Authors: Laura Cooper
My Path to the Pole
Big Black Blow Up Man
That Saturday I left a message for Patty. I need someone to go bikini and toy shopping with me. It takes a special friend to accompany you on that kind of shopping trip, after all. An hour later my phone rings, “Oh girl, you have to come over and meet these crazy women!” I can hear raucous laughter in the background.
“What’s going on over there?”
“Just a bunch of us from the club hanging out by the pool. Come on!”
As I pull into her driveway I can’t help but notice that every single car in her yard is new. My van chokes a little, and seems to get smaller as I pull it between a black Mercedes SLS and a BMW M5. I bolster as soon as I am free of it. Like wearing an old coat over your new prom dress, you just want it off as soon as possible. Patty introduces me to Bonnie Dangerfield, Tonya Conners, and Terry Chalmers. All of whom hug me tightly as if I am a long lost sister. Terry smiles brightly, “Want to take a swim with me?”
The other women groan and I scan their faces to discover the hidden joke. No one is forthcoming. I shake my head nonetheless, “No thanks, I didn’t bring my suit.” And again the group moans.
But Terry sticks out her bottom lip and shrugs, “You don’t know what you’re missing!” And she plods off in her pink bikini towards the pool. Her deep Lebanese figure is silhouetted by the doorway as she casts one last pout in my direction.
I turn to Patty and Bonnie and ask, “So what’s all the groaning for?”
Bonnie chuckles, “Terry’s examining her lesbian tendencies this month. You’re fresh meat to her right now!”
Patty laughs, “Lebanese Lesbian. Try to say that five times!”
They all laugh while I consider the close call. I’m completely oblivious to the gay lifestyle. I’ve just never been able to tell if someone is gay or not. I’ve always thought they were just people with fantastic personalities. I feel like she’d have to explain how to do it to me. Can we say
awkward
here? But if I’ve learned one thing over the past few weeks it’s never say never! But the conversation moves on.
“So what do you think we ought to get Kelly for her birthday?” Patty chirps and hands me a Mimosa. “I’m getting her a big black blow up doll.”
I gulp my drink. “Seriously? Who’s Kelly?”
Patty leans against her kitchen counter, “Another one of us, and she’s always asking me for one of my ‘chocolately kisses,’ kind of annoying really. So I’m getting her something ‘chocolately’ to kiss.”
Bonnie recovers from choking on her drink, “What? Oh that’s fucking hilarious!” She nods frantically. “Let’s dress him up like a cowboy or something!”
“Hey, come up with your own gift idea,” Patty teases.
“Oh come on. We could make a whole theme party around this,” Bonnie protests, tossing a dirty blond mane around her shoulder that makes her the envy of Patty’s well tended horses.
“Theme party around what?” Terry strolls into Patty’s kitchen, in her bathrobe, fresh from the pool.
“So we’re planning Kelly’s birthday party. Any ideas?” Bonnie turns towards Terry. “And no trash cans or saran wrap!” she adds as an afterthought.
Terry shrugs, “Too bad, because it was a lot of fun.”
“I’m getting her a big black blow up doll,” Patty repeats.
Terry’s eye’s perk up, “When are you going to get it?” The thought apparently interests her.
“Was thinking of running over there shortly,” Patty mumbles, throwing the tennis ball one more time towards her dogs on the lawn. In a few minutes they’ll be sitting back at the screened door, ball in mouth, ready for another round.
“Oooh, I want to go with you!” Terry gleams, “I’ve got a whole list of things I need!”
“I’ll go with ya’ll.” Bonnie chimes in, “Could use another dildo. Wore mine out.”
“Damn Bonnie! Don’t you keep any secrets?” Terry laughs, feigning shock.
“What do you want me to say? Until I find a decent man, I need my dildo!” She calls out defensively as she twirls her finger in her hair, “You don’t want to see me without my orgasm. It ain’t pretty!”
Patty laughs, “Alright ladies, we leave in fifteen minutes!”
We pull into Generation X in my minivan. As it turns out, it’s the only vehicle that will carry us all. I sigh after warning them all of the elusive, world’s largest ball of chewed gum that had been created and lost somewhere in the van during our last family trip to D.C.
“I’m nervous. I don’t want to go in,” I say quietly from the front seat as I stare at the front of the non-descript building with ice water running through my knees.
“Doesn’t matter whether you go in or not, either way you’re a creep,” Patty quips comically.
“How’s that?” Terry raises an eyebrow.
“Either you’re in the sex store buying a giant black blow up doll or you’re the one waiting in the car for us like some freaky get away girl. Might as well come in, creep!”
I glare at her as the women struggle with the child-proof lock on the back sliding door, I push a button on the dash and it slides open. Relieved to escape the ‘Cheeto wagon,’ as I call it, they all pile out. Hastily I grab my purse and follow them, intent upon telling anyone in my vicinity that we’re shopping for gag gifts.
“Here’s one!” I call out to Terry and Bonnie, who are wandering open mouthed around the store. Terry has a basket she’s filling up quickly as they meander to my side. Bonnie’s reading glasses slide down her nose as she reads the directions on the back of the box.
“How are we going to blow this up?” she asks peering up at us above her readers.
That hadn’t occurred to anyone. “A bicycle pump?” I suggest timidly.
“Wonder where the plug to blow it up is?” Terry’s infectious laugh comes from behind us. She has an entire basket full of sex toys draped over her arm and is fiddling through it as if mentally checking the items off her list.
Bonnie, Patty and I laugh with her. “I bet I can guess!” I chuckle.
“Surely they blow them up here.” Bonnie looks around the store for a possible sign that declares, ‘Dolls blown here.’ There is none.
We move towards the tall glass counter. The store clerk is on an entirely different level than the rest of the store. Literally, the entire check out register is at least two steps higher than the shopping area so that the clerk can watch for shoplifters I presume idly. “Must be a real problem with people stealing dildos?” Patty questions the pimpled young clerk behind the counter.
He shrugs dully, but stands waiting for her to place the blow up doll on the counter as if he doesn’t have the patience for her games. He is there to check people out, not make friends. I don’t miss the absurdity of the entire situation. Do they have a class or something to teach employee’s how to sell sex toys with a straight face? I shrink behind Patty and Bonnie with my small collection of two vibrators and four packs of AA batteries.
Patty sits the doll carefully onto the glass countertop which covers an array of brightly colored balls and marijuana pipes. “Do you blow these up here?” she asks.
Now let me tell you, my best friend can be an intimidating force when she wants to be. She got that from her Momma, and I wonder if she isn’t fighting the urge to yank this impertinent kid over the counter and paddle his behind. Poor kid doesn’t have a prayer.
“Excuse me?” The kids’ Buckingham Guard stance falters.
“I mean, is there a charge for blowing this up here?” Patty restates her question.
I nudge Patty from behind and lean forward to whisper, “I’m not riding all the way home with a blow up doll sitting next to me.”
“You want us to put him in the trunk?” Bonnie whispers.
“It’s a van. There is no trunk!” I shake my head.
“Oh snap!” Bonnie exclaims. “I’ll sit in the back with it. If someone starts staring he’ll moon them!”
Patty turns back to the clerk. “Okay, how much?”
The poor kid is clearly taken off his rocker. “Ma’am we um… don’t offer that service.”
Patty tries to grasp our situation, “So how are we supposed to blow it up?”
Terry and Bonnie follow my stare at the young troubled man. “Well, I mean, you have to blow it up… you know with your lips,” he stammers, turning redder by the second.
I frown. My lungs are nowhere near strong enough to blow up my pool float each summer, much less this entire doll. I turn to Bonnie and raise my eyebrows?
She catches my meaning, “Oh no, not me. I can’t blow that whole thing up. I’ll stroke out for sure.”
Terry puts her hand on my shoulder, “We’ll get Steve to do it.”
The young clerk coughs heavily in an attempt to cover his laugh. We all stare at him blankly. It’s the perfect plan. We’ll get Steve to do it.
Patty turns and nods to the clerk to go ahead with the transaction. “Okay then, wrap it up, Dudley!”
“Ma’am, would you like batteries or condoms with this?” He asks, clearly struggling to hold back gut wrenching laughter.
I frown, “What does it need batteries for?” I’m thinking it is animated in some way.
He turns the box around on the counter and points to the directions. This one comes equipped with a vibrating penis.
Patty laughs, “Oh, well then, by all means add in batteries. A case please.”
“And condoms?” He struggles.
“What are the condoms for? He’s not going out tonight, is he?” I chirp.
Bonnie and Terry gulp, holding in their laughter to help this poor child maintain some sliver of dignity.
“Oh, no ma’am. It’s just that, for uh… comfort reasons, most people used ribbed condoms with them.”
Patty waves and nods for him to throw in the condoms. Maybe this pimply teenager knows what he’s talking about; it certainly doesn’t appear that any of us do. To be honest, their naivety is a little refreshing. They’re nothing like the whores I’d imagined them being. As a matter of fact, they all seem like Patty… and me.
Blow up man adds the extra scent of an unfolded pool float to the Cheeto and chewing gum scent in the hot van as we pass back over the Ravenel Bridge.
“Do you think we can blow it up at a gas station?” Terry asks.
“Right! With an air pump. I was wondering the same thing,” Bonnie adds.
“I don’t see why we can’t,” I respond, suddenly feeling brilliant.
We pull into the Shell station on Ben Sawyer Boulevard just after lunchtime. At this time in the afternoon, the only people mulling about town are mom’s taking their kids to doctor’s appointments or toddler classes, and I’m relieved by the silence of a small town. Nevertheless, I pull the van in front of the air pump to hide us from the street. Terry unfolds the deflated black blow up man. He’s a great deal like one of the pool rafts that we constantly have to replace, and I marvel over the repair kit as Patty studies the air machine.
“Oh my God!” Terry exclaims, “look where the air nipple is?”
Bonnie moves over to see the unfolded doll on the back seat. “Makes total sense,” she confirms with wonder.
“Yes it does.” I finish, noting how perfectly hidden the blow up nozzle is in the faux man’s bright pink nipple.
“Alright, well let’s hook him up!” Patty smiles, flipping a quarter in her hand.
In a minute the air tank is buzzing loudly. Terry holds the deflated body of the doll and I hold its head while Patty attaches the nozzle to the doll’s nipple. “Alright, here we go!” she yells as the doll begins to fill with air in our hands.
“I don’t think it should be taking this long!” I yell over the sound of the air machine.
Bonnie is standing beside me watching the doll fill slowly. “Patty, adjust the nipple a little!”
Patty bends over low and studies the connection; there is a lot of air not going into the doll because the nipple is flimsy. I slide my reading glasses onto my face and lean low over the doll in an attempt to help her adjust the poor connection.
“Looks like someone’s got a slow leak,” a deep voice booms from behind us.
We are all frozen in time at the sound of the voice. I look up from my position over the blow up dolls nipple into the eyes of my Parish Priest. Blood raced to my face and I quickly feel the molten lava of a hot flash spreading through me. Already I am ten shades of crimson as I try to disassociate myself from the blow up doll attached to the gas station air pump.
Bonnie gasps, and Terry stands dumfounded before she starts hysterically laughing again. In the short time I’ve known these ladies, I already know that Terry has a weak bladder when she laughs. “Oh no! I’m going to pee!” She falls back into the open back door of the van and onto the backseat, holding her stomach to control hysterical laughter.
“Not in my van!” I drop big black doll’s lifeless head towards the asphalt in my effort to pull her from my microfiber seats. Admittedly, it wouldn’t be the first time the van has been peed in.
A huge gust of wind was blown up by a passing Mack truck, and instantly blows the doll into a standing position next to Bonnie. It’s some kind of suction event that only a scientist can explain, but blow up man flows with the wind. Instinctively, the mother in Bonnie reaches out to grab him, but it’s too late. He rides the wind gust towards the street as we all race after him. Bonnie grabs just before wafts onto Ben Sawyer Boulevard and stops traffic.
Once we get him back to the pump, we secure the nipple tightly to the air hose, and he wavers wildly for a moment before standing up straight next to Bonnie. The connection has finally sealed between the air pump, and Mr. Blowup Man’s penis now rapidly fills with air. All of us suddenly become aware of the sheer size of his manhood as it grows. It’s hard to ignore.
“You better un-plug him before he explodes!” Terry yells through her hysterical, choking laughter.
My Priest leans against the back of my van to steady himself as he watches us all scramble to un-attach Mr. Blowup Man from the air hose. Finally Bonnie frees him and snaps his rubber plug with finely tuned fingernails.
“But look Bonnie, his… pee pee… lost some air.” Terry notes, trying to control her giggle attack with a serious face.