Buttplug of the Ear Award

By Sean O’Brien

“Although I smoked a pound of herb, I’m still nice with the verb, so fuck whatcha heard.” — Phife Dawg — A Tribe Called Quest

I hate putting anything into my ears. I can’t overstate this and often struggle to articulate this truth properly. Perhaps, if I were to word it differently, something like — I vehemently detest putting anything into my ears, or, I have an abnormal reaction when any object is inserted into my ear, or even, I have a serious aversion to anything penetrating my eardrums. Maybe one of those might help me better convey the fact that I hate putting anything into my ears. Maybe not. Sometimes, I stick with the more urgent word, fuck. I fucking hate putting anything into my ears.

Even cleaning my ears with a Q-tip grosses me out. I’ll do it when it’s necessary, and I’ll do it with a surgeon’s precision, but I hate it. Shit, I can’t even listen to Low End Theory anymore.

For a lifelong musician who claims I’d much rather go blind than deaf, I’ve done absolutely nothing over the past thirty plus years to protect my ears from screaming Marshall stacks, booming Ampeg bass speakers, and pounding Pearl drum kits. In fact, somewhere during my musical career, I made the dubious and sadistic decision, most likely during a drunken blackout, to start playing the Great Highland Bagpipes. The war pipes. Just throw a thunderous bass drone and two equally loud tenor drones right next to my left ear. Why not?

My girlfriend, Ashley, whom I adore, cherish, and love, can do next to nothing to gross me out. Seriously, that woman could shit herself, Dutch-oven me after eating a chili-cheese bean burrito, wipe a slimy yellow-green booger on me, or mistake a bloody tampon for a day’s old jelly-donut, eat it, then throw it back up into my face and none of that would gross me out. I’d remain unaffected. It might even turn me on in some perverted way. I even watched my son, Killian, come out of my ex-wife’s vagina. Baseball catcher style. Crouched down and watching every movement, every single twitch and shake, as that boy squeezed his way out of that women’s vagina. It was amazing. I would have videotaped it if I could, but she drew the line at that suggestion. Pussy.

I, however, am no pussy. I’m a man. On top of my broad and manly swimmers’ shoulders rests a somewhat and sometimes mercurial head. On top of that good-looking head of mine is an irresistible and full-bodied head of luxurious hair. On each side of that head hangs one ear. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I’m very protective of my ears. Penetration-wise, at least. Inside those ears lives an irrational and unreasonable staunch heterosexual named Ernest. I kid with Ernest from time to time, saying, “Well, if you’re a heterosexual who lives in both ears, then wouldn’t you be bi-sexual?” He doesn’t find me funny.

Ernest has gone on record declaring he’d rather die than have anything stuck in his ears, even earplugs. Earplugs, from my understanding, are designed to minimize specific frequencies, not eradicate sound. Well, after six months of sleepless nights shared with a substantial number of self-diagnosed insomniacs, who snored all night long, I broke down. Against my better judgment and Ernest’s pleadings, I bought a pair of earplugs. I had to. I felt like I was losing my mind.

After carefully inserting each earplug and checking for snugness, I found it curious that they did not dull the frequencies on which ignorance, racism, hatred, stupidity, and arrogance float. Those frequencies continued to remain constant in jail. Change is not the only constant. In addition, I also found it curious that the tiny plastic package the earplugs came in included directions in five different languages, all romance languages. As if the pedigree of our inmates throughout America were fluent in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Romanian. And if that were the case, who would want to drown that out? I see that as a reason to want to go to jail.

“Please forgive me, you Honor, I only raped that poor cat in hopes of spending a few months in county jail. You see, Judge, I have a lovely little trip planned to the Basque country in Spain. Then I’ll be traveling up through France and into Romania. I intended to brush up on my Spanish, French, and Romanian.”

Let’s take a closer look at the earplug. An earplug is half the size of a baby carrot, usually a bright neon color, smooth and foamy. I, however, am six feet tall, pasty white, freckled, and flabby. And those are just our differences. Our similarities are staggering when you get down to the exact nature.

Perhaps earplugs are misunderstood, to which I empathize and relate. Who isn’t misunderstood to a certain degree? We can’t all be germane. I contend that earplugs aren’t as popular or widely used due to poor business decisions. The earplug companies are missing their target market. Furthermore, I have clearly missed my calling, CEO of an earplug empire. I’ve always possessed the uncanny ability to solve multi-million-dollar companies’ problems, none of whom I work for, while locked up in jail or doing a 30-day rehab stint. My sister calls it ‘bursting with ideas.’ I will admit my sister is more intelligent than me. However, I can’t understand how she fails to see the genius of me spending hour after hour writing another unpublished short story from jail. Is it not brilliant? Am I tripping?

Despite all my ups and downs, my prolific turning out of ideas has won me various awards over the years. In addition to being nominated for the 2022 Buttplug of the Ear award, I’ve also been nominated a handful of times and won the Man of the Hour award. I’ve had the dubious honor of winning the 2019 Nobelt prize for fashion. That was weird. My pants kept falling when I went up to the stage to receive my award. I’ve also won the highly touted Cinnabon Eating Champion of the World award, twice. Finally, in the spirit of transparency, I’ve also placed third, or as they called it, ‘honorable mention,’ for the 2020 Best American Blivit Author, or as we literary snobs call it, the BABA. Losing to the runner-up, BJ Novak, and ‘Best in Blivit,’ Kurt Vonnegut. I lost to a dead guy, yeah. BJ Novak I can understand, but Vonnegut? I mean, come on? Have you read Timequake? Of course, you haven’t. No one has but about twelve other idiots and me.

Honorable Mention? What a joke. I thought that title was reserved for kids who came in last place in sand-building contests. I’m S.O.B, a magnanimous motherfucker, remember that. But I digress.

All of my achievements, however, can be viewed proudly on display hanging over the mantle in my imagination. However, only select family members and a handful of friends have been given the keys to my imagination. The rest of my friends, acquaintances, and fans simply have to settle for sniffing Cognac, sunning on the Rivera, or skiing the Swiss Alps with me, in-between my hectic schedule of jet-setting around the globe to attend award ceremonies, of course.

Of course.