Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish

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Friction | Jan 26 2005

The document is eleven pages long. It’s called Customer Sensitivity Issues in Content and it shows what’s okay and not okay to include in the company’s publications. The company is a major U.S. publisher of children’s literature.

These things (among many others) are not okay anywhere:

• casual, social drinking by adults
• birth control / cloning / reproductive issues
• ghosts, witches, warlocks
• topics considered embarrassing such as menstruation, flatulence
• “embarrassing” words such as breast, toilet, brassiere, jackass
• people discussing sex or sexual feelings; human sexual acts
• blatant disrespect of parents or authority figures
• kids vomiting
• suicide

*

I’m in a bar, having a drink with a sexy ghost. We’re discussing reproductive issues.

I ask her if ghosts need to use birth control, and she says they don’t.

She has nice breasts.

I ask if ghosts still have periods.

She says no and adds that ghosts can’t have sex with living people because ghosts’ bodies are immaterial. If a human tried to mount her, he’d fall through.

I ask about phone sex, and she laughs. She’s got a great laugh.

Just then the president walks by. He’s holding a vomiting child in his arms and looks like he’s about to shoot himself.

This is definitely a mood killer.

“Only by using a speaker phone,” she says, finally.

“Pardon?”

“Ghosts can only have phone sex by using a speaker phone. It’s the same immaterial problem.”