So Jobe (that's Joe-Bee) is, like, the other half of me. Even his parents are always saying "You two" and stuff, as if Jobe implies Wil and Wil implies Jobe. And it kinda does.

Just to get this out of the way: yes, we've "done stuff." It's fun. Builds team cohesion. Uh, "unit" cohesion, as Jobe likes to say. Especially once it starts to dry. Oh, that's "Adhesion," sorry. But that is sort of beside the point of this tale of... whatever the fuck it's a tale of. Insight into the convoluted and wonderfully perverse world that is Wil-and-Jobe. Mostly Jobe.

So Jobe's got this younger brother, Sammy, who's about -- what -- five and a half? Sammy is cuter than shit and makes me jealous of Jobe, having a sweet little brother like that. As you might imagine, any child with Jobe as his older brother is going to be... Not your orrr-din-ary bear.

Jobe knows this -- and he knows he can trust me with Sammy -- but I think Sammy is the cutest fucking thing on the planet. Yes, cute in that way -- sort of. It's not like I have this big pederasty thing going on. It's just that he's so iconically a boy. And boys are... cute and fun. He's stocky and bold and little and vulnerable and funny and he really loves him some big brudder. And maybe some big brudder's best friend. And when you love a boy, you just gotta love him all over, love his boy package too, as part of the whole deal. His, by the way, is surprisingly fat and -- I hate to keep using this word, but -- iconic of tough bouncy five-and-a-half year old boy. More on this later.

Oh, and they have a new baby brother, Keene, who's about 5 months old or so. Dad Winthrop throws a mean Y chromosome, I guess.

Speaking of which... So we're in their SUV. Now Jobe's dad is pretty handy (I guess it runs in the family), and he ordered an aftermarket Nav/Audio system online that also has a rear-facing camera and 2 video feeds. He installed it with no drama, except some chopped up knuckles (he asked me to bring him some band-aids. I had to make 2 trips, 'cuz I figured 8 was gonna be enough). So, after the Jobe's-dad blood was all scrubbed off the console, and the set up had been suffered through, in the absence of an intelligible manual, they had rear-facing video and all that.

Jobe was the one, as he always is, that got stuck figuring out what "Press Activation Button Enough" meant. What he also discovered was that he could connect a Raspberry Pi to the second video feed and have a full blown computer on board. Of course, unless you have a 4G card or something it's mostly a curiosity, since it can't see the outside. But you can store and retrieve files and stuff.

So we're in the SUV, and Jobe's mom is messing with the nav system. Now, if you know anything about the Pi, you know it runs a full Linux OS from an SD card. Everything is on that one card. Change cards and it's like switching to a different computer. So, I'm guessing Jobe got distracted. I don't think -- and I could be wrong here, cuz he's pretty darn smart -- I don't think Sammy had a hand in mixing up the cards. But...

So I hear Sammy saying "Play that one, Mommy!" all excited. So she does. It's this Vimeo thing about camel breeding, and there's this lady talking about her girl camel and her boy camel and blah blah, until it gets to the part where... uhhh... the boy camel kneels down and he's about to get him some girl-camel pussy. He's all hyper excited and he's shaking and weak in the knees and frothing at the mouth all camel disgusting, but still cute in this fucked excitable-boy way because he's so excited to dip his eager boy-camel wick in his sweet Camelita. Sammy's squirming in delight and the dad's oblivious, driving, and their mom's looking at the frothy boy camel trembling at his girl camel's loins. And Jobe's mom says, sideways to her hubby, "Look, just like you, honey."

Jobe had ear buds in and didn't hear that. But when all that root beer shot out of my nose, he followed my gaze and saw Joe Camel getting his camel nut in high-def, right in front of their mom. Sound and everything. Ahh! The look of horror on his face was indescribable. As was the root beer snot delight that I got to clean off the leather seats when we got back. Poor fucking little Keene: he has no clue what rampant lunacy he's been born into. Gotta love these people.

So, as you can imagine, Jobe's Christmas list wasn't exactly normal. His mom said he'd open up a box and a bunch of random wires would be sticking out and he'd be all, "This is so cool! How'd you know to get me this?" And I felt all gratified, 'cuz his 'rents had quizzed me a few weeks earlier and I'd suggested some stuff from Adafruit, like a Flora and shit like that. Anyway, he also scored a hefty gift certificate for Adafruit and also one to this big surplus place in Chicago. Which is where The Tale Of The Pleasure Pants begins.

So I show up on Saturday morning, like usual, and Jobe's in his mom's sewing room with a pile of huge, adult-sized cloth diaper rags, and he's sewing little pockets into them. Like all over them. I didn't ask.

He jumps up, glad to see me. "Grab that black thread and a big needle from that plastic box. We're doing a tear down!"

He turns and grabs this nasty little stabby thing -- like a Lego-sized Klingon weapon -- and leads me to his room, where he has his dad's massage pad -- the kind you put on your chair or the bed, and it has a hand-held control and you can program it to vibrate in various patterns and heat up and stuff? -- He has it on his work table and he attacks the side seam with the little metal thing -- a seam ripper, he tells me -- and burrows into the guts of the thing 'till he gets to one of the little motor vibrator units.

"Here, get your phone and take a picture of this writing and send it to me." I do. He goes over to his computer and looks up the words and numbers on the motor unit and copies some shit down. Then he comes back and opens a box and compares numbers.

"Cool! Perfect! See what I got?" The box had about 50 of those little motor units in it. There was the motor part and then a little end piece attached to the motor shaft with a spinning weight in it. The weight was off center, so when it spun, it vibrated. So, he had a crap load of them that he bought from the surplus place.

"Twelve volts. Ten cents each!" He crowed. Then he sewed his dad's massage pad back up real quick and put it back on his dad's chair in the den.

I knew it was gonna be something... odd and fucked. That's the mind of Jobe. Oh, and he loves a dare. He even dares himself. Actually, he likes those self-dares best of all. 'Cuz they're usually the most deeply fucked.

So we go do stuff together. Not that kind of stuff. We usually do that at night. Well, sometimes during the day, but it can be hard to arrange to be alone during the day. So we go places and do shit. I had to be home for dinner because some stinky "Aunt," was going to be there. Really one of my mom's college friends. Still, a middle aged woman and sort of average-ly woman-stinky. Last time she was there, she was pretty funny though, especially once my mom got a few glasses of wine into her. They giggled like girls. Just really old girls. And about weird shit. Anyway, dinner wasn't too bad and I snagged a couple of glasses of wine while I was at it.

So I get to Jobe's the next morning and Sammy's in Jobe's room and they're about to conduct a test.

"They are NOT dydees!" Jobe kept telling him. "They're just made of leftover scraps from the rag company that used to be dydees. They sell bundles of 'em for washing cars." He's holding what actually does look like a cross between a pair of briefs with no sides and a thick diaper. Embedded in the fabric are a bunch of those little motor units, mostly in the front, crotch and butthole areas.

He convinces Sammy, who's been standing there boy-naked (to my delight), to straddle this thing and then pull on a pair of his Fruit of the Looms over it, while Jobe held this... contraption in place. There were wires hanging out the top. And it was pretty saggy, from the weight of all the little motors.

"Okay, I think you better put on another pair of undies, on top of those, to hold it in place." Sammy did, then a third pair, 'til the whole thing ended up looking like some sort of a thick white Speedo with a stocky little boy sticking out all the holes. Sammy looked down at the wires dubiously, as Jobe went to hook things up to them.

"Have I ever hurt you?" he asked Sammy.

"Yeah, well, how about the hammer when we made the tree house?" Kid had a point. That had sucked. Flipped through the air and bonked the poor little tyke like a fucking roadrunner cartoon.

"I mean on purpose. Haven't I always been good to you?"

"Okay," says Sammy, in a resigned tone, "Do your 'speriment."

Jobe smiled and said, "Hold onto that chair, Sammy. Ready?" and he flipped the switch.

"Uhhhhh! Uhhhhh!" said Sammy, clutching the chair. His little legs went rigid.

"My pee-pee! MY PEE-PEE!!" He was panting and his little knees were buckling and he would straighten them out and they'd buckle again. His little hips were gyrating, and his head turned sideways, his eyes pointed my way.

"My peeeeeeeeee-peeeeeeeeeee," he moaned, in a voice like a 5 year old ghost, "My peeeeeeeeee-peeeeeeeeeee." His eyes were pointed my way, sightlessly. The pupils were twin pools of darkness, huge and dilated.

"Oh, my peeee-peeee... " he almost whispered, his little butt sticking out as he squirmed. "Aaaah, Aaaah, Nggg, Guh," then a long moan of outrage, a bleating squeal and, after a moment, he began to giggle and tear at the underpants-monster thing, trying to escape from the vibration.

After Jobe turned it off, Sammy relaxed and was all smiles. His eyes looked normal again. "That feeling was gooder than any feel I ever felt!" he declared, squirming around his little boy-package. "Is that what Joe Camel was feeling?"

Jobe was all smiles: "Probably."

He turned to look at me: "Well, I declare that a success!"

"Declare WHAT a success?" I asked in a vexed tone.

"Oh. I think I'll call them The Pleasure Pants."

What could possibly go wrong?