Member Challenge - Funky Phobias

Requirements:

1) MC or romantic interest (or both) must have an obscure phobia (i.e., fear of balloons, flowers, etc. No fear of needles or heights, unless it's a REALLY amusing situation.)

2) said phobia must cause some humorous ruckus.

3) and said ruckus must either bring together or tear apart romantic interest and MC - you choose

4) either romantic interest or MC must beat up/chew out a group of people for making fun or taking advantage of either romantic interest or MC's phobia

5) must include line "You couldn't just have been afraid of dentists, could you?" and/or "Careful, people with obscure phobias are often neurotic, as well." (Or something along those lines.)

6) must be a oneshot under 10,000 words

No:

- sudden cures of phobias. They can't just disappear when convenient, and the romantic interest can't make it go away with their healing kisses, or whatever.

- tearjerkers. There can be serious moments, but most of it should be funny and fun.

Sex on The Brain

It was the summer job nobody else wanted. Two hundred (five drawer) filing cabinets, each drawer containing at least thirty charts, needed to be inventoried, categorized, correctly alphabetized, labeled and typed into a computer spreadsheet before being boxed up for removal.

The huge file room was called "The Tomb", a windowless giant prison cell with endless rows of gray filing cabinets lined up like gravestones in a cemetery.

The files (dating back fifty years) were the property of The Blue County Mental Health Association and my job was to prepare the records for transport to a storage facility. I had to pass a CORI background check and sign a privacy agreement promising to keep all names I saw confidential.

My mother was a social worker clinician with BCMHC and she got me and my semi-pal Franklin the low paying summer gig. About the only plus was that The Tomb was air conditioned and we could play our music since the large room was nearly soundproof located at the end of a dead-end hall in an unused wing of the facility. The Agency planned on renovating that section (including The Tomb) and rent it out which is why the files had to be moved.

The Human Resources Lady mentioned that a third worker has been hired to help with the project but I wasn't expecting that new co-worker to be a coed about to begin her freshman year at Green College. Franklin and I were going to be Seniors at Hillsboro High School and it felt intimidating to be working with an "older woman".

"Hi, I'm Edythe," my new associate introduced herself on our first day on the job.

"I'm Dunkin Darwin," I replied nervously.

She burst out in laughter. "You're kidding, right?"

"No," I said, slightly offended. "That's my name."

"Sounds like Dunkin' Donuts!" She giggled.

"I like that name better!" Franklin decided.

I had known Franklin from the neighborhood and I guess he was my best friend pretty much by default. The only reason I actually hung out with the guy was because he was just as much a loser as I was and we tended to wallow in self pity together. I actually didn't like the guy very much – he was a whiny, rude, unsophisticated, unfunny loser (whereas I was just a regular loser).

Edythe wasn't cheerleader beautiful or overtly strikingly attractive but she was pretty in an understated way. She didn't wear much makeup, she dressed casually, and she wore her long black hair straight and simple, usually pulled up in bun or ponytail for work. I noticed her perfectly white teeth right away and she had a sweet smile that lit up her face. Edythe was taller than me by about an inch or so and she was an easy conversationalist.

But I wasn't an easy conversationalist so it was going to be a long summer in The Tomb. I was never good with girls, self-conscious to a fault, usually at a loss for words, and hopeless shy. Edythe probably felt like she was being punished being stuck in a lifeless, windowless, boring tomb of a room with a bore like me.

I also took the job very seriously (I didn't want to embarrass my mother by being a screw up) so I was focused on making sure we completed the project correctly, almost to a point of being obsessively paranoid. Edythe was much more laid back about the process and she didn't sweat the small stuff. If she dropped a file, spilling it all over the floor, oh well. Franklin didn't give a shit about anything and I didn't really pay much attention to him anyway. I assigned him the responsibility of putting about four hundred cardboard boxes together.

I took the privacy/confidentiality pledge very seriously and if I recognized a familiar name I practically closed my eyes and pretended it wasn't anybody I – or anybody I ever knew – would know. Edythe, on the other hand, was naturally curious and she often opened charts to scope out a case summary, progress note, crisis evaluation, or case review. Edythe came from New York state to live with her aunt while attending Green College so while I was paranoid that I might stumble across a mental health chart on a teacher, pastor, neighbor, or friend's parent I knew, Edythe had no reservation about prying into the private lives of people she didn't know.

After a few days of working in the tombs, I noticed that Edythe seemed to be preoccupied with the sexual cases she stumbled across.

"Oh, another pervert," she would announce as she pulled a chart from the drawer to be "inventoried, categorized, correctly alphabetized, labeled and typed into a computer spreadsheet before being boxed up for removal" according to our job description.

I just wanted to get the job done and I wasn't interested in snooping into the charts but Edythe seemed fascinated by some of the more bizarre cases she discovered.

"This guy let his dog lick his dick," Edythe announced one day.

It was about the twenty-third time she had revealed somebody's perversion and that one definitely took the disgusting cake. Franklin thought it was funny and he called me a prude when I gave Edythe a hard time about her uncouth reports but who cared what Franklin thought anyway?

"Why are you so hung up on that stuff?" I asked Edythe with annoyance, not really wanting to know about dog licking. "It's really none of our business."

"Oh, didn't I tell you?" Edythe asked innocently. "I have Erotophilia."

"What's that, like acne?" I asked.

"No," she laughed. "See, some people have phobias that deal with heights or insects or spiders or high places or lightning or enclosed spaces or whatever. Living with any kind of phobias is a bummer but can you imagine what its like for those who suffer from sexual phobias?"

"Sexual phobias?" I frowned.

"Sure, Dunkin Donuts," she replied. "Those kind of phobias really effects social and sexual lives."

"Erotophilia is a sexual phobia?" I asked with confusion as I stood at my filing cabinet.

"Yep," she answered.

"What exactly is it?" I asked, not really believing her.

"It's not having guilty feelings about having sex and being more open when it comes to talking openly about sex," she explained from where she stood. "We don't have negative attitude towards sexually explicit materials, for example."

"You're making this up," I accused.

"You're into porno?" Franklin asked with interest.

"No I'm not," Edythe said confidentially while ignoring Franklin's question as she stood at her cabinet a few down from me. "I know it sounds weird, but at least I don't have Erotophobia."

"What's that?" I foolishly asked.

"A sexual phobia about not talking about sex, reacting in a negative way to sexually explicit material and having sex less frequency than most. Which would you rather have?" She teased.

I wondered if I already had Erotophobia since I'd hardly had a girlfriend yet. Apparently, Franklin decided I had that because he piped up from across the room: "Dunkin' Donuts has never dunked his donut!" Humiliating me in front of Edythe.

"Can you image what it must be like to have a fear of nudity or sexual images or homophobia or a fear of sex education or even a fear of talking about sex?" Edythe asked.

When I didn't answer her question, Franklin answered it for me: "He sure can," Franklin laughed. "He's as chicken-shit as they come!"

"Not to be able to enjoy sexual relations or not even be able to have sex?" Edythe asked.

"Can we just get back to work?" I mumbled.

"See, I have Erotophilia, which is all about openness to sex and sexuality," Edythe said. "So I find this stuff fascinating." She held up a chart for me to see.

"You might be sicker than some of those people in those charts," I remarked with disapproval.

"Maybe," she agreed with a shrug. "But again I ask, Dunkin' Donuts, which would you rather suffer from?"

"Dunkin' Donuts is a non-sexual," Franklin laughed. "He couldn't get laid in a bedroom factory."

"Hey, lighten up, Frank," Edythe complained. "Stop making fun of Dunkin Donut's phobia."

"I don't have a phobia!" I protested.

"Sure you do," Franklin said. "You're afraid to get laid."

"Leave him alone, Frankie," Edythe advised and now I was feeling more pathetic than ever.

I was actually kind of glad when Franklin quit the next day. He got offered a job with the town which paid more and the new job got him out of The Tomb.

"Hey, good luck with the nympho pervert," Franklin told me when we left work together for the last time that afternoon. "She's one sick chick."

"No she's not," I said, feeling the need to defend her.

"Hey, any broad who gets off reading about perverted shit is just not normal," Franklin insisted.

The thing was, Edythe seemed to be an interesting person to me. I got to know her pretty well held up together in The Tomb. She talked about herself a lot (mostly because I didn't talk much) and I thought she was funny, intelligent, down to earth and – except for her alleged Erotophilia - a pretty normal person.

But three or four times a day in the middle of the work process she would stop what she was doing and want to tell me about whatever strange case she had come across. I kept telling her not to open the damn charts but she said she couldn't help herself, especially now that Franklin was gone.

"It's the Erotophilia," she'd insist. "I love reading about this stuff."

"You couldn't just have had a phobia about dentists, could you?" I groaned.

"How boring would that be?" Edythe laughed. "Besides, I wouldn't have these wonderful pearly whites if I had a phobia about dentists," she said, flashing me her pretty smile.

I tried to do my job even with Edythe's periodic sexual interruptions.

"Man, this guy sucks himself off," Edythe said one day as she flipped through some poor sick bastard's chart.

"Put it in the box," I moaned.

Three hours later: "Man, this guy microwaved a tomato and then fucked it."

"Put the chart in the box," I mumbled.

The next morning: "So this kid beats off all over his mother's coffee table but he doesn't clean it up very well," Edythe tells me. "Later on, he sees his mom trying to clean the stains off. She's licking her finger and rubbing it over the stains several times, re-wetting her finger again after she's already rubbed the spot."

"No wonder the kid was in therapy," I sighed.

I was beginning to wonder if I really did have Erotophobia since I became extremely uncomfortable whenever Edythe announced some new sexual perversion she came across. She seemed delighted to read it out loud while I cringed with awkward embarrassment. Maybe it was because a woman was the one telling me such filth with such great interest.

"Oh, here's a local successful business man who likes to wear ladies underwear," Edythe announced out of the blue.

"Please don't tell me who it is," I replied. "I still live here."

Later that day: "Hey, here's a guy who uses his drumstick as a miniature self lubricating anal stimulant," Edythe informed me.

"You mean a drum stick from a drum set or a drum stick from a chicken?" I asked (I couldn't help myself – I was suddenly interested in some of this sick stuff after hearing about it from Edythe so much).

"Either way, let's just hope it never got stuck," Edythe replied with a laugh.

Later that day: "Oh, here's a habitual chronic obsessive masturbator," Edythe told me.

Uh-oh. Now we were getting closer to my realm!

"He masturbated while his sister was in the bunk below him on vacation," she revealed. "He masturbated in the same bed as friends. He got caught beating off in the bathroom at school. He was at football camp with thirty guys and jerked off when it turns out they all were watching."

"Okay, I think I've heard enough of that stuff," I sighed.

"How often do you masturbate, Dunkin Donuts?" Edythe asked (as I had feared).

I pretended I didn't hear her but she knew better.

"Ah, don't worry, I do it all the time too," she laughed.

Now I was blushing. That was probably something I didn't need to hear but if she did have Erotophilia I guess she didn't mind telling me about her own habits.

"I used to masturbate while pretending to read at school," she revealed openly. "I'd wear really tight jeans and rock back and forth until I came."

I had no response for that.

"Of course, it's easy for us girls to get off anywhere because there's no clean up, no need to remove any clothing, and there isn't a lot of evidence, depending on how much control you have over your orgasm face!" She laughed. "I bet there are women who have gotten themselves off on airplanes, buses, subways, and backseat of cars when friends are driving, in office cubicles, stairwells, and bathrooms and I don't think it's sick or perverted either."

I just stood there gawking at her, unable to respond.

The next day while we worked: "Can you believe this guy?" Edythe asked. "And at Green College too!"

"What?" (Why did I ask!?)

"He administered a website that required students to have accounts with usernames and passwords but he set up the database so he could have access to them too. Of course, most of them were the same passwords to their other files and accounts so he was able to check out e-mail accounts, facebook and even their hardtops. So he gets access to girls' nude photos and videos of people having sex and all that crazy sort of stuff."

"So be sure you don't give him your password," I remarked.

"Ah, it wouldn't be so bad," she laughed.

Later that afternoon: "Oh, look a teacher who's also a prostitute."

"For god sakes, don't tell me the name!" I yelled.

"Come on, Dunkin' Donuts, don't you want to know who it is!?" Edythe teased.

The next day: "Here's a guy who cut his dick fucking a cheap vinyl sex doll," Edythe told me.

"Please put that file in the box," I begged.

That afternoon: "Ah, gee, this poor girl."

"What?" I dumbly asked.

"She got an ear of corn cob stuck up her twat trying to masturbate," Edythe revealed. "She had to go to the emergency room."

Edythe told me about the cop who was a stalker voyeur. She told me about the waiter who if he didn't like a customer would jack off into their salad. She told me about the hotel security guard who rigged cameras in all the rooms. She told me about the religious youth counselor who was addicted to porn. She told me about a guy who locked his hotel room, took off all his clothes, stood in front of the peephole and masturbated while watching people walk by.

I continued to feel squeamish and embarrassed whenever Edythe revealed another perverted therapy confession by some anonymous poor soul but a weird thing started to happen as the summer progressed: I sort of kind of found myself looking forward to the next sick revelation, not so much because I wanted to hear about them but because I wanted to hear Edythe tell me about them. She was so honest, natural, comfortable and relaxed about what she was saying and reading that I found it to be strangely sensual in a freaky way.

With Franklin long gone, we were alone in our secret little room doing our work (and making good progress even with Edythe searching for scandalous perversions) and I enjoyed spending my time with such an openly unembarrassed girl. She didn't mind reading about people's weird fetishes, humiliating sexual experiences, or strange fantasies and she definitely didn't mind telling them to me.

I even knew about some of Edythe's own personal sexual experiences. During the course of the summer she had talked about her masturbation habits, her previous lovers, and other aspects of her "Erothophilia". I still wasn't sure if there was such a thing but I was beginning to figure out that I really didn't suffer from Erotophobia either because I'm pretty sure I would have ran screaming from The Tomb the very first time she told me of some sexual perversion, quitting my job and hiding in my room for the rest of the summer as a result of her revelations.

Instead, I found myself excitedly heading off for work every morning to spend quality time with Edythe and her "readings". Even my mother thought it was a little strange that I was so motivated and dedicated to the job given my unremarkable work history of the past.

Sometimes, Edythe and I would leave The Tomb on break or for lunch and my mother would see us together and smile, happy that I was finally hanging out with a girl for a change. Maybe I was just a late bloomer or maybe it was Edythe and her Erotophilia that had successfully drawn me out of my shy shell of insecurity, uncertainty, and even misery.

I suppose my big breakthrough came when Edythe was reading about some sick fuck's ability to ejaculate "a good five feet" when he masturbated – often aiming for a dixie cup he'd place on the floor while he stood jacking off in the middle of the room. Sometimes he'd do it on the stairs and see how far he could shoot it.

"What's your personal best, Dunkin' Donuts?" Edythe wanted to know.

Before I started working with (and listening to) Edythe, I would have denied I ever did the dirty deed to begin with. And I certainly would never admit that I did it in any other place than in the privacy of my bed, hidden and buried under covers where nobody could see. I'd never have told her about the time I felt so horny as a young frustrated teen that I ran out into the woods to beat off behind a tree just because I needed to relieve myself but there I was standing at the file cabinet unloading files into the boxes telling Edythe of the time I found some skin magazine in my older brother's room with some of the raunchiest photos I had ever seen. I went out to the hidden old tree fort never used anymore and relieved myself from twenty feet in the air, shooting my cum over the side of the rail.

"Well, I guess that beats the dixie cup guy," Edythe remarked.

The strange thing was I really wasn't that embarrassed telling Edythe what I had always felt was a shameful secret. I was almost proud to "come clean" and admit that maybe I was just as perverted as everybody else, hoping that maybe I had a small case of Erotophilia after all.

Edythe continued to find scandalous secrets to reveal – the minister who was into the swinging group sex life style, the kindergarten teacher who drove to Boston every weekend to work as a stripper, the wife who spiked her cheating husband's lemonade with her urine, the secretly gay husband who met homosexual strangers in the park bushes late at night, the church choir leader who was into S&M, the golden boy sports star who dressed up like a transvestite at night, and the seventy-five year old man who liked to streak the neighborhood at 2:12 a.m. every night.

Sometimes I got a headache listening to all the sick stuff but for some reason I didn't want Edythe to stop telling me the tales. It was sickly interesting, scandalously titillating, and naughtily disgusting but strangely fun.

Maybe I was the one who needed therapy!

One afternoon Edythe and I needed to catch up with the spread sheet entering on the lap top computer. I had been writing the chart numbers on a piece of paper and now we needed to match them up with the names in the computer. I sat on my swivel chair on wheels (we each had one for the lower drawers of the cabinets) and I assumed Edythe was going to use hers so I was surprised when she took the lap top and sat in my lap, putting the computer on her thighs and typing in the numbers I recited.

I had never been so physically close to a woman before. We sat like that for a couple of hours as we caught up with the entries. I smelled her hair and almost tasted it a few times. I smell the scent of her natural body odor and felt the warmth of her skin whenever her arms touched mine as she banged away on the keyboard. Most importantly, I could feel her buns and ass crack through the thin material of our shorts and ever so subtly Edythe would rub her hips and cheeks against my expanding pup tent pole and pretty soon I realized I was actually masturbating as I felt her firm butt pressed against my privates as she repeatedly shifted her rear for me.

It was almost as if we were pretending that nothing out of the ordinary was happening as I continued to recite the numbers and she typed away. It wasn't until my breathing got short and my voice got higher that Edythe turned her head and looked at me over her shoulder to give me a smirk while pressed her butt closer against my member.

"I guess they're not going to find this incident in any chart," she giggled.

"Do you want to go out sometime?" I asked shortly before I exploded, amazed that I had actually asked a girl out on a date for the first time in my life. As unbelievable as that was, to do it while I was cumming against her (clothed) rear through my shorts was pretty wild too.

"'How bout tonight?" She suggested willingly.

I had never cummed in my underwear before, a wet spot forming on the front of my shorts.

"Take them off," Edythe instructed. "I'll go wash them in the ladies room.

So I stood there naked from the waist down praying to God that nobody would come into The Tombs and find me exposed while Edythe washed my shorts. She giggled when she came back, handing me the shorts.

"Don't worry, nobody saw," she said, as she checked out my penis hanging out from under my shirt. She turned and shook her buns at me. "Do I have a wet spot?" She wanted to know. "It feels damp back there."

"Sure," I lied. I couldn't really see anything but if it was a chance to see her naked ass I was in.

Edythe giggled and pulled down her shorts, mooning me in the process. "Go wash them for me," she said. "I'll wait here."

She turned and handed me the shorts and I got a bird's eye view of her neatly trimmed black bush.

So, was I really going to date someone with "Erotophilia" or was Edythe just a sexually liberated, nymphomaniac-leaning free spirit who liked to talk about (and have) sex while flashing her pubes and butt? And if so, what was I doing with her? I thought I had Erotophobia or Sex-a-phobia or whatever you wanted to call it (shyness, insecurity, frigid, etc.) but if Edythe really did have Erotophilia maybe she was the type of person I needed to be with!

We went out to dinner at Serguci's Family Italian Restaurant and it really wasn't all that awkward of a date. We had already spent weeks together in The Tomb talking and reading about sex and I had also accidentally masturbated with her sitting on my lap and we shoed each other our lower region so there wasn't a whole lot left for us to experience together.

But I was excited by the prospect of being with Edythe in any way she saw fit. We didn't have sex that night or the next few times we went out (a ball game at Beano Field, a movie at the Night Owl Drive in, and a free concert at the Hillsboro Park). Part of me was wondering if maybe Edythe's Erotophilia didn't apply to me – that perhaps I was exempt from her sexual feelings, that maybe I even turned her off or that I somehow emitted my own Erotophobia which cancelled out her Erotophilia and I was beginning to feel depressed. If I couldn't get laid with a girl with self-professed Erotophilia, there really wasn't any hope for me!

On Friday at the end of work (we were now up to the R's so there wasn't a whole lot of time left together in The Tomb) Edythe suggested we spend Saturday together. I agreed and we met for breakfast at Johnny C's Diner and then we went for a ride. Even though it was cloudy and not all that warm, Edythe wanted to take a walk in the woods so we stopped in the remote woods of Mt. Griffin and hiked a little used trail while chatting about her upcoming freshman year at Green College and my senior year at Hillsboro High and other incidental subjects when suddenly the clouds opened and it began to downpour.

Edythe laughed and stripped out of her clothes as if she was taking a giant outdoor shower. I had never seen a woman totally naked in person before and I stood under the trees gawking as she danced through the falling rain.

"Come on, be two with nature with me!" the naked Edythe encouraged and how could I argue with her?

I stripped naked and ran and rran

bare-assed through the downpour, my first joint perverted venture although even I had to admit that it really wasn't perverted at all. Actually, it was the most erotic thing I'd ever done and I loved doing it with Edythe.

We put our wet clothes back on and hiked back to the car and Edythe drove us back to Hillsboro but instead of stopping for my car at Johnny C's she took me to her Aunt's house.

"She's gone for the weekend," Edythe slyly told me with a smirk as she hopped out of the car and ran for the house, stripping her soaked clothes off as she ran.

"Somebody could see you!" I warned as I chased after her around the back of the house.

"Who cares!?" Edythe laughed.

I waited until I got inside the house before I discarded my clothes and followed the naked Edythe up the stairs to her bedroom where we ended up naked together in her bed but the thing was I wasn't nervous or frightened even though this was my first time.

Edythe, of course, was not shy at all and she made no attempt to hide her approval of how I looked naked, eying my understandable excitement between my legs. She was the one with Erotophilia and she was the one who taught me everything I needed to know to be blessed with it too.

When we finally finished hours later, I collapsed on Edythe and almost passed out from the most overwhelming experience of my life. Edythe kissed me happily and I hugged her tightly, practically in tears at how complete she made me feel.

"I'm pretty sure you don't suffer from Erotophobia after all," Edythe informed me.

"Good," I said. "I think having Erotophilia is much more fun anyway."

Author's Note: I realize one of the rules was "no sudden cures of phobias. They can't just disappear when convenient, and the romantic interest can't make it go away with their healing kisses, or whatever" but Dunkin Donuts really didn't have Erotophobia (or Erotophilia) anyway. He was just a shy guy waiting for the right 'liberator' to come along and Edythe proved to be that unabridged person.