By Scarlett M Butler
Becca peered over the rims of her bifocals at the glaring screen in front of her.
Hesitantly, she hunt-and-pecked for the right keys to express her innermost thoughts and feelings about one of the most treasured and important possessions she had ever owned.
“White thong for sale! Excellent condition. Thong is recently laundered with two brown stains—one in the back and one in the front—that don’t come out, even with bleach. Well-worn, well-loved. Please give it a good home! For more information, contact me, Becca.”
With a few more strokes of the keys, and a few clicks of the mouse, the deal was done.
Becca had just set up the sale of her white thong over Ebay!
Slipping the thong off her 4’11 346 lb frame, she placed it carefully on the scanner, scanning not just a picture of the thong, but the thong itself, as a visual aide to help stimulate the interest of her potential buyers.
With this arduous task on, Becca sniffed aside a brown tear and clutched the white thong to her chest. She had loved this thong dearly, and it was truly with a sad heart that she had now chosen to part with it.
Recently, Becca had come up on hard times. Her most recently live-in lover was a musician, which meant that he had absolutely no money to spend on anything except alcohol, drugs, and prostitutes. Becca already owed several thousand dollars to a certain pimp with whom she was acquainted. And the rent was always due—her boyfriend’s landlord had a lot of gambling debts that he needed his tenants to pay off!
So one thing had led to another, and Becca had decided that she needed to make some money. So she had ‘borrowed’ a computer from some crazy homeless lady’s shopping cart and carried it back to her apartment, where she set it up and proceeded to put her favorite white thong up for auction on Ebay. She sorely needed the money that this would bring in!
She had set the starting price at one thousand dollars, in the hopes that if her thong sold well, she wouldn’t have to sell her trenchcoat, too. Her thongs she could sell—she could always knit more from the blankets she had taken along with the computer from the homeless lady—but her trenchcoat! To sell the antique article of clothing she had received as she lay atop her grandmother’s deathbed would be pure sacrilege!
Becca carefully took off the bifocals—another gift from the homeless lady—and put on her sunglasses. She refused to part with those, either—they had once belonged to her friend’s ex-girlfriend’s step-brother’s ex-wife’s ex-boyfriend’s friend’s mother-in-law’s cousin’s wife’s friend’s ex-boyfriend’s ex-wife’s boyfriend’s friend’s brother’s ex-wife’s step-mother’s ex-step-daughter’s ex-husband’s ex-wife’s ex-husband’s ex-mistress’s ex-lover’s ex-girlfriend’s ex-friend’s friend, and that deep, spiritual connection meant more to Becca than anything. She refused to part with such a treasured gift, belonging to someone so closely connected to herself!
Just as she was thinking this, a little message popped up on the computer screen—an instant message!
Becca giggled and clapped gleefully. She had her very first instant message, possibly from a potential customer! She rubbed her flabby hands together greedily, dreaming of swimming in a sea full of money.
Or at least a bathtub full of money.
Well, maybe a glass.
A small one.
Becca quickly became involved in her first ever instant message conversation, reading the message that had been sent to her:
Thongalicious24: Hi! I couldn’t help but notice your auction for that delicious thong! Could you tell me some more about it?
Becca giggled and jumped up and down in her little kiddie-chair—yet another former belonging of the homeless woman—her rolls of flesh rolling and crashing like waves against the beach. She gleefully replied to the message.
ThongsR4Becca: Hi! Thank you for noticing my thong! It is very attractive, don’t you think?
Thongalicious24: Um, yeah, that’s why I’m talking to you about it. Do you have any more information about it? You didn’t really say much in the ad, but it sounds like a really great bargain.
ThongsR4Becca: That’s because it is! It’s an amazingly wonderful bargain! You should buy it!
Thongalicious24: Right … but could you maybe give me some more details about it? Like, size and stuff? And maybe a little history of the article?
ThongsR4Becca: Oh, of course! I’m sorry, I’m just a little new to this whole “internet” thing. I mean, who ever knew that you could talk to people over the internet?! When I heard about that, it literally blew my mind!
Thongalicious24: That’s great, but could you maybe tell me about the thong?
ThongsR4Becca: Oh, right! Silly me! Well, let’s see. It’s a size 13 (a few sizes too small for me, but I think it flatters my figure better when my thongs are a bit tight—it also keeps them in place so that they don’t fall off and get lost in dark alleys!) It’s white, and there are two brown stains on it. One is in the back, one is in the front. I’ve tried bleaching it, but it looks like they are there to stay! They are relics from a time when I was living on the street for about two days last week, and I had nowhere to go to the bathroom, so I just had to go! When you gotta go, you gotta go! Lol
Thongalicious24: O … kay. So, this is your thong? Do you wear it often? How old is it, and when did you buy it—and was it used or new?
ThongsR4Becca: I bought it about two weeks ago at a yard sale. Well, I didn’t exactly buy it, while everyone was outside in the yard I snuck inside and raided the woman’s underwear drawer! Lol. It was sitting there, very neatly folded, so I’m not sure if it was ever warn or not. It was blindingly bright! But I was in dire need of a thong, All I was wearing was my trenchcoat and, well, I was cold!
Thongalicious24: So what you’re saying is that you expect someone to pay good money to buy a thong that you STOLE from some poor unsuspecting woman?! You know that not only is it illegal to steal things, but it’s also illegal to sell stolen goods!
ThongsR4Becca: No! It’s not stolen! I only borrowed it because I was in dire need of a thong! My last one had somehow disappeared while I was skipping down a dark, dank alley! So I was desperately seeking something to cover up the nakedness under my trenchcoat, and voila, there it was!
Thongalicious24: OMG. OMG!!! You are such a fucking pervert!! You disgust me!! I’m going to tell everyone the truth about you, and now no one will buy your thong you disgusting pig!
ThongsR4Becca: No, wait! Please don’t do that! I need the money to pay off some gambling debts, and I have to return this computer to the homeless lady’s shopping cart before she calls the authorities to come and take me away!
Sorry, ThongsR4Becca, but your message could not get through. You have been blocked by Thongalicious24. So stop bugging her and get a life, loser. Thanks, your friends at the Instant Messaging Service Thong Workshop.
Becca let out a sob of pure terror as she read these words. No! This wasn’t possible! She couldn’t have some unsatisfied customer dissing her on the internet! She’d never be able to show her face in a video chatroom ever again! And worst of all, her thong wouldn’t sell—and she’d lose all the precious money that she needed oh-so-desperately to service her unique lifestyle!
Brown tears gushed down her face as she sobbed into the thong, creating more un-washable brown stains on the pristine white surface. How would she ever get out of this pickle that she had bit too hard and broken her teeth on?
Then the answer came to her.
Of course! It was so simple!
She simply had to stop the problem before it started, by fighting fire with water, thus dousing the fire and causing it to sputter and die a horrific, sad little death, as she laughed from the helicopter above, cackling gleefully as she raised her empty bucket to the heavens and crowed with victory at having single-handedly defeated the biggest forest fire in the history of the world with a single blessed bucket of water and a single white thong.
So Becca brought up Notepad and wrote a quick little note, then began posting it on every single messageboard, chatroom, and website she could find, all over the internet. No one could surf the net without viewing this particular message just once! It was the solution to all her problems—now she could sell her thongs without worrying about any interference from an irate, dissatisfied customer!
The message read:
Dear fellow internet users:
I am now bringing up an important issue that concerns us all very deeply. I’m sure you all know what I am talking about. Yes, I am talking about that lying whore, Thongalicious24.
Thongalicious24 is a vicious, cruel woman. Her intentions are to berate law-abiding internet users like ourselves, and use our pain and sadness to her own gain. She wishes to humiliate us, and, even worse, dis us on the internet. Her horrible tactics know no bounds; from instant message spamming to email harassment, she is a vicious perpetrator who wishes to make victims of us all.
Therefore, I propose that we, the users of this wonderful technological advancement known as the internet, band together as brother and sisters to fight this one person’s horrendous abuse of our social conventions. If we join together, shunning her and letting her know that we know her name and she will never succeed, then perhaps we hold a chance of defeating the beast at her own game.
So join with me now, my internet brothers and sisters! Join with me in shunning Thongalicious24 from our internet communities, chatrooms, messageboards, and forums. Join with me in spamming her inbox before she can spam ours. Join with me in instant messaging her and telling her that we know exactly what she is up to. Join with me in contacting her local authorities and ordering them to arrest her for all her many indiscretions, which include among them fraud, grand theft auto: vice city, larceny, burglary, and identity theft!
If we join together now, my brethren and sistren, then we will be able to stop this threat before she has a chance to do any more serious harm than she has already done! Please, assist me in this sacred mission!
Thank you for all your support! With the help of all of you, I am sure that we will be able to apprehend our perpetrator, and succeed in the fight against terrorism!
Many thanks,
Becca
Minutes after posting this message up from one end of the internet to the other, Becca received the following angry message:
ThongThugLuvah24: You bitch! Because of you, my inbox and email address and instant message got completely spammed! What the fuck is your problem?!
ThongsR4Becca: My problem is that you should treat your elders with respect!
ThongThugLuvah24: Elder?! I’m 123 years old! Who the fuck do you think is older than me?! One lady in France, and she’s about to keel over from some damn disease, you fuck!
ThongsR4Becca: Oh, sorry. My mistake. But still, didn’t your Momma ever tell you to wash that mouth out with soap?
ThongThugLuvah24: Wash my mouth out with soap?! Listing, BIYOTCH, I’ll tell you what YOU can go wash RIGHT NOW!!
*Censored*
ThongsR4Becca: …
ThongsR4Becca: Well! Of all the nerve! Saying such things to me! Hmph!
ThongsR4Becca has blocked ThongThugLuvah24.
“And good riddance!” Becca muttered darkly to herself as she switched off the computer and quickly pitched it out the window.
The old homeless lady would just have to find another one!
And Becca would just have to keep her white thong and find some other way to make money.
But as she turned to pick up her thong and put it on, she realized that it wasn’t there.
Running to the window overlooking the alley, she leaned out and peered down at the shattered computer that lay beneath her window.
A sparkle of white and brown shone for a moment beneath the broken computer before catching a ride on a breeze and flying away down the alley, companion to the wind.
