Binge

by Douglas Coupland

  “How did I think of it? Um…with my brain.”

  “But…” I could tell from the guy’s voice that he’s done this same pep talk a zillion times and I’d come up with maybe the first plausible idea he’d ever encountered. “Don’t you think that’s too much money?” he asked.

  “Not really. Spread that out over twenty years and it’s almost zilch per year to guarantee that some kid grows up to be a permanent customer. I’ll take eighty-seven beef tenderloins, thank you.”

  Then one of the other attendees piped up, “I don’t think anyone would name their kid Kirkland. I mean, how stupid.”

  “I beg to differ. Haven’t you noticed all those immigrant families of ten who come in here? Those parents want their kids to succeed here as quickly as possible, and one way is to give the kids names that are 1,000 percent assimilated.”

  “Assimi-what?”

  “Totally melted into the American scene. Names like Stuart or Sarah or Greg. Not even Gregory—Greg.”

  “That’s racist.”

  “How is that racist? These people are here to succeed. Giving Greg the middle name Kirkland says, booyah, I’m going to college, sucker!”

  Crickets.

  Tumbleweeds.

  Back to my till.

  Soon I got a call to go to the manager’s office, and I was wondering what I might have done. When I got there, Carol, the manager, asked, “Is that Kirkland middle name idea really yours?”

  I was insulted. “Well, yeah. Do you think I spend my free time visiting Kirkland brand-building online forums and ripping people’s ideas off? You can give a kid as many names as you want—there’s no legal limit—so why not throw Kirkland into the middle of the bunch? I think Prince William has, like, twelve middle names.”

  “I see.”

  “Is there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “No. Thanks, Chloe.”

  I went back to my station and, as I scanned flats of figs and mega-packages of toilet paper and tube socks by the dozen, I thought about the whole naming thing. Then I decided to do something that, while not technically evil, would nonetheless create issues within the zealously loyal Costco community. Starting with the next customer, Elana, a mother of five, I planted the idea of the $500 Kirkland middle-naming program.

  “Five hundred dollars? Really?”

  “That’s the rumor.”

  “Wow! Can I do it with all five kids?”

  “Why not? Costco is a proud gender-neutral, family-centered company. Five hundred bucks a kid.”

  “I have to talk to my husband about this.”

  “You do that!”

  And so it went for the rest of the day. I deftly planted the Kirkland seed with any pregnant woman and all the mothers who came through my cash.

  And then I left for the day.

  The next day I was on the late shift, and soon got called into Carol’s office.

  “Do you have any idea of the shitstorm you’ve created?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t ‘What?’ me. I’ve just met with Legal, and we have seven people changing the middle name of their kids to Kirkland because you told them it was a thing.”

  Awkward pause. And then I said, “So why can’t it be a thing?”

  “What?”

  “It should be a thing.”

  “I was expecting an apology.”

  “Give me a raise instead. I have an idea.”

  “I—what?”

  “Is your browser open? Let me look up someone who can help us take advantage of the situation.”

  And that’s how I met Karen, about half a year before her mega-success with Dad-Dancer-5000—talk about good timing on my part. I called her office from Carol’s phone and she picked up right away. Carol, of course, was pissed because she realized that I’d just entered a new orbit and that she was now a used Kleenex in my slipstream.

  * * *

  —

  Cut to three days later: local story gets picked up nationally and goes viral globally.

  Cut to a year later: just over 120,000 young Americans have been christened with Kirkland as their righteous middle name. Little Kirkland license plates are now on sale at Disney World. Me? Costco’s dead to me. I’m working with Dad-Dancer-5000 management now, and I’m never looking back. The moral? Sometimes employee motivation seminars really work. Man, what a shitty moral.

  32

  Search History

  I WAS THE LAST PERSON to join the internet party, and it was not a good thing. My religion does not take a kind view of the internet. I’m not Amish or anything—technology makes America truly great. It’s the things you can find on the internet that are the problem. My questionable search history started with Stormy Daniels, that woman Donald Trump paid to keep quiet about their affair. In the newspapers she looked like she could be a soccer mom, but I got to wondering what she looked like as the porn star they said she was.

  So one Saturday at the library I searched for Stormy Daniels pornography, and when her titties and shaven hoo-hoo blasted onscreen, I felt like I was going to have a stroke. My mind couldn’t even process what I was seeing, and then Clara Garfield started walking over to me from the periodicals area—probably to tell me about some dumb recipe that uses Crock-Pots—and I didn’t know how to get Stormy Daniels’s shorn nether bits off the screen. I panicked and lunged for the plug and yanked it out in the nick of time. I could hear my heartbeat.

  What is the human heart? How does it work? Where does the devil lurk? Why does it lurk? Why do we have bodies? Why can’t we just be souls?

  I have never thought of myself as an easily tempted person. I got to the age of forty-four without experiencing a serious temptation. But then something broke, and I blame Stormy Daniels. After seeing those images, I spent hours looking up filthy things on the internet, there at the back of the library, with the screen facing away from the room so that I never had another life-shortening Crock-Pot moment again.

  It was all such a revelation. I have only ever had sex with my husband. I raised three children, who have all turned out more or less okay. Well, two did. Laura owns a massive florist business and is poised to meet Mr. Right. Jenny’s married, low-key and righteous, and already has three kids under four. Following in her mother’s footsteps. Then there’s Luke, who never leaves his bedroom. But he’s another story.

  Ken and I waited until after the wedding to have sex; the first time was on our honeymoon in Mexico, in a hotel room with no air-conditioning, after relaxing our inhibitions with some tequila and Fresca. It was certainly not a pleasurable experience, but I wanted to please my husband and have children and do my duty.

  The children came almost instantly, and I was glad not to have to be intimate with Ken as often as I might have, had conception been difficult. I didn’t dread sex, but pleasure-wise it rated somewhere around having to vigorously use a coal-tar shampoo to get rid of lice—just something you have to do. And frankly, it was hard to look at Ken naked. I mean, a penis is a weird thing, and I really tried never to look at his.

  And then I discovered the internet. Once I started looking at naked bodies, I saw my own with new eyes. My pubic hair, for example, looked like the floor of the salon I go to. So I stood in front of my bathroom sink, debating whether to trim my hoo-hoo, but I worried that Ken would think it was an invitation. By that point, I’d seen so many penises onscreen that I couldn’t map it all in my mind. But I still didn’t want to see his. Ken and I had not had marital relations in many years. It didn’t occur to me to wonder whether he was doing something other than praying and drinking Coors Light…but I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, I finally picked up my Lady Gillette and “trimmed my bush.” (Why does anything to do with private regions sound so filthy?)

  Mother of Jesus, the things people attach to their bodies and the things they put inside the
mselves in the name of stimulation. Is there nothing sacred? The whole porn thing is a slippery slope, and before I knew it, I was looking at grown men inserting their fists inside each other’s rectums, and women sharing an enormous double-pronged dildo. I believe that’s called double anal. Lord, the internet has corroded my interior world.

  Out of the blue one night, while we were sitting on the couch watching a Frasier rerun, I asked my husband, “Ken, are you having an affair?” and he said, “Well, uh, actually, yes. I am.”

  “I’m not surprised. How long has it been going on?”

  “Years, actually. Three? Four?”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “No.”

  I paused. “Well, it had to happen, I guess. I never thought to lose the baby fat or trim my bush for you. I guess you picked up on that, huh?”

  Ken stared at me like I was speaking Chinese. “This wasn’t the response I thought you’d have.”

  That’s the moment I woke up. I think such clarity only happens once or twice in a lifetime. I didn’t need to stay married to this man, whatever my church said.

  Ken and I are no longer together. I don’t think of him all that much, and I don’t think he thinks of me, either. The divorce was like removing a Band-Aid long after the wound has healed. The two older kids were totally okay with it too. But my youngest, the one who lives in his bedroom, didn’t take it well.

  33

  Clickbait

  YOU WON’T BELIEVE!!!!!!

  Has there ever been a grammatical construction that taps so deeply into the human psyche? Some people take the clickbait; some don’t. My mother always takes the bait.

  “You know, dear, sometimes what these websites show you is quite remarkable. I just can’t believe how badly child celebrities age. It’s that godless Hollywood lifestyle. They all end up looking like those pasty-faced Oompa Loompa people smoking outside of AA meetings with your Uncle Greg.”

  One day, for fun, I made some fake clickbait and forwarded it to my mother:

  Ten Celebrities Who Eat Hamsters—Number Eight Will Blow Your Mind!

  [A smiling photo of Cameron Diaz posing with a golden retriever.]

  A Child Gave Halloween Candy to a Street Person. What Happened Next Will Change the Way You Live!

  [Child was sodomized and then used to provoke a pit bull fight.]

  Top Model Befriends an Anaconda. What Came Next Will Make You Smile!

  [Anaconda quite reasonably crushes said model to death and then swallows her whole.]

  I dropped by for a visit at her place after I figured she’d looked at them.

  “Very funny, smarty-pants, very funny,” she said as I came in the door.

  My mother is super-religious, but she kind of likes it when I push her boundaries a bit. If my sisters tried it, she’d kick them out of the family. I get to be the free-spirited one.

  On that particular afternoon, I didn’t expect more than to drink some coffee with her and then head out. I love sitting in Mom’s kitchen—it’s the one place in the world that never changes.

  “How’s work?” Mom asked.

  “Good.”

  “And Hayley?” (My wife.)

  “Busy. She’s making a pile of costumes for Mason’s Thanksgiving pageant.”

  “She’s so creative. You really lucked out with her.”

  We talked a bit about the upcoming holidays, and it was like I was twelve again, waiting for a bowl of Campbell’s vegetable soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. I was so happy.

  Then Mom put down her coffee and excused herself to go to the bathroom. She left her laptop open.

  Okay.

  So.

  Haven’t we all wondered, even for just a few seconds, where our mothers go in the online world? Of course we have. Who wouldn’t? As my mother climbed the stairs, headed for the washroom off the master bedroom, I knew I had a bit of time on my hands. So I opened Google and snooped into her search history.

  felching meaning

  felching m4m

  felching f4m

  felching drinking straw

  drinking straw ocean plastics

  drinking straw save turtles

  [scroll]

  rectum prolapse

  rectum prolapse image

  rectum prolapse too much sex—gay

  rectum prolapse promiscuity

  cbt

  dildo fatigue m4m

  dildo exhaustion is real?

  [scroll]

  walgreens discount coupon code noxema

  walgreens seniors cwdes noxema

  walgreens seniors codes noxema

  dad dancing

  dad dancing tickets

  pearl necklace

  figging

  figging is real?

  queefing

  [scroll]

  ryan gosling wife

  ryan gosling shirtless

  ryan gosling net worth

  ryan gosling full frontal

  kate winslet diet tips

  do women cheat?

  objects emergency rooms remove from butts

  can fetuses have erections?

  avocado texture = pleasure?

  four way vs three way

  “I see you’ve been snooping through my search history.”

  “Mom!!”

  “Yes?”

  All the love had drained from her face, and I was so frightened by the dead look in her eyes, I stuttered. “I…”

  “Yes?”

  “I…”

  “I think you should leave now, John.”

  “But…”

  “But what?”

  “How could you…?”

  “How could I?”

  “How could you look up all of this…this stuff?”

  “How could I? Why shouldn’t I?”

  “You’re…”

  “I’m…?”

  “You’re…”

  “I’m a sexless old maid?”

  “No!”

  “Is it because my upper lip is wrinkled? Do you think I should get my lips injected with filler so I can look ‘hot’?”

  “Jesus, Mom, what?”

  “I don’t know if you should bring our savior into this.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I just said not to bring our savior into this.”

  “Okay. Man. I…”

  What to say in a situation like this? “Does Dad know?”

  “Does Dad know? Why is that even a question? And why would it matter to you? Are you a tattletale? Are you a snitch? Do you snoop into Hayley’s search history too? Does it arouse you?”

  “Holy fuck, Mom!”

  She was standing her ground, in a way I’d never seen.

  She said, “Here you are thinking you’re such a class clown, sending me emails with contents you think might shock me or [air quotes; so painful] ‘freak me out.’ Well, I’m not freaked out. I’m curious. I want to know what human beings are capable of. Don’t you? Do you ever wonder what you’re gaining or losing by living the drab little life you lead—that I lead—that all of us lead?”

  Silence on my end.

  “I refuse to be silent anymore. I refuse to pretend I don’t know what a biracial double-anal dildo is. Don’t give me that face. You know what all of this stuff is and have known for decades. But I’m supposed to live like an innocent in a nunnery?”

  “No. You’re right. That’s stupid.”

  “Thank you.”

  A pause, and then I couldn’t help myself. “But, really, does Dad know about all this?”

  “Yes and no. By the way, he and I are separating.”

  That floored me. After a suitable silence
I asked, “Mom, do you still believe in God?”

  And she said, “I don’t know.”

  34

  18+

  SO LAST TUESDAY NIGHT I got really hammered and decided my pubes needed shaving. What happened next is not pretty. If you’re under 18, you have to stop reading here.

  Now, for all you 18+ people out there, here’s how it went down.

  Me: F26. Were you to see me on the street, you’d think, That young woman looks like she has her shit together. She probably has a bowl of lemons on her kitchen counter beside glass jars of interestingly shaped pasta that are stopped with jumbo corks, and fancy bottles of European bubbly water in her fridge. But you would be wrong. I don’t have my shit together.

  The thing about me is that I’m hairy. Some girls are just born that way. Remember seeing the music video for that 1980s one-off hit “99 Luftballons,” where the singer raises her arms and her pits look like the fringes of a clown’s wig? It was such a revelation for me. I don’t think I’d actually ever seen a woman with hairy armpits before. I didn’t even know it was an option.

  So, with my light complexion and dark hair, if I shave down there, I look like a chocolate chip cookie. It’s not sexy, it’s just ick. But after you’ve drunk a bottle of something Californian in the fifteen-to-twenty-dollar price range, your brain’s executive functions are diminished and you can fall prey to the urgent thought: Why have I never done a proper shaving before, like the magnificent shaving I’m about to do? My pubes need to be heart-shaped…that will make all the difference!

  I’m not even quite sure why it felt so urgent, but it probably had something to do with this new guy I’m sort of seeing, Jeff. He wants us to go to Burning Man, he says, but he hasn’t quite committed, and maybe me having heart-shaped pubes would make him decide to go there and take me with him. Man, what a shitty excuse, but did I mention alcohol? And I’m not even sure what Burning Man is, except that it’s a place where rich people get naked, do ’shrooms, blow shit up and listen to 1970s music with Google executives and don’t get arrested.