STAY AWAY from the Off-Brand Boner Pills at the Convenience Store!

Don’t ask me what I was thinking.

I’ve gotten that question from countless doctors and nurses in the hospital.

It was stupid. But we all make mistakes, right?

I walked into the convenience store to pick up a package, since it was the local UPS pick-up point. Some vegan boots that my girlfriend had ordered for me as a gift had come in the day before and I had missed the delivery man.

She had shown me pictures of them online – black, lined with fur, fuzzy and warm and perfect for winter weather down to -30 degrees Celsius.

Very thoughtful, considering my love of winter hiking, animals, and the current state of my old worn-out Blundstones.

I wanted to do something for her, to say thank you. Looking around the filthy little bodega, I began to scan the shelves for potential ideas. A large display for February was set up near the cash register and it immediately drew me in.

I imagined myself giving her the various items from the shelves, and pictured her reaction to each of them in turn. She was not impressed by any of them.

Flowers? Too cliché.

Chocolate? Boring.

A stuffed teddy bear? Ugh, who am I?

The choices of Valentine’s presents at the convenience store were seriously lacking. But it wasn’t like I had a car or a credit card. I was limited in my options.

That was when I saw the display hanging behind the counter.

“HARD AS ROXXX!” one of them advertised. I looked at the price tag – $55. It was a large colourful cardboard advertisement with a single pill on the front of it encased in hard plastic.

Next to it were a couple of other options: “JAGUAR ROAR” and “PLATINUM BOOGEY”.

“What’s that?” I asked the man behind the counter.

“Oh, that’s good stuff. I used it myself the other day. It’s expensive, but without a prescription, this is the best you can get. And you look a bit young to be going to the doctor for that little blue pill. I think they’d laugh you right out of there!”

I swallowed a lump in my throat and thought about it for a few seconds.

“So… You’ve tried it?” I didn’t have any problems in that department but I had heard it was a bit like baseball players using steroids. It gave an extra edge and the oomph to hit it out of the park.

I was thinking back to an older co-worker of mine who had told me plenty of bawdy stories when we had worked together as cable technicians. He had been a big advocate of that ‘little blue pill.’

“Oh, plenty of times. My girl still has a smile on her face and that was two nights ago! If you’re looking for a Valentine’s present, look no further!”

The man was a fantastic salesman. Or maybe I’m just a gullible idiot. It’s probably the second one.

Forking over the $55 plus tax, I walked out of there with a big grin on my face. I was still thinking about my old co-worker and how he had bragged about his non-stop sex during the nights when he took his half a little pill. How the ladies just couldn’t get enough. At least according to him.

I got home and popped the whole thing on an empty stomach.

It was a capsule, so it wasn’t like I could cut it in half.

By the time my girlfriend Rhonda got home, though, I wasn’t really capable of having sex.

Sure, I was “HARD AS ROXXX” just like the package had advertised, but my entire body had also turned purple as an eggplant and I was vibrating from head to toe, bleeding from the eyes and nose, and my teeth were falling out one by one.

The ambulance came and picked me up and the EMS workers looked baffled and quite terrified. By that point I was screaming incoherently and my face and all of my extremities were swelling up.

They tried to put an IV in my arm and the needle going in caused my swollen arm to make a loud POP! like a balloon, fizzing out air afterwards and deflating as if it had been full of gas instead of, y’know, muscle and fat and the usual stuff.

I’ve been in the hospital since then.

The doctors were baffled for a while. I guess they still are.

The closest thing they can come up with is that this disorder I have acquired from the over-the-counter boner pill I took is “similar in symptoms but has differing etiology” from “Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva” – a rare genetic disorder that turns muscle into bone.

Yeah, you heard me.

TURNS MUSCLE INTO BONE. Like it turns your body into a fucking statue. A concrete human-shaped gargoyle.

This boner pill did pretty much what it said it was gonna do. It’s making me “HARD AS ROXXX”…

It started with my… nether regions…

My most prized body part is now completely transformed into a stalactite. The doctors had to use a hammer drill to get a catheter in just so I could take a piss.

The mutant stone-flesh is spreading, too. It’s moving up into my midsection now.

“You’ll have rock-hard abs pretty soon,” one wise-cracking doctor joked.

But once it gets to my digestive tract and the rest of my internal organs I’m pretty much fucked.

So please, heed my warning.

Do NOT buy the off-brand boner pills from the convenience store!

I mean, you can give “Jaguar Roar” a try, but you should probably just stick with the little blue pill.

Maybe just take half.

TCC