On my next book tour the theme was monkeys, and on the latest one it was items men shove inside themselves and later have to go to the emergency room to have extracted. This started when an ER nurse told me about a patient shed seen earlier in the week who had pushed a dildo too far up his ass. The door had shut behind it, so hed tried fishing it out with a coat hanger. When that proved the wrong tool for the job, hed snipped it with wire cutters, then gone after both the dildo and the cut-off hanger with a sturdier, fresh hanger. You hear this from doctors and nurses all the time: their patients shove light bulbs inside themselves, shampoo bottles, pool ballsand they always concoct some incredible story to explain their predicament. I tripped is a big one. And, OK, Im pretty clumsy. I trip all the time, but never have I gotten back on my feet with a pepper grinder up my ass, not even a little bit. Im pretty sure I could tumble down all the stairs in the Empire State Buildingnaked, with a greased-up rolling pin in each hand and a box of candles around my neckand still end up in the lobby with an empty rectum. Another common excuse is I accidentally sat on it. Implied is that you were naked at the time and this can of air freshener that just happened to be coated with Vaseline went all the way up inside

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris