.
I quickly boiled it down for her, and to her credit and my surprise, she didn’t waste a second trying to right this wrong. She was there to help, and she made that clear. As if my penis were drowning and my balls contained oxygen, Team Player (aptly named now, right?!) ripped that penis sheath from hell off me and immediately began the rescue effort. As her head disappeared below my twin comforter I thought, Okay, we are at least addressing the problem now. We can get through this together. It felt nice. It felt real nice. Actually, wait a minute, it was working! Whatever she did down there helped a ton. At first I couldn’t feel it at all, but I think my brain, penis, and heart all got together on one end of the tug-of-war against Novocain and collectively yelled “Heave!” I was getting harder, then getting feeling back—the Novocain was wearing off! After just a few minutes, I was up and running. The flag was raised to full mast and patriotically blowing in the breeze. God Bless America!
TP came back upstairs and we got back into our horizontal no-pants dance. At this point, we got rid of the condom plan altogether. I certainly wasn’t complaining. The next few minutes were a total roller coaster! Ups, downs, upside downs, screams! It seemed that after all this nonsense, the stars had finally aligned and all was right in the world. We were sexing! And it was fun. I discovered she was a dirty talker. That is such a huge plus, ladies. Man, do I love dirty talk. I was getting really into everything she was saying, and as time went on, the things she was saying got saltier, dirtier, and even sort of nonsensical. Soon I couldn’t even understand what she was saying! Wait, was this some sort of advanced-level stuff that I was now hearing for the first time and having trouble keeping up with? It was like a mix of a whisper and slur, but there was a decent amount of lip sounds incorporated. I wasn’t going to miss out on this. I decided to mix the position up to get a better listen. The position switch gave me a good look at her face, and that tipped me off that something wasn’t quite right.
Her lips looked like Bubba’s lips in Forrest Gump. Had she been on the army base in Vietnam, Lieutenant Dan would warn her to tuck it in or else she’d get it caught on a tripwire. As I contemplated whether she was having a stroke, I realized just what was happening. When TP was downtown resurrecting my penis, she was really just sucking all of the Novocain into her mouth, tongue, cheeks, and throat. There was drool everywhere. The craziest part, which at first seemed like a saving grace but ended up backfiring, was that it did not deter her at all! It was a total circus. That’s a huge difference between guys and gals. If a guy starts uncontrollably drooling and slurring his words beyond recognition, no gal will continue to have sex. You’d stop and ask just what the hell is going on. Guys just keep on humping. Once we start, the only three things that will stop us are the words “Stop,” “My dad is home!” and “I’m a man.” Technically, I can’t know for sure if she said any of those words, because she couldn’t fucking talk, but her enthusiasm reassured this dog that he should keep on having his day.
While all this was going on, I hadn’t even considered my roommates. No one was home when Team Player had come over, so no one knew I had a girl in my room at all. I was living with six other guys at the time, and they were some real sickos. A coupla booze-baggin’, no-conscience-havin’, dope-smokin’ scumbags. My best friends! These guys got home sometime between my initial panic and TP’s role as a Rescue Ranger. I could hear the boys hanging in my living room, just one door away.
As my buddies sat outside my bedroom, TP continued to bring the heat. Not only did she not miss a beat physically, but also she continued to try to talk dirty, despite not being able to form any understandable words. This girl was on top of me, giving maximum effort, and drooling on me like a bloodhound. If any of you fellas are asking yourself why I didn’t just flip into missionary and take control of the situation—don’t you know how Jimi Hendrix died, choking on his own vomit? I was afraid that I was experiencing a close cousin of this exact scenario. What if she was on her back and couldn’t feel the saliva accumulating in the back of her throat until it was too late? No way, guys, I can’t afford a lawyer! We were already living on the edge with no rubber. I wasn’t going to take any more risks. I was perfectly happy with her on top and me on the bottom, where I could serve as sex partner, observer, and lifeguard. Just Mike and gravity, working together, trying to hang on until the end.
Soon, through the paper-thin walls of my college crack house, all my roommates began to hear the noises. They muted the TV and their curiosity grew even more. They moved from the couch toward the wall, and then toward my door. They were perplexed and confused by what they heard. What did the evidence suggest? It seemed to them as though Mike was in his room and he was having sex. Cool! They high-fived in my honor and continued to listen like the sexual deviants they all were. Who is Stangle having sex with in there? What is that sound? Wait, is he? She sounds like some sort of . . . a retarded girl? And what’s that in the background? Are they watching The Lion King? Is Mike in there taking advantage of a special needs child!? If so, what the hell? They were genuinely concerned! Some were impressed, the sickos. I immediately started hearing the hooting, the hollering, the off-color jokes made loud enough to be sure I could hear. They had no idea! Sex with a special-needs gal would have been a lazy Sunday afternoon compared to what I’d just gone through.
Considering the circumstances, the sex was actually pretty great. After all of this anxiety, Team Player’s drool face actually helped me get over my original fears/intimidations. It was like the Novocain from the condom knocked her down a peg in my fantasy draft, and I was able to relax, connect, and have some fun with this drooling-and-babbling bombshell. We were able to have a good laugh about it once the dust had settled. As an added bonus, with her help I was able to convince my roommates not to call the police.
Team Player didn’t end up being my girlfriend. We didn’t even really end up “dating,” exclusively speaking. What we did have was one of those classic college-fling-type situations. Yeah, my counter went back to zero days, but so what! From this disaster forward, Team Player and I had an incredibly honest, open “friendship” (college-style). Yes, we each humiliated ourselves at different points in our roller-coaster ride of a sexual encounter—but yes, we could relax around each other, because we’d seen each other at our worst.
Inside the Sicko’s Studio
Mike’s Live-Time Notes of Dave’s Most Recent Sexual Encounter
(Mike)
One time when Dave and I got Craigslist-famous for a week and people were actually paying attention to us, we got into some real weird shit. If you go viral, you’re automatically playing with house money. Don’t waste it. When the next viral craze breaks two days later, and you have to go back to being a normal person, you’re going to regret not taking advantage of all the eyes on you. Me and Dave? We got downright silly. We went looking for trouble and found it. A lot of crazy shit started to happen all at once. How many times have you thought of a brilliant idea, only to later forget it because the brain cells previously allocated to remembering it had to be reassigned to keeping a bunch of Twisted Teas at bay? We found the best way to remember an idea to expand on is the “notes�
� folder in our iPhones—which you can share, by the way. Welcome to 2015, motherfuckers! It is sick! In fact, I’m writing this from our notes folder right now. I’m on the subway, I’ve got no service, I’m listening to John Mayer, and I’m deep in notes. Dave’s at work right now, definitely moving an afternoon bowel, typing away in our “notes” on his phone. Good for him! That’s actually where the Craigslist ad was born, in a stall over at Discovery Channel on the seventh floor. If he wasn’t going to get fired before, that disclosure should be the nail in the coffin. Sorry, Dave. You were poop-grunting while being creative—that’s multitasking. You’re a real company man; they’d be foolish to let you go. Anyway, this past summer, Dave and I were hitting “notes” pretty hard.
Every time you opened up “Stangle Notes,” you read the last person’s disgusting and disturbed thoughts, experiences, and ideas. We had a lot of them, too. It was a strange time. Stangle Notes became our drawing board, message board, and Real World–style drunk confession room. After you finish reading this chapter, think about finding someone to share a notes folder with. You two will learn so much about each other!
I was thumbing through Stangle Notes recently and came across a pretty strange, pretty disturbing entry. And that’s saying something. This entry really struck a nerve. I honest to God hadn’t remembered writing it. . . . I didn’t even really remember the night it was written, until I checked the date of the entry and reread the post a few times.
After reading this entry, I tried six different times to figure out how to put it in context for you. But you know what? I give up! I shouldn’t have to sit here and struggle to make Dave sound normal. He isn’t; he’s a freak who is really good at coming off as normal to most people most of the time. I emailed Dave a copy of what I reread in the notes and told him I was having trouble writing the piece and thought a thorough Q&A might jolt my memory. Then it occurred to me—did Dave even remember this? I dove in headfirst with the Q’s, and couldn’t believe how well he remembered the A’s. What follows is our attempt to put together the pieces.
