The Two Deadly Sins of Phil: Sin Number 1

I've been taking part in David's homoerotic fantasy football league for the past two weeks. Lots of buggering jokes. Maybe that's what got me thinking about something that happened with my old buddies at the kitchen cabinet shop.

I worked at the shop for several months about five years ago. It was a strange little world that a guy named Mark created in his garage. He populated this little world with a table saw, planer, router stations, and two humans. Then he tried to see how far he could push the humans, Mike and Phil, with jabs and minor insults before they would snap and want to kill him. Phil had a particularly short temper. Phil shaved his head all the time, and we always joked about how you could see how angry he was by how red his bald head was.

Mark hired me to do all sorts of grunt work -- sanding, lifting, routing grooves, assembling drawers, and more sanding. Mike and Phil gradually informed me about the ongoing war between them and Mark. They told me that every year there was a cease fire at Christmas. For the Christmas party, the three of them would get drunk right there in the shop (aka Mark's detached garage). They told me that one year Mark told Phil that Phil had only ever done two things that were really wrong.

One time, long ago, they were doing an installation. This meant that they loaded all the cabinets in the truck, unloaded them into a house, and spent the rest of the day trying to level the cabinets, cussing up a storm about old houses, and crawling around putting shims under the base cabinets. Once level, they screwed the cabinets to the wall. With the base cabinets, you would have to basically crawl into the cabinet, which was very awkward.

So there was Mark, bent over, head in the base cabinet, trying to get a screw to go into a stud, and evidently he was having some trouble locating the stud. Phil was standing behind Mark and was suddenly inspired to pantomime like he was having anal intercourse with Mark.

Mark must have tried to look as unkempt and uncouth as possible. He was 6' 4", around 280 lbs, and rarely bathed. He had one of those beards that didn't really have a starting point or ending point. It just kind of grew up his cheeks and down to his chest in jagged lines. He looked a lot like Bluto of Popeye fame. And he never brushed his hair, and he smelled.

Mark's appearance and hygeine made Phil's decision to pretend buttfuck him even funnier. Now Phil could have gone a couple of ways with it. Maybe a business-like screwing: mechanical, disinterested, just getting the job done. Or he could have done an angry and forceful humping, furrowed brow, like he was really giving it to him good.

Instead, Phil went for ecstasy. He did some gentle pumping, dropped his arms to his sides, and threw back his head with an expression on his face that said that nothing had ever felt so good in his life. He shut his eyes and formed his mouth formed into a silent, "Ohhhhhh." I know that's what he did because both Phil and Mike re-enacted what Phil had done that day.

Evidently, Mark caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, scrambled out of the cabinet, and said, "What the hell are you doing?!!"

Even though there was no music playing, Phil said that he was dancing. Mark stared at Phil, and then said nothing...until years later at the Christmas party when, drunk, he finally admitted that he knew what Phil had been up to that day--pretending to hump him. And he didn't like it one bit.

I had forgotten about this for a long time until Krista recently did the same thing to me in homage to the cabinet guys.

Next time: the other thing Phil did that pissed Mark off.