I work part-time at a dry cleaners, but I’m mostly known for posting cute videos of otters that make people smile. Most people thank me for my work by liking and sharing my videos but some people, like two or three a month, ask me to post videos of otters having sex. When I tell them I don’t post lewd otter content, these people usually say mean things about my penis. For instance, how it’s microscopic. Or how it’s bent like a Russian sickle. Or how it smells like pot roast. If I could brush these comments off I would, but sometimes they really mess with my head and I have to take off my pants and double check my penis is not a tiny pot roast scented sickle.
Yesterday I was in the bedroom and my girlfriend, Shelly, caught me trying to get my nose near my penis.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “It doesn’t smell like pot roast, it smells like pennies.”
Shelly and I have been together for almost two years, but our relationship hasn’t been going very well lately. Shelly used to work as a bank teller and in her free time she would post cute pics and videos of tigers for the entire world to enjoy, but there were some people, like fifty or sixty every day, who begged to see her naked. For a long time she said no way, but these people were relentless and a week ago she said fine, as long as you pay me $79.99 a month.
***
Today I took a break from otter posting and stood outside Shelly’s office. Her door was shut, but I could hear her chatting with someone named Lawrence. I heard some sultry whispering and then some sexy giggling. Then I heard a bikini top being unstrung and tossed erotically onto the floor. You may wonder how I know what a bikini top landing erotically on hardwood sounds like through a closed door, but like most people I have incredible hearing when I’m super jealous. After her session ended, I knocked on her door. Shelly answered it wearing a tightly cinched robe.
“When are you going back to posting tigers?” I asked.
“Probably never,” she said.
I could tell Shelly was annoyed I’d interrupted her again. Since she’d started her new job, I’d been interrupting her about twenty times a day to tell her how much I loved her or to tell her how beautiful she was.
“People really loved your tigers,” I told her.
“My tits are my tigers now,” Shelly said, tightening her robe and closing the door.
***
I hadn’t taken Shelly on any dates lately because I was saving up all my money for my leg un-lengthening surgery. I’d gotten leg lengthening surgery a year ago because Shelly wanted to wear heels without towering over me. The surgeons snapped my leg bones and screwed in some titanium rods and after my femurs fused back together I was three inches taller. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, Shelly got drunk and admitted she loved me more when I was shorter.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but your old personality and your new height just don’t match.”
I remembered how when I’d woken up from my original leg lengthening surgery, Shelly and my parents were all standing by the side of my hospital bed. I was pretty out of it, so instead of thanking them for being there, I asked my parents why when I was young and they wanted to have sex my dad threw seventy five cents out into the lawn and told me not to come back inside until I found a dollar.
“Jesus Christ,” my dad said, “this again?”
Fine, I’d brought this topic up a couple of times before, okay maybe like every time I saw my parents I said something about it, and sure, sure the last time I’d brought it up I had compared the quarters in the lawn to less shiny and less valuable blood diamonds which had made my mom cry because she was really against blood diamonds.
“You threw those quarters into the lawn like twice a day,” I said. “Sometimes it was freezing out and that one time I got bit by those fire ants.”
“Everyone in our neighborhood did that,” my mom said. “Even Pastor Curt’s kids were out there searching for quarters in their lawn.”
“It was bad parenting,” I said. “It was an absolute betrayal of trust.”
***
My blood pressure was rising and my heart monitor started beeping faster and faster. Shelly knew where this was headed, so she pressed the button that controlled my pain medicine about 10 times and I drifted off to sleep before things got any more heated.
***
I met up with my friend Calvin for brunch. I told him how Shelly and I were going through a rough patch. Calvin had been against my original leg lengthening surgery and now he was really against my leg unlengthening surgery.
“Your body is a unique tapestry and altering it to fit someone else’s desires is totally fucked,” he said.
“Of course,” I told him, “but there’s also nothing in the world that says I love you more than having incredibly painful elective surgery. Everyone knows that it works way better than having a baby to save a relationship.”
I told Calvin how I’d bought a wig and some sunglasses and a fake mustache and paid for an individual session with Shelly for later that week.
“That’s a horrible idea,” he said.
“Maybe what she’s doing isn’t as bad as I think,” I told him. “Maybe it is super innocent. Maybe I’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Maybe what she’s doing is way way worse than you’re imagining,” he told me.
***
I had my session with Shelly later that week. I knew I couldn’t be at our house, so I drove over to the grocery store parking lot and put on my disguise.
Shelly came on screen, smiling, wearing a tiger print bikini. Unfortunately I had not cleaned out the back window of my car and all the otter stuffed animals I kept there were visible to her.
“Ughh,” she said. “Take off the fucking wig and the stupid mustache. I know it’s you.”
“I was just curious what you were doing,” I told her. “I just wanted to talk.”
“We’ve talked enough,” she said. “I can’t do this anymore.”
I started to plead with her, but she clicked off the session and my screen went black.
***
I drove around for a while and when I got home I saw Shelly had chucked some of my things out onto our yard. I gathered all my clothes and books and threw them into my backseat. Then I sat there in my car and cried while I watched all my favorite otter videos, otters swimming around and splashing each other, otters juggling rocks on their chests, otters chowing down on sardines. When I stopped sobbing, I drove over to my parent’s house to see if I could crash there.
When I got there I found my two nephews, Kaden and Karl, on their hands and knees, crawling around in my parent’s lawn.
“Grandpa threw five bucks into the grass and told us not to come in until we found it,” Kaden told me.
While I stood there Kaden found a quarter, held it up to his brother.
“Sweet,” Karl said.
The two of them were laughing, they looked happy. I looked at my car, filled with all my belongings and then I got down on my hands and knees and helped them search.