FANZINE

I am naive. Painfully naive. The kind of naiveté that can’t be beaten out or shoved away by lessons learned. It’s the kind that sticks, the kind that is inherited.  I come from a long line of naïve women. While watching Tony Soprano’s cousin inhaling lines of coke on HBO my mother asked, “Are they smoking cigarettes through their noses?” And at the baiting of my grandfather, my grandma extended her middle finger to a car that cut them off on the highway, then turned to my grandpa and asked sweetly “What’s that mean?” *  If I did more digging I am certain that I could trace this naïve gene back to the old country where my grandmother’s grandmother mistook short people for leprechauns.

So when my friends said we were going to a pajama party, I took that at face value. I imagined flannel pants, sleeping bags, and hair braiding. I opened the door expecting a throwback to the days when parents would come down at two a.m. and try to muzzle excessive giggling so they could finally sleep––something that might end up on Things White People Like. What I walked into was a room full of people I never wanted to imagine in their underwear––in their underwear.

The small apartment was lined with duct-taped couches and a wall of “easy assembly” wire shelves filled with liquor bottles. In the middle of this monument to alcoholism sat a working soda fountain used specifically for mixers. Two girls in Wal-mart pajama sets with Looney Toon characters on them and pigtails that framed their acne-ridden faces hopped from person to person playing “musical laps” and taking a survey of who would be down for a game of Twister. They had the most initiative to get the night going and the most clothes on.

The room could have been divided into three types of people: people who came in regular clothes and were peer-pressured into taking off their pants and walking around in their underwear, people who came dressed ready for the occasion in bedtime attire that was somewhat sex-oriented (a skiing t-shirt that reads “I like it on top” and boxer shorts), and the brave few who strapped themselves into the kind of sleep attire that can only be found at Fredrick’s of Hollywood and in the back of sex toy catalogs. I am talking about the crotch-less nighties that your gynecologist cringes at. Easy-in easy-out sleep is not an issue.

–––––––
^{* This is in opposition to my paternal grandma who, after sitting in traffic for hours, flicked off a highway patrolman who was working the road construction area.}

The first person I saw when entering said pajama party looked like he’d dropped his pants as soon as he walked in. The black fitted tee accentuated his love handles and cut right above his crotch, which was highlighted by tight red briefs that left so little to my imagination––I couldn’t help but look.

Normally, I am at the center of a party making myself dizzy twirling from person to person, trying to live up to the reputation I have worked so hard to perpetuate. At this party I crawled along the walls with my lips pressed firmly together.

While in line for the bathroom I found a long wand with feathers on the end––an object I was positive was a sex toy––and met the host.

“It’s a cat toy,” he said. He was dressed in a stretched-out tank top revealing his navel, large Snookie-esque slippers, and tight, fluffy shorts that cut right below his ass cheeks. I have the same ones.

“But do you have these too?” He responded. He pulled down the front of his shorts to reveal underwear I didn’t know a male over the age of five could purchase with a Superman logo over his junk. Because he was a few steps above me on the stairs, his “super-crotch” lined right up with my face as he wildly thrust in my direction.

This was the most action I got at the party.

I was wedged between two girls trying to pressure me out of my clothes when Little Red Rocket made his way into the room. He positioned himself on the couch and two big women, letting every bit of their womanhood hang out of transparent nighties, fabric stretched to the very end of its life over their lady parts, made their way toward him. They looked like the kind of women who would post late night on craigslist’s casual encounters about their “throbbing hungry pussies.” They were making a rocket sandwich.

A young man wearing a “Chicks Dig Robots” shirt and what resembled a Nintendo Power Glove met them on the couch. Finally catching on that the next action would not involve videogames, I started inching towards the door. He massaged the two large women with the vibrating glove as my favorite party guest in red stuck a hand down each of their shirts––thumbing their nipples in unison. The rocket was ready for takeoff.

The girl in pigtails and Porky Pig pajamas cut me off at the door. “You’re not leaving now, are you? We’re just about to play spin the bottle.”

This is the only game of spin the bottle I have ever turned down.