Going to the Chapel

26th August 2006: Cherry Popping!

I've caught Twinkles’ cold. I've got an uncomfortable prickling at the back of my nose and throat. It's a foregone conclusion that if he catches a cold I'll end up catching it too and not just because we share proximity, but because he leaves his snotty, germ laden tissues all over the place and I end up putting them in the bin. It drives me mad. He has some disgusting habits. He says I'm not exactly Snow White and I have a few grotesque habits of my own, like the way I rake a cotton wool bud around my lughole and then examine it to see what I've poked out. Well, we all have to have a hobby.

Karen inadvertently accelerated my upgrade from heartless beast to nice human last night. She called to ask if we would baby-sit on Sunday morning while she and Paul took her parents to the airport. She feared Dominic would get bored and fractious if the flight was delayed due to all the extra security measures currently in operation. I said we'd be delighted. Twinkles then took the phone for a chat while stuffing his face with chocolates. Despite his best attempts to stop me I swiped a Viennese truffle from the box before going for a shower leaving him to gossip his heart out.

When I returned downstairs I found the living room seductively lit with lamplight. A bottle of red wine and two glasses were set on the coffee table and he'd saved me a chocolate, one of my favourites, the coffee surprise, sans the coffee bean, which usually adorned the luscious treat. I asked what had happened to it and he claimed it had fallen into his mouth by accident. I forgave him. He was altogether cuddly, attentive and affectionate and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Karen had told him about the umbrella. He said I wasn't to scold her, she hadn't realised it was meant to be a surprise. He then scolded me for not telling him and making him think that I was a miserly, dictatorial...he almost said bastard, but didn't dare after the business with the birth certificate and substituted the word swine instead. See, deterrents do work.

We shared some kisses and cuddles and were just getting intimate when Lulu landed. He still has a key from when he stayed with us and he thinks nothing of using it. At least he bawled hello as he came into the hall. We sprang apart like two guilty teenagers, hurriedly stuffing our accoutrements away out of sight.

Any annoyance we felt vanished the moment Lu walked into the living room. He had a black eye, a real day-glo shiner. He soothed our concerns saying it had been an accident. Helping himself to a glass of wine he downed it in one and flopped down on the couch between us. He was obviously shaken and we demanded he divvy up details.

He'd been out on a date with a guy from one of the agencies he's joined. It had ended in disaster. The guy in question, while not bad looking, had turned out to be even weirder than the last agency guy he’d gone out with, the one who kept his date’s used condoms in a special album labelled with their owner's names and details of their sexual performance. Twinkles wanted to know how anyone could be weirder than that? This one had offered him a drink from a can of Coke. So what was weird about that? At the time the can was wedged up his arse!

Apparently this bloke's bedroom party piece was something called 'popping the cherry' which involved opening a can of cherry cola by first shaking it and then shoving it up his bottom and contracting his anus to pop the seal on the ring pull. His dates were supposed to be impressed by the sheer capacity and power of his sphincter, as well as the arch of cool liquid refreshment shooting out of his backside. Unfortunately on this occasion he inserted the can with the ring pull facing the wrong way, first date nerves perhaps, and had thus given himself a fizzy cola enema. Not only that, but the can had shot out of his arse like a rocket and hit Lu smack in the eye.

Twinkles and I tried we really tried not to laugh, but when Lu said, somewhat plaintively, that he wouldn't have minded so much but he didn’t even like cherry coke he preferred plain we cracked up.

Fortunately Lulu saw the funny side too. He giggled, saying he'd almost had a fit when he finished undressing in the bedroom and had turned round to see his date lying on the bed busily pushing a can of coke into his back passage. He said his instinct was to run, but he was rooted to the spot like a mesmerised rabbit and couldn't drag his eyes away and when invited to bend and drink it seemed rude to refuse.

Poor Lulu! He doesn't have much luck with boyfriends. There has to be someone out there for him.