Episode 10: Twelve Fingered Shame Spiral

A few years ago Paige and I went to Cambodia. As many of you know we are adamantly against pre-planning our trips, and prefer to figure out the necessary details upon arrival. However, while we had been researching the trip, Paige happened upon a local Phnom Penh massage organization run by and for local land mine victims. Fondly remembering a previous SE Asian massage experience...we agreed to specifically seek this one out, envisioning long, relaxing, affordable rubbing, and all for a good cause to boot.

A few days after arriving in Phnom Penh, we successfully found the location for the massage parlor, flagged down a small moped (both of us riding on the back - hey, 14 cents goes a long way in Cambodia), and hightailed it over there. 

Upon arriving at the dilapidated, dusty old place, we were excited. As the young lady led us up the rickety wood stairs behind the dirty, open kitchen, we were excited. After she instructed us to get undressed and pulled a transparent curtain across the room in between two torn and stained massage tables, we were excited. Heck, even when we laid down nekid and our two masseuses limped in - both guys, both blind, both badly crippled - we were...excited. 

I worked hard to clear my mind and relax. My guy dug into my back...but I was slightly distracted by the heavy slurping, sucking sounds that Paige's guy was making in lieu of breathing. I worked harder to relax, my guy's fingers seeming to be all over my back, in more places than fingers should be at the same time. Paige's guy's sucking sounds grew louder and louder. Still...excitement was...forcibly abound.

"Chris," Paige said loudly to me from three feet away across the transparent iron curtain. 

"What?" I testily replied, distracted by the distraction within the distraction. 

"Um, he's touching the side of my boob." I had to compute that for a minute. Wait, she was saying this at a decibel louder than normal talking...oh yeah, they didn't understand English - he wasn't going to understand her anyway. Wait, he was touching her boob? Only one boob? Which boob? "And he's slurp-breathing at me...this doesn't feel right..." Suddenly the sucking was interrupted by intermittent, evil snickering. 

"Slurp slurp...heh, heh heh heh...slurp slurp...heh, heh heh heh..."

We both immediately wrapped the towels around us, sat up, waved off the guys, got dressed and left. Outside in the brutally blaring sunlight, we felt strangely dirty, soiled...damaged.

"What the hell was your guy doing?" I somehow managed to formulate, afraid of the answer. "I mean, why didn't you stop him the second he combined the slurp-sucking-snickering with the boob-fondling?"

Paige looked at me in disbelief, "You do know that your own crippled blind guy had at least twelve fingers, right?"

Look, the point to this story is, we had shitty intuition, and look where it got us:

So when Coach tells JT and Steven, "I've got really good intuition," in response to their yarn that they were "doing him a favor" by not telling he and Debbie that they were voting off Tyson, I think of slurpee boob touching, 12 probing fingers, and, ultimately:

Still, what this lil' episode unveils is quite fascinating. Did you notice that Steven let JT do the 'splainin' - kind of interesting that he's always the one that seems to come out clean as a whistle. If there's one person who's playing this game perfectly at this point, it's Steven.

Debbie had been solid as well...but tonight's episode was tragic. She literally broke down into near hysterics twice, and pronounced "supposedly:" "supposovelly." Nice job there Principal of a thousand youths formulating the future of this country...

At the Reward Challenge, it's a high school yearbook contest, and Sierra wins three huge categories:

1. Most Likely to Stab You in the Back
2. The Person You Least Want to Win
3. Most Likely to Look 60 Years Older Than She Actually Is

Sierra: day 29...

Steven pulls out the win (because - surprise! - nobody targets him even once) and takes his now open alliance with him: JT and Taj. As they scheme on the reward, they all agree that "Coach is weak and Sierra is strong," as justification to boot Sierra next. 

Huh? What did I miss? Coach weak? Sierra strong? Sierra suddenly seemingly having more power than Coach? Debbie sinking into hysterics? EriNn claiming that nobody is more girlie than she? Lying, cheating, scheming, fuzzed out privates, whining, backstabbing, Probst, dimples, heterosexual mancrush (I'm speaking for all you guys reading this - it has nothing to do with me), dirty sweaty bodies, drama, more fuzzed privates, random shots of venomous insects never anywhere near camp, wet glistening fake boobs air-drying in the sun...

God I love this show.

Anyway, where was I...?

Oh yeah, Coach and Debbie claim Sierra approached them for an alliance, Sierra claims the opposite (which is actually the truth), JT and Steven don't know who to believe, EriNn vows not to vote for Sierra...and the next thing we know we're at the Immunity Challenge which is eerily similar to that Brady Bunch episode where the indispensable Jim Backus plays crazed old man Zaccariah in a Grand Canyon ghost town and locks up the Bunch who are then forced to tie all their belts together and toss the hook across the room to retrieve the jail key.

JT, Coach and Debbie make it through to the final round with their expertly-tossed belt hooks where Coach claims a slim victory punctuated with a loud, "DRAGONSLAYER!" screamed from the top of his lungs.

Is anyone surprised at Coach's victory? I mean, as he said in his own words, retrieving bags with a hook on the end of a string and then maneuvering a ball around a maze laden with holes IS his "forte..."

Another of Coach's "fortes..."

At tribal council, it appears to be between Debbie and Sierra - Sierra still being on the chopping block not because they didn't believe she was telling the truth, but because everyone thinks she's a psycho.

Difficult to argue with such iron-clad logic.

Still, it's delicious to see Debbie sink into another bout of hysterics when Sierra calls her to the carpet; glorious to see Coach babble in endless circular logic as he blindly and unsuccessfully attempts to spin his integrity; and dreamy to let oneself sink into the bottomless pit of Probst's Ponce de Leon fountain of youth dimples...

Again, that's for you bi-curious mancrush guys out there. I'm:

So, blah blah blah, Sierra's booted. 

I'm out.

PB