This week’s columnist: Sherlock Holmes
Dear Sherlock,
I've been dating this girl for 4 months. We mess around but she still won't take her pants off. Please help me get to the bottom of this! ~Harry Blueggs, Waterville, ME
Dear Mr. Blueggs,
As I sit here in my flat at 221B Baker Street contemplating your electronic letter, I'm lead to ponder what force of natural order drives a man in his daily strivings. Your, one might say, desperate plea has awakened in me a sharp if not unusual curiosity on the subject. What motivates our every action? Now be at ease my boy, for I am not about to pelt you, the questioner, with questions of my own. No, I pose the query in a fully hypothetical fashion - a self-prompt as it were.
Consider me, for purpose of example. At the time of this writing I find myself preemptively clad in my bedclothes and robe and comfortably ensconced in my favorite, high-backed chair, which I've positioned at the ideal angle and proximity to the fire, which by all accounts is crackling robustly. I'm coming down like a soft rain from my last hit of opium, sipping a veritably brimming cup of Earl Grey, and our dear Dr. Watson is, at this very moment, busying himself with no small industry in baking some of his world-famous loganberry muffins. Should I not be, as you rubes often phrase it: “on cloud nine”? Perhaps, rationally, I should be. However, I find that I am not on cloud nine, but rather drifting helplessly somewhere between clouds five and seven. You’re inquiry into the stiff resistance mounted by your partner in love, has squeezed a hard-boiled epiphany from betwixt my virile lobes. Namely this: Is it any wonder at all, that concrete objects of comfort such as the hearth and the muffins fall fiercely short of filling a man’s daily lust? Is it not, in truth, a different sort of muffin and the attainment thereof that stokes the engine of our spirits?
Indeed, I believe we have struck a well of brimming truth. Let us now apply the paring knife of logic to the raw materials of memory and carve out a well-reasoned conclusion.
The memory to which I refer should be of great help to us in unraveling the wooly coyness of your better half. It was only yesterday, in the moody twilight that it happened. I was returning home from a night of no small indulgence, having temporarily suspended my customary temperance to watch Weekend At Bernie’s one and two with Dr. Moriarti, when, in the glare of a nearby streetlamp, I spotted her.
She was a young woman, no doubt precisely twenty-seven, and well-washed. From her titling gait I deduced that she'd recently imbibed some manner of mind-altering beverage. It was momentarily unclear what variety until I noticed an errant speck of ginger clinging to her lower lip. Ginger as we all know is a commonly served accompaniment to numerous sorts of sushi due to the sharp contrast in taste that it provides. From this insight it was an infant’s leap to her spirit of the hour - namely sake, the rice wine refreshment so typical in any half-reputable sushi den.
Needless to say, my powers of observation had been considerably dulled by the rich, chocolate Ovaltine I’d consumed at Moriarti’s; however, from the information yielded by the ginger, and from the size of her shoes, I was able to conclude with great certainty, that her favorite colour was indeed – blue.
In immediate retrospect, that little adventure had no relevance whatsoever to your question. I will say this: Don’t give up my boy! Hound her like the Baskervilles! And if that fails to work, get her drunk on sake. The rest should, as they say, fall into place.
Yours,
Sherlock Holmes
p.s. As I am, in practice, vigorously asexual, I possess nothing beyond a theoretical understanding of such issues. I would suggest, if I may, redirecting your query to Dear Abby. If one is to believe the more fashionable monthly magazines, she’s quite a tart.
