Lockjaw Blowjob (or why I changed my LinkedIn settings)

this time with the text receipts

Everyone has heard a story so incredulous that even the people who were actually involved are forced to question whether it happened it all. This story makes me sad that I don’t have kids, because it means I’ll never have grandkids that will get to say “ok sure grandma” as I tell it for the n-teenth time from my wheelchair in the nursing home. anyway, here it is, with all the text receipts at the bottom.

Ten or so years ago I moved into a new apartment in NYC with a chick I met off Craigslist and we ended up becoming super great friends. She had a heart of gold but had terrible luck with men and was always on the hunt for a good one, so we did a lot of sloppy ladies’ nights.  I was in a LTR but happy to play wingwoman. Three weeks before the ladies’ night that is the focus of this story, we were out in the LES and walking to a bar when some drunk bro just like, randomly spun into the air to show his friends he could do a roundhouse kick (yes, dudes rock, I know) and she got caught in the crossfire and got absolutely creamed.  It was horrible, but even now I can't not laugh as I type it because this girl was so incredibly sweet (and pretty, but a little thick so she had some cushion when she hit the pavement that night). We went home immediately after that.

Fast forward to the next ladies’ night (three weeks later) and she's hellbent on having a good time.  Which we all know is exactly how you have a very bad time.  We go to our usual haunt, Mad Donkey Beer Bar and Grill, which any young alcoholic dilettante living in NYC in the early 2010s could have told you was the place to be on a Thursday (when $10 would get you a wristband with unlimited bottom shelf drinks, including gigantic scorpion bowls). After Mad Donkey we went to the local beer garden, where these two Algerian guys started chatting us up. My friend is vibing with the tall guy (great for her) and eventually, at around 3 a.m. or so, they're like "you guys wanna go back to our place and chill?"  I say "Nah, I'm good, I'm in a LTR, but [roommate] should go."  My roommate then sends me a text that's like "please, i don't want to go alone." I keep thinking about the roundhouse kick so I'm like, "Ok fine, I'll go."

We walk to their place, which is like 15 minutes away, we get there, it's chill, they're nice/not pushy.  We're chatting/drinking when all of a sudden one of the dudes gets up to go to the other room and comes out with a mirror with a GIANT pile of cocaine on it.  Like a Scarface level of cocaine –  I have never seen that amount in real life before. 

So we're chatting, and of course partaking in the foregoing, when the tall guy says to my friend "do you want to go to the roof and look at the stars" or some shit like that. She's feeling him and is like "yes, absolutely." They leave. I'm still downstairs with Algerian dude #2 and I've made it pretty clear that I'm in a LTR / just here to make sure my friend doesn't get dismembered, etc.  And he's respectful of that, but I'm sure he's still trying to shoot his shot.  Eventually he goes into the bedroom, comes back out with a banjo unlike any I've ever seen before, and proceeds to play the entire Pink Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon" album on it, in order (yes, yes, dudes rock, I know). Unfortunately, unbeknownst to him, Pink Floyd had been ruined for me because I once had to watch the "Essential Pink Floyd Collection" infomercial (yes, that existed) on loop for 4 hours when I was severely ill as a child and couldn't figure out how to turn off the TV in our shitty Ocean City condo during summer vacation.

So, he's playing, what feels like AGES go by, it HAS to be like 5:00 a.m. now and I start getting worried about my roommate because I haven’t seen her come down from the roof. So I'm having these horrible drug-fueled intrusive thoughts about my roommate getting brutalized on a rooftop while Roger Waters' bassline from "Money" plays in the background.  So I go up to the roof to check on things.

I get up there and I'm wholly unprepared for the situation. I see my roommate and her mouth is wide open and she can't speak. Like not a little bit open, but gaping open. Apparently the drugs and her preexisting TMJ disorder combined caused her jaw to lock WIDE open when she was in the middle of blowing the guy on the roof, like some modern day version of Munch's "The Scream." I start laughing, but quickly realize she is in distress and we all go back to the living room to try and fix it.

The guys get out their laptop and start frantically googling stuff in Arabic and then speaking to each other in Arabic, and they're like "this website says you need to pop it back into place." So they literally start palming her head and jaw and trying to force it back into place but it won't budge. Amid the chaos, I jump up and go over to get them to ease up because I can see her starting to lose her shit.  When I stand up, I bump into the coffee table and accidentally spill an entirely full bottle of beer onto the coke mountain, which IMMEDIATELY liquifies into goo. Afterwards I say the stupidest thing I think I've ever said in my life, which was "just put it in the microwave, it will turn back into powder."  

Just to be clear, I had absolutely no source for that, it's just something I felt was true at the time.  While this story is really about my roommate's L, I admit these guys were not far behind because that had to have been four figures worth of product that was instantly turned into paste. Not to mention that guy must have had horrible blue balls, which undoubtedly was why he was brutally trying to force my friend's jaw back into place like she was going to explode if it wasn't fixed in 30 seconds flat.

Anyway, at this point it is 6 a.m.  Dawn is breaking, birds are chirping.  Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite no. 1 op. 46 is playing in the background. My friend is (rightfully) having a full blown panic attack now and she manages to eke out a "go home" to me. Despite our very adamant protests, the guys insist on walking us both home, and at that point we are too tired to argue with them. So we all walk back to our apartment (30 minutes away) through a very suburban neighborhood. It was the most unholy scene you could ever imagine. It was me and my roommate in the front, her mouth still locked wide open with mascara all over her face, and then the two Algerian guys woefully trailing behind us like sick oxen on the Oregon trail.

She had to spit every 30 seconds or so because lockjaw somehow interferes with your ability to swallow your saliva. It was a nightmare. I remember passing this old Greek guy who was watering his lawn and the sheer "what the FUCK" look on his face. The funniest part was he immediately stopped spraying his lawn when we passed, so he could just stare at us in silence.

Anyway, we get back to the apartment, the guys leave, and my roommate is just sobbing (poor bb).  I tell her we can go to the emergency clinic when it opens (at 11 a.m.) and just to wake me up when she's ready. But thank god it popped back into place once she was able to relax a little bit. Then we went out for pancakes.

The story does not, unfortunately, end there. Her dude texted her a few times after but she was kind of done at that point, and neither of us heard from these guys again. Then, a entire YEAR later, I got a text from one of my friends from grad school named Ali (nice jewish girl that looks like Alana Haim). She says "hey girl, I'm at the beer garden – you wanna meet up for a drink?" and I respond "ah, no, I'm staying in tonight -- I'm working on my YA porn novel"  This was around the time Fifty Shades of Grey came out and I had convinced myself that I could make a million dollars writing shitty porn books for idiots (don't worry, I wrote 30 pages and gave up, like a normal person). But Ali was a Fifty Shades fan for some reason, so she knew generally of my scheme, which is why I brought it up.

As soon as I mentioned the porn, the vibe shift was palpable. She starts sending me these really flowery erotic texts "let me write it with you: he grabs her legs and lifts her like a wheelbarrow" and "her yoni unfolded for him like a blooming flower." Immediately when I read the word "yoni" (which apparently is the hindu word for v*lva) I knew that this was not my friend Ali (jewish girl) this was Ali (as in alibaba), the Algerian banjo man who somehow had his number saved in my phone but did not text me until a full earth's rotation around the sun later.

I ignored the texts but they just kept coming. Yoni this, yoni that. I was too r-slurred to figure out how to block a number back then so my friend eventually grabs my phone and sends a text that reads "hey I'm engaged now, nice to have met you though."

He responds with the most ominous text, which I include below verbatim:

"Congratulation . Heaven is the Vision of fulfilled Desire,

And Hell is the Shadow from a Soul on fire,

Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,

lately emerged from, shall so soon expire."

At first I thought this was original content (and the last words I would hear before I died) but upon further investigation, it appeared to be a poem from 12th century persian polymath, historian, and author of the Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam.

In a text response that still makes me smile to this day, my roommate simply responded (as me): "thanks."

If anyone doubts the veracity of this story, I have all the receipts, which I like to look at from time to time to keep me on God's path.   Here are the texts for your viewing pleasure, the timestamps are crazy lol:

the juxtaposition of the tori amos “FEARLESSNESS” against the threat of being made into a woman in my mid/late 20s

I thought that was the end, except that THREE years ago (8 full years after Yonigate, and 9 full years after the lockjaw incident itself), this guy somehow finds me and sends me a friend request on LINKEDIN. After that I changed my settings so I'm no longer searchable/can't be added by randos. And that's it. That's the story.