The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 1996. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.

I have a friend. Let's call him Bob. Well, actually, Bob really is his name, so let's call him... Bob.

Bob has two particularly ugly habits that just so happen to compliment each other in much the same way that tornadoes and mobile homes do. Bob likes to take a lot of speed... and Bob also likes to watch a lot of television.

Now on the surface, one would think that these two habits would clash with each other. After all, we can opine to ourselves, television watching consists of hours upon hours of sitting on your ass, staying in a prone position and basically turning into a vegetable-like form. Speed taking, on the other hand, usually consists of running around like an idiot, climbing the walls and sputtering things to your friends at parties that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

The way these two competing vices come together in Bob is this: his body wants to move a zillion miles a minute, yet he has to stay glued to the television. Therefore, his body races in the only way that it can: through his mind. As a result, Bob comes up with the most vastly ridiculous analyses of banal television shows I have ever witnessed, which he then proceeds to tell me in one long, unending sentence later that night. For example, from March 16:

"Jason, Jason Jason Jason, I just discovered something on TV tonight and you are not going to fucking believe this. Okay, right, channel 9's started running old episodes of Blossom, so I've been, like, watching them everyday and then I've been taping them everyday, you know, 'cause I can, you know, I mean, how cool is that, 'I got a six-hour videotape of Blossom episodes!' Ha-ha! Anyway, so tonight I had nothing to do and I was on all this speed so I put in this tape and I watched the whole fuckin' thing, all goddamned six hours right in a row, well okay, I stopped for about twenty minutes to fix dinner, but guess what! Oh, guess what! So, like, I'm watching it and I'm starting to put it all together, you know, Blossom's dad and her brother are these really sensitive, artist types, and they're the good guys, you know, and her other brother who's masculine and strong, you know, the guy guy, you know, Joey Lawrence, you remember, 'Whoooa!' Joey Lawrence, well he's an idiot, I mean, he's a complete fuckin' retard on the show, and you know, Blossom doesn't have a mom so she has to do all her mom-bonding stuff with Six, her next-door neighbor, but Six is a peer of Blossom's, you know, she's like, Blossom's age, and she's constantly 'spending the night' over at Blossom's, you know, she's sneaking through Blossom's 'window' without 'Dad' knowing about it, you know, and, like, Six's name, like it's such a coincidence it sounds so much like 'sex,' and... well, you see what I'm saying, don't you?"

"No!"

"The writers of Blossom are subconsciously pushing an agenda of lesbianism! God, it's so obvious!"

So, that's Bob. And if you're around Bob, you get used to Bob, and you take everything he says with a grain of salt. Recently though, Bob said something at a party that struck me as rather profound:

"Oh Jason, oh, oh, Jason! You'll never guess what I figured out today! Okay, so sometimes I watch Regis and Kathie Lee, you know, and there's always been something that just has never sat right with me about that show, you know, something about that Kathie Lee that just doesn't, I don't know, sit right. So I started watching the show religiously, and this is it, man, I just figured it out today. Like, Regis is constantly making fun of Kathie Lee for being sleepy during the show, and he says it's because her husband, Frank, spent the whole last night giving her the big bone, you know, like, Frank was laying more pipe last night than the whole fuckin' Alaskan pipeline! Ha-ha! And you know, Kathie Lee makes fun back at Regis, or laughs or something, but get this, get this, man, she never denies it! Not once, in thirty-four shows, has she ever denied it! Man, Kathie Lee Gifford likes to fuck! Who woulda... ever... fuckin'... guessed!"

I sat and pondered this for awhile. Well, that can't be right. Kathie Lee? Demure, pretty, All-American, family-values, "I'm shutting down the sweatshops" Kathie Lee Gifford? Likes to fuck? Why, if this was true, it would complete disintegrate the theory I have had my entire adult life about my personal prowess in bed.

You see, I tend to date quiet women, shyer than average in public, slightly... boring, to tell the truth. And when the inevitable point always comes where one night I close my bedroom door and they attack me, when they suddenly metamorph one night into a ferocious sexual animal, a "Fucking Machine," when they do things in bed that I scarcely believed possible, much less legal... well, I've always attributed this change to the fact that I'm really good in bed. The implication, of course, being that I was able to draw this ferocity out of the woman that a normal, mere mortal man would not be able to.

But... if Kathie Lee Gifford likes to fuck, then that means that just about every woman likes to fuck. And that blows my theory to complete shit! How can I possibly justify to myself in my head on why that woman should sleep with me versus him, if she's going to enjoy it no more and no less than with him? Why, I might as well give up fucking altogether. Well, actually, I kinda have given up fucking altogether, for nine months now, but it's not by choice and I really don't want to get into it right now.

Bob, being on speed, decided to put this to the test. He ran around the party and proceeded to ask every shy, serious woman there if they do, indeed, like to fuck. It would be redundant to say that Bob got smacked many, many times that night, but the surprising part was that he caught many of these women drunk and they would say in all sincerity to him, "Are you kidding me? I love to fuck! Fucking is the singlemost enjoyable leisure time activity I engage in! There are some days where the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is knowing that if I don't get out there and meet someone, I'm not going to get fucked that night!"

All this information threw me into a spiral of depression, and in desperation I finally went over to my friends' Brynn and Sam's house, two lesbian friends of mine who frequently are the bearers of truth to me and more and more often have delivered lines of such utter clarity and profoundness to my dilemmas in life that I am starting to think of them as goddesses.

Now, Brynn's a shy, quiet woman, but she likes to fuck -- I know this because we actually dated for awhile in college. It's a long story and frankly, I don't know why I even mention it. Sam's not necessarily shy or boring, but just not the type of woman you look at and think, 'You know, I bet she likes to fuck.' But she does -- I know this because Sam got drunk one night and told me.

I put my question to them. Brynn and Sam looked at each other and rolled their eyes in exasperation, as they frequently do when talking to me. Finally Sam says -- "Well of course women like to fuck, Jason. How did you get to be twenty seven years old and not know this? Look, the difference between men and women is this: If a woman fucks someone and it's a bad fuck, she'll never fuck them again."

I said, "So what you're saying is that if a man has a bad fuck, he'll go ahead and fuck them again?"

"Please," she said. "There's never been a man in the history of time who's had a bad fuck."

I'm feeling much better these days. True, there has been a minor paradigm shift in my life and I've had to completely rethink the idea of how the world works and what my penis' place is in it. However, the enlightening truth I have discovered recently has also opened up a brand new possibility to me, a new philosophy, a new mantra, if you will, that I now chant to myself as I'm sitting across the room, trying to get up the courage to go talk to that quiet, serious woman in the corner:

"Kathie Lee Gifford... she likes to fuck."