It’s literally impossible for me to get off anymore. I don’t know what it is. Sex doesn’t do it for me. Masturbation doesn’t do it for me. I just can’t get off. I mean, sometimes I can get off, but the situation has to be just right. Like if I’m watching Jake Tapper’s The Lead on CNN and a Mesothelioma commercial comes on followed by a commercial for the Laser Spine Institute, I can probably get off. I don’t know what it is, but something about the order of those things really gets me off.
Other than that though, it’s pretty hard for me to get off. Now, if I sit fully nude and motionless on a cold, steel chair in a room lit only by overhead fluorescent bulbs I can maybe get off. MAYBE. It’s a process, though. I have to stare straight ahead for over an hour, focus on the cold steel against my back, and I have to keep my unblinking eyes open until a tiny piece of dust enters my iris and cuts my cornea. Then and only then can I get off.
Certain things that used to turn me on — women, pornography, nakedness, Kevin Kline’s performance in the 1991 farce Soapdish — just don’t get the job done like they used to. So now I have to throw plates across my apartment and break them against the wall. Each time a plate breaks, I get more and more aroused until I have to break 15 plates very quickly to achieve climax. Sometimes I’ll get a text message from my downstairs neighbor asking, “What the hell are you doing up there?” and I’ll respond, “Breaking plates,” and he’ll respond, “Are you trying to get off again?” and I’ll say “Yes, I’m trying to get off,” and he’ll say, “Do you think you will get off?” and I’ll say (depending on where I am in the process) “I think I’m getting close,” and he’ll say, “Okay, well, good luck. It’s important to get off. I hope you are successful at getting off.”
I like my neighbor. His name is Andy. Andy Hiller. He’s a very understanding and compassionate man, so if you ever come across an Andy Hiller in, like, a job interview or something, you should hire him. That’s Andy — A-N-D-Y. Hiller. H-I-L-L-E-R.
Andy Hiller.
Anyway, yeah, so, as I was saying, ejaculating is tough for me. Like, if it’s partly cloudy outside, no way Jose. Now, if it’s a sunny day, that could potentially work. But I have to be in the park. And it has to be October. And I have to be fully clothed.
I was in the store the other day and I picked up a box of Triscuits. I got off instantaneously. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the texture of the box in my hands that got me all hot and bothered or the perfect hatchet pattern of the Triscuit featured on the front of the box, but yeah, I got off big time. I made sounds.
So now I’m thinking, “Okay, Seth, you’ve finally found a really easy way to get off that doesn’t require fried okra or Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley being interviewed by Sioux City Iowa News 4 anchor Matt Breen.” So the next day I went back to the store and I picked up that same box of Triscuits, and I didn’t get off at all. The thrill was gone. I picked up a box of Cheeze-Its. Nothing. I picked up a bag of Bugles. Something. But it was slow going and the store was closing.
Carbon monoxide doesn’t get me off. I thought it would, but it doesn’t. Then again, hydrogen peroxide does get me off. Can you even begin to explain that? Sexuality is so complicated. For example, I recently went to a public reading of Carly Simon’s new memoir Boys in The Trees. And as I was sitting there, some synapse in my brain spontaneously fired off the suggestion that if I killed Carly Simon, took her place behind the podium, continued reading the book, and got a standing ovation based on how great I read the book, I’d get off.
So I did all that. And I did get a standing ovation. And I did get off.
Carly Simon is dead.
That’s when I got arrested.
Now you’d think that the policeman’s handcuffs or the steel prison bars would trigger something inside me that would get me off. But no — what really gets me off these days is my parole board meetings. Not the people on the board (they ugly), but the smell of the folders that contain my case file. That smell gets me off every time. So I’ve created a system wherein I go to the parole board meetings, I get off, I’m not granted parole because I orgasm (multiple times) in front of the parole board, I go back to prison, and then I behave great so I can appear before the parole board again and get off again and again and again.
It’s a perfect system, and you know what? I’ve never been happier.