JJ Gives Some Drunk Girl a Butt Chin

Detective Dufresne

I saw J.J. Dufresne last Saturday night. Al and I stopped by his apartment. I used the bathroom. When I went to wash my hands, rusty water trickled out of the faucet, but there was a copy of Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre on the back of the toilet, and a tube of St. Ives Apricot Facial Scrub on the side of the tub.

J.J. told us about what had happened to him that morning, how the night before he’d been at a wedding and how when he woke up, he sisn't know where he was. He was on a couch but he didn’t know whose or where.

“The apartment was immaculate,” he said. “Really clean. And it smelled good. That’s how I knew a chick lived there.” He spotted a photo album on the book shelf, and as painful as it was to get up, walk across the room, and retrieve that album, J.J. suspected it might provide him with some clues, maybe it would contain a photograph of somone he knew.

"Did it?" we asked.

"Yes," he said, and before we could press him for further details, his cat Marvin began using the side of the couch as a scratching post. "He's allowed to do that," J.J. said.

J.J. with Facial Hair (and possibly something up his nose)

Got a Whole Lotta Love

A Text Message from J.J. Dufresne

Received just yesterday:

This one is just a mess. A loud splattery dump that all the kids on tour of the capital can hear. Christ, I just had to tell a lady janitor to go away.

J.J. Dufresne loves all things scatological: fart jokes and girls who laugh at them; scat exhibits and girls who think farting is funny; the colon; those ditties about diarrhea (“When you’re running in a race and something splashes in your face! When you’re sitting in your Chevy and your pants are feeling heavy!”); girls who laugh when he says pull my finger; the many euphemisms for defecation (“dropping the kids off at the pool” and “taking the Browns to the Super Bowl”); a girl who’d ask him to pull her finger. If J.J. met such a girl, he would love her, he would cherish her, he would drop to one knee and ask her to be his wife. But where is such a girl? J.J. Dufresne is looking for you.

Upon Learning That Trina Is Enjoying This Blog

JJ Dufresne had this to say:

has the chick sent in any boudoir photos?

J.J. Dufresne's Brothers

J.J.'s big brothers tortured him.

They dressed him like a girl, they told him he’s an alien from outer space, he’s adopted, his real parents didn’t want him, Mom and Dad hate him, Mom and Dad ran away and are never coming back, Mom and Dad are dead!
They told him he was dying from a terrible disease, but they wouldn't say what this disease was, only that it would hurt a lot when pus shot out of his eyes, and bugs crawled out of his butt, and nobody would want to come near him, not even Mom. They locked him in the basement where it was dark, scary and full of spiders. They locked him outside when it was raining. They pushed his face in the snow. They pounded on him, pounced on him, punched him, pummeled him, they hit him, smacked him, wailed on him and whacked him. They beat him up. They told him he’s stupid, he stinks, his breath smells like farts, and Mom hates you! They made him cry then they made fun of him for crying.

Thirty years later, whenever one of them walks by, J.J. flinches.

Butt-Chins

When J. J. Dufresne is drunk, stoned, or bored, he likes to make butt-chins.

The first time he did it to me, he was drunk. He came up and stood very close to me, violated all sorts of my personal space, and pinched the sides of my chin together. He laughed.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"You've got a butt-chin," he said. "Ha-ha."

I didn't understand what he was doing. It just felt like he was pinching me, like he was trying to help pop a particularly troublesome zit.

"Ouch," I said. "What are you doing?"

"Butt-chin! Butt-chin!" he chanted. Then he reached over with his other hand and made a tiny indentation in the pinched-together skin of my chin. "You have a butt for a chin!"

J.J. and Pigtails in Black and White

I Loved J.J. Dufresne's Best Friend

I met J.J. Dufresne through his best friend.

I was in love with his best friend. Serious love. Love that had me up all night. Love that had me writing poetry about J.J.'s best friend's socks and ankle bones. I wrote things like, I want the sweetness of possibility, the curl of night against skin, the dark scrape of teeth on bone.

If J.J. ever read those poems and knew they were about his best friend he would pretended to gag. "I don't get it," he would say. "He's kind of a douche."

Even so, that douche introduced me to J.J. Dufresne. Back then J.J. had spiky hair. He wore t-shirts with holes in them, t-shirts that had the words PORK CHOP SANDWICH or BEN'S CHILI spelled out in big letters on their fronts. When he got drunk he let me do things to him. He allowed me to pull his hair into a tight ponytail at the top of his skull, and he also let me drape my purple boa around his shoulders.

I did all those things because I wanted to appear fun. I wanted J.J.'s best friend to notice me and say, "Hey now. That Brandi girl, she's not so bad."

That didn't happen. J.J.'s best friend noticed another girl, a girl with nicer breasts and hair, and he brought me to a bar one night to let me down gently. We ordered some drinks. He told me about his new love and their exciting new love life. He told me he hoped I'd be able to cope with my grief because he knew how much I liked him. Then he suggested that as a first step in getting over him, I should go on a date with someone.

"You know," he said, "J.J.'s single."

I wanted to put a knife through his eye, but I somehow restrained. Instead, I went back to my apartment, stopping first at the Kwik-Trip for a gallon of orange juice. When I got home I dumped half the juice down the drain and filled the rest of the bottle with vodka. Then I sat on my couch and drank it and cried and talked on the phone with people who listened to me cry.

I spent at least a month thinking the rest of my life was going to be hell because I couldn't have J.J. Dufresne's best friend for my very own. Then one day I was sitting in a class, sitting right next to J.J., and he was drawing his trademark big-chinned, warty cartoon man that went on everything from birthday cards to workshopped short stories. I watched as he looped the big loop for the chin. I watched as he drew in a hairy mole and a heart-shaped tattoo. Then, without missing a beat, J.J. Dufresne extended his drawing hand to my notebook and he scratched the word FART in bold letters across the notes I'd just taken on contemporary schools of poetry. After he finished flourishing the T, J.J. resumed the shading of his big-chinned man. And that's when I realized that the real prize in my coming to Minnesota was not meeting J.J. Dufresne's best friend—a boy J.J. would go on to refer to as not only a douche but also an asshole, jackass, cock-knock, jizz-mouth, and fuckhead—but meeting J.J. Dufresne himself. That was worth everything in the world.

A conversation with my husband about J.J. Dufresne

Betty Sue: We have to get JJ something for Christmas.

Al: JJ! We're not getting anything for JJ! What are we getting JJ?

BS: A crockpot.

Al: A crockpot?! We're not getting JJ a crockpot.

BS: Then what do you want to get him?

Al: Nothing! I say we give him a great big dose of nothing.

BS: We're getting him a crockpot. He doesn't have a crockpot.

Al: (grumble grumble grumble)

BS: One of the big ones. Not cheap, either.

Al: (grumble grumble grumble)

J.J. and Piñata

I like his teeth.

An Amendment About His Tastes in Women

Forget what I said about slutty girls.

J.J. Dufresne's mother might not like slutty girls and she might be very sad if J.J. ever took up with one, but J.J. Dufresne really, really likes slutty girls. He'd prefer, of course, to have a Real Woman—one who could cook a killer meatloaf, one who would laugh at all his fart jokes, one who would smile and put her hands in his floppy hair, one who might, someday, sing their children to sleep—but those women are in short supply. J.J. Dufresne cannot find a Real Woman to save his life.

So he will take a slutty girl in the place of something more substantial.

J.J. Dufresne likes a girl he can meet in a bar, charm with a few stories about his life as a clerk in Washington D.C., and then take home. Once he gets them home, that's when J.J. will put down his best lines. He will show off his smoothest moves. He will offer the girl a beer or a cigarette, and then they will get naked.

Once, J.J. Dufresne told me a story about one of these slutty girls. He took her home. He got her in bed. She was going about her slutty business and doing her God's honest best on J.J.'s man parts, but J.J. wasn't having it. He didn't like her technique. He was feeling antsy. He'd brought this girl home with one goal in mind: complete and total satisfaction. What she was doing, however, didn't feel like it would ever come near complete and total satisfaction. But then the girl stopped her slutty business. She put her cheek on J.J.'s thigh. She rested.

Although J.J. wasn't a fan of her technique, he wasn't going to have the whole night be for nothing. J.J. Dufresne does not like a woman who quits. So, J.J. Dufresne reached down, took his man part up in his hand, and whapped the slutty girl on the cheek with it.

"I just wanted to wake her up a little bit," J.J. Dufresne explains when I look at him, horrified. "Come on, she needed a little something."

Slutty Girls Scare Him

Especially when those slutty girls drink too many Mich Goldens with olives and fall asleep on his shoulder.

J.J. Dufresne's mother would not approve of this type of girl.

J.J. Dufresne Attempts a Booty Call

This summer J.J. Dufresne tried to take me to bed.

It was after 1:00 AM when he called. I was coming back to town after driving a friend home from the bar.

"Hello, J.J.,"I said when I answered my phone.

J.J. didn't waste any time. "I'm watching movies," he said. "I think you want to come over."

I thought of J.J. Dufresne's apartment and the pan of sticky rice that had been rotting there for at least two weeks. "J.J., are you trying to make a booty call?" I asked.

"I want your boobs," he said. "I really do."

He's Employed!

"Now I can pay my rent," he said.

"Now women will be interested in you," I said.

"They better be!"

Recent Communication with J.J. Dufresne...

During Which I Learned:

1. He has a head cold.

2. He does not have a crock pot.

3. He has never participated in a circle jerk.

4. He doesn't know if he got the job. He might know more tomorrow.

The Man

More about Who He Is

He likes Wonka bars and milk with his supper. He likes his cat Marvin and teaching small children how to make fart noises by blowing raspberries into the palm of their hands. He likes any girl who will let him touch her. He likes America. He is a Republican. He believes in God and baseball and pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps. That he believes in it doesn't mean he does it. He is thirty-one years old.

Who is J.J. Dufresne?

He likes breakfast when someone else cooks it. He likes a sandwich that someone else has assembled. He likes milk that's not sour, but he'll drink it if it is. He likes a boob, no matter what size, and he isn't fussy about perkiness. He likes short stories by Raymond Carver. He likes things made out of butter. He likes the state of Minnesota, which is lucky because that's where his mom lives, and he loves his mom.