Michael Hendrick Looks At Nipples

Curious Readers,

The title of this post may not come as a surprise to some, yet even Michael Hendrick admits that there are some nipples he does not want to see. Like Chris Christie’s…in the attached photo we see the big lug (Christie, not Hendrick) looking down to see if his nipples have stiffened from the touch of Mitt Romney. Christie will never be a US president unless an assassination occurs when he is a veep.

For many years, whoever was president on the twentieth year died in office. It started in 1820 when Henry Harrison stole more land from the native americans. He defeated Tecumseh at Tippecanoe and made a slogan of the event to run for president…and won. Tecumseh’s half-brother and medicine man, Tenskwatawa, threw a curse at all ‘great chiefs’ of the US, who were chosen every twenty years. Their deaths would be a reminder of what the US did to the Shawnee.

Christie is smart to (try and) run now. No prez had died since G.W. Bush’s buddy’s son screwed up his attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan. It goes largely unreported that John Hinckley Jr. had a scheduled lunch with Neil Bush, son of you know who, the day after the shooting. He did not make it.

It is well-known that the Hinckleys and Bushes have not only been in business together since the early 1960s but that the Bush family and the Hinckleys share a common ancestor – an oilman no less, Samuel Hinckley. Of course, after all that trouble Dubbya Bush, the last president before Obama, managed to kill any respect people had for him – but he lives.

But what about the nipples?

We promised you nipples, you are thinking…

It all started when Hendrick set to work merchandising the books he likes to sell. One of them is this one from 1974. 

Just about to hang it on the wall of a local merchant who kindly gave him space to sell, he thought he should ask the owner if it was alright to post partial nudity. The store owner is a woman and when describing the cover, he got to the part about the cartoon images covering the nipples. He started to describe the cover but ended up pointing vaguely towards his own chest and saying ‘private parts’.

Damn it – he was embarrassed!

But why?

It does give us pause to ponder, however, why male nipples are legal to show anyplace in public but showing female nipples can result in a fine, sometimes even for breastfeeding in the wrong spot. It has happened.

Back in the 1970s at the start of the punk rock movement, singer-songwriter Shane MacGowan, seen below,  ran into problems with his first musical group…The Nipple Erectors. The record company would not accept his ‘male/female both have them’ logic and so he changed the name of his group to The Nips. Later he formed The Pogues, based on the term Pogue Mahone, which was a derivation of the gaelic phrase meaning ‘kiss my ass’. In this world kissing ass is preferred to mentioning nipples – for some people, anyway.

Even male cats have eight nipples…or six…it is hard to hold the rascal steady enough to count them. Male cats allow tiny kittens to pretend they are nursing on them. They do this when the momma cat is out hunting and it keeps the little ones secure. We wonder if Chris Christie ever tried that but we do not want that image floating around our cerebral cortex…or yours! Sorry for that – blame it on Hendrick.

There are many types of nipples and even more ways to look at them. Instead of listing them all, we turn to Hendrick.

At fifty-seven years of age, he has seen more nipples than the average man (in person, that is). He chose to relate a bit about ‘funny nipples’. Some people, who have little sexual experience, find them funny just as diners who have never eaten a falafel think that sounds funny.

In his now-out-of-print novel (Portrait Of The Artist As A Little Bastard, TumbleWeedBastard Press, 2014) he tells of going to grade school in Upstate New York’s Mohawk Valley.

Sitting next to him, at the back of the classroom in the ‘tall’ section, RandyNiples always flinched at the muffled laugh which arose whenever a nun called his name. He could not do much about it in class but he frequently ran in circles on the recess yard shouting, “It’s Nip-PELS!!!…I tell ya!!!…Nip-PELS!!!”

Our Dear Michael occasionally wonders what happened to Randy. The way he ran in circles would have made him true presidential material!