LOOKING INTO THE WINDOW OF VICTORIA’S SECRET IS NOW THE CLOSEST I GET TO SEX. JUST GAZING AT THOSE SLINKY UNDERGARMENTS HAS me remembering there is something missing in my life, and it all fits into those clever little bits of fabric. Well, you know how guys are, and it doesn’t seem to go away with age. It just gets slightly less frequent. Yeah. Like once every twenty minutes. I finally had to do an intervention and walk myself away from the store window. Surely Victoria’s Secret is sexual harassment? I’m walking through the mall happily whistling Mozart and contemplating the meaning of life (which is shopping, natch), then boing! I’m staring helplessly at the exquisite buttocks of a half naked beauty bent over in a wispy thong, having unwanted lustful thoughts about shagging her senseless. Am I not being exploited? Am I not quite powerless to prevent my DNA urgently wanting to plant my seed all over her? Aren’t they using my male programming to entice me into their store to flash my credit card and pull out my pocketbook and plonk down my fifteen dollars, while wondering wistfully what the lovely assistant is wearing underneath? Is exploitation okay if it’s disguised as commerce? [Yes. That is the point of America.—Ed.]
You know you’ve been on the road too long when you find yourself gazing into the window of
Victoria’s Secret for over an hour.
I announced on Bill Maher’s show I was thinking of suing Victoria’s Secret for exploiting me by bombarding me daily with shameless catalogues. Sometimes I can hardly make it back from the mailbox. I have to bend over double to prevent embarrassment. As if the sight of young women in satin skimpies was something I wanted to see.
So I am having a day off in Battle Creek, Michigan, wrestling with lustful thoughts in a shopping mall and shortly after my return to the McCamly Plaza there comes a knock at my hotel room. Thinking it’s my dinner I open the door to find a cute young blonde in a very revealing, eye-catching black lace shirt, showing a lacy push-up bra and a very healthy display of chest.
“Oh my gad!” she says. “It’s you!”
“No it isn’t,” I say.
“Yes it is,” she insists.
Philosophically this argument is becoming hard to maintain, so I try another tack.
“Who are you looking for?” I ask in my pleasant British way. Note, I don’t say “whom.”
“Steven Tyler,” she says.
“I’m not him!” I say triumphantly.
“I know that.” She is unflappable. “You’re that English guy. My sister loves you. Can I have your autograph?”
I hesitate.
“Please,” she says.
Dear God, lead us not into temptation. Surely just a quick …couldn’t hurt …no, no, no…. I try to avoid staringat her breasts as I sign. But I fail miserably.
“This is so sweet of you,” she says, not going away.
I decide silence is the safest course. I nod resolutely and close the door firmly. I’m practically sweating. Perhaps it was a succubus. (No, no, no, that doesn’t mean a blow job on a bus. Succubi were medieval devils. Sexy little spirits that tempted you at night and were, probably, a medieval way of accounting for wet dreams.) Succubus or not, I close the door determinedly and return to my diary. Just then my wife calls. How do they do that? Women know, you know. They have these antennae. It’s extraordinary. She says she likes my diary entry about the God thing and I say, “Oh good. I thought I might have gone too far.”
“You always go too far,” she says.
She cracks me up. I tell her about the blonde and, God or no God bless her, she believes me.