Like just about everything else Elroy does, his apology begins with an explanation. A really long explanation. 

"Do you know who Anthony Bourdain was?" Elroy asks.

"This better be relevant to your apology," Judy says.

"It is."

"Well, I'm paying close attention, and if I don't see the relevance to Anthony Bourdain by the end of this apology, I'll..."

"You'll what, Judy?"

Judy looks stumped. For all the arguing with her little brother, they both seem to love each other. And seeing them standing there in Judy's living room, I wish, just for a moment, that I had a sibling. Because even when Mom and Dad aren't at work, which is pretty all the time, I feel alone in my family. What would it be like, I wonder, to have someone else I could confide in, even if we were just commiserating about something totally ridiculous our parents said?

"Just get on with it," Judy snaps.

"Very well," Elroy says. "Anthony Bourdain was a famous chef, author, and television personality."

"I've seen the show," I say. "The one on CNN. I mean, Travel Channel."

"It's basically the same show. Anthony Bourdain travels somewhere, eats the food, has a profound experience with a local, and then tries to get his viewers to change their outlook on the world, or travel, or the location, or humanity."

"So, you're Anthony Bourdain here," I say. "Without the travel. Or the cooking, unless you count the Chub Potion Number Nine and its various recipes. And you were trying to change my outlook."

"I was trying to change your outlook," Elroy says. "But I'm not the Anthony Bourdain of this story. You are."

Judy rolls her eyes, and I have to say I can't blame her. The thought of Elroy being Anthony Bourdain is laughable. But hey, that's Elroy's fantasy, and it's his story, so whatever. But how on Earth am I Anthony Bourdain? That guy was as cool as cool gets in a real person. Only Han Solo is cooler, but alas, he's a fictional character.

"At first, my idea was just to help you change your outlook," Elroy says. "I used to have a lisp."

"It's true," Judy says. "He used to have a terrible lisp."

"Nick Spears and all the football players teased me. So did the mean girls. Everyone teased me. The called me gay. Which is true, of course. But they didn't mean it as a compliment. Instead, they just assumed that because I had this lisp that I must be gay. And to them, both my lisp and my sexuality were hilarious. It was like I couldn't talk without some jerk at school doing a terrible impression of me, making fun of the way I spoke, or the fact that I was gay. And at that point, I wasn't out, so it really hurt. It got so bad, I practically became a mute."

"I wish," Judy says. But she's smiling to let both Elroy and me know that she doesn't really mean it.

"My grades started dropping," Elroy says. "I stopped hanging out with friends. I basically retreated from life."

"Sounds familiar," I say.

"Exactly," Elroy says. "When I saw what they were doing to you, Peter, I saw myself."

"So, you thought all this guy needs is a bigger dick?" Judy asks.

"Yeah, I don't follow," I say. "You can fix a lisp. Obviously, you did fix your lisp. But my dick remains tiny, AF."

"I fixed my lisp by doing a lot of exercises with my tongue," Elroy explains. "I don't want to get into the details here, but basically with a good speech therapist and a lot of hard work, you can correct a lisp."

"Well, with a lot of magic potion and a malfunctioning piece of machinery, you can't do anything for the size of your penis," I say.

Judy doubles over with laughter. Then, after she collects herself, she says, "Sorry, but it's funny because it's true. You can't change the size of your penis. Not without surgery, and even then, the results aren't so great."

"Peter, I wasn't trying to give you a bigger penis," Elroy says.

"Then mission accomplished," I snap.

"I was trying to give you more confidence."

"Confidence?"

"Yes," Elroy says. "Because even after I corrected the lisp, I still had trouble speaking at school. I would get so nervous. My palms would sweet. My stomach would churn. It felt as if everyone was watching me, waiting for the lisp to return, so that they could pounce."

"What did you do?"

"Well, I suffered. I suffered a lot more after I had corrected the lisp than before, actually. But then I met George. At first we were just friends, then more than friends. Then we kind of broke up. Then we got back together. Then we broke up again."

"Is this really relevant to the story?" Judy asks.

"Not my ongoing George drama, no. But the thing that George taught me was that I could be myself around him. I could talk to him, and I was confident. And because I was confident, I didn't fall back into the bad habits that led to the lisp."

"That was it?" I ask. "That did it?"

"No. George was just one person. But then I started talking to his friends. Just small groups. But as my confidence grew, so did the number of people I felt comfortable speaking in front of. Eventually, I was able to speak in class. And eventually, the football players and the mean girls just sort of forgot about me because the lisp was gone, and I guess they had moved on to a new target."

"Me," I say.

"No, actually it was this kid Evan Mooney who wore an eye-patch for some reason. They made all these silly pirate jokes. They even forced him to walk the plank last year at homecoming."

"What happened to him?" I ask.

"He broke his ankle when he fell off the plank."

"Oh my god," Judy gasps. "I am so glad I'm done with high school."

"Then he transferred," Elroy says.

"Oh."

"Anyway, I thought if I could give you this potion, which was really just a harmless veggie smoothie, that it would boost your confidence."

"The placebo effect," Judy says. 

"Exactly," Elroy says.

"Huh?"

"The placebo effect is when the control group in a drug trial gets sugar pills instead of the actual drug, but for some reason, they get better," Judy says. "It's a question of psychology. Basically, it's in their head, but it works."

"And that's where Anthony Bourdain comes into the story," Elroy says. "Because in your case the placebo worked so well that you turned the tables on Nick Spears, the football team, the mean girls. Heck, you changed the entire school's outlook at that assembly."

"Well, I just said what was on my mind."

"No," Elroy says. "You said what was on everyone's mind. You said what everyone wanted to say, except they were afraid to say it. In that moment, you were the Anthony Bourdain of John Wayne High School. And your big dick energy was on full display."

"Big dick energy? But I have a tiny dick."

"You don't need a big dick to have big dick energy. The fact is, we don't know if Anthony Bourdain had a big dick or not. But he had big dick energy. He had confidence. Not just the kind of confidence it takes to speak without a list. He had the kind of confidence that you had in that moment, the kind you need to change the world, to turn a toxic cesspool like our high school into something better, something positive."

"So big dick energy is kind of like being a Jedi," I say.

"It's exactly like being a Jedi."

"Oh here we go with the Star Trek stuff," Judy says.

"Star Wars!" Elroy and I both shout in unison.

"Sorry," Judy says.

"Big dick energy is exactly like being a Jedi because there's also a dark side," Elroy says.

"There is?" I ask.

"Peter, the more obsessed you became with your literal dick size, the more of a monster you became. Look at how you behaved. You yelled at me. You strapped that thing to your penis. Lord knows what else you've done. But for me the really telling moment was when I tried to get you to see all the positive things that were happening, and you just wanted more Chub Potion, even though you thought it had killed Colonel Mustard."

"Wait," I say. "Colonel Mustard..."

"Isn't dead. He just had to go to the vet to get a teeth cleaning. Those Skittles are a nightmare for dental health."

"You lied to me about Colonel Mustard?"

"Peter, my brother was lying to you about the entire thing."

"And for that, I am truly sorry," Elroy says. "But hopefully you can see that my motives were pure, even if my methods were unsound."

"Extremely unsound," Judy says.

"I just wanted to give you confidence," Elroy says. "And then when I saw that you had some serious big dick energy, Peter, I just wanted to help you see that. Can you forgive me?"

I want to be angry at Elroy, but I can't. I see that he was trying to help me. But more importantly, I see that I had become my own worst enemy. Or, put another way, I see how the dark side of big dick energy was beginning to overwhelm me, just like the dark side of the Force turned Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. Elroy is my Obi-Wan Kenobi, but I'll be damned if I end up becoming Dick Vader.

"I forgive you," I say. "But tell me something. Do size queens appreciate big dick energy?"

"You mean Audrey," Elroy says. "Peter is dating a size queen."

"Of course," Judy says. "The history of the world can be summed up as follows: men doing stupid shit because they think it'll impress some woman, who probably doesn't even care about whatever stupid shit they're doing."

"So, does that mean Audrey isn't a size queen?" I ask.

"Isn't she that girl who got thrown out of your school for collecting dick pics?" Judy asks. "The one they sent the letter home about, and Mom and Dad asked me what sexting was?"

"Yup," Elroy says. "That's her."

"She probably is a size queen," Judy says. "I mean, most women don't collect dick pics. If anything, we try to avoid them."

"But she'll be satisfied with big dick energy, right?"

"I don't know why you're asking a lesbian that question," Judy says. "But I know a  size queen from college. Size queens are rare. Very rare. But for the one I know, a guy without a big dick is a deal breaker."

"So, I'm screwed," I say.

"Not with this Audrey chick," Judy says.

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