I am a detective who works the mean streets of Berkeley. And on this job, I’ve just about seen it all. Drive-bys, crimes of passion, crimes of capital, battery, rape, drugs, alcohol, assault. So forgive me if I’m cynical when I hear about people who are both in love and best friends. Forgive me if I snicker when I hear talk about the guy who’s super-creative or the girl can always make you laugh. Forgive me if my approach to sex is anything but mechanical, fatalistic, an expensive meeting of flesh. I’ve seen too much of the underbelly of the human condition to think otherwise. But then I met a broad who made me question that, if only for a little while.
Emily was a sexy Asian lady who writes a column for the Daily Cal. I can remember all too clearly – the light rain streaming through lamppost light outside my window that night she called. She had a job for me: someone had broken into the Daily Cal office and stolen her latest column. When I arrived she was deliberately smoking a cigarette in the dimly lit Daily Cal office with the windows closed – the muffled noise of the crazy city beneath us, the human animal in all its wondrous depravity. She was a classy dame, oozing sensuality and intellect in buckets. I had a feeling this case might be more than I bargained for.
It wasn’t long before we grew closer, searching the woefully inadequate Daily Cal archives and staking out Eshleman Hall in hopes of finding the thief. It wasn’t long before this dame was doing a ransack job on my heart. I was a bit ambivalent about actually expressing my love for her in our committed, nurturing, co-equal relationship. She was a sexy lady who knew about sex, a sexual scientist. And here I was – a cynical detective, with a heart that wanted to cry out, but remained as cold and unreachable as a university chancellor.
Let me be honest. I’m no “thunder-cock,” to use the Chungism. The NEA is better-endowed than I am. However, Emily, always the nurturing and supportive partner, assured me this was not a problem when we actually got down to it. “A lot of people are thunder-cocks, with brute power,” she said quite frankly after surveying the equipment for the first time. “Very few actually know how to communicate their feelings of intimacy.” What can I say, I blushed. Flattery will get you everywhere with the insecure.
She wanted to start with oral sex on me, being the giving person she is, but I refused on aristocratic principle. Remembering her insightful treatise on cunnilingus, “Gettin’ Jiggy With It!” I brought out a towel into our cozy candlelit love nest on the sixth floor. I didn’t want to ruin the couch. After an initial lesson in anatomy, I was all ready to dive in. “Instead of just sticking your tongue in her vagina immediately, start with a little foreplay,” she suggested. “At this point she should become lubricated and aroused.” It doesn’t get more “communicative.” Things picked after that as I followed her carefully laid out methodological considerations to their logical physiological conclusion. Forgive the lack of details, I’m a prude. Let’s just say I learned the difference between vaginal and clitoral orgasm.
After cunnilingus, I was all ready to skip fellatio and go for the gold. “Did you know the average speed of ejaculation of semen out of the penis is 28 miles per hours?” she asked seductively. “I am an honest and law abiding man,” I replied. “But tonight, I plan to make an exception.” Our kissing was an explosion of marmalade, sweet beyond compare, making both of us hot and bothered in the “excitement phase.” I was ready to take it to the next level when I caught a fleeting shadow out of the corner of my eye. I leapt to my feet, grabbed my piece and dashed nakedly into the hallway. I didn’t see the anyone, but I did find a page full of Clinton jokes that must have been three years old – an email forward. Like a bad teenage mustache, the answer was right under my nose. There could be only one possible culprit.
I found the editors of the Patriot later that evening as they were stealing blankets from homeless people along Telegraph Avenue. “No loitering!” cackled Ivan Jen, clad in a “Fry Mumia” t-shirt. When I confronted him about Emily’s stolen piece, he first claimed he was trying to destroy the “hopelessly vile” Sex on Tuesday column. Once pressed, he admitted that it was a desperate attempt to boost readership of the failing magazine. “What am I supposed to do?” he pleaded. “We’ve tried comparing campus activists to Hitler, clever double entendres like ‘master debater,’ and even updating our Microsoft Paint software – nothing works!”
He handed the column over without a fight, but quickly made a break for it, simultaneously kicking a puppy and telling it to “get a job” as he ran. I pursued half-heartedly, but what’s the use? In a world where something so ugly as the Patriot exists, what hope is there for anything beautiful, like love, or multiple orgasms? I went back to the office, handed over the column, and broke off the relationship right there. I thought I’d seen it all. But after that display of human misery, I couldn’t bring myself to care for anyone, even my sweet Emily. But I still can’t help but get a little miffed when I see her column on Tuesdays. Is she thinking of me? Does she hate me? I hope not. Take it all in stride. Sex a la Chung just doesn’t work with a hardened detective like me.
