Seven Men A-Humping

I was 16 when I went to Paris.

(Sounds like the intro to a movie, doesn't it?)

I was 16 when I went to Paris...and that's where I fell in love.

(Well guess what. This isn't a movie.)

I was 16 when I went to Paris...and that's where I was humped by 7 Frenchmen.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking...

"Way to go, Natasha! Smother that French toast with a batch of your own syrup! Yeah, baby!"

Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that is not how it went.

It all started in a small cafe with three of my friends. (If you converted this situation into some kind of algebraic equation, it would go something like this):

If you have four young teenage girls each ordering one 4 dollar cup of coffee from one male waiter, and two of the girls are adding a shot of espresso for an extra 75 cents, but one of the girls is adding whipped cream for an extra 25 cents, which girl will the waiter hit on first?

...and they said I should have taken a math class my senior year. Please.

"I'd like a cup of coffee, please."

"Of course, of course, Miss...?"

"...Natasha."

"Natasha....Natashaaaaaaa...are you American, Natasha?"

"Yep, I'm from America!"

"You don't look American."

"Well, I am!"

"I've heard a lot about American girls..."

"Have you now."

"Yes...I hear they're a lot different than European girls..."

"Oh, really?"

"I'll go get your coffee now."

He comes back, coffee in hand, mysterious male friend at his side.

"Hello, American girls!"

"Hi!"

"You want to go to a disco with us tonight, yes?"

"Hehehe!"

What? We were 16. We didn't know any better but to sit back and giggle at the 25-year-old perverts. Who happened to be quite attractive.

"We can't; we came here with a group of people and we have plans tonight..."

It scares me to think if we would have gone with them had we not had a mandatory engagement.

"You should forget about those other plans, yes?"

"HEHEHEHE!"

Look. I've already explained the giggling thing. You're just going to have to get over it.

"You know what the ladies call me?"

Random questions like this can never be good.

"What?"

"Superman."

"Superman?"

Along with the giggles often come questions you wish you, yourself, had not asked.

"Yes, Superman, because I be with THREE girls one night, THREE girls at the same time, in my bed, and they call me Superman."

Notice the word, "girls." Also notice the fact that OUR WAITER IS TELLING US ABOUT HIS THREESOMES AND WINKING AT US.

This evening was significant because, although we did succumb to a bout of the gigglies, we were not oblivious to our new outlook on Frenchmen. Well, let me correct myself: on the stereotypes Frenchmen believed were true regarding American girls and their frivolous friskiness. Which, while this can hold true for many girls out there, hence the skyrocketing on the "YOU HAVE A DISEASE; KEEP YOUR TONGUE IN YOUR MOUTH FROM NOW ON" charts, it did not match up to myself and my friends. BECAUSE WE'RE NOT SKANKY WHORES.

This is where we jump a couple days ahead on the, "Encounters With Frenchmen" Timeline, to none other than...New Year's Eve.

The streets were nothing short of chaos. As we walked along the sidewalk, we had to dodge people left and right (whether this was because there were a lot of people or because there were a lot of people stumbling around due to intoxication, I'm still not sure), and not one person was lacking the accessory of the evening: a bottle of wine. The whole time I crossed paths with a fellow teenager, a teenager with the ability to freely carry alcohol in their hand, only one thought was able to consume my mind.

Why am I not French. Why am I not French. Why am I not French. Why am I not French.

But no matter! It's not like I MIND the American law of prohibiting people under the age of 21 to drink! It's not like if we had been able to drink while we were young, we wouldn't go so haywire with it when we FINALLY were of legal age; it's not like a lot of people would still be ALIVE had they not had to wait over two decades to get to drink, and then not know how to handle it since they had been holding off all their lives! It's not like America is FUCKING RETARDED when it comes to alcohol!

As everyone else stumbled around screaming, "Bonne année!" (pronounced bone-oh-nay) (it means, "Happy New Year"), my friends and I cautiously wandered the streets, in complete awe of the scene before our eyes. It was beautiful...it was magical...it was a moment I'd never forget...especially when 7 men emerged from an alley... and began to hump us.

"Bonne année!"

They hit my friend Josie first.

"Man down! Man down!"

We tried to alert the group, but soon it was too late.

"Bonne année!"

They had swarmed us.

"Call for back-up! Repeat: call for back-up!"

But the 7 Frenchmen had their own idea of "back-up."

"Bonne année!"

We had no choice but to initiate Plan A.

"STOP, DROP, AND ROLL! STOP, DROP, AND ROLL!"

It was pointless; we had been seized.

"Bonne année!"

And conquered.

"WHAT TO I DO WHAT DO I DO!"

Josie shouted to me.

"WHAT DO I DO WHAT DO I DO!"

I shouted to Josie.

"Bonne année!"

The Frenchmen shouted to no one in particular.

It was no use; they continued to thrust their pelvises at any part of our body they could come near to. In our desperate attempt for survival, we moved on to Plan B.

"AAHHHHHHH!"

We began to scream.

Our tour guide turned around. FINALLY we had caught his attention.

"HELP USSSSSS!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha! That's what we do in France!"

Back to Plan B.

"AAHHHHHHH!"

"Bonne année!"

"AAHHHHHHHHH!"

"Bonne année!"

"AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"OUR TOUR GUIDE IS AN ASS!"

"THESE GUYS ARE GRABBING MY ASS!"

We were in the middle of a battle that we were sure we would lose. We had no ammunition but our own individual pair of grenades, and that is exactly what these men seemed to be after as they tumultuously tried to fire off their own individual missiles. And people say the Vietcong was fierce...they don't even come close to the fierceness of the VietCOCK.

BUT, just as we were about to surrender, a neighboring troop of fellow females passed us, and the Vietcock immediately migrated to their next battlefield, with enthusiastic shouts of, "Bonne année!"

(Now I know why they pronounce it, BONE-oh-nay.)

Though our limbs were warm with friction, though our innocence was publicly stolen from us, though our last night in Paris was spent getting involuntarily dry-humped by drunken strangers, these strangers had moved on to their next target, which, in my optimistic opinion, means only one thing:

Mission accomplished.

Natasha Ferrier (a.k.a. The Cliché Conjurer)

I find that whenever something doesn't go as I had planned, the easiest way to accept it is to spout off some cliché. Let's say, for instance, someone broke into your house, stole all of your belongings, shaved your cat, and then burned your entire house down, and the only survivors of this catastrophe were you, your now-bald cat, and some marshmallow Peeps. (they don't burn, ya know.) This is when I come in. You're crying, you're screaming, you're telling your cat to shove off because it's bald and creeping you the fuck out, and all I have to say is,

"Cheer up, kid! After all, everything happens for a reason."

You stop crying. You lift your head up. You look at me, and you smile.

"Gee, I never thought of it like THAT!"

"That's what I'm here for! To brighten the spirits of those less fortunate with cliché sayings that have uncommonly known explanations! And YES, I do expect you to take what I say to heart without questioning it at all! Because I'm Natasha Ferrier, The Cliché Conjurer, at your service!"

I did not realize the tendency I had to blurt out clichés at what were probably not the best of times until I was informed of this habit.

"I wonder if he likes me or not..."

"Curiosity killed the cat."

"Yeah but it's really bothering me...when will I KNOW?"

"Only time will tell."

"WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DO THAT."

"What?"

"You just respond to whatever problem I have with some random idiom and I HATE it."

"Love and hate are two horns on the same goat."

"SEE?"

"What?"

"You picked me up to talk about this, but you're not really SAYING anything to help!

"Actions speak louder than words."

"STOP IT!"

"What?!"

"None of those even make sense!"

"Things could always be worse."

"AH! You are impossible to talk to. I'm ignoring you for the rest of the night."

"Easier said than done."

"..."

"You're really going to ignore me?"

"..."

"Are you serious?"

"..."

"Silence is golden."

"UGH!"

Of course, I do realize that there are some sayings, clichés, idioms, and euphemisms that make absolutely NO sense at all, and that is why all of you reading this today have been granted the privilege to not only learn a cliché or two, but also learn my own personal opinion of them. Maybe one day you can be a Cliché Conjurer yourself! (Though don't expect to master the art right from the get go; it took me years to perfect my skills. And what sweet skills they are.)

"You can't judge a book by its cover."

Actually, I can. And I do, often. And until a book featuring Fabio on the cover holding some chick with her shirt mysteriously torn conveniently across her breasts wins the Pulitzer Prize, I will continue to do so.

"A watched pot never boils."

Whoever made this one up obviously had never watched a pot. Smoked some pot, maybe, but certainly never watched one. Because a watched pot DOES boil, and how do I know that? Because I've WATCHED one, and what did it do? It BOILED.

"When in Rome..."

When in Rome...what? How did this saying survive all these years? The guy who wrote it OBVIOUSLY wasn't done with the saying, and some idiot found it and thought, "This is brilliant! When in Rome! I don't know exactly what that means...it must be some kind of poetry! Yes! Abstract art! The kind of art that people only pretend to understand because they feel like being DIFFERENT, when really, any 5-year-old could have written this and it would have merely been regarded as childish gibberish and been put on the refrigerator door by Mommy! But since an adult wrote this...well, it's abstract ART!"

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

What's going to hurt you more? A pebble thrown at your big toe, or someone telling you you're a fucking fat tub of lard who's going nowhere in life and has bad B.O.? If you chose the pebble, you might want to continue reading to the next saying on the list.

"You're an idiot."

Okay, this one really isn't a cliché; I just felt the dire need to address the audience who chose the pebble. Moving on.

"I'm happy as a clam."

Where the hell was I when scientists discovered that sea organisms had emotions?

"Drunk as a skunk."

And where the hell was I when they discovered that skunks were the alcoholics of the mammals?

"Cool as a cucumber."

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous.

"Don't toot your own horn."

Who else's horn am I gonna toot? Yours? A stranger's? NO. If there's a horn to be tooted, it's going to be my own, thank you very much. I'm not going to just go around tooting other people's horns. Because that's WEIRD. And you know what else is weird? "Toot." Why not "honk?" Or "beep?" Toot? Are you kidding me? You think I'm going to take you seriously when you say that?

"Walking on Cloud 9."

Hold on a second here...what happened to Clouds 1 through 8? Are they not as good of clouds? Well why not? Aren't all clouds pretty much the same? Is the ninth cloud really the best of the bunch? How many clouds are they, anyway? Has anyone ever counted the clouds? I doubt it.

"You say potayto, I say potahto."

No you do not. Because no one says, 'potahto.' That's retarded. That's like if I said, "You say banana, I say BaNONa." You'd be like, "What? Who the fuck says baNONa?" to which I would respond, "You say potayto, I say potahto," and yet for some reason this would automatically be acceptable, and you would say, "Ah...well, to each his own," when just a minute ago you were about to drop me off in the middle of the freeway because I prefer my yellow fruit of mush to be pronounced, "BaNONa."

"Distance makes the heart grow fonder."

Oh, how sweet!

"Out of sight, out of mind."

Wait, what? You just told me distance makes the heart grow FONDER, and now you're telling me that if I'm not seen then I'm not in anyone's mind? What about the DISTANCE? REMEMBER THE DISTANCE? Why must you confuse me like this! Damn you!

"Ask and you shall receive."

HA! Right. You keep on thinkin' that, you naive dimwit.

"Good things come to those who wait."

Look! It's the naive dimwit again, BACK to waste my time with some more bullshit! Hey! Maybe if I wait awhile, the naive dimwit will go away! Because that would be a good thing!

"Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all."

Nope; dimwit's back.

"Fake it till you make it."

I think this one really only applies to the women of the world.

"Two heads is better than one."

Don't worry, men of the world; I found one that only applies to you, as well.

"Busy hands are happy hands."

(As long as they're not my hands...or hand...)

"The best thing since sliced bread."

Whoa! No way! It can't be! Nothing is as absolutely wonderful as bread that has been cut down the middle a few times! It's just not possible! Whoever is the best thing since sliced bread must really be a somebody...man...if only I could be better than sliced bread! I'm just a dumb HUMAN, who's never been sliced! Not even once! Damn you, bread! Damn you AND your slices!

"When one door closes, another door opens."

Yeah, at the same time 8 other doors close. Then what will happen with that one open door? You won't do shit about it, and then it, too, will close. But that's alright! Because yet ANOTHER door will open! And you find yourself in this neverending cycle of opening and closing doors and I won't blame you if you ask who the HELL keeps closing all these damn doors and whoever it is must have a LOT of time on his hands.

"Leave no stone unturned."

And so does this guy.

"Speak softly and carry a big stick."

I left this one last on the list, because this one baffles me the most. By FAR. Speak softly and carry a big stick? Who am I, Gandalf? You think anyone is going to listen to a guy who speaks softly? Or for that matter, listen to a guy who carries a big stick with him everywhere he goes? EARTH TO HUMANS: Lord of the Rings is FICTION; it's FAKE; in the real world, people don't listen to guys who speak softly and carry big sticks; in the real world, people sell those guys heroin and give them some newspaper to sleep on.

I think it's time we all take a second glance at the ridiculous phrases we use and realize how absurd we all sound when we say them, thinking we sound wise. Seriously, people, I mean it. Wake up and smell the roses.

Forgive Me Father, For I Have Flipped My Shit

People may say, "don't sweat the small stuff," but an intelligent psychologist of whom I've been studying recently by the name of Dr. Nat Ashafer Rier says, "DO sweat the small stuff; DON'T sweat the big stuff," and that's exactly what I tend on doing. I am going to scream into pillows, throw electronics at walls, kick and scream, and show every stranger who happens to walk by me my middle finger, all because of a minor issue I encountered earlier and will soon forget about completely. Why fret over a huge dilemma that you have no control over whatsoever? You're never going to be able to fix it, so I see no need in getting all worked up over it. With small problems, you can more than likely make them better, so why not channel your hissy fits toward something that you can make disappear! Getting ridiculously upset over something you can easily mend is a wonderful feeling! I love it, I do! It's not that I have an anger problem. And if you think I do, THEN FUCK YOU I'M NOT AN ANGRY PERSON SO EAT MY SHIT AND SHIT IT OUT AND THEN EAT IT AGAIN. I just like to express my emotions from time to time, that's all.

It was the summer of 2009 when one of these emotional expressions of mine occurred. (Some folks call it a temper tantrum, I call it an emotional expression.) I was driving in my car with my sister; it was a beautiful day and we had just spent the entire afternoon stretched out on blankets and basking in the sun at one of our favorite parks. (I describe the scene to you so you know I was harboring no fury.) There was a building to my right where cars were driving out of, onto the street of which I was on. So THEN, some bitchassmofo decides to pull out onto my street (yes, my street.) even though I obviously had no intention on letting her in, so at the same time that she decides it's a brilliant idea to pull out in front of someone as they are still driving, she also brilliantly [almost] hits my car. This is when my outburst occurred.

"FUCK! YOU!"

I scream and casually toss up my middle finger, then I thrust my other middle finger upwards, and simultaneously move them up and down at a high speed, as if they were doing a little dance. The Middle-Finger Mambo, as I like to call it.

Then, in my petulance, I turn towards my sister, to alert her of my infuriation in case she had remained oblivious during my Middle-Finger Mambo.

"FUCKING. BITCH."

I say these words slowly, so the message really comes across, and point to that vexation of a woman ahead of me, hoping she would see my profile in her rear view mirror and not only be able to tell that I was talking about her, but be able to tell that what I was saying was that she was a FUCKING. BITCH.

Then it hits me that we are still in front of that line of cars waiting to pull out from that building.

Then it hits me that there was a mini-van at the front of the line facing towards me as I had so blatantly cussed out that woman.

Then it hits me that that mini-van was jam-packed with people, and not just any type of people.

My sister turns and looks at the mini-van, then slowly turns back to me and utters:

"Nuns."

We both cautiously look back at the 7-seater mini-van that had every one of those 7 seats occupied. With nuns. Elderly nuns. Elderly nuns looking right at me. Elderly nuns looking right at me...and laughing.

"Are they laughing?"

"Yeah...it looks like they're laughing..."

"Are they pointing at me?"

"Yeah...it looks like they're pointing at you..."

"Are they pointing at me and laughing?"

"Yeah...it looks like they're pointing at you and laughing..."

"What kind of nuns ARE these, man!"

"Laughing nuns. Seven of them."

"Well well well...nuns aren't as innocent as they say they are..."

"We need proof of this!"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

"What?"

Click!

"Quit taking pictures!"

"We need PROOF, Natasha."

Click!

"STOP IT THEY CAN SEE YOU DOING THAT!"

"And they're still laughing and pointing! It's perfect!"

Click!

"Stop!"

Click!

"Stop it!"

Click!

"They're probably laughing because they know you're going to Hell for having a nun photo shoot."

Click!

"They think you're going to Hell, too, for cussing out that woman."

"You're right. Keep clickin'. "

Click! Click! Click!

"Okay, that's enough."

"Now how do I forward these..."

"You can't FORWARD pictures of nuns!"

"Why the hell not?"

"It just seems wrong..."

"If anything is wrong here it's the fact that 7 nuns just witnessed you being disrespectful to thy neighbor, and instead of being appalled, they started laughing and pointing at you."

"You're right. Forward that shit pronto."

Some may say it is wrong to have random fits of rage over trivial matters, but I think we all know what is truly in the wrong here: the fact that nuns have been lying to us for years and really they are sinful, sneaky, masturbating perverts who find joy in the animosity humans have towards one another. Why do you think they have to go to their Father and ask for forgiveness? BECAUSE THEY HAVE A LOT OF SHIT TO CONFESS, THAT'S WHY. I can just imagine those nuns later that day...

"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been 2 minutes since my last confession; I just can't stop sinning today. This afternoon, I saw a young girl blurt out profanity at a woman she did not even know, and I laughed about it, and then posed for pictures her friend took of me as I pointed at them. Oh, and I masturbated to a picture of Jesus. Please, I ask for your forgiveness."

Yeah, DO you? Do you, BITCH? Well guess what. You're NOT forgiven. What ya gonna do about THAT, huh? Huh?! Yeah. That's what I thought.