Toothpicks

Maine is the toothpick captial of the world.

Chase likes things in his mouth. Honestly! His last girlfriend had told him he's got an oral fixation -- he just couldn't go that long without something in his mouth. And not in a sexual manner before someone starts saying he's gay. Again. That's getting old too.

But not as old as the remedies people seem to come up with for his love of objects in his mouth. The first one, in middle school, had been replacing his pencils with gum. Chase had gotten the sneaking suspicion that his teachers were eager to stop having to give him pens because he'd eaten his pencil. He'd chewed on the pens too and gotten a mouthful of ink for his troubles.

High school brought about his first girlfriend cramming his mouth full of gum so he would stop being so intent on sucking her tongue right out of her mouth. In the end, she dumped in for he was too taken with blowing bubbles bigger than her breasts (something he said, not her) to pay attention to her anyways.

College had been the Time of Great Things, being a med student and surrounded by other med students. He'd agreed to a study of his love of a full mouth and had nearly wound up in some uncompromising situations, half of which nearly ended in seing on how well he would be able to suck...things. Was it in fact better than said student's girlfriend? Chase had immediately switched dorms.

Now there was work and he was again turning pencils into snack time as he had so many years previous. Though, now he seemed to have depleted the supply closet of its marvelous Ticonderogas, and was left merely with a pocketful of toothpicks swiped from the cafeteria.

He didn't like toothpicks. They were too skinny and so easy to --

Foreman leaned over and gave Chase a generous wallop to the back.

"Try not to inhale the toothpicks."

Note: I have this vision of Chase in college going 'you want me to do what' that makes me laugh far too much.