Golden John reached over and grabbed the three sheets of printer paper off of my coffee table, briefly scanned through the lines and lines of printed text, and then began to read aloud.

“A guy walks into a bar with a set of jumper cables.  The bartender says, ‘You can come in, but don’t start anything!’”

Panther and Jamie snickered.  And then Panther asked, “Is that really a bunch of pages of ‘Guy walks into a bar’ jokes?”

Golden John replied calmly in a tone of mock nonchalance, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.  “Yep, it was right here on Bones’s coffee table, next to the whoopie cushion and the ‘Meditating with Mandalas’ book.”

Panther and Jamie shrugged and then went back to their previous conversation.   No one gave it much of a thought, presumably because they weren’t terribly surprised to discover that their weird buddy had a stack of “Guy Walks Into a Bar” jokes, a whoopie cushion, and a “Meditating with Mendalas” book on his coffee table, much in the same way a normal person might keep a book of landscape photography or a basket of remote controls.  Perhaps a bowl of decorative shells.  No one showed any particular surprise at my chosen selection of coffee table decor.  But I felt a bit of happiness about the whole thing – the way Golden John noticed the absurd trio of items and called me out on it.

It’s not that I had consciously decided that these were going to be my coffee table show pieces.   Not that I had laid out a bunch of props.  That would be silly, considering that I almost never have visitors at my house, and laying out props for my own sake seems rather ineffective.   No, it just kind of happened.  I was talking to co-workers one day when someone tossed out a “Guy walks into a bar” joke.  It wasn’t terribly funny, but that didn’t matter.  Something about a “guy walks into a bar” jokes seemed to really tug at my brain, some glob of neurons in some corner of my mind began firing in a particular pattern, and suddenly,  having a collection of “Guy walks into a bar” jokes just seemed very very necessary.

Same with the whoopie cushion.  I was at a kids’ store buying some gifts for my nephew and niece.  I spotted the whoppie cushion hanging from a rack along with a varied bunch of odds and ends and assorted crap.  I grabbed it and took it to the counter with my other purchases.   The friendly woman pulled all the items towards her and asked, “Would you like me to wrap these?”  I snatched back the whoopie cushion, and then replied, a bit embarrassed, “Um, yes.  Except for this.  This is for me.”  At that moment, having a whoppie cushion on hand seemed very important.  I didn’t know when I’d have an opportunity to orchestrate a fake fart blast  out from under my buddy’s ass as he sat down on my couch.   But I knew that I needed to be prepared for it.  Just in case.

The “Meditating with Mandalas” book?  This was a birthday gift from a girlfriend I had around the time when I started growing more and more preoccupied with discovering how to levitate.  There’s not a large amount of personal levitation literature, so this about as close as she could find.  And I appreciate the thought.

Three random items.   Three stupid and seemingly unnecessary items.  But not so.  For me, each one of these satisfied a particular need.   Scratched an itch, if you will.  They were the results of an urge.

And you know what, this makes me feel pretty good, really.  Cause that’s as weird as it gets for me.  One might argue that the desire to print out a collection of “Guy Walks Into a Bar” jokes to proudly display for the non-visitors who don’t visit my residence might be kinda weird.  And plain old stupid.   I’m fine with that.   Cause I feel pretty lucky that the products of my urges can be left out in full-view.  Were I to die, and my family had to comb through my house to put all my shit in boxes, they could rest easy in the fact that they wouldn’t stumble upon anything they really didn’t want to see.  Nope, no surprises in the Boneyard.  I wear my oddities in full view of the world.  Not as a pair of panties under my work pants.

No secret weird stashes in my place.

Well, I take that back.  I do have a weird drawer in my dresser that at one time contained a black mesh tank top with the word “Fierce” emblazoned upon it, along with some silver bicep bracelets and black biker shorts.  And a black leather Judas Priest cap.

Yeah, that’s kind of weird.

But, these weren’t the product of some uncontrollable fetish.  These were the products of a series of hilarious bachelor party stunts committed by my group of friends and I.  Whoever happened to be the unlucky guy with the upcoming wedding would be forced to dress up in the “Leatherman” costume and stroll around in public, carrying a boom box that played whatever terrible dance song was popular at the time.  Kylie Minogue or that “My milkshake makes all the boys go round” song or whatever.  This was  a tradition we had for about 4 or 5 different bachelor parties.  And I happened to be the guy tasked with holding onto the costume until the next round.  But yeah, were I to die, and my family were to open the drawer and discover this stash, they wouldn’t be shocked.  No, they’d let out a simple bitter sweet smile, remembering the hilarious times we all had getting drunk and embarrassing the hell out of our good friends.

Strangers might find the weird drawer to be a bit disconcerting, though.  I sure hope so anyway.  A couple years ago, my house was broken into and was completely ransacked.  And the one positive thing to come from this is the knowledge that some son of a bitch must have opened up the weird drawer and blurted, “What.  The.  Fuck.”

The bastards stole the Judas Priest cap, by the way.  I can only imagine that this hat was subsequently sold to some seedy pawn shop, only to be purchased by some nervous creepy dude with a regular job and a wife and a kid.  And an uncontrollable urge to dress up in leather.

Do you ever read a news report about a guy who gets caught in a really embarrassing situation?  A man gets arrested for shoplifting and the mall cops discover two dozen pairs of women’s underwear in his shopping bag, for instance.   Or the guy who happens to be walking out of a porn shop with a brown bag full of weird things in his hand just as the Google Street View cars drive by, forever capturing this fellow’s moment of weakness as part of google maps.  And inevitably this poor fellow is going to end up as a link on Reddit, too.

When I hear these stories, or similar ones like a dude who spent years sneaking onto farms to bang the livestock until he was finally caught and mortified on CNN,  I think to myself,  “Thank God I’m not a creep.  Thank God I’m not crippled by these crazy desires.”  Surely this dude didn’t want to be a sheep fucker.  Who would, right?  But the poor bastard couldn’t help himself.  Couldn’t control the urge.  Like, he’s leaving work with his buddies and they invite him to join them for happy hour, and as much as he’d love to join in the camaraderie, there’s a new barn up the road and… well… maybe next time.

This is an extreme case, to be sure, but I can only imagine that there are a LOT of people out there harboring some hidden desire or fetish that they would do anything to keep secret.  Normal people, I mean.  Regular jobs, families, hobbies.  And fecal fetishes.

Or being whipped.

Peed on.

Peeing on.

Watching women in high heels squash bugs  (yeah, this is a real one).

If it’s weird and unsettling, then someone is into it.   Cause people are really gross.

You ever try to spot the weird ones?  Not the obvious ones, I mean, but rather the ones whom, well, whereupon hearing that she is into hanging from the ceiling from hooks piercing her back, you’d exclaim,  “Her?  From Accounts Payable?  Naaaahhhh….”

Take your job, for instance.  Usually the workplace is a sterile, uninspiring environment where people shy away from any conversation that goes any deeper than the smallest of small talk.   Everyone seems like a safe, carbon copy worker drone, who exist only within the confines of the office, and when you leave for the day, they evaporate into the ether and patiently wait for you to return the following morning so they can reappear.   But you know this is not true.  Because you know that, for every 3 coworkers who go home to feed their kids and watch their shows, there’s one who heading to the fetish club to dance on the bar in a spiked g-string.  Or to meet up with her husband and head to the weekly Furries gathering.

You ever sit in a meeting room and glance around the table and try to determine which is the weird one of the bunch?  Sheila from Marketing?  Dan the Business Analyst?  Kyle from operations?   One of them owns a pair of nipple clamps.

Truth be told, my coworkers don’t strike me as a group who’d be harboring a major secret or two.  Overall, it’s a pretty laid back bunch of guys – young folks with wives and young kids.   I don’t suspect there’s a closet case in this group.  Actually, if there is a weirdo in the bunch, they probably think that it’s me.   The workaholic with no wife or kids, the one who never seems to leave the office.  What’s he hiding? Ahh, but  then again, they’re probably not thinking about me one way or another.  Yeah, sometimes my extreme narcissism battles my realist sensibilities for brain time.

NARCISSIST BONES:  Bones, I find you fascinating

REALIST BONES:  Well, that’s only because you’re a narcissist.  I’m not particularly interesting.

NARCISSIST BONES:  Wow, you’re so insightful.

REALIST BONES.  Not really.

But I digress.   So where am I going with this?  What was I talking about?  Oh yes, being weird.  I was thinking of the collection of nonsense on my coffee table and my public facing oddities, and how I feel a sense of relief to not have anything that I have to hide.  With my vast array of neuroses and paranoias – fire, electricity, cars, bugs, the wheel – having to live in fear of somebody finding something, well damn, I’m pretty sure that would be enough to really put me over the edge.    But for the freaky folks, the ones with the skeletons in the closet, or rather, leather jumpsuits in the closet, is it really that big of a deal?  Really?  Is the guy who wants to poop on his wife any worse than the guy like me who wants to turn his extra bedroom into a levitation station for public consumption?  I’m assuming, of course, that the wife is cool with the whole poop thing.  I do wonder how that guy figured out how to bring up the conversation.  “Well that was a great meal, honey.  Say, what do you have planned for the next 15 minutes?  Cause I was thinking that maybe… well…”

The world is an odd odd place, isn’t it? There’s a lot of people going to work, small talking about the new restaurant on the block or last night’s episode of SportsCenter, and then they head home to do all kinds of weird ass shit with all kinds of weird ass devices.  And hey, to each his own.  Just keep the blinds closed.

Being weird is a good thing.  If you’re weird, don’t be ashamed.  Of course, while being weird is not a bad thing, being publicly weird is, well, it’s not for everybody.  Some of you should probably keep those secrets urges to yourself.   And always remember that your coffee table is probably not the best place to keep your RealDoll.  You dirty bastard.