Fear the Willow.

This is just the first draft of this and will be edited at some point, but I really needed to get this written down somewhere.

The fetishes of others are something I have never really been concerned with. I have always believed that as long as you are not hurting someone else, that you should go with it. It is also known as "what ever floats your boat."

But when I found out about a certain one, it made me cringe.

Back in 1997 I was living with my friend Spencer who I also happened to work with. We were both drivers for a restaurant delivery company in Atlanta. The job allowed us loads of cash for a minimal amount of work. That and we rarely had to be up before two p.m., so it also gave us the opportunity to drink copious amounts of liquor on an almost nightly basis. One of these nights was when I found out that some people are just plain ill in the head.

After work one night we decided to go on a whirlwind tour of our favorite watering holes and maybe find a few new ones. We started out at a place called MJQ. MJQ was a bar that was known for being hard to find. Mainly because when you pulled up all you saw was a small shack in the middle of a huge parking lot. Since both of us had been there many times in the past we knew that the shack had a stairwell in it that led own to the club.

Once we had made our way in to the cavern like club we both headed straight for the bar. Lucky for us Jenn (not her real name, well it could be, but it has been so long I forgot what it was. Damn my gin soaked memory) was working, so that meant free drinks for me and Spencer.

As we were sitting at the bar shooting the breeze with Jenn about, well, I am not really sure what we talking about, but I am pretty sure it had something to do with monkeys. Anyways, after a while of imbibing spirits a waifish looking woman at the other end of the bar waved to get Jenn's attention. She went over to talk to her while Spencer and I finished our drinks up. After she came back we explained that we were heading off to the next bar on our little voyage. As we left Spencer asked Jenn what the girl she talked to had wanted. Jenn just shrugged and said "My ex asked her out and she wanted to know if it was cool if she went out with him. I have no problem with hit, we broke up eons ago." And with that we were out the door. The rest of the evening was more of the same, I think. Well, Spencer did manage to drink himself sober, but that is a story for another time.

A few weeks later Spencer and I were winding down our night at work by trying to decide what to do afterwards. We wanted to do something other than go drinking, but were at a loss to find anything more entertaining than that. So we hit the bars again. I am still not really sure when we ended up at MJQ again, but at some point I was sitting at the bar staring down at a gin and tonic that had mysteriously been placed in front of me. I looked up and there was my savior, Jenn. She was overly animated on this evening, but Spencer and I could not figure out why. That is when I heard the following.

Jenn came up after giving us our drinks and asked "Were you two here a few weeks ago when that girl asked me about my dating my ex?"

Drunkenly we nodded and I might have managed a "Uh, yeah, but I am not sure on that.

She went on "Holy shit, you are not going to believe what happened today. That girl called me up earlier, bawling."

Spencer and I looked at each other, shrugged and he asked her "Ok, I'll bite. What was she crying about?"

"Well, she called me up and I could barely understand her. She was doing that deep sobbing while trying to talk thing. You know what I mean?"

I piped in with "Like a little kid type of crying?"

"Yeah, exactly. Anyways, I finally got her to calm down and asked her what was wrong. She stared to tell me about how she and Steve (the ex-boyfriend of Jenn, but like before I am not sure if that was his real name or not) had gone to pick up some movies. Afterwards they went back to his place and popped one to watch. "

Spencer interrupted her with "Wait, that is the big deal? She watched a movie with him."

"No dumbass, you need to let me finish."

He gave her a sheepish grin and apologized.

"Okay. As they were making out, things started getting a little heavy between them. She was getting in to it when all of a sudden he just stopped. She said 'He just sat back up and started watching the movie again. I thought that maybe I was a little too forward with him, or maybe he just did not like me.' I have never known him to turn down ass so I asked her if there was anything else. She started to stammer a bit and said 'Well I am not so sure I can tell you the rest.' "

Spencer and I were both confused by this point. Neither of us had ever heard of a guy just stopping while that close to getting laid.

She continued. "I finally got her to open a up a little bit and tell me what happened. 'At first I was a little confused, but I decided to let it slide since we had only been dating a couple of weeks. But after about ten minutes I looked over to ask him something and he was, um, he was beating off!'

This got some odd looks from Spence and myself. "He was choking the chicken, polishing his knob, and other assorted slang for jerkin it?" I quipped.

Jenn cut me off "Whoa, let me finish. You are as bad as he is. Anyhow, I asked her what movie she had been watching with him. I could tell there was some curiousity in her voice when she said 'Willow, why?' That is when I asked her if it was the scene with Willow and the faerie. She then blurted out 'How the fuck did you know that!?'


Because the guy had done it to Jenn too. That's right a man who gets off on faeries, or possibly midgets, or a combination of the two. In either case it was pretyy fucked up, but we found it hilarious.

Spencer was lucky, but I on the other hand was not. I happened to be taking a swig of my drink which ended up all over me, the bar, and a little bit on Jenn when I spewed it all over from laughing my ass off.

We both looked at her in a new light and told her just that. All she could do was shake her head and say "I let it slide too, but after he kept wanting to rent that movie I began to suspect something. I really should have warned her about that."

After Spencer and I had regained some sort of composure we left Jenn to the rest of her customers and headed out to the next bar.

On our short drive over we just kept saying "Willow" and giggling uncontrolably. Once we got to our destination, The Star Bar, I headed straight to the bar while Spencer grabbed a table for us. I got our drinks and started walking over to where Spencer was. As I walked up to the table Spencer had this look on his face like he had just seen a ghost. I asked him what was up and all he said was "Dude, the bartender you just got the beers from is him." "Him? what the hell are you...oh fuck. You don't mean.." Spencer cut me off, "Willow boy" was all he said.

The rest of that evening is kind of a blur. Partly due to the fact that we could not pour bleach on our brains to blot out the knowledge we had just gained, so we tried to drink it out. Or as Lizard and I often say "The visual is winning, the visual is winning!"

On one hand I am glad that I have this story to tell. On the other I can no longer hear the name Willow without a chill going down my spine.