Cult of Jef

In her Artist’s Way series of books, Julia Cameron sug­gests that artists take an Artist Date every week to fill their cre­ative well.  These cre­ative adven­tures often inspire or show a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive to what the artist has been work­ing on, or just pro­vide a prompt to stim­u­late the imagination.

Lately, my cre­ative well had dried up.

Every time I go into work at the book­store, though, I feel that I have an Artist’s Date.  I never know whom I’ll meet or what they’ll say.  Sat­ur­day was no exception.

I had just fin­ished ring­ing up a pur­chase when the cus­tomer asked me, “Do you play games?”

I gin­gerly handed her the receipt and said, “Could you be more spe­cific?”  I wasn’t sure if she was ask­ing if I was a playa, a swinger, or a Monop­oly enthusiast.

She told me that she was work­ing with a client that man­u­fac­tured a game for baby show­ers.  “Basi­cally, it’s Pin the Tail on the Don­key, except the tail is a baby and the don­key is a vajayjay.”

“You mean a vagina?”  I’ve always been fairly clin­i­cal when it comes to mat­ters below the waist, so I wanted to ensure there was no misunderstanding.

“Yeah,” she said.  “Do you think you’d be inter­ested in car­ry­ing it here in your store?”

I paused.  She prob­a­bly thought I was delib­er­at­ing about the prob­a­bil­ity of being able to sell such a game in the shop; how­ever, I was try­ing to fig­ure out how one spells vajay­jay.  (I actu­ally had to look it up on Google, if you can believe it.)  “I don’t think our cus­tomers would be inter­ested,” I said.  “And the peo­ple who would be inter­ested, prob­a­bly wouldn’t think to look here, either.  It’s a great idea, though.”

After the cus­tomer had left, I found myself spec­u­lat­ing on the tech­ni­cal aspects of the Pin the Baby on the Vajay­jay game.  I imag­ined that a small piece of vel­cro could be applied to the back of the baby, which would easy attach to the vejay­jay, unless it had received a Brazil­ian wax.  Then again, if the game came with detach­able pubic hair, it could help keep the game chal­leng­ing for play­ers who had mas­tered the basic level at pre­vi­ous baby show­ers.  Then again, if one just served alco­hol at the shower, that would make the game pro­gres­sively more chal­leng­ing, anyway.

I’d never been to a baby shower before, so it got me think­ing about what fun, cre­ative ideas I could come up with to amuse guests.  Maybe the guests could bond by eat­ing a com­mu­nal gummi after­birth.  This, of course, reminded me of the time that I had to pre­pare a pre­sen­ta­tion for Jonathan Swift’s  essay “A Mod­est Pro­posal” in my col­lege Eng­lish class, and I served my no-nonsense teacher lime Jell-o with a plas­tic baby doll in the mid­dle of it.  He actu­ally gig­gled when I served it to him.

I real­ized that my cre­ative well had been replen­ished with­out eat­ing any after­birth or encap­su­lat­ing a baby doll in gelatin.  My writer’s block was gone.

I made a men­tal note:  You never know who’s vajay­jay will get your cre­ative juices flow­ing again, so to speak.