Their folks would find them, a towel twisted around the kid's neck, the towel tied to the rod in their bedroom closet, the kid dead. Looking back, kid-psych experts, school counselors now say that most of the last peak in teen suicide was kids trying to choke while they beat off. Some deeds are too low to even get a name. Those stupid, desperate things you actually think or do. The trouble is even the French don't have a phrase for the stupid things you actually do say under pressure. You come up with the perfect thing you should've said. But the moment you leave the party… As you start down the stairway, then - magic.

So under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. Say you're at a party and someone insults you. It means that moment when you find the answer, but it's too late. People in France have a phrase: 'Spirit of the Stairway.' In French: Esprit de l'escalier. Every Easter egg hunt with his kids, his parents' grandkids, that ghost carrot is hovering over all of them. Even now he's grown up, that invisible carrot hangs over every Christmas dinner, every birthday party. This friend of mine, he waits months under a black cloud, waiting for his folks to confront him. No way could she not find the carrot, carefully shaped with a paring knife from her kitchen, still shiny with lube and stinky. All his dirty clothes, while he ate dinner, his mom grabbed them all to do laundry. After dinner, he goes to find the carrot and it's gone. He works the carrot out and stashes the slippery, filthy thing in the dirty clothes under his bed. Then, this kid, his mom yells it's “ suppertime ”. He slathers it with grease and grinds his ass down on it.

At home, he whittles the carrot into a blunt tool. Like he's going home to stick a carrot cake up his butt. So, my friend, he buys milk and eggs and sugar and a carrot, all the ingredients for a carrot cake. Everyone seeing the big evening he has planned. All the shoppers waiting in line, watching. Then he pictures how it's going to look at the supermarket checkstand, the lonely carrot and petroleum jelly rolling down the conveyer belt toward the grocery store cashier. He goes out to buy a carrot and some petroleum jelly. He's always jonesing for a better way to get his rocks off.

At that age, this friend's a little sex maniac. Stimulate the prostate gland hard enough, and the rumor is you can have explosive hands-free orgasms. A friend of mine, when he was thirteen years old he heard about 'pegging.' This is when a guy gets banged up the butt with a dildo. This story should last about as long as you can hold your breath, and then just a little bit longer.

Haunted chuck