I'LL NEVER BE POPULAR BECAUSE I'M TOO PICKY WITH MY PENIS

Hi, I'm back.

For those of you who've been in a tizzy, scratching your head and wondering "Where my Uncle Bob be?" ... duh....I TOLD YOU GUYS I was going to the beach for a few days for a work retreat.

I mean really!!

DUHHHH!!!

So anyway...yeah...I'm back. Had a good time and am in the worst pain that I've been in for 20 plus years. More on that later.

So here's the highlights of the trip:

My co-worker Amy comes to pick me up on Sunday afternoon in the rental car.

"You wanna drive?" she asks.

"Nah," I say. "You drive."

We drive for about two miles.

"I've had a bad day," she said.

"Why's that?" I ask.

She proceeds to recap this story for me, explaining that these were people she went to church with and were friends with and was supposed to go to New Orleans with next weekend.

I mean ... this was a car crash that was SO BAD that CNN reported on it.

Now five of her friends, INCLUDING HER MINISTER were dead.

She said that this was the first time she had stopped crying long enough to talk about it.

The weirdest part was that last weekend, before her minister started his sermon, he said "If you've never listened to a single sermon I've preached...you MUST listen to this one..."

...And it was the last sermon he ever preached.

It gave me goosebumps when she told me that.

Needless to say, it kinda sorta cast a pall over the entire trip. Especially since they were in a rental car, WE were in a rental car and we had to drive past the "Investigating Crime Scene" on the interstate where it happened at which time police were out on the side of the interstate, searching for clues.

She was strong though.

Never once cried in front of me.

So we get down there and we're staying in a nice hotel on the beach.

I get to my room and immediately snap a photo off my balcony.

Wish you were here ... and naked on my bed, eh?

I slap on my trunks and head down to the beach and get in the water.

WHEEEE!

Dare I say it ... I'm frolicking in the water.

I'm dancing in the waves by myself, enjoying the living shit out of the gulf waters.

A big wave approaches me.

"WHEEEE!" I think to myself. "This should be fun!"

The big wave gets even bigger as I brace myself to withstand it.

I withstand it.

My swim trunks however ... do not.

Suddenly, I feel my trunks being pulled straight down my legs as the wave moves away from me.

I panic. There's about 40 people on the beach and in the water. I'm about 10 feet away from the beach.

And I'm standing there with the waistline of my trunks around my knees.

I plop down into the water to cover myself which doesn't do much good as the water is only about knee deep.

I'm scrambling to yank my shorts up while I'm sitting in sand and broken sea shells.

Another big wave comes up and smashes me in the face.

Now my life is one big Lucy skit as I struggle to hide my naughty bits while being pummelled by Mother Nature.

I finally get my trunks back up around my waist and try to exit the waters as dignified as a guy can be after exposing his shriveled up penis to everyone in attendance.

The water was cold, mind you.

And Mr. Happy let everyone know that.

Humiliated much??

That night we had a luau on the beach.

Shrimp, chicken, ribs, alcohol and various sides.

Limbo, hula hooping, Hokey Pokey-ing.

It was my first time being around the majority of these people at this retreat.

I learned quickly that there was one major clique that about half of the people were in. This clique controlled things there and had all the fun. And if you weren't part of the clique, you sat with the losers.

Amy and I were the losers.

So we drank lots and lots of alcohol until we no longer felt like losers.

We then tried to infiltrate the clique. Amy entered the Hokey Pokey contest.

She lost to popular members of the clique.

We stopped trying to infiltrate the clique and just drank and hobnobbed with the losers.

Losers suck though. They talk about things like tourism and work.

No wonder they're losers.

Monday we sat in seminars for two and a half hours in the morning.

At 11:30 we're finished for the day and are told to either A) go golfing. B) Go shopping. Or C) go lay on the beach.

Since my wife is fair skinned (dare I say...transparent-skinned?), I took advantage of an afternoon on the beach, grabbed my trunks, tied them EXTRA-SPECIALLY TIGHT and headed back to the beach to work on my tan while Amy went shopping.

Rented a chair for five bucks an hour. Highway robbery. But I wasn't going to lay in the sand all afternoon and have sand bugs crawl all over me like the poor people who didn't have five bucks.

The breeze from the open gulf kept me cool as I laid there.

I kept looking at my arms to look at my developing tan, but couldn't really see anything.

So I kept laying out.

Three and a half hours later, my nipples started to burn.

"I bet I've gotten some sun," I thought to myself. "I should go back inside!"

Went inside and showered and looked at myself in the mirror.

No tan.

"Damn," I thought to myself. "I can't believe I laid out for three and a half hours and got no sun at all."

Uh-huh.

Monday night, we went on a dinner cruise.

That was a lot of fun. More free booze. It was a Corona kind of night and I decided that I'm going to get drunk for the first time in years. My plan was to get drunk, try to infiltrate the popular clique one more time, but this time be so tipsy that they had no other option than to accept me because I'd be so damned witty and charming, because my wit really shines when it's fueled by alcohol.

I first demonstrated my sensitivity by taking pictures of the sun going down from the cruise ship.

I then downed four Coronas in a 30 minute period.

I was suddenly witty and charming.

Not to mention extremely good looking.

A member of the popular clique walked up to me and stood next to me, looking out at the sunset. Someone else walked past her and said "Don't fall overboard."

She looked in my direction and said "I'm sure if I start to fall, he'll catch me .... won't you?"

The alcohol was working. I was so extremely good looking that a member of the popular clique had even taken notice.

"Yeah, sure," I said, all witty and charming-like.

"Your name's Uncle Bob, isn't it?" she said.

"Why yes," I said, all taken aback because I was neither wearing a name tag nor had we been properly introduced yet. "And yours is....?"

"Marla," she said, shaking my hand and smiling.

We talked about our respective positions in our companies. Her city is roughly 45 minutes away from mine and she asked if she came to visit my company one day, would I take her to lunch?

"Yeah, sure," I said, all witty and charming-like.

She kept calling me "darling" and "sweetie" which again took me aback.

So here I was...a tall blonde with deep blue eyes calling me "darling" and "sweetie" while the sun went down on a romantic cruise ... and I realized quickly that if I were going to be part of the popular clique, it may require sharing the penis.

I wasn't here to share the penis.

I had already shared it with the 40 random tourists on the beach the previous day. And no matter how tall, or blonde or blue-eyed this chick was ... my penis was already on permanent loan to the Mrs. And Suze has a little problem with me going on business trips, getting drunk and porking strangers.

I purposely let our conversation get dull by saying "Yeah, sure" a lot and roping in the wit and charm. Marla finally got bored with me and went and found another guy to prey on.

We had dinner a little while later which was delicious...surf and turf.

I was even invited to sit with the captain of the ship at his table. For some reason, he really took a shine to me.

It may have been my charm and wit.

Maybe he sensed that I should have been firmly entrenched in the popular clique and that if I sat at the Captain's table, the popular clique would all be like "Ooooo...the captain digs him so maybe we should sink our claws into him and yank him into the popular clique without actually demanding that he sex us all up because he's married and faithful."

Believe it or not, it worked.

After dinner, I was asked by two of the popular clique members to come down to the "hospitality suite" at the hotel (i.e. open bar) and hang out with the popular clique.

I would have, but I was having strange sensations all over my body. I told them I'd have to go to my room first.

We got back to shore, got back to the hotel where I went upstairs and took off my shirt.

I was more red than a 14 year-old caught masturbating in church.

The three and a half hours in the sun was such a shock to my body that it took a while to produce the results.

I had the sunburn from hell. Even if I had wanted to pork total strangers, I couldn't because there was not a single part on my body that wasn't sunburned.

You know...except for the part that I'd actually use to have sex with.

I looked in the mirror and saw the results of my day at the beach.

Maybe Marla was into guys with third degree burns. Sure it's a sick fetish, but someone has to have it.

I covered my body with aloe and stripped naked, laying face down on the bed and gently sobbing into my pillow from the pain.

I fell asleep that way. Woke up at 1 a.m. and the pain was overbearing.

Slept off and on like that for the rest of the night.

Tuesday we had one more seminar, packed up and came home where I was reunited with my wife and son.

My son wouldn't stop hugging me which was nice except my neck and shoulders are on fire and a handshake would have been sufficient at that point in time.

He's even adapting to his new daycare slowly. He now no longer sobs when Susie drops him off and yesterday was the first day that he smiled and laughed with the other kids. The daycare lady was so impressed that she took a picture of him smiling and put it up on the wall.

Things are looking good.

Except for my right armpit.

Which is looking like a lobster has been smushed into it.

It's good to be home.