Hobbits Across America

“Sam, do you want some more lobster bisque?” Frodo asked.



“No, thank you. I’m so sick of lobster bisque. Do we have anything else to eat?” Sam replied.



Frodo and Sam were sitting in the breakfast nook of their seaside home in Maine. They had lived here for about six years after escaping the hectic life they led in New York City. Sam had started a landscaping business and Frodo stayed home trying to write his novel, which never seemed to near completion.



Frodo looked in the fridge. “Well, we have some leftover lobster roll, lobster cakes, lobster sticks, and some of that lobster frittata I made for breakfast yesterday.”



“Anything without lobster?”



“Well, we have some mineral water.”



“Good, give me some of that.”



Frodo poured Sam some mineral water in a glass and handed it to him.



Sam took a sip and dramatically spit it out, spraying mineral water everywhere. “Is this lobster-flavored mineral water?” Sam asked indignantly.



Frodo examined the label. “Whoops. I guess it is. Sorry.”

“I had no idea they even made lobster-flavored water.”



“Well, I did, because I’ve invested $10,000 in this company. So drink up, Sam!” This news made Sam throw up a little in his mouth.



“Why would you do something so stupid?” Sam asked after washing the throw-up taste out of his mouth with plain-old, sane, lemon-flavored water. “That is so unlike you. Usually you’re so rational.”



“I know. I guess I’m just going through a crazy phase. I’m at a really difficult part of writing this book.” Frodo’s soon-to-be completed novel, Why the Heart is Fond of Loving and Aching in the City of Despair of My Heart, a gay beach thriller about a couple who moves to Maine and discovers a rent boy left for dead in their dumpster out back. Also, it had a heavy-handed motif of the Buddha appearing in inappropriate places. Frodo thought this was very deep; Sam found it simultaneously pretentious and perturbing. Because of this opinion Frodo no longer asked (or even allowed) Sam to read his drafts.



Frodo’s first, nonfiction book, Homoeroticism in Tolkien, had been such a smashing success that it had prompted him to sell the Park Slope condo he shared with Sam and move out to Maine for some reason. Looking back on the decision, neither of them knew why, but it happened to coincide with their friend Ronaldo’s birthday weekend, when Pippin had accidentally sold them some marijuana that was laced with PCP.



“That was a fairly intense weekend,” Sam liked to comment.



“Shut up, Sam.”



Frodo was beginning to tire of Sam’s constant negativism. Nothing seemed to satisfy him anymore. That’s why the previous weekend Frodo had secretly driven into Boston to visit his favorite lingerie store, Grima Wormtongue’s Lingerie Pit Stop.



“Hi there,” Grima had said when Frodo walked in the door. Some mechanical chimes had signaled his arrival with a rousing rendition of “Barbara Ann.”



“Hello, I need some very sexy panties. I mean briefs. Better yet, make it a thong,” Frodo replied.



“We’ve got lots of thongs. What kind of thong do you want?”



“Do you have the kind that is an elephant, where the penis is the trunk?”



“Yes, but we only have it in large and extra large. You don’t look like an extra large.”



“Are you saying I have a small penis? Because let me inform you, you are dead wrong. I can have at least 15 people here in five minutes who could tell you just how wrong you are!” Frodo was beginning to turn red with rage.



“No, no! Of course not! Those are for fat people and you, sir, are very skinny. We have the kind that looks like a little tuxedo in your size. That model is very popular.”



“Are you calling me fat?”



“No.”



“Trashy?”



“No!”



“Large pubic mound?”



“Heavens no!”



~



So Frodo had planned a special surprise for Sam. That evening, he slipped into his new undies and closed the bedroom curtains. He lit several vanilla-scented candles, and put a bottle of 1992 Bollinger Grande Annee champagne on ice. This was Frodo’s favorite champagne, for the indiscriminately superficial reason that he thought the bottle was sort of sexy. Frodo also put out a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries, and put on some seductive tunes.



When Sam came home from work, the song stylings of Barry Manilow were swirling around like so many Barry Manilowish swirls lost on the breeze. “What the hell is this?” Sam asked, trolloping into the bedroom.



“Hey, handsome,” Frodo purred from the bed, doing his sexy legs-in-the-air thing. “You look like you’ve had a long, hard day.”



“You bet I have,” Sam agreed, kicking off his shoes. “I had to pot a plant, and then I had to pot another plant. Oh, it was just awful.”



“What sort of plant was it?” Frodo asked, tonguing a strawberry.



“Um, a fern,” Sam hee-hawed.



“Oh, yes. Ferns are so hot. Will you pot me like a fern, big boy?” At this, Sam burst out laughing. “I hate you!” Frodo cried, throwing a shoe across the room at Sam’s head.



“What?”



“I’m trying to spice up our lives, and all you wannabe is my last time lover.”



“Huh? Frodo, look, I’m tired, and I need to take a shower. Shouldn’t you be finishing up your novel so we can move back to the city?”



“Oh!” Frodo exclaimed, tearing off his tuxedo thong and letting his penis flop out like so many floppy penises flopping out of someone’s underwear. “So that’s what this is about!”



“What is what about? Why are you acting so crazy?”



“You want crazy?” Frodo babbled. “I’ll show you crazy!”



“You are so hot when you’re crazy!” Sam half shouted.



“I know, I know,” Frodo retorted.



Sam pounced, tackling Frodo to the floor. The thick shag carpeting in their bedroom engulfed his tender limbs. Frodo moaned deeply. Sam grunted abruptly. “I’m going to fuck you like I’ve never fucked you before,” Sam whispered into Frodo’s ear.



“Do me!” Frodo moaned.



Sam briskly unbuttoned his fly, pulled down his pants and threw them across the room, where they landed on a decorative lobster trap draped in an antique fishing net that Frodo had thought would give the place some much-needed charm.



Sam pulled a condom out of Frodo’s purse, which was conveniently on the floor next to them. “Glow-in-the-dark?” Sam asked, a bit surprised.



“Ooooh! Turn off the lights! I want to see if they actually work.”



“It’s the middle of the day, it won’t make a difference. Now, let’s get to it.”



“Yipee!” Frodo shrieked.



“Now, what would you like today? The usual?” Sam asked.



“No, I’m not in the mood for that today. How about the second-most-usual?”



“Is that the thing with the ... ?”



“Pass the lobster-flavored lube.”



“What?”



“Nothing.”



“Listen, Frodo,” Sam said gently, picking at the lint between his toes. “You have to tell me what you want me to do here. I’m only—” he counted on both hands, “—one man.”



“Well, I was just reading this anthology of gay erotic fiction the other day,” Frodo said seductively. “And there was a story about corn.”



“There was a story about porn? In an anthology of porn? How post-modern.”



“No, you misheard me. There was a story about corn. One of the main characters — actually, the only main character — was a farmhand in Iowa or something, and he used an ear of corn to...”



“No! Absolutely not!”



“Well, what do you want to do, then? I think my penis is going flaccid with all this deliberation. Sam, I hate to say it, but...”



“But what?”



“I think we’re suffering from an urgent case of LBD.”



“Long-horned beetle dancing?”



“No, Sam. Lesbian bed death.”



A deep silence hung in the air. It seemed to Sam as if the room were suddenly made of molasses. A tear streamed down his right cheek. “Frodo...” he mumbled.



“Yes, Sam?” Frodo was very near tears himself.



“How could you say such a thing?”



“Well, it’s true, my love. Our sex life has gotten ... well, very dull.”



“But, Frodo, I bought you that sex toy recently. That sure spiced things up.”



“Sam, I don’t think pink condoms count as a sex toy. Anyway, I’m bored with what goes on in the bedroom.”



“Well, what would you like me to do?”



“Corn.”



“No.”



“See, you’re always so negative. You’re shooting down all of my ideas all of the time. Why can’t you just stick some corn in my...”



“FRODO! I had a very traumatizing experience with corn once.”



“Care to share?”



“I’d rather not, actually.”



“C’mon. I’m like your soul mate or whatever. You can tell me. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”



“Even our gardener, Saruman? I know how you love to gossip with him.”



“Even Saruman. I promise.”



“Okay, I’ll tell you my traumatizing experience with corn.”



“Yipee!” Frodo yelped inappropriately.





“Once, when I was a kid, and by a kid I mean a teenager, and by teenager I mean 22, I went with my father to a farming convention in Calgary at the end of June. Also staying at the Radisson was a man by the name of Bill Ferny, who tried to sell me a delicious puppy—”



“Delicious?”



“—but I didn’t buy one. My sister did, and boy was she in for a shock, because the stupid thing reproduced like lightening.”



“Lightening doesn’t reproduce.”



“ANYWAY, also at the convention was Fred Burrows. The third important party staying at the convention was several storage closets full of corn. Long story short, I opened one of the storage closets and I got a humongous load of dead puppies dropped on me.”



“How did that work out?”



“Well, it turned out that Burrows had poisoned all the corn and, at the rate that Ferny’s gerbils—”



“Puppies.”



“Like it matters, but okay. At the rate the little rats were reproducing, they had gotten into the storage closets and eaten the poison corn. Hence all the puppies were dead, and I never want to think about corn again. Also, you could lose part of a husk up there or something.”



“You hold on with the husk,” Frodo enlightened.



“Yeah, whatever. Not doing it.”



“Well, Sam, if you want to know why the spark is dead, it’s because you tell me pointless stories that are actually Star Trek rehashes instead of molesting my tight asshole with a ripe ear of corn. And anyway, ‘Space Seed’ is a better episode to rip off. Good night.”



“But it’s mid-afternoon!”



“Eh.”



~



Days later Sam was in the garden, well, gardening, when he heard an excited yelp from inside the house.



“Sam!” shrieked Frodo from inside.



“What?” Sam yelled back.



“Shut the hell up!” screamed their crotchety neighbor, the Widow Rumble. “I’m trying to take a nap!”



“Sorry, Mrs. Rumble,” Sam apologized. “Ugly old bitch,” he muttered under his breath.



“I heard that!” the Widow Ruble replied.



“SA-AM!” Frodo shrieked again.



Sam put down his trowel and stomped inside, tracking mud all over the new bright white carpeting Frodo had recently had installed in the mudroom. “What?” he annoyedly pouted when he finally reached Frodo, who was lying naked on his chaise lounge with a big stack of papers covering his nether regions.



“I finally finished the first draft of my book. Now, let’s have sex,” Frodo said, tossing the papers on the floor carelessly.



“I’m not in the mood.”



“WHAT!?” Frodo howled.



“I just can’t turn it on like that, Frodo. I have to be in the mood.”



“What kind of man are you?”



“Now there you go insulting my masculinity again.”



“I am not insulting your masculinity,” Frodo slithered.



“Yes, you are. When you say, ‘What kind of man am I,” you are begging the question that there is something lacking about my masculinity.”



“Look, Sam, I know what it means to beg the question and furthermore, yes, I am insulting your masculinity.”



“Then why would you say you weren’t?”



“I don’t know, but I do know that I’m sick of you never giving me the sort of sexual satisfaction I want and deserve. All I ask is that you indulge my fantasies. Is that so much to ask?”



“Corn, Frodo. You wanted me to stick a vegetable in your bottom. That is really a lot to ask.”



“No, asking if I could stick corn in your butt is a lot to ask.”



“Why would you want to put anything in my butt?”



“I don’t know, Sam. Maybe you just have me stereotyped as this sissy little nelly-boy size queen, but maybe sometimes I want to give it to you, huh? Huh? HUH? HUH?”



“That hardly makes any sense! This argument was started because you wanted me to rape your asshole with an ear of corn, and now you’re angry at me because I’m inferring that you like having things put up there. Furthermore, I’ve been with you for years. Don’t you think I would know a thing of two about your likes and dislikes?”



“I hate you!” Frodo yelped, and skipped out of the room, his semi-erect little penis flopping in the breeze.



~



“We’re not here to make judgments,” said Dr. Boromir, Maine’s hippest couples therapist. “We’re here to find a solution to our problems. Frodo, would you like to begin?”



“Sam hates me!” Frodo shrieked, tearing at his clothes as his black veil trembled with rage.



“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Sam gruffed. “Why are you dressed like a widow? I’m not dead.”



“I wouldn’t care if you died!”



“All right, everyone, let’s calm down. Frodo, we’ll come back to you. Sam, why don’t you tell me your problems?”



“Well, for one thing, he told our gardener my corn story after I specifically told him not to.”



“That’s not true!” Frodo interrupted.



“Frodo, Saruman wore a wire. A wire!” Sam shouted.



Dr. Boromir snorted loudly. “Excuse me, you two. I think you both have a lot of issues. Sam, you’re a little too vanilla and you don’t trust Frodo at all. And Frodo, you’re too kinky and you don’t care about how Sam feels about anything.”



“Why would I care about what he thinks?” Frodo impertinated.



“See?” Sam said.



“Whatever, man,” Frodo answered.



“Okay. I don’t usually say this, but I don’t want to be your doctor anymore. The two of you disgust me,” Dr. Boromir sneered.



“You can’t do that. We’re paying you $200 an hour,” Frodo high-pitchedly screamed.



“It had better be refundable,” Sam shouted as he waived his fist in the air.



“Sorry, no refunds,” Dr. Boromir snorted.



“WHAT?” Frodo and Sam shouted angrily in unison.



“You heard me,” Dr. Boromir politely reminded them.



“Let’s get him,” Frodo whispered to Sam. Sam nodded in agreement.



They both suddenly pounced on Dr. Boromir, pinning him to the ground.



~



“Well, that was pointless,” Sam said sullenly, wiping Boromir’s blood off of his face.



“I know, I know,” Frodo moaned. “I still hate you just as much as I did before. What are we going to do?”



“I hate to say it, Frodo, but maybe it’s time we broke up.”



“No!” Frodo gasped. “I’ll never find anyone else I ever loved ever again ever!”



“But you just said you hated me.”



“I don’t hate you. I’m just sick of your negativity, and your lack of having sex with me ever.”



“I wouldn’t call five times a week ‘ever.’ I actually think that’s pretty good for a couple that’s been together for seven years.”



“Well, I think it sucks!” Frodo crowed. “I want to work it out. We could try having an open relationship.”



“How would that fix anything?”



“I would be able to get the sex I need elsewhere. You know, I’d put an ad online: ‘Corn fetishist seeks same. Only tops need apply. Sorry, no bisexuals.’ “



“What’s wrong with bisexuals?”



“I don’t want to talk about it.”



“Come on,” Sam encouraged. “We need to have better communication. You should tell me.”



“Well, all right.”



“So, tell me,” Sam nudged on.



“Okay, so, I once slept with this dude. I think his name was Gamle or Gamble or something like that.”



“Gandalf?”



“Eww, no. I would remember if I slept with Gandalf.” A look of sudden realization crossed Frodo’s face, highlighting his petite features and gigantic eyes. “Gimli! His name was Gimli. Now I remember.”



“Oh, I don’t know this person.”



“It’s better that you don’t. Anyway, this Gimli character, he was a bisexual. At first it didn’t bother me, but then I got to thinking.”



“Really?” Sam looked doubtful.



Frodo gave him a playful punch. “Yes, really. I just couldn’t understand why anybody as hot as Gimli would be into girls too. The whole concept started to bug me. Then, when we were in the heat of passion, right before he climaxed, instead of screaming out my name, he screamed ‘Oh, Cindy!’ and I was so disgusted.” Frodo started sniffling at that point. “I just knew he was picturing somebody else while he fucked me and that’s never happened to me before. It especially bothered me that he was imagining me as a woman.”



“That is truly an interesting story, Fro Fro. Why would anybody ever need to imagine you were anything other than your hot self? I just don’t get it.” Sam said as he made eyes at Frodo, quite obviously.



“Did listening to that story make you as horny as telling it made me?” Frodo preambled as he winked knowledgeably.



“Hell, yea,.” Sam yelped as he ripped open the button fly on his Diesels and moved toward Frodo sensuously.



“Oh, Sam!” Frodo sighed. “But we can’t have sex in this parking lot.”



“What about the car?” Sam asked as he rubbed his crotch against Frodo’s leg.



“That’s great.” They got in the car. “Oh, Sam, do me!” Frodo cried, tearing off his black shirt to reveal a perfectly hairless chest.



“Aw, you shaved for me?” Sam asked.



“First of all, no, I waxed. And second of all, I didn’t wax for you. I wax for me. Now, what have we got for lube?”



“I dunno,” Sam shrugged. “Uh, we’ve got spit. Lots of wonderful spit.”



“Excuse me, Sam, but my anus is a delicate little blossom. I think I deserve something a little more expensive than spit.”



“Wait, wait, wait. First you want me to molest your asshole with corn, or something, and now you’re too good for spit?”



“Okay, fine. I’m going to burst in like, four seconds. Just stick it in.” Sam did.



~



Back at home, Frodo ordered Chinese food from the only Chinese food place in their town, which happened to be called “Mandalay Bay.”



“Why Mandalay?” Sam asked as he silently passed up the shrimp in lobster sauce.



“I think they were trying to get ‘Mandarin’ or something. Are you going to eat your egg roll?”



“What’s it made out of?”



“Fried lobster.”



“Pass.”