Last night at Wolf Hound we had a conversation about butt plugs.

We were talking about butt plugs because someone had recently had an incident involving a butt plug. And I wondered aloud: “What does one do with the butt plug afterwards? Does it go in the sink, or in the dishwasher, or do you put it in a shoebox under your bed?”

I mean, for god’s sake, if you just toss it on the sheets or on the floor, it’s bound to collect cat hair and dust and pieces of Cap’n Crunch or whatever. You wouldn’t treat your toothbrush like that. It’s unsanitary!

The discussion grew from there, with nearby tables chiming in either with empirical evidence or their own personal theories. It was great!

There was one person at our table, I can’t remember her name but I’ve seen her around, and she definitely wasn’t having it. She looked downright angry that we were having a dumb conversation about butt plugs in a gloomy dive bar.

I thought, “Hey. Come on. Chill out. We’re experiencing a nice thing right now, which is the joy of conversation!!!!”

I like having conversations. It is fun to talk, especially when it doesn’t matter what you’re talking about.

Maybe the idea of a butt plug made this woman uncomfortable. I don’t know . . . I don’t personally want anything to do with butt plugs—mostly because of the hygiene issue, and also because it would make me feel weird to encounter one out of context (e.g. you have to move it when you’re vacuuming or something)—but there’s nothing wrong with them.

And anyway it doesn’t matter what we were riffing on. We were just riffing, man.

What makes me think she was just uncomfortable with talking about anything at all is she wore the same bitter facial expression when we got into pulp. See, the bartender gave me an expensive cocktail just for the hell of it, I really don’t know why, and it was all right. I think it had tequila and Campari and grapefruit juice in it. I let my friend’s girlfriend try some, and she said, “Ew! It has stuff floating around in it!” To which I told her it was just grapefruit pulp. She said, “Pulp is gross!”

Pulp is not gross. Pulp is Real Cool. I am pro-pulp. She is anti-pulp. We polled the table. It was a fifty-fifty split.

The woman who hates any sort of bar-room conversation didn’t give me an answer. She looked pissed off, like, “Why are these assholes still talking?”

If I had to guess, I’d peg her as anti-pulp.

The pulp, baby—the meat of the fruit—that’s what makes it all worthwhile. And I ain’t just talkin bout JUICE.

Yup! The end.