I’ve recently been playing little Q & A games with a fellow blogger. They’re fun and hilarious and enlightening. Sometimes they’re silly. Sometimes they’re serious. You should totally try it with a friend, relative or someone you’re supertotally digging.
But sometimes seemingly innocuous questions accidentally invoke deeper responses. The following question posed to me had such an effect:
What is your least favorite song?
I didn’t even have to think about it. I immediately replied,
“Push It” by Salt-N-Pepa.
He never asked why I chose that response. But someone else here knows the story and said I should share it sometime. I said “NOFUCKINGWAY AM I FUCKINGEVER DOING THAT. I’LL DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS BEFORE I’D EVEN CONSIDER IT.”
So here I am sharing that little piece of my history. Are you ready? It’s fucking nasty and terrible and traumatic and eyeburning misery. But apparently quite fucking hilarious from an outsider’s perspective. (Thanks a lot for laughing. You know who you are!) Let’s start with…
The Reason Why You Should Always Fucking Knock
So it’s like, what? 1989? 1990? That sounds about right, because given where we were living at the time, I had to be around nine or ten years old. Which puts my older brother at fourteen or fifteen.
The point is that this was the year of my doom. My life was ruined for fuckingever. Or at least for the rest of the week. Same difference. It has been twenty-fucking-five years, and I still cannot forget it. All because of a careless door opening and all the tits in the world descending upon my heretofore innocent little eyeballs.
I have no idea what I wanted. I really don’t. Hell, I may have even been being a nosy little sister. The music was blaring from my brother’s room. I figured he’s in there by himself, doing something he’s not supposed to be doing. Like those things he used to roll on my elementary school D.A.R.E. pamphlets, then admonish me not to tell mom. Or just listening to all that naughty music with the curse words that mom hated. Words like motherfucker and dick and pussy. I didn’t know what all that meant, except it was supposed to be bad bad bad and you’re going straight to hell if you even hear those words. And I’d heard a lot from my brother, so I knew I was doomed to burn in the fiery abyss for all of eternity and beyond. Of course I don’t hear, think or dare say words like that anymore. So maybe there’s some motherfucking hope for me yet.
I walk down the little hallway.
I hesitate.
I turn the knob.
I open the door.
I died.
What had been seen would never been unseen. And I just knew I was going to frolic with Satan forever after this. No one could ever enter the pearly gates after witnessing…
The Tits That Sealed My Fate
My brother was in there, alright. But he wasn’t alone. There were tits all over the room. Wall to wall tits. I was drowning in tits. All I could see were tits. They were big and heavy looking. Thousands of them. Taunting me and my ruination. And the music of choice?
“Push It” by Salt-N-Peppa. Burned into my brain. Foreverandeverandfuckingeveramen.
The girl was curvy. Long, straight blonde hair. And completely topless. Totally naked on top.
She immediately covered herself, and I ran away crying. Seriously. Crying. Straight to the couch I went, curling up into a ball and sobbing. I didn’t really understand much at this point, but I knew it was bad bad bad. And it would definitely end in hell. My brother was going to hell. His friend was going to hell. And my eyeballs were most definitely going to hell.
But if I thought my torment was over, I was wrong. Woefully wrong. It had only just begun. What came next haunts me far more than the Bouncing Boobs of Babylon.
The Punishment to End All Punishments
My brother immediately followed me into the living room, followed shortly there after by Booby Betty. Thankfully she had put her top back on, at least one small act of mercy in my impending waterboarding musical torture.
He’d brought his little silver boombox and two cassette tapes. He pulled up a chair from the dining table, and the girl sat next to him, on the coffee table. They sat so close to me that I could smell their sin oozing through their pores. Fucking bastards.
First, he speaks to me in a soothing tone. But I’m still sobbing and refuse to roll over and face him. I kept my hands over my eyes, covering my face and my shame.
Then he starts shaking me and gets loud.
Steph! Look at me!
I’m not fucking kidding!Turn over damnit and look at me!
Steph!
Steph!
I finally reduced my sobs to shaking sniveling snotty sniffles. I rolled over, and first he tells me I’d better not tell mom. And then he tells me how bad I was for not knocking. That this is all my fault, because I should have knocked. She wouldn’t even have been naked if I had knocked.
And then he tells me I need to be punished.
He smirks.
The girl looks uncomfortable, shifting on the table.
He pops the first cassette into the boom box.
And the lyrics of “Push It” blare out at full volume. Straight into my little skull. He played the song all the way through, singing along with it. Laughing. Yanking my hands away from my ears. Pushing me down when I tried to get up to leave.
When that was over, he wasn’t finished. I thought it was done, but no. The next hour of my life was complete and abject misery.
Never Sit on Your Sister and Punish Her with Music
He needed to make sure I was good and punished. And would never ever ever again forget to knock on the door.
He popped the next cassette in. One of 2 Live Crew’s.
He pushed play.
I tried to get up, to get away. I was sobbing my whole guts out.
Not so fast.
He got up and sat on the edge of the couch and held me down.
The girl started protesting on my behalf.
She was visibly uncomfortable and told him to stop.
He shut her up and told her I deserved it.
That fucker sat there and held me down through the entire album.
Then he finished it up by playing “Push It” once more.
By the end of it all, my ten-year-old little self was a devastated shambles. I felt guilt, shame, confusion, fear, sadness, all of it. I completely internalized the whole situation. I wish I could forget that day. It doesn’t haunt me like other things do. But damnit, that was a bad fucking day!
But lessons were certainly learned, my dear Peopleaneous.
The Moral of the Story is:
Always Fucking Knock. Or Ye Shall be Tormented ForFuckingEver by the Ghosts of a Thousand Tits. ~Buddha
Never Punish Thy Young Sister with Pornographic Music. ~Ghandi
Never Ever Ever Use Words like Motherfucker and Dick and Pussy. Or Ye Shall Surely Perish. ~Confucius
And when Someone asks You to Please Please Stop that Song, because You Just Don’t Understand, Please Entertain her Seemingly Silly Whim. For You will Only Truly Understand if You, too, have been Waterboarded Musically Tortured. ~Churchill
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