Ben Lee Handler Handler is ready to do his duty for America – are you? E-mail him at misbeaten@aol.com. Click Here for more articles by Ben Lee Handler

I had a friend who was a big baseball player back in high school. He could have had almost anyone he wanted, my all-American friend, and sometimes he did.



Cheerleaders, teammates, coaches – they all wanted his jock. More often than not, however, he could be found in the ballpark bathroom, swinging his bat through one of the many holes connecting the stalls to each other, slugging line drives down the throat or into the ass of whomever happened to be playing catcher next door.

Once I asked him why he was so fond of those glory holes.

“Ben Lee,” he said, “on the field I’m lucky if I only strike out half of the time.”

“In the bathroom,” my friend continued, “I always bat a thousand.”

Now it has been almost five years since I last saw my friend with the golden bat – he joined the Navy, something about Uncle Sam wanting sea men – and I haven’t thought about him much since. That is, until a recent national tragedy and a visit to the downstairs bathrooms in Royce so shockingly collided with my subconscious.

You see, I was sitting on the pot pondering what I could do to help my country – which Target had the shortest flag line, which credit card would donate the greatest percentage of my late fees to the relief fund, which burrito stands offered red, white and blue tortilla chips – when I was struck with an epiphany; it poked me in the ear through a hole in the wall.

In light of the recent tragedy, it is more important now than ever that we unwaveringly support our proud servicemen and uphold the glory of America – or rather, that we unquestionably service the proud men of America through its holes of glory.

You’ve seen them before, the glory holes, on campus, in your kinky friends’ houses and apartments, at the dentist’s office and in the confession booth at church – little peep holes about waist high, no bigger than the bottom of a coke can in circumference, sometimes stuffed with tissue or toilet paper to keep them less than conspicuous.

“Whatever are these curious holes here for,” you’ve asked yourself.

Freedom is the obvious answer. The glory of these holes is the freedom they grant to those who use them: freedom of choice, freedom of expression, freedom of numerous anonymous sexual partners.

A foe to all that connects the penis to any oppressive political structure – relationships, dating, the body – the glory hole allows for a male’s sexuality to exist entirely as its own entity, unveiled and unthreatened by the Taliban-esque standards held to more common forms of intercourse.

The beauty of the glory hole comes from the simplicity of the interaction it enables; one certainly need not ask nor tell anyone to begin or stop the exchange, but doing so most certainly won’t mandate the dismissal of the offending party.

For the most part, though, speech is entirely unnecessary. If one desires a suck or a fuck, he simply slides his junior officer through a hole in the wall and waits for someone to come along and salute. If one is looking for some privates to order around, he need only find a hole penetrated by a man like the one mentioned above.

Every once in a while, ever since that fateful day in the Royce bathroom, I’ll look to the east and wonder what my baseball playing buddy is up to now. Is he grand-slamming terrorists with the broadside of his superhuman bat? Is he sinking evil-doing submarines with his fellow American sea men?

Whatever his current predicament, he can rest assured the whole – the hole – of American glory did not leave with him. No, it lives on inside of me, inside of you, in public restrooms and private residences across the continent, across the globe.

So before you turn your back on a hole-in-the-stall or signal the proprietor of the restroom to cover it up, think of my friend in the Navy, think of American glory – tonight, suck for America.