10:08 pm | 15 December 2003 | de-funking the myth of clean boys (part 2)

I know you all have been chomping at das bit for another installment of the
Boy Funk Treatment Manual
and so here it is.

Boy funk is sometimes a stealth funk. Some boys, craftily, impart an air of neatness while secretly funking about right under your nose. Example: Beardy-weirdy Mildew Boy (see Boy Funk, part the first) had four little glasses on top of his desk. At the end of each day he would meticulously sort his pocket change into these glasses--pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters--before removing and tossing to the floor THE ONLY PAIR OF PANTS HE OWNED to which perpetually clung a mildewy funk, his excuse for which was "They are the only pants I own, so when I wash them sometimes I don't have time to let them dry before putting them back on." This explanation, sufficient in his demented, moldy little brain, was met by yours truly's gaping maw of bewilderment.

Another cock I used to know was one of those film-school assholes who will whip out the Truffaut vs. Godard argument at any/every party where it's necessary to impress/give the idea of large intellect/dick, but who, while personally fastidious, was the NASTIEST SLOBBIEST HO in the universe. Like, I moved into an apartment he'd previously occupied and there was a film of nicotine on the cupboard over the toilet because of incessant on-the-bog smoking. Like, under the sink in the bathroom was a pair of ancient and stained whitey(yellowy)-tighties which did not belong to him but which he had lived with for nearly a year, had every day brushed his teeth with the knowledge that those fetid draws lurked just below the countertop. Like, his "beadspread" was one of those moving pads that you use to cushion your furniture in a U-Haul, for serious, and this was before Urban Outfitters co-opted that shit. It was not a stylistic decision. It was because he was NARSTY TO THE MAX. Anyone seeing his fussy little black-framed glasses in public would've been fooled, but ladies I am here to tell you: Dude had the funk.

Lest I be labelled a misandronyst, I would like to say that girls, too, have the funk, but it tends to be a more palatable variety: overflowing ashtrays and dirty dishes, yes, but not (TRUE STORIES AHEAD) putting your dirty dishes in the refrigerator so they will be chilled and hence not rot as quickly so the dish-doing can be procrastinated a few extra weeks, and not throwing your empty beer cans into the basement (?!) so that, ostensibly, at the school year's end you can return them all (in michigan we get ten cents for each can returned, so you could really make a haul) but in the intervening eight months enduring a housewide beerstench reminiscent of your personal living space being the place where frat-hazing casualties go to die, and THEN when the basement FLOODS more than seven hundred beer cans RISE UP THE STAIRCASE like a horrific MIASMA and spread their DISEASE OVER THE WHOLE FLOOR, but of course you are all TOO FUUUUCKING DRUNK TO NOTICE/CARE.

This is what I am talking about.

At most girls' houses, i will pull a fork from the sink, give it a swab and a rinse, and happily eat from it. Contrastingly, at all but the most trusted boys' houses, i have to pack an autoclave and hazmat suit before dinner more complex than pizza may be eaten.

This is not the end of the Funk Seminar, my children, but for tonight, it must be. Because why? Because I am hungover! clm.

p.s. I wanted to mention that yesterday we went to a Gingerbread Party, and in typical type-A craft overmanagement, I decided that a gingerbread house was too pedestrian, and we made, instead, a double-layered gingerbread lighthouse, complete with surf, Katherine's rocky promontory, gumdrop Santa (made by Janine), and candy-cane anchor, leaning against the front door. In a word: AWESOME!