This is a longer story than some of the rest, but I promise you, the end is worth it. Hope you like it!



Lunchtime has always been a special time for me. I am a strong believer that you can make some of the best friendships on the planet, if not in the history of man, over a good meal. One such friend of mine, we'll call him Jaq for purposes of this blog, and I fulfilled this ideal to it's fullest. Each day at lunch, we would meet in our students council room and try to gross out the other. A Gentleman's sport to be certain.

Our contest had lasted for the past 4 months. Each day bringing a new bounty of filthy images meant only to make the other incapable of responding back and ultimately, from eating. Topics ranged from "mild" topics, such as stories of our childhood and bed wetting to horrific taboo choices like alternate measures of abortion. I remember the conversations fondly.

The inciting incident in this story took place like any other lunch hour. Jaq and I met in the SC room and sat down. We flipped a coin for it and Jaq won. I had to come up with the first gross out. With quick precision, I whipped out my first gem. Imagine waking up with a dick in your mouth. We both laughed. Jaq fired one back and so on and so forth. About 20 minutes had passed and we were red in the face from laughing so hard and the other members of the council were either laughing just as hard, or had left the room in total disgust. That's when Jaq posed to me the worst gross out so far.

"Oh man, If you had to choose, which would you rather do?" Jaq purposed the scenario with a devilish grin. "Would you rather lick a hobo's butt crack, OR drink a tea where the teabag was a used tampon?"

The room erupted into a chorus of laughter and noises of disgust. I was completely flabbergasted. I was laughing far too hard to even think of a retort, Jaq had reigned triumphant. He got up and did a pantomime of Rocky Balboa. As others got up to congratulate him, I was struck hard by a thought, so heinous, that I actually puked a bit in my mouth. Swallowing my ham sandwich a second time, I announce to the room that I was not yet defeated.

"What if," I began slowly, "what if, you were at a party and you met this gorgeous woman. And things started to go pretty well. So one thing leads to another and you go somewhere in the house, doesn't matter where, and you start to go down on her. And it's dark. And as you go down on her, something falls into your mouth, and you realize, you just went down on 'The Halfie'. Half man, half women"

Silence filled the room.

As I looked around, the faces of my friends were that of total shock. All eyes in the room were on me. Everyone looked as if they were mid dancing and someone had hit an all-powerful pause button, their limbs frozen in awkward positions. Duckie himself was was propped up on one leg, both fists in the air, staring at me in pure disbelief. It literally seemed like we were frozen in time.

Our sports rep was the first one to move. She leapt up from her seat and ran out into hall. Everyone watched her tear out of the room and listened as her footsteps echoed down the hall. Seconds later, we heard the tell tale sign of a trashcan lid being pushed open and the horrific sound of a previously delicious lunch being wretched from it's final resting place.

All the guys in the room erupted into cheers. It was like the collective intelligence of the room reverted back to the dawn of man. We jumped about, hoot and hollering, laughing and shaking each other. High fives and back slaps rained down from the heavens. Jaq himself collapsed on the floor from laughter and had to crawl to his back pack to get his inhaler. Today was a day that would forever live in infamy. The legend of The Halfie was born.

And this was just the beginning.

The following week started just like any other. I arrived at school, attended class and when the lunch bell went, I headed to the student's council room.

I enter the room to a round of applause. Everyone who was in the room the previous Friday were cramped into the space and everyone wanted more. I thanked them all for the reception but said that I think that I had Jaq beat with that gross out for a while. I've never been more right in my entire life.

Minutes later, Jaq stormed into the room. He looked like a man possessed. In his hands, he held a mound of papers and he had his eyes set on me.

"Luke, we gotta talk," he panted heavily, pausing briefly to catch his breath, "I did some research and you gotta see this."

Jaq had taken my comment more seriously than I had thought. Apparently, he had done a tremendous amount of research over the weekend on the condition that I had referred to as "The Halfie", and had a complete write up on the condition. At first, I didn't want to hear about it. But as he persisted, my curiosity peaked. As I poured over his report, I was astonished with it's scope and detail. He continued to explain as I read through the notes. 1 in 500 people are Halfies he claimed. Running the numbers, I realized that our school had a population of 750 students and a potential for 1.5 Halfies. As I looked up to Jaq, the look on his face told me that he had come to the same conclusion.

There was a Halfie in our school. And we would find it.

The events that played out in the following couple of weeks, I am not proud of. We became completely obsessed with finding out who the Halfie was at our school. Completely in silence, our lunch hours were now spent sitting in front of the door leading to the hall, trying to pick out the Halfie as students walked by. Mentally undressing each person as they walked by was a grueling task, but we were men on a quest for knowledge, and we needed answers. We always mentioned our suspicions to each other, not one candidate completely satisfied both of us.

That is until SHE, walked by.

Two weeks of this bullshit continued on until, finally, she walked by. I can remember it clearly. I was reading over some notes when I looked up by chance and was directly looking at her as she passed by the doorway. She was never really popular and she once had a boyfriend for a month, but at the end of the month, he disappeared entirely, never to be seen again. I peered even closer towards here and quickly scanned the "danger zones". A check list formed in my head, filled the criteria for the Halfie.

Outsider? Check.

Is female and has many masculine tendencies? Check.

Has an Adam's apple? We would soon find out.

That was enough for me. I poked Jaq on the shoulder and said two the two initials. Instantaneously, we both jumped up and started to celebrate. We had our candidate.

Work started immediately. Like detectives work to bust an international drug ring, we turned the students council room into our Halfie Headquarters. On the largest wall in the room, there was an enormous whiteboard. This became our lifes work for the next 3 weeks. Top-center of the board, there was J.T.'s yearbook photo. From there, lines dropped away into a flow chart of epic proportions. I had never been this dedicated to a pastime since I had discovered masturbation. The amount of work and information we had gathered on J.T. had started to garner attention from our classmates. Awestruck, all of them who ventured in, stood and just gawked at us. Some started to help, some just walked away head shaking. It was all starting to go according to plan.

Then it just started to go weird.

3 weeks passed and I was starting to lose enthusiasm about the whole Halfie thing. The last couple days had yielded no advances into the investigation, and tempers were near the breaking point. When Jaq freaked out, I knew I had to end this.

One of the grade 11 reps came into the room and was walking passed the whiteboard, and accidentally, her coat wiped off a section of the chart. Jaq immediately snapped.

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" He shrieked. "DO YOU REALIZE HOW MUCH WORK I'VE PUT INTO THIS?! HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF SOME ONE DROVE UP AND HIT YOUR CHILD ON THE STREET WHILE THEY WERE BIKING AND YOU WERE JUST AROUND THE CORNER CELEBRATING YOUR PARTNERS RETIREMENT!?"

Nobody had a fucking clue as to what the hell he has talking about. Everybody was just really freaked out. It was the first sign of the madness that was consuming Jaq. Taking him aside, I calmed him down and told him to go home for the day.

The next couple days passed without incident. Jaq's fervor about the Halfie was so much that it was putting me off the project. Always in the students council room, he cast his glare around like a hungry dog, looking for a meal. It was today that I decided to end it.

"Jaq, buddy. We gotta talk," I solemnly began, "This whole project has gotten out of control. It was funny to start, but we could get into major shit for this. The chart alone would get us hanged by the Principal. This is really bullying and we're on students council. This shit is over."

We sat in silence staring across the hall.

"We were so close," Jaq started to cry.

"I know buddy, I know. The legend will live on though, Jaq. We're heroes."

This was the last we talked about The Halfie for a long time.

Fate, it seems, decided that we weren't finished.

Several months later, we were at the end of the school year party. I forget where exactly, but the location isn't important, the incident is. Jaq and I were stand beside the keg. The Halfie all but forgotten, we were now surveying the room, looking for prey. We had both consumed a fair amount of booze and were feeling the groove. The Dj in the corner was spinning with style. Across the house, drinking games where in full swing and people were laughing with their friends. I was just commenting on a poker game that was to my side when suddenly and forcefully, Jaq's arm shot out and hit me in the chest, almost causing me to spill my drink. I looked up at him, mad at first, but then I followed his gaze across the party, and to the front door.

The Halfie just walked in.

Our jaws dropped in unison. I turned to Jaq, he was still staring at the Halfie.

"You know what you have to do."

The Dj flipped to the next beat. Awesomeness had arrived.



As people began to dance to the music, a path through the crowd seemed to opened up between Jaq and The Halfie. In my head, time had slowed to a crawl. Jaq drunkenly sauntered towards The Halfie. Woman bumped and grinded with their partners. Men pushed up against them. Drinks were consumed and set down. The lights flickered to the beat of the music. Friends who knew about the Halfie came and crowded around me, witnessing the drama that was about to unfold. The Halfie looked up and locked eyes with Jaq, she smiled. Jaq approached her and put his arm around her. A few seconds passed and they started to ascend the stairs and head up to the bathroom and shut the door. I sat down at a table with the other 5 people who had watched this play out as I had.

5 minutes passed.

10 minutes passed.

20 minutes passed.

Finally the door opened. The Halfie came out with a huge smile on her face and quickly moved down the steps. Jaq stepped out after a few seconds slowly walked down, wiping his face. As one, the entire table shot over to him, sending their chairs flying and surprising the people around us. Before I turned to face Jaq, I took one more look at the Halfie. She was now babbling excitedly to her friends. My friend's cries of disgust made me abruptly turn back.

Jaq had stopped wiping his mouth. There was something on his face.

He looked a little like this.



Jaq, to this day, holds the title for biggest gross out.