The secret

I have a secret.

Sure. Everybody has at least a dozen secrets.

But mine is juicy.

Not like other, stupid secrets. Like the kind of secret you pinky swear about as kids. It is not at all like the time in junior high when my friend Yvette told me she was going to have sex with her boyfriend and showed me the condom she was going to use. No. Those are secrets you keep because you are told to.

I keep my juicy secret hushed because it is just too much to unleash onto the unsuspecting world. Too much embarrassment, too much explaining involved.

If you’re thinking it is a silly secret that I can easily divulge after a few libations, you’re wrong. It is not as simple as the time I made my high school boyfriend ejaculate on the tree in my front lawn. And it is much more complicated than the secret I’ve poorly kept about making that same guy attempt anal sex on my parents’ washing machine to preserve my virginity.

No, the washing machine was not on at the time. I don’t know why people ask me that. But they do. My reaction is always the same, “No, it wasn’t. Are you going to pay attention? I’m telling you a secret!”

People never really grasp the gravity of the secret you are telling them. After the initial shock of whatever it is you’re telling them in the strictest of confidences, their eyes glaze over as they run through their mental Rolodex of people they NEED to tell right away and the other group that they will tell in exchange for a favor.

You know these people. They are the types that say, “If you lend me your car I will tell you who landed in jail for soliciting a prostitute.” So annoying.

That’s what happens when your secret is a verbal one, though. Everyone owns it and repeats it at their discretion. You have no control over a word of mouth secret. Even if it starts out as a written secret, like, for instance, let’s say you found your father’s will that was supposed to have never existed, or so you were led to believe by your mother who made you sign sixteen affidavits assuring the court that there was no such will and even if someone would one day find it you would not pursue what was on there. This is just an example. That secret, although written, would then be spread verbally all over town after the angry daughter found out about it.

With that said, my juicy secret is on video, which makes me have the upper-hand in secret keeping. I have sole custody of the video, which means I am the only one that gets to show it. My own movie house of the secret. I get to press play and watch everyone’s reaction.

In case you are wondering, it is not that kind of movie. Although I did once steal an adult video from a family member’s home. Well, more like borrowed. Permanently.

It is the perfect item to permanently borrow, too. Think about it. Accusing you of taking it only means they have to admit to owning it in the first place. And no one wants to admit owning Stuff and Munch 4.

The thought of them using this video was repulsing. I was doing it to prevent my vivid imagination from envisioning this particular person using this movie for pleasure. That and I needed proof that they were a big fat perv.

Proof. That’s what videos are. Proof we went to a concert. Proof we had a surprise party. Proof we ran down the street naked in the rain. Proof we recorded an unsuspecting co-worker when they were having a meltdown. We all walk around with our phones, ready to record evidence of our lives. Only, this one time, I stumbled on something so dark, so twisted, so wrong that it should never be repeated, over and over again. It’s enough to see it twice in one seating.

I’ll show you if you promise not to tell anybody.