Reader Submission Corner Presents: Christmas in Korea; or, the Tell-Tale Phallus
submitted by Sam
[Note from OMGJ: Yeah, we know it's June, but how likely is it that we would be able to store this until December and still remember that we had it for use at the appropriate time? So welcome to our One Day Christmas-in-June Event starring exactly one single guest article!]
“Hey Sam, are you coming to the Christmas party? We’re doing one of those ‘secret santa’ things.” My boss asserted himself into the doorway with the absolute immovable finality of a polite well-spoken southern refridgerator.
“Can I be the present?” I asked, fighting off a forest of waist-high 12 year olds trying to hit me in the face with a stuffed dog.
“I’ll, uh. . . I’ll get back to you on that one, but it’s a $20 max either way.”
“Damn, I’m worth way more than that.” I sighed. “Back to the drawing board, then!”
The party had been brewing for the better part of a month. Actually, scratch that, only a complete and utter social mongoloid could somehow expect a major holiday to pass without some sort of corporate-mandated observance-shinding taking place, so it should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone ever that I woke up on the day of the party without a single clue as to what to bring.
Until my eyes happened to fall upon a statue I bought at the market a few months back.
It judges and finds you lacking.
I’m not certain on the history of this specific figurine, but I do know that icons like this feature heavily in ancient Korean fertility rituals, which were practiced extensively up until the Japanese occupation. Rumor has it that to this day there are still shamans working their magic in remote mountain villiages the same way they did when foreign devils first sailed up the Han river.
However, absolutely none of that mattered quite as much as the fact that it’s a smiling clay penis and therefore the absolute height of comedic genius.
“It’s the perfect mix of hilarious and borderline-harassing! This will be perfect to inflict upon my co-workers!” I said to the giant pile of laundry quietly learning algebra in the corner. “If only there were some way to make it MORE HILARIOUS.”
I glanced at the clown nose perching on my lamp before deciding that, no, I should save that for my Saturdays down at the cancer ward. I already had bright metallic-blue wrapping paper, just begging for a priapism joke. I stewed over my options and tried to imagine a way to fill it with cream and cover it in chocolate, perhaps even affixing it to the greased loins of a Chippendales dancer.
No, instead, I reached for the bag of generic bulk candy underneath my bed, covered in dust bunnies and stained with tears and self-loathing. I pulled out a sweaty fistful and crammed it into the hollow base of the clay penis. I took a second fistful of shiny, foil-wrapped diabetes and shoved it in, grinning like a man possessed by his own puerile sense of humor.
I might have giggled a little bit while doing so, I don’t recall.
With an absolutely unhealthy level of manic glee, I grabbed the sheet of wrapping paper and proceeded to fashion the world’s least effective condom since crocodile feces fell out of favor. I covered it with such a layer of scotch tape that it could probably have survived a trip through one of those microscopic black holes the Large Hadron Collider spits out.
I tucked it into my backpack and headed out to do some shopping before the party. Sure, at any moment I could have purchased any number of gifts which would be infinitely more appropriate than a grinning stone penis, but then I would have passed up the opportunity to give someone a penis for Christmas. You can’t ask me to give that up.
So, the day passes, and I head to my school dressed in my Christmas finery. Sadly due to some trouble with the police earlier in the year I was forced to wear pants over my mistletoe themed banana hammock. Such is the price of artistic expression, I assume.
Stepping inside the office, two things became immediately, chillingly obvious: For one, the academy’s owner was milling about the punchbowl with my boss. Two, his wife and children were there.
There I was, standing face-to-face with an individual capable of instantly exiling me halfway across the world on a whim, at a family Christmas party, and I had a stone penis in my pocket.
No sir, I was not happy to see him at all.
Intensity of cock sculpture is depicted.
“Glad to see you made it, dude.” My boss said, slapping me on the back. “So, what did you bring.”
“Well, actually, I don’t think. . .”
“Aw come on man, you can trust me to keep your secret!” He jokingly punched my arm, dislocating my shoulder in like twenty different places.
“I mean I thought it was just going to be us foreign teachers and-”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to!” He said quickly. “Just making conversation.”
“I appreciate that, but-”
“The more I think about it, the more I realize how foolish it was to pry into the nature of your gift.” He hugged an arm around my shoulders and stared up at the stars, hidden behind a ceiling and a choking layer of pollution so thick you could dig through it with a melon baller. “For lo, Secret Santa is a tradition handed down to us by agents unknown. Secretive people hiding amongst the cracks and crevices in mini-malls and retail outlets, scattered amongst the blighted urban hellscapes of our suburban shopping plazas. Who knows why they designed the rituals they did? Clearly not I, who was so callous to disreguard that!”
“Well-”
“FORGIVE ME!” He bellowed, shaking his fist at the heavens. “I only sought to wrestle that sacred knowledge from the tyrannical claws of the gods themselves!”
He wandered off, muttering about ecclesiastical ursurpation and unknowable mysteries. I scratched my head and wondered, breifly, if my strangeness was contagious.
“Okay everybody!” The owner called, clapping his hands. “It’s time for the gift exchange!” He waved his hand at a large pile of hastily wrapped gifts and shopping bags containing rushed piles of impulse purchases hastily arranged into some semblence of thoughtfulness. I placed my penis on top of it, since I am just a glutton for torture.
My fellow teachers and I took seats as the owner’s kids ran around in circles, screaming like. . . Children, honestly. They made small talk about inconsequential bullshit, completely ignoring the obvious, Poe-like guilt-sweat seeping through my hilariously ironic tee-shirt.
“Well, everyone is ready!” The owner gestured to the pile dominating the center of the staff break room. “Who will go first, I wonder?”
“Hey, it’s Christmas, let’s let the kids go first.” said Annie, a woman known far and wide for her unrelenting love of fashionable environmentalism. This suggestion was met with a quiet murmur of general agreement, since we foreign devils didn’t understand that to Korean children, “Christmas” means double homework and giving all your money to your mom as a show of appreciation for her hard work.
"Pick any gift you want, childrenNO NOT THAT ONE!"
That being said, there’s something innately seductive about a giant pile of gifts, and their childishness overwhelmed their Korean programming, and they dove in like angry piranna attacking a racist cow. They swarmed around the presents, peeking under wrappings and into bags as much as they could, yet not a single one of them even so much as touched my stone penis, standing proud on the top of the heap like an even more phallic version of a Moscovian minaret!
They returned to their seats, gifts in hand, moving silently through the crowd like tiny Predators.
“Aha! Thank you one and all!” The owner said, grinning like a man whose employees just gave his children money. “But it is very late! My family must return home and sleep. So, goodnight!” I thought my trial was over when they started to don their jackets, but like the fabled Icarus from olde, my heart was dashed upon the rocks by a co-worker with more vocal chords than sense.
“Ain’t yer wife gonna pick something?” The words hung in the air like leaden notes from Anubis’s own death-bell. A look of sudden realization crossed the owner’s face, as he turned to his wife and exchanged a prison riot of words. He looked at his wife, and waved his hand at the pile.
She turned, grinning, and without a moment’s notice, grabbed my penis. With the panache of someone expertly adept at recieving gifts, she tore through the paper with a single manicured fingernail, and stared.
The owner stared, too. My co-workers craned their necks to see, and when they did, they ALSO stared. The children stared, but given at the many questions they asked their dad I don’t think they understood what they were staring at, thankfully.
The silence was so thick you could weave it into body armor.
“Who. . . Who brought th-” The owner was interrupted by the clattering of my penis ejaculating half a bag’s worth of candy all over the floor. There was a singular moment of absolute silence. The owner’s wife had that unique look of horror smeared across her face where you’re not quite certain what it is you’re supposed to be afraid of, but goddamn if it isn’t monstrous.
Then, she started laughing. The tension in the room snapped like a hamstring, and everyone started laughing with her.
So, guys! What’s the lesson in today’s story? If you said, “If it looks like a dick, don’t bring it to your job’s Christmas party,” then congratulations, you qualify as a decent human being.
