Excerpt: Dublin by way of Denver...and Paris and Amsterdam

if you are offended by porn shops, masturbating and jizz, don't read this:

Rule 1 of beating off in a Porn shop: always bring in a napkin, paper towel, Kleenex or Burger King bag. Yes, there is someone paid to mop up jizz. But you shouldn’t add to the funk. There’s people who are paid to clean up crime scenes but that doesn’t make it o.k. for you to butcher someone in a bath tub and paint the walls with their blood and entrails.

Rule 2 of beating off in a Porn shop: Once you’re done don’t blaze a trail for the front door. Look around a little bit at their wares before exiting the establishment. No one goes to a dinner party, main lines the guacamole and runs screaming for the front door. You let the host know you appreciated the invite by sticking around pretending to shop for butt plugs.

John did just that. He looked around for awhile, appreciating the subtle differences between Dutch porno shops and their American counterparts. There weren’t many. They both had the same cheesy fixtures and the gray, slotted laminated paneling that supported shelves full of pocket pussies, dildos and cock rings. The same white wire racks held mountains of porn movies and the bad fluorescent lighting was just like at home. It was like when rebuilding Europe after WWII an accord was reached on how to outfit porn shops. The same American company that helped rebuild the European infrastructure, also set the standard for the look and feel of smut parlors. If it wasn’t for all the German poop porn, John could have sworn he was back in Denver with a familiar uncomfortable moistness in his pants. He decided it was time to leave.

He walked out into the fading light. His buzz had finally tapered to a completely manageable level and he wondered what Jessica had gotten herself into. He figured he would start back that way, and find a bar, drink a beer and smoke another joint. As he stood in front of the porn shop, a brisk current of people walked by and he happened to look down toward his shoe as something caught his eye. There on the left side of his pants, glinting in the last throes of the day, was a huge glob of cum.

He reacted quickly for a stoned person who had just beat off. Most people would have curled up under the ALL ANAL section of the porn shop and gone to sleep. But not John. He swatted at his leg and removed the wad only to leave a huge, glistening snail track on his black pants. He did the only thing he could think of at this point: he dropped to one knee and pretended to tie his shoe. While doing this, he wiped furiously at the cum spot, blending it further into the fabric. To sell the illusion, he mimicked tying his shoe even though it was perfectly knotted on top of his foot. After doing so he looked up and saw a young woman looking directly at him.

Not knowing how to explain his phantom shoe tying and not wanting to direct her attention to the shiny glob on his pants, John quickly spun on his heel and headed off back toward the direction of Jessica and the hotel. He pulled his jacket down as far as it would go and hustled off down an Amsterdam street. Hoping against hope that once he was clear of the Red Light District, the strange stain on his pants would take on a far less sinister capacity.