Comedian Nikki Glaser

There are a ton of interesting talk show topics across the “dial” of Sirius XM radio. I love listening to comedienne Nikki Glaser because she’s so blasted honest and isn’t afraid to talk about sex and other bodily topics. The same goes for The Bonfire with Big Jay Oakerson and Dan Soder, both comedians who aren’t afraid to mention a dick or two, now and then.

Ostensibly, I’m a Christian guy. But having religious beliefs does not––in my take on life––constitute adopting an attitude of willing ignorance or denying the earthier aspects of life. I ran for what most people consider a Christian college, and many of the guys and gals on that team were conscientious believers. Yet none of them were technically prudes. We had a lot of laughs and told our fair share of dirty jokes and stories. But reality was sometimes even funnier than the stuff we made up.

Morning practice

I recall arriving for practice one morning when my cheeks were still flushed from having made love with my girlfriend just minutes before. Then I threw on my running shorts, trotted down the hill from the dorm and showed up for practice right on time. On my arrival, one of the freshman on our team pointed to my complexion and exclaimed, “You just had sex!”

When I chuckled, because it was true, he jumped around even more, yelling “Ahhhhhh! Cud just had sex!”

Man, was I glad to have just had sex. Several of the guys on the team actually fist-bumped me. They knew that getting it on was good for me and anyone else on the team that could manage that glorious venture. There’s nothing like having the love of another to make you feel strong inside even if you’re super relaxed from release of sexual tension. We never bought into the claim that sex would make you weaker in athletics. If it did, we were more than willing to accept the compromise.

Games people play

Insights like that are why I tend to like talk shows that cover sexual topics, especially if they’re done in humorous fashion. They remind me of the discussions we’d have and the teasing we’d endure on long runs.

Well after college, when I was living near Philadelphia, I trained with a group of guys in a club associated with a running shop called Runner’s Edge. They were great runners and a truly funny bunch of guys. One day we were doing a three-hour run in forty-five degree weather when it started to rain. It wasn’t a light rain. We just kept moving and let our body heat compensate for the chill air and cold precipitation.

We entertained ourselves playing a game in which each runner had to come up with the name of a place or town beginning with the last letter of the previous player’s word.

This lasted for a couple hours, and one of the players, a short but strong little runner named Steve, was enormously slow on the draw. It took him half a mile at times to come up with a new name. We’d all be laughing so hard waiting for his answer that it was hard to run.

Change of topic

Then for some reason, perhaps to compensate for his inability to play the game well, he felt the need to brag that he’d recently been invited to “be in the movies.” He’d been approached on the streets of Philadelphia, he told us. So we asked him all kinds of questions about the film in which he was supposedly going to appear and as the details emerged, it became evident that the type of film in which he was invited to participate was indeed a porn film.

We hadn’t really noticed that aspect of Steve’s appearance before. But as he shared the manner in which the “producers” had approached him, we asked if indeed they’d seen him while running. Because now that we looked at Steve in that light, we noticed the pronounced bulge in his shorts. It was suddenly apparent, especially in wet running shorts, that Steve had talents none of us had noticed before.

That wasn’t actually a “dick joke” in the traditional sense of the term, because it wasn’t a joke. It was true. But we still had a prolonged laugh helping Steve come to grips, so to speak, with their real interest in having him star in their film.

“No way!” he insisted. But yes, it was true we assured him. “They want you to star in a porn flick. Because of your big dick.”

Porn party with Seka

A couple years later while training with a friend and fellow runner in Chicago, he invited me to to what promised to be a wild party in some refurbished warehouse on the Northwest side. “You have to wear a G-String or something under sweatpants,” he told me. “Because I hear the dancing gets real crazy.”

There was also a famous porn star named Seka scheduled to make an appearance during the evening. That was supposedly the big draw that was going to set the mood for this wild party about to happen.

When we showed up at 9:00 pm for the party, there was a long line of intensely suburban looking geeks standing outside. Each was wearing clothes that looked like the style manual for computer nerds. Thus it didn’t turn out to be a wild party at all. Instead it was a creepy crowd of uncomfortably stiff men milling about in hopes of seeing the famous porn star sometime that evening.

We left. But not before the lights went down and the dancing started. In the dark I could hardly tell one person from the next. Finally I noticed what appeared to be a pretty face next to me and asked, “Do you want to dance?”

And the guy said, “Sure!”

Frankly I didn’t know what to do in that moment. But it was the early 80s and the dividing line on sexuality was pretty stark back then. These days I’d just dance with the dude. But back then, I booked out of there and trotted my way home through the cold Chicago night. That was how I learned that running in a silver G-String under sweatpants is actually pretty comfortable.

Hotel room prank

Despite these past experiences, my reputation as a relatively staid and moral guy was intact by the time I’d entered the work world. In fact I’d earned the nickname The Professor at the marketing agency where I worked simply by accurately spelling the word “pterodactyl” for one of the salespeople who wanted to put one of the flying dinosaurs on a marketing piece.

To test my supposedly professorial resolve, the President of the marketing agency for whom I consulted decided to “pimp” me by having me room with one of our print suppliers the first night we traveled to another city. The guy was a total pig. Think John Candy in the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Plus he snored like a hog, and I came down to breakfast the next morning disgusted by the whole experience. The President roared with laughter as he asked me how my stay was so far. “It’s like living with a farm animal!” he chortled.

The next night he gave me my own room. So I decided to teach the President a lesson. I slept well on my own and rose early to go out for a run. On the way back through the lobby, I stopped at the reception desk and asked them to do me a favor. “Could you print up a phony receipt that makes it look like I rented every X-Rated movie you have on those channels?”

They chuckled and said “Sure.” That list of movie titles was as hilariously bad as you could imagine. Plays on words like Star Whores instead of Star Wars. Things like that. Collectively, it read like an All-Star lineup of bad sexual puns and corrupted classics.

Then at breakfast, I brought the receipt with me an waited until we’d all had a chance to finish eating. Then I slid the fake (yet real-looking) receipt across the table and said, in a quiet voice, “Hey, I’m really sorry about this Vince. But I just couldn’t help myself last night.” Then I sat back and sort of looked away in a guilty fashioin.

The President’s eyes literally flashed down the list and back at me. And he said, “Well, okay then. No problem.”

I burst out laughing and said, “Seriously!? You think I’d actually rent that many porn movies? In one night?”

I sat there laughing as a wan grin spread across his face. He was the known trickster of our group, always playing pranks of one kind or another. But this time I’d gotten him good and it was all because my Goody Goody made it work so well.

Obsessions and otherwise

To create a bachelor party gift for a running buddy that was getting married, I once made a mashup of the movie Pee Wee’s Big Adventure with the porn classic Behind the Green Door starring Marilyn Chambers. It was a big hit and got passed around between guys getting married until some idiot tape over it to record a PGA tournament on TV.

The funny part about the place where I rented the porn film to make that mashup is that it was only one of two shops in the mid-80s that rented such fair. Both stores were located in a prim little white-bread community that prided itself on its reputation for “family values.”

Well, so much for that.

The proprietors of both video stores were friends of mine from my days selling advertising for the local newspaper. Without divulging any names, they confided that it was many of the town’s most respected citizens who rented the most porn.

Does that really surprise anyone these days? 

Over time all that porn content migrated to the Internet. It seems like it’s only those strange stores along the Interstate that rent porn any more. Apparently there must be a market among truckers or something like that. Otherwise, who the hell visits those places?

On second thought, spare me that information. I don’t really want to know. That was just a rhetorical question.