Your Princess is in Another Castle (5 page)

“Ah, okay.
  Sure, go on ahead and construct a series of Rube Goldberg machines to gradually draw the two of you together while always making sure that Sabrina is the one to set in motion each step.  She’ll definitely prefer that to some other guy and his
hey, let’s go out sometime
direct approach.”

“Yeah, well, I liked playing
Mouse Trap when I was a kid.  Sometimes the situation calls for a little complexity.”

“Everybody
played Mouse Trap
exactly once and then lost integral pieces that made the game impossible to play without them.  After that it sat in the closet gathering dust, a lot like the destiny of your dick.  And dude, look what Chris is doing.”

Relieved that the subject has changed to Chris, I glance over at him to see him sucking on Starry’s big toe.  She appears amused at what he’s doing, perhaps impressed at his willingness to indulge.  Taki
ng her digit out of his mouth, he begins to massage the sole of her foot just as her routine comes to an end.  He looks at us then looks away, realizing in horror that he has been caught. 

“Huh,” says Seth.
  “I wouldn’t have thought that they’d even allow that.  Maybe it never came up before.”

“Did you know that he was into that?”

“No.  Did you?”

“No.”

“Poor bastard.  Probably been hiding it all this time.  I guess he just lost control.  Pretty mundane thing to hide though, given what all is out there.”

Starry Nights disappears into the back as the DJ announces that for the next five minutes all dancers are available for dollar table dances.  Chris returns to the table, says nothing.  I’m not sure if this should be addressed.  Seth simply smirks.  

“Fellas,” says Chris, his eyes darting back and forth between Seth and me like the eyes on a sinister looking portrait in a bad horror movie.

“Chris, why didn’t you tell us?
” asks Seth.  “This isn’t that big a deal.  Why hide it from your closest friends?”

“What’s there to tell?”

“Oh, give it up,” I say.  “You were sucking on Starry’s big toe like it was a tootsie pop.”

“Oh, that?  She asked for it.  Guess she’s into that kinda thing.
  Kinky, huh?”

Seth rolls his eyes.  “Please, man.  Please.” 

“Who’s up for some dollar dances?  I’ve seen a few that might be just your type,” says Chris to no one in particular. 

“Epic failure on
the transition there, my friend,” says Seth.  “Look, just admit to it.  We don’t care.”

“I do feel a little betrayed that you just feigned agreement whenever I mentioned that Tarantino’s foot fetish was becoming a little too apparent in his films
, though,” I say.

“Yeah, around
Kill Bill
it started getting out of control,” says Seth.  “I mean you’ve got a scene that exists solely to have Uma Thurman wiggle her toes for the camera.  But anybody, even if you’re not a foot fetishist, would have sucked on Salma Hayek’s toes when she poured beer on them in From Dusk Till Dawn.  Great song playing during that scene, by the way.”

“Hey, yeah, so what, I’ve got a foot fetish,” says Chris, admitting it per
haps out of agreement that anyone would have indeed sucked on Salma’s toes during that scene.  “Go on, give me shit about it.  I don’t care.  I don’t care.  And you wanna know why?  Because when you have a foot fetish, every day of your life is like a fucking Mardi gras!” Chris takes a large chug of beer, as if to demonstrate the hard-partying lifestyle of a Bourbon Street regular.  “You, college boy,” he says, pointing directly at me.

“We all go to the sa
me college, Chris.”

“Exactly!  And you’re a breast man, correct?”

“Well, speaking purely physically, I’d say that’s what I look at the most.  Yeah.  But my friend Jessica isn’t busty at all and I still think...”

“Yeah,
” interrupts Chris, “well you think about this.  When the warm and sunny weather comes round spring semester and all the girls start wearing lesser-covering tops, you might get the occasional side-boob or be walking down a flight of stairs and catch a nice little bit of cleavage from a girl coming up the stairs in a low-cut top, but that’s all you can really hope for.  Me?  I’m gonna get it all.  Because cleavage-bearing weather is also flip-flop weather.  Now you’ve probably never really noticed, never fully appreciated just how many women wear flip-flops in the warmer months if you don’t share my… enthusiasm.  But pretty much all of them do. 

“And for me and those like me, looking at a woman in flip-flops is the equivalent of you checking out a woman showing off her cleavage.  And again you’ve probably never noticed, but whenever girls are on campus be it outside studying under a tree or relaxing on a couch in the university center, there’s a high probability they’re going to just take off their flip-flops all together while they do it.  Maybe even while they’re just sitting at their desks in class.  And looking at the sole of a woman’s foot, for me that’s the equivalent of you getting to see a woman’s bare breasts.  Only it’s even better for me, because women don’t realize this.  A girl flashes you it’ll last for a few seconds.  Stare at her cleavage too long and she’ll catch you.  But since women don’t even know I’m looking, I can look as long as I want and they’ll never pick up on it.”

Pausing for a breather, Chris takes another drink.  One of the dancers, not Starry but an unusually tall Latin girl puts her hands on Seth’s shoulders.  “Would you like a dollar dance?” she asks him.

“No, thank you.  I’m about to be on the receiving end of a tirade,” is his reply.  I decline the offer by shaking my head and she’s off to the next table. 

“Yeah, that’s right mister two girls at once rock star.  What I said before about women relaxing barefoot?  I’ve also seen a girl kick off her flip-flops and lay her legs on another girl’s lap.  Just together on a sofa in between classes.  And the other girl took her friend’s feet and started to massage them.  Now to them, they’re not doing anything sexual.  But they certainly were to me.  They may as well have been going down on each other, that’s what that was to me.  And I was watching the whole thing, sitting in a chair a few feet away.  And they never realized they were giving me a live sex show.  Never knew.”     

“I’m in a local band
, Chris,” says Seth.  “I don’t bang cocktail waitresses two at a time.  But it feels good to have someone to tell this to, doesn’t it?  Not having to hide it anymore.  Knowing you have friends who accept you anyway.”  He glances at me.  I glare back.

“You know, it actually is
a bit of a relief now that it’s a secret to everybody,” says Chris.  “A weight has been lifted.” 

“Besides, it’s not like you’re a furry,” says Seth.

“Hey, that’s not funny,” says Chris.  “I’ve got a friend who’s a furry.”

“You’ve got a friend who’s a furry?” I ask.

“You’ve got a friend who’s a furry?” asks Seth.  He shoos off another request for a dollar dance.  Both dancers have asked him if he wants one before Chris and me.  That’s why he got to be Wolverine, I suppose.

“Yeah, a friend
from back home,” says Chris.  “Jimmy is his name.  He’s been a furry since back when he was little. It’s a serious problem for him.”

“All right, let’s hear about Jimmy,” says Seth.

“Yeah,” I say.  “Let’s hear about Jimmy.  Unless you think he’d mind.”

“No.  Jimmy, he’d be cool with me telling the story.”  Chris takes another drink.  “You guys remember
Robin Hood?  I’m talking about the Disney film version.”

“Yeah, wh
ere Robin and Marian were foxes,” I say.  “And it had the rooster who played the lyre as the narrator.”

“No, he played the lute,” says Seth.
  “A lyre is more like a harp.  But I see where this is going.  Robin Hood and furries, only one way for it to go.”

“Yeah, it goes down that path,” says Chris.  “
But it’s even worse than what you’re thinking.  So Jimmy, when he was younger, he watched the Disney Robin Hood all the time.  Favorite movie.  Obsessed with it, even.  Now Jimmy also had this cute babysitter, Katie.  Katie lived down the street, was in high school.  It was a textbook babysitter fantasy.  You know how when you’re in junior high or high school and a friend’s got a hot mom that you fantasize about?  She’d be a MILF.  Well, to a twelve-year-old, a fifteen-year-old babysitter is the equivalent of a MILF.  Katie was Jimmy’s BILF.  Of course, he’s too young to actually want to have sex with her, so he just crushed on her, but you know, same principle at work.

“And Katie watched Jimmy a lot.  And when she watched him, he watched
Robin Hood with her, pretty much every time.  Since Jimmy was crushing on Katie, naturally he was delighted that his parents had plans to go to a costume party on Halloween and had asked Katie to take Jimmy trick-or-treating.  She accepted.  And as I said, the Disney Robin Hood was Jimmy’s favorite movie.  And as you said, Robin and Marian were foxes in it.  So naturally, Jimmy wanted to go as Robin Hood for Halloween.  But not just Robin Hood.  The anthropomorphic fox Robin Hood.  So Jimmy’s parents, they get him some green tights and a fox tail and some fox ears so he can be the Disney Robin Hood for Halloween.  Normal enough for a kid.

“Now Katie’s taking Jimmy out for Halloween.  And Jimmy’s crushing on Katie.  And Katie’s a good sport, so she gets a pink Renaiss
ance-type dress from the school drama club so she can go as Maid Marian along with Jimmy’s Robin Hood.  But Jimmy wants her to wear a tail and some ears, too.  And she does, because she’s a good sport. Now when Katie comes over to Jimmy’s house to take him trick-or-treating, and he sees her in her pink dress with a fox tail and fox ears, well, that was the very first time Jimmy ever got an erection.  And it hits him.  He was crushing on Katie, yeah.  But what he really wanted all along was an anthropomorphic half-Katie, half-fox.  Even back then, he knew.  That Halloween was the best day of Jimmy’s life.  He got to spend the evening with his dream fox-girl.  Of course after that night Katie goes back to just being a girl.  And that simply wasn’t enough for poor old Jimmy.

“From that moment on to the presen
t, Jimmy only gets aroused by women with some kind of anthropomorphic quality.  Obviously, foxes do the most for him.  But feline traits will work, too.  Let’s just say if you ever meet Jimmy and play some Darkstalkers with him, he will own your ass when he uses Felicia.  Now Jimmy says his furry condition is like being gay, that he was born the way he is, and he can’t help it.  But I don’t know.  Sometimes I think he may have been normal if he’d just watched The Sword in the Stone instead of Robin Hood.”                     

“That’s pretty messed
up,” says Seth.

“Yeah, that’s pretty messed up,” I say.

“Yeah, I know it’s messed up,” says Chris. 

“
But I don’t know about your The Sword in the Stone
theory,” I say.  “He might have just gotten some kind of squirrel fixation or something.  Remember when Arthur gets turned into a squirrel and that girl squirrel falls for him but is brokenhearted when he turns back into a boy?  Man, did that bother me as a kid.  I felt really bad for her.  All she wanted was to love and be loved, and at the end that gets taken away from her and she’s just standing atop that tree staring at the sky devastated.”

“
I as well remember feeling sad for the squirrel,” says Chris. 

“Me too,” says Seth.
  “I mean they couldn’t have put in a post-credits scene where she finds love again with one of her own kind?  How about a happy ending for the goddamn love-starved squirrel?”

“M
aybe sharing an acorn with a boy squirrel, how about that?” asks Chris.  “Poor little squirrel gets unceremoniously told by Arthur to just piss off because he’s a human boy again, and this is the guy we’re told is so good and noble that he’s destined to pull the sword from the stone and be king of all England!”

“Lady, that little Cocker Spaniel, she got hers,” I say.  “
She got the Tramp.  So she got hers!”

“The bitch,” says Seth.
  

The three of us s
tare into our glasses.  We weep for someone and don’t even know her name.  Although being a squirrel, she may not have a name.

Stephanie stands behind Seth’s chair and wraps her arms
around him, resting her head on his shoulder.  “Okay,” she says, “a minute ago I walked by and saw you turn down a dollar dance from Kelly, who has the tightest ass I’ve ever seen on another girl.  Like I’m tempted to slap it myself next time I walk by her.  Now you’re all three looking so morose it’s like somebody just died.  What gives?”        

Seth takes her hand.  “We were just talking about someone we know that got her heart broken
recently.” 

“How’s she taking it?”
asks Stephanie.

“Not well,” says Chris.  “Her boyfriend wasn’t who she thought he was.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” says Stephanie.  “But she’s probably better off anyway.  So how about another round?  Have one in your friend’s name?”

“We can do another as long as you sl
ap Kelly’s ass on your way back,” says Seth.