Dr Phil M.d. Part 2 Of 2
Continued from last week…
The funeral was beautiful, if somewhat sparsely attended, with sun seeping through the balmy boughs of the palms that lined the memorial park. After the ceremony, while chatting with a few generally reliable sources, over a few generally reliable drinks, I learned, and was reminded of, much.
First, Phil’s sister Jeanie brought to my attention something I’d completely forgotten, something that might bring the Dr. Phil saga a bit closer to home: Do you recall the incident a few years ago where a guy had one of his fingers bitten off by a Portland Police horse? It was in the papers, and even made it briefly into the national media.
Anyway, yes, that was Dr. Phil.
Long story short, he’d come to visit, and after a night of partying downtown, we stumbled by the stables where the cops keep their horses, which was on the way to my apartment at the time. I remember we were having a particularly heated and boozy argument about whether dogs or whales had greater intellectual capacity, and midway through one of my rants (I was on the dog side of the debate, my thesis being that they had to deal with people, which is always a complex and trying proposition, while whales simply swam around and beeped at one another) I realized that Dr. Phil was no longer with me. I looked back about half a block to find him scaling the fence to the stables, and just as he reached the top, one of the horses came by and, for no apparent reason, plucked one of his pinkies right off, chewed it, and swallowed it.
Now, again, in the interest of time I’ll simply say that Dr. Phil was fine. He was sanguine about the incident, bore no grudges. Plus, he was so medicated that he felt no pain, and upon returning home he was fitted with a prosthetic which, he said, he actually liked better than his old finger, as it didn’t retain the scent of certain pungent items he was obliged to deal with on a daily basis (onions, cigarettes, blood, etc.), as his fleshy, human finger had.
The real kicker came a few days later, while I was casually reading the Oregonian, when I learned that the horse in question had actually died as a result of the incident. Apparently, autopsy results found that it had been killed by a “deadly mixture of narcotics and alcohol,” and that the source was unknown. There was no mention of a disembodied finger, or, for that matter, how the horse might have come upon the drugs and booze.
Essentially, Dr. Phil had enough intoxicants in his little finger to kill a horse.
And while I did shed a few fond tears upon reliving this episode, in the back of my mind I couldn’t forget my secondary goal, after paying my last respects to Dr. Phil, in making this trip: to find out what had killed him.
So, here it is, unabridged, sources omitted, no license taken:
About a year ago, Phil met some girl, and they liked each other. They were both around 35, both into living frugally, both a tad paunchy and nondescript.
More to the point, they were both virgins. And given their religious convictions, even despite decades of pent-up sexual repression, they decided to wait until after marriage to engage in sexual congress. Of course, after a few rounds of over-the clothes finger-fucking, heavy petting, flirting with the real thing, their initial plan to wait a year fell by the wayside and they eloped to Vegas, where, put lightly, their much-anticipated foray into conjugal felicity did not live up to expectations. Despite several attempts at aping the porn actors on their free hotel room cable, Google searches for “Good Sex” on their complementary wireless internet connection and even a one-hour instructional, and certainly not complimentary, session with a “very instructive” call girl arranged by the doorman, they simply couldn’t make it happen. They couldn’t get into it, get off, or get over the fact that, sadly, once the clothes were shed, they weren’t attracted to one another.
After much soul searching, proposed annulments, hurts feelings, depression and inspiration, they finally hit upon an agreement: They would turn convention on its ear.
They would wait. Even though they were officially wed, they would wait to have sex until they were both so empirically and unquestionably sexy that they could no longer keep there naughty bits off of one another. To achieve this, they’d diet, work out, employ plastic surgery—whatever it took. They’d live together, they’d be man and wife, but there would be, under no circumstances, any amorous interaction, not for at least six months time, and not until they’d both, under penalty of dissolution of the marriage, sworn a solemn oath that they were 100% hot to trot for each another.
And so it began.
Now, during this “sexless” period, as he called it (which is funny, as his whole life to this point had been one big sexless period), Dr. Phil apparently went through something of an identity crisis. In order to keep his mind off of sex, while at the same time whipping himself into shape, he cultivated a number of strange habits—even by his own already strange standards.
First, and apparently as an extension of his new healthy eating regime, he began to eat food based solely on its color. Nutritional value, taste, texture, portion size—they all went out the window. He color coded every day of the week, and on that day he only ate foods of that color. So, for example, Monday might be bananas, Twinkies, yellow squash and Captain Crunch. Tuesday, Wonder Bread, cottage cheese, etc.
Second, in order to further facilitate his weight loss, he carried no less than 25 pounds of extra weight with him everywhere he went. But since he was so damn cheap, he refused to by the dense, compact weights you’d find at the gym. Instead, he carried stuff he already had at home. So, on any given day, he might be wandering the hospital with four cans of cream of mushroom soup stuffed into his doctor’s coat, pounds of pennies in his pants pockets, and a lamp or coat tree tucked under each arm.
Oddly enough, within a few months, he’d lost 40 pounds.
More troubling, though, were the classes. Dr. Phil, though he’d never shown an inclination towards education, though he was surely one of the more maladroit people living in the western US, began to advertise (via Craigslist) weekly classes that he’d teach in the lounge of his modest apartment building.
Subjects taught were:
1. How to speak with a French accent.
2. Harvesting and Investing pocket change.
3. Mitral Valve Proplapse.
4. Making yourself look taller.
Apparently, and I must say, inexplicably, the classes were a runaway hit. In fact, Dr. Phil, sporting his new physique and a renewed sense of authority and self-esteem, had to fend off the advances of more than a few of his young female students. Still, he held firm, stayed faithful, put his head down and worked until six months had passed. And once they had, his focus turned to the one and only thing that held meaning for him anymore, the one thing for which he had to live:
Fucking his wife.
For her part, she’d done beautifully. Though her path had been more traditional (Weight Watchers, the gym, etc.), her results were no less stunning. She’d successfully transformed herself from a frumpy thirtysomething into a bona fide hottie.
And so it was that, on a Tuesday evening, they convened, talked, agreed, and set about the business of consummating their marriage.
All we have are phone records and the forensic assessment of the coroner’s office to give us any indication as to what happened next, but apparently, they both called in sick for the next two weeks. One day they stopped calling in, and a couple of days later the cops were called, knocked, entered, and found them both dead, both naked, both still in bed.
The official cause of death was listed as dehydration/exhaustion/starvation, but it was clear to all involved what had happened: They had simply fucked each other to death. There was no indication that they’d ever gotten out of bed after that first Tuesday, and the grizzly state of their genitals led the coroner’s office to speculate that they’d had sex in excess of one-thousand times during the two week period.
In essence, they’d quit eating, drinking, and eventually, living, because of their staunch commitment to each other’s sexual gratification.
Sort of makes you feel guilty for ever having played the “headache” card, huh?
Of course, one could speculate that they’d done it so many times in an attempt to get it right, that they’d died never having reached the carnal bliss that was their aim. I prefer to think, however, that the very first time was so good, so otherworldly amazing, that they simply couldn’t stop. I prefer to imagine that, for a brief but shining moment, they were the world’s greatest lovers.
Incidentally, I’ve heard talk that several media outlets have expressed interest in buying the rights to Dr. Phil’s story. Possible stars attached to the project? Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench.
I’m getting hot already.
Completely hilarious! It sounds like a CSI episode.
Ohmygod. I just stumbled on this magazine and was totally drawn in by the first paragraph. This is side-splitting funny. And it makes me hot. Can’t wait for more…
Reminds me of the time I fingered a $10 hooker and was treated for toe fungus. By the way; I just left my negro girfriend, I was tired of getting bitch slapped, although it turns out I was not getting the handshake right!
Got drugs?