Tough Guy Cred, Without the Toughness

About a month ago, I saw a dermatolgist about a suspicious looking blue-ish dot under my left eye.

"I don't like the look of that," she said as thoughts of gloom and doom swum through my brain. "It's gonna have to come out."

And so it did. And, thankfully, it was benign. But the process left me with a small scar under my eye which, I'm told, with a lot of ointment and some TLC, will eventually fade.

I haven't thought much about it until last week, when I was meeting with one of my hot, younger, female co-workers.

"I've got to tell you," she offered, as we were going over the Muldoon report. "That thing looks fucking awesome." [Her exact words.]

"Huh?"

"That scar. It makes you look tough."

"Really?"

"Yes. Very cool."

Whether she was messing with me or not, I could care less. For the rest of the day, I was the office park's resident scurvy dog. Not to be fucked with under any circumstances. And it felt pretty good.

Who knows? I might just skip a day or two of that ointment...

Oh, If They Only Knew

This sixty-something woman in my office, whom I lovingly call "everybody's grandma", brought a stuffed turkey to work the week after Thanksgiving and positioned it within her cubicle. The damn thing makes this crazy-ass cackling noise when you squeeze it, and I find it positively enrapturing. Because, let's face it, I'm pretty easy to please.

The other day, I was walking by her cube and, as always, my hand automatically reached out to tweak the turkey's belly. Grandma heard the cackling and, from the copy machine a few cubes over, noted aloud that, "Ken just can't stop squeezing it. It makes him feel really good to squeeze it."

Yeah, I'd say they know me pretty good at the office.

Speaking of Gay Porn...

I saw "Fright Night" for the first time around Halloween - total 80's movie, right down to the gratuitous boob shots (refreshingly un-enhanced!. One of the spastic dudes in the movie I recognized as the chronic masturbator from "Heaven Help Us" (Another awesome 80's flick, featuring Johnny Drama himself.) That guy was funny, I thought. Wonder whatever happened to him?

How come "dating a stripper" doesn't hold the same card-carrying membership for women as it does for men? Case in point: I went out a couple of times with a guy named Derek. He was really pretty, as in, 1. he'd look much better than me in makeup, and 2. he was way out of my league. I was bewitched, bedazzled, etc. until I found out he was doing Chippendales to put himself through college. Instead of hitting star status with my friends, it promptly hit the skids when I happened to let it slip that my new guy likes to dance in a thong and bowtie. I was annoyed and frustrated - female strippers get a lot more respect, not to mention money, I argued, and when female strippers put themselves through school they make a movie or write a book, not get invited to Mrs. Kerbapple's 50th birthday party. But at the same time...I was kinda horrified at the ridiculous cheesiness of it all, and ended up having to call it off. Also, not to mention the two words my friends gleefully shared as the natural next step to a budding career in the male striptease profession: gay porn.