#8 - Dane Ball: No Relation to Lucille

“So guess what I got in the mail yesterday? Only about the best damn late Christmas gift I've ever received in my life. Dude, that was fucking hilarious. That was the LAST thing on my mind, but...I just can't even describe it. I couldn't stop laughing for 15 minutes. Seriously, thanks for sending it. I am going to put it on tonight and see what 'cums' of it. HA HA.”

Thus wrote Dane Ball in an e-mail dated January 9, 2004. (Yes, I keep memorable e-mails. I'm sentimental like that.) The gift Dane was thanking me for in this particular e-mail was (obviously) a porn flick.

Now, I know it sounds strange that I sent porn to celebrate a Christian holiday. But what you have to understand is that this particular porn flick had (are you ready for this?) sentimental value for me, Dane, and everyone else in our circle of friends. Back in middle school, you see, Dane swiped some porn from a friend of his family. And, like any group of healthy 14-year-old boys, we all watched it over and over again until we knew every line of dialogue, every musical cue, and every irrelevant plot twist. The movie I sent to Dane was one of the Coming Attractions advertised before the Feature Presentation...You can see how it might have made him feel nostalgic to get a copy of it in the mail 10 years later.

Once – this is my parents' favorite Dane story – Dane crashed at my house (this is in middle school) and left a porn tape in the study. We didn't think it was that big a deal, because the study was basically my second room back then and there were all kinds of VHS tapes laying around all over the place. The chance of my parents discovering the porn amidst my mountain of movies seemed pretty slim. But wouldn't you know it? My mom decided to clean the house THE VERY NEXT DAY and went through every single one of the tapes. After I got home and frantically searched for Dane's porn for a good 3 or 4 hours, my dad casually invited me out on the back patio for a little chat.

“So, J,” he said, taking a drag from his pipe, “what movie are you looking for in there?”

I could tell he was fucking with me, so I just went ahead and admitted everything. “It's not mine,” I told him. “It's DANE'S!” (How's that for loyalty?)

Dad gave me the whole paternal spiel – “I don't want that kinda stuff in my house, especially where your mom's gonna find it,” blah blah blah – but it wasn't long before he admitted that it was one of his proudest moments as a parent. (To this day he makes fun of me for the terrified look I had on my face as I was searching in vain for the tape.)

When I told Dane what had happened, he was a little concerned and wanted to know what I'd told my dad.

“What do you think I told him? I told him it was YOURS and that I didn't even really wanna watch it all that much.”

“Oh fucking great, dude! Now your parents are gonna think I'm some kinda pervert!”

This prediction wasn't true, by the way. If anything, my parents enjoyed this little misadventure in adolescence, if only because it showed them that underneath his shy and quiet exterior, Dane is just one of the boys. Good times, good times.