Hairy Eyeballs

At eighteen, my super-strict puritanical upbringing made me stupidly ignorant. I write this to prepare you for the following story, which, although hard to believe, is completely true.

During my first week of college orientation, a free film played on campus. Not knowing anyone, I went by myself. I took a seat in the middle of the auditorium to hopefully meet a person of the opposite sex. After a few friendly hellos, the lights dimmed for the film comedy, titled The Groove Tube. As it began, I laughed along with the crowd. Then up popped a puppet-like face and the whole audience went into a fit of hysterics. They laughed. They howled. They rolled in the aisle. While I scratched my head.

I sat there thinking, yes, the wiggling face with the scruffy beard, googly-eyes and jiggling nose looked funny, but not enough to warrant such a rip-roaring response. I stared, trying to figure out why the long waggling nose and the two hairy eyeballs made everyone laugh so hard. What was the joke that I wasn’t getting? Think, I told myself, there’s got to be a logical reason why the guy beside me dropped his popcorn and is doubled over on the floor, gasping for air.

Hmmm. I leaned forward in my seat to study the problem, like a trick question on the SAT’s. Long, flesh-colored nose. Two, pink hairy eyeballs. What on earth could that possibly be?

A light flashed in my naive brain. My stomach lurched. All the blood in my body rushed to my stupefied face. I slumped down into a tiny, embarrassed ball beside the guy on the floor.

Oh my God, I thought, so that’s what a penis looks like!

True I had seen scientific diagrams and little babies, but viewing that particular section of adult male anatomy for the first time up on the big screen came as quite a shock. I had never seen my dad or my brothers naked. Nor had I agreed to any hanky-panky with any previous high school dates. This was way too much. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

The fact that the poor fellow’s private parts were dangling upside down for comic effect did little to alleviate my chagrin. Like a person in a witness protection program, I stumbled to the exit with my head down. Then I tore off across the campus to the safety of my dorm room to spend the night screaming into my pillow.

My next penis inoculation happened when my first art teacher invited students to a life drawing session.

In a flutter after class, my friend Patty giggled. “Omigosh, are you really going?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Well, I’d be too embarrassed. The model will be totally nude.”

My mouth fell open. “Really?”

Patty twisted a lock of her blond hair and nervously plucked the split ends. “Yeah, that’s the reason guys cruise this building. They want to see naked women.”

“Oh jeez,” I said, wishing I had been better prepared for the realities of my new chosen profession.

For moral support, we decided to meet beforehand. Clutching our drawing pads tightly to our chests, Patty and I ventured forth into the studio, filled with serious-looking upperclassmen. Copying them, we placed our large paper pads on easels and waited for our instructor.

Finally he appeared, followed by a tall reedy guy in a brown paisley robe and green flip-flops. The teacher said a few words of instruction, none of which I heard. My eyes were glued on the twig-like fellow, who was about to drop that ugly robe and stand before us in his thin hairy birthday suit.

The model ambled slowly to the raised platform at the center of the room. Then with a lightening quick skip, the guy was up, naked and striking a pose, reminiscent of a buffed Greek Olympian complete with an imaginary spear.

I gasped. His pose was way too much. My hand quivered over my drawing board, like a needle recording a seven point earthquake. I needed air. I needed air, BAD!

Seeing my friend’s bright red face, I knew she did too. I grabbed her hand and pulled her out the door.

We raced down the hall and plowed into the girls’ bathroom where we collapsed onto the floor in a total giggle fit.

Seeing a live dick just cracked us up. I laughed for days.

Even right side up, it looked quite funny.

*The Groove Tube parodied various TV tropes like toothpaste ads, but the funniest was a public service announcement about venereal disease narrated by a flesh-colored puppet called Safety Sam; as the camera zooms in, it’s apparent that Sam’s doughy eyeballs and prominent nose, which jiggles as he talks, are a man’s inverted genitals—and that man was Chevy Chase.

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