Blame it on the Guatemalan Guy... and Anne Murray

Once in a while, I think it might actually be quite nice to be able to shut off my brain so I don't keep getting myself into trouble.

But then again, what fun would that be?

Far too early this chill obsidian morn, my fetching Fetish Ninja and I had our weekly coffee'n'catch up date, long-overdue as we'd missed a few because of holidays.

There was much to be shared.

Amongst them was a sweet, neophyte relationship I had the privilege of witnessing take root and blossom right before me a few weeks ago. At the home of an amiable photographer where good friends and I participated in a cool project, we hung out, listening to music, awaiting the arrival of a fifth friend, and chatting about kinky sex and S'n'M as so many of Fetish Ninja's friends from "The Scene" were featured in work all around the room. It was both fun and amazing to see the excitement radiate between FN and one of my male friends when they suddenly realized they were both ready and looking for the same things in a liaison nouvel: strong attraction with deep respect and no strings attached. Friends with benefits.

"A fuckbuddy, if you will," she said with easy insouciance.

Immediately, a chortle began to bubble in my chest when a scene from a movie I was surprised to enjoy started playing in my head.

"You've seen '40-year-old Virgin,' right?" I asked. "D'you remember that scene at Best Buy when the guy's co-worker, played by this actress who looks like a total doppelgänger of Anne Murray, asks him... Well, actually, never mind. I'll send it to you."

During class a little bit later when the sun was finally up, I was in the middle of meticulously executing some gorgeous-feeling short spine exercises (without using my arms to stabilize for once!) when, without warning, Anne Murray's head spontaneously popped into my mind's eye, whispering meaningfully, "Fuckbuddy."

With a sudden apoplexic paroxysm of startled giggles, I nearly twanged myself off the machine and splatted backwards onto the floor. Heart hammering with fright, I straightened myself and forced a poste-haste exorcism of Elle Fuckbuddy's floating nog out of my brain. While trying to get back into concentrating on the exercise, I looked up and saw my instructor's lovely face hovering between my legs, latent with both concern and clear struggle to not laugh out loud.

"S'okay," I reassured her. "If I were you, I'd laugh, too. Look, everyone else is."

So it's not just hearing about sexual adventures involving someone you look upon as a little brother that isn't discomfiting enough, but add an extra-creepified Anne Murray to the mix. Suffice it to say, uncontrollable laughing and precarious Pilates techniques do not an accident-free session make.

Screw the draughtsman; I blame it all on the cherry-popping gardener.

And that blasted Anne Murray.

Somehow she achieves the impossible (and unforgivable) by completely obliterating every trace of smoldering sensuality and soul from "Fever."


(photo credit: an old record album by, yes, Anne Murray, a Canadian icon who makes ad nauseum national television appearances that are both unbearably cheesy and mortifying. In the clip above from "40-Year-Old Virgin," actress Jane Lynch croons a song she actually wrote herself; in translation, it reads, "Whenever I clean my room, I can't find anything. Where are you going with such haste? To a football game.")