I can tell that I’m getting older. It’s not just my Jason Statham hairline, (not his muscles or anything, just his hairline) or my gray pubes or my intense dislike of current music trends. It’s the fact that I’m easily grossed out these days.
I know you probably don’t believe me. Sure, you’ve read all my blog entries,* and my seductive way with words does have the ability to paint very realistic and graphic pictures. For example, when I say Stuff like:
“I look down and see three things: the hilt of the knife peeking through her fingers, which are clenched in a fist so tight her knuckles are white; the place in my Chest where the handle protrudes, like a morbid after-factory modification; and the blossoming pool of blood on my chest with lines of blood going down my stomach, like red rivulets of rain on a window. But more gross.”
Or:
“Decades of drunken college use had left a four-inch layer of puke and shit all over every surface. Just walking into the bathroom was like dealing with a HAZMAT environment. You have to hold your breath starting from ten feet away from the bathroom”
Or:
“His head was a mass of cuts, shards of glass from the window were embedded in the skin of his face. Parts of his scalp hung loosely from the top of his head in flaps. The bone from his right arm jutted gruesomely from the soft pulpy flesh of his forearm. His legs lay in unnatural positions, one behind his head, one in front of his face. Had he the ability to move his body, he could have kissed his own shin. By the way he was sitting I knew that most, if not all, of his ribs were broken.”
Or even:
“With their tongues entwined, the two hot, young teenage girls spent hours engaging in every sexual act they could imagine. The Crippled Olympian, the 23 Skidoo, the Whirling Dervish, the Interrupted Transmission; nothing was beyond their burning desires. Giblets were strubbed, lymph nodes were whitewashed and banders were snatched frumiously.”
You can clearly see all of these scenarios in your mind’s eye, as if they are happening right in front of you. But of course, this is just creative license. Just as Stephen King doesn’t know what it’s really like to be a demonic creature from Hell, James Patterson doesn’t know what it’s like to be a black man in Washington D.C. and E.L. James doesn’t know what the consensual touch of a man feels like, I’m not actually into most of the over the top stuff I write about.
Of course, things were different when I was younger. Like most ill-behaving, wannabe cool boys in their pre-teen and teenaged years, I was totally into viscerally gross stuff. Anything with special effects by Tom Savini, anything by Troma Entertainment, Carrot Top. The grosser the better. If I could handle it, that meant I was totes a manly adult and ready to start my 401(k).
As a kid, I could watch The Toxic Avenger over the weekend and walk into school on Monday with my chest out, humbling my peers with my knowledge of seeing a person’s hands deep-fried at a fast food restaurant. Truly I was a god among boys.
I used to even be really into horror Movie make up as a youngster. One day in seventh grade, I gave myself and some of my friends bullet wounds in our foreheads and we went around school that day doing our best impressions of JFK.
But the older I got, the more squeamish I became. Seeing videos and pics online of people after they jump out of windows, or blow their brains out, get their throats slit, or hit by cars isn’t enticing anymore.** It’s not cool or edgy, it’s all just gross and unnecessary. Any “torture porn” movie is definitely right out. I got as far as halfway through Saw III, and just turned the movie off.
Maybe it’s because after being into all the fictional grossness when I was younger, I got to see what it looked like in reality when I was in Iraq and I just don’t have the stomach for that stuff anymore. I dunno. All I know is when given the choice between Disembowelinator 2: The Disemboweling, or Spongebob Squarpants, I’ll choose the latter.
*You do read them all, right? RIGHT?! Oh please God, say somebody reads these nonsensical ramblings!
**2 Girls 1 Cup on the other hand…
