Brown Beard

0:04 To the restless, the insomniacs, the stressed out, the worried, and the board. This is for you. Welcome to Anxiety Addicts Bedtime Stories, an original podcast by Joe Newman and Morgan Walsh, serving up hot, mostly true, twenty minute stories to turn off your brain and turn on your ram. The stories come from all over the Internet, whispered late at parties and from you to the bs inbox. But your secrets are safe here. All names have been changed to protect the guilty, So please sit back, relax, and send us your stories at the link in the show notes and sweet dreams.

0:54 Hi. Not sure how you got here, but welcome to Anxiety Addicts Bedtime Stories out. And this is where my best friend Morgan and myself find stories from all over the Internet and scour our inbox and take those embarrassing, ridiculous, horrible, cringey, wonderful moments and turn them into twenty minute bedtime stories that always have a happy ending. So thank you for being here, Sit back, relax and enjoy this time to turn off your brain. Now, Morgan and I disagree about some stories and whether or not they're funny. I am a huge fan of poop stories. Morgan doesn't love them. This is a good poop story. If poop stories are triggering to you, don't listen.

1:39 To this one. But it's really, really, really funny. The flashback ruined the moment spectacularly. Mora's brain wasn't the most reliable engine. Sometimes it would stall on her when trying to do simple arithmetic, especially if someone was waiting impatiently for an answer. Then she couldn't add fourteen and twenty seven. But sometimes her brain was powerful beyond belief and reason and the laws of physics, actually, because at this particular moment in her life, it somehow made time stand still. She shifted her weight uncomfortably from one rainbow flip floped to the other, looking out past the dock at the seagulls circling the August New Hampshire sky.

2:25 The loose threads of. The end of her cutoff jean shorts tickled her tan thighs. The sea breeze worked its way through a crop blonde hair, which disengaged itself. From behind her ear, there was Stephen in front of her, on not one but both of his knees, holding up a ring box as if. He were a Greek statue he'd said. The words they hung in the air like smoke escaping an oven. Will you marry me? He's proposing? Mora's brain was following up coherent thoughts like quicksand after which has happened?

3:06 This couldn't be real. People didn't use expensive pieces of jewelry to suggest spending the rest of their lives with someone after what they had just experienced together. Mora's jaw hung uselessly from her face, her mouth gaping like a fish in the harbor below. She tried to ignore the small crowd which formed in the periphery of their proposal bubble, were people taking pictures. She looked into Stephen's brown eyes, which reflected the dark water behind them. His face was sweet, kind, half covered by the burly mountain manned beard which she found. So cute, and Cuddy's dive bar three years earlier.

3:47 She tried to focus on those features, but her brain. Could not help but picture something much more disturbing. It all began the night before, at about seven pm. There had been a lot. Of excitement surrounding the upcoming trip to Maine. Their favorite Grateful Dead Cover band was playing on the wharf. The hotel was running. A special where you got your fourth night free, and the Crabshack was celebrating its annual and heavily advertised Crabfest, which was in all you can eat situation with views of the harbor. It's hard to rate which experience the young couple was the most excited about. Maura met Stephen their senior year of college. She had been bar attending at the loudest place in town and had a reputation that preceded her. It had something to do with tequila.

4:35 With Mora's short blonde hair and eyelashes so long they touched the lenses of every pair of sunglasses she owned, she was a sight to behold, hovering somewhere. Just above five feet tall. She had this vibey mix of girl next door and possible hired assassin. She was from Boston. She wore a baseball hat all weekend and was the first one at a party ready to be tipped upside down and impressed with her kegstand. She could crush six bud lights. In an hour and still recite the preamble to the Constitution that she memorized in fifth grade. We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union a step You get the gist, think of a young Amy Poehler.

5:16 If you knew maur you were stoked. If you were in love with her, you were in a pickle. Unless you were the very lucky man whom she finally loved back. And this was Stephen. Stephen wasn't your average Massachusetts dude. He only looked like one. With his baggy old navy khaki cargo shorts, a Patriot's T shirt and. Red Sox baseball hat. You'd have a hard time picking him out of a lineup after a bar fight in Southeast But he was different to Mora. He was Indiana Jones. He was the reason for so much of her life discovery. He introduced her to books and philosophers as if you were Matt Damon in Goodwill hunting.

5:59 He took her out to restaurants. And back alleys with the most obscure and divine dishes she'd ever tasted. And well, in bed, that was a whole nother story. We'll just give you the high level overview here. But Stephen taught more what heights of pleasure her body was capable of, and that would require a beach towel or two in the bed before they got down to it. They were quite the match, and this particular summer had been epic. Stephen had graduated with his masters, been accepted to his dream PhD program, and Mora was working. As a vettech in the nicest neighborhood in the Bay State.

6:39 Life was good and they wanted to celebrate. A trip to Maine for both Crabfest and some obscure historical thing that Stephen was excited about was the perfect answer. But first crabs. The Crabshack was. Legendary among locals and the tourists lucky enough to stumble upon it, and the annualfest, those three nights of the summer where the stuff memories were made of whispered about and hangover stories and group chats for years to come. Mora was ready for it, but first an educational afternoon For a moment wandering through the historical buildings, she worried that the other history buffs on the tour could hear the grumblings of her empty stomach. That day, she'd sworn off all food until the crab Shack doors opened, and her fifty nine ninety nine all you can eat insanity was hers for the taking, but her stomach didn't know about that plan. She looked around at the other members of the group tour listening intently to the history of the colonization of the great State of Maine. She realized that she did not need to worry. The average age, even factoring in her and Stephen, had to be.

7:51 Hovering right below ninety. There wasn't great odds of anyone's hearing being that good. The tour dragged on. Looking at even you would have thought he was a twenty five year old being taken on a private showing of the Playboy Mansion in nineteen seventy five. No, it was twenty twenty two, and he was just that excited about Nick Zoom Musket. Morris smiled to herself and thought, there is no better proof of love than me being here. In the next few hours, she would learn how wrong she was. She and Stephen followed the guide in their merry band of nanagenarians through the seventeen hundreds and into the next entry. She watched the love of her life hang on every word about the socio political clashes of New Englanders three hundred years earlier, and then she totally zoned out and thought about crabs until her brain was swimming in butter. They weren't the first ones in line at the crab shack, but they were close. The air was peppered with salt, the breeze cool coming off the Atlantic, and the mood about as happy as it could get.

8:55 On that perfect August. Evening, the sam Adams flowed and the case had to be changed out twice before the sun even set. The plastic red and white checkered tablecloths were littered with crab shells and buckets of ignored corn on the cob. The rule was simple. All you had to do was finish the seafood on your plate. Then you'd raise the orange flag at the end of the table and a freshly stock plate would be in front of you before you could even finish your beer. Stephen was full after three Mourra was not. She was wholeheartedly committed to eating her body weight and crab and nothing was gonna stop her. Steven sat there, laughing, sipping his drink, and cheering on his tiny girlfriend as she went at it. God, she was cute, the thought rang through his head over and over, and she was even shoving her pretty mouthful of seafood, he could appreciate how adorable she was.

9:52 Her hair was even lighter than usual. Due to the summer sun, and the freckles that spattered her nose gave more of this youthful quality that made him want to pick her up and bring him back to the hotel room immediately. As soon as Mara was. Too full to raise her flag for the final time, That's exactly what he did. They giggled through the town's cobblestone streets and through the lobby of the small hotel. Mare excused herself just long enough to brush her teeth and run a comb through her hair. Even with three years of dating history, she was still keeping the romance alive on her end, which didn't hold a candle to what Stephen did on his. Oh God, he was fun in the sack.

10:35 As Maura laid on her back, her tan skinned the perfect contrast to the crisp, white sheets, she giggled and moaned in pure bliss, feeling the waterworks about to escape her. As Stephen did what he did so well, she tried to keep the noises to a whisper. It was an old hotel, and she was sure that the walls were thin, but seriously, this man was a master with a female body, and she couldn't hold it in anymore. Mora let out as her vision blurred to every color of the rainbow, the release from her body draining her of everything but happiness. Stephen lifted his. Head up, and when her eyes were finally able to focus on the site in front of her, she felt her body replace her feelings of ecstasy with those.

11:23 Of utter horror. There was Stephen, his eyes bright but confused, his cheeks flushed, and his beard covered with the wrong kind of human juices, the wrong color, the wrong consistency. He looked like he'd just taken a swim at the jello pudding factory. Yeah, more had let go from the wrong hole. After consuming more crustaceans than any person her size had any rate to consume, and it was everywhere that beard that she'd fallen in love with three years ago. Oh boy, it looked like never mind.

12:04 Oh my god, No, she yelled loud enough to be heard two blocks away. More. I look down at the love of her life, now covered in what should only exist within the confines of a toilet bowl, far from any other person, and really far from the person she was being intimate with. There was no option. Mora froze like an ice sculpture in Elsa's palace. She didn't move, as if making some promise to the universe that her stillness would somehow enable her brain's ability to just disappear. But much like adding fourteen and twenty seven, it was just not happening. Uh you I Unlike the diarrhea, the words would not come out.

12:51 I'm gonna have to eat myself off the balcony was the only solution that Maura's brain would offer. There was no coming back from this. Her eyes focused on the new polka dots smattering the white bed sheets. Something had to be done. They couldn't just lie there, frozen and not do anything right unless she got really lucky and a hidden volcano somewhere off the shores of main was going to erupt and bury the two of them in that moment. Forever Maura waited for molten lava to come pouring in from the open windows. It didn't, so she had to make a move. You shower now. Maura eked out those four syllables, avoiding all eye contact with Stephen as he shuffled into the bathroom. Clearly in some kind of well deserved shock.

13:37 Did she hear a laugh escape through his mess of defiled facial hair? She didn't know. Maura called housekeeping, doing her best to be as vague as possible about why she need a new set of bed Ludden's. Absolutely immediately, Please just bring them up right now, She bagged into the phone, not knowing how much time she had. Based on her cursory assessment of her boyfriend's hygienic situation, she hoped he would be in the shower for an extended period of time. He was a half an hour later. He emerged, smelling like Irish spring and old spice. In that time, she'd managed to change the sheets and wrap herself in a bathrobe. Maura avoided all eye contact as they switched places in the bathroom. How is she ever going to come back from this?

14:22 Was that crab in her teeth? Did this mean sexy time was over? Like forever? How could he possibly maintain his love for her when she'd accidentally just done that to his face and some of his neck? Thank goodness for. Massachusett's beer still flowing through her bloodstream. When she got out of the shower, there was Stephen, clean dress, sitting on the freshly made bed with a twinkle in his eye. Can we go for a walk? He asked, I heard there were seals on the pier. Now listen. Maura may have just shit on her boyfriend's beard while he was going down on her after eating eleven pounds of crab, but. Well, seals. Maura loved seals as much as she loved crab.

15:05 In fact, her plan was to spend time studying marine life as she pursued her veterinary degree one mention of the slippery silver mammals, and she momentarily forgot about the previous forty five minutes of her life. But Stephen could do that turn. Shit into gold, almost literally, And this is how Maura found herself standing on the dock while her boyfriend presented the diamond engagement ring before her in front of a crowd of excited onlkers at nine o'clock on a hot summer evening in Maine, a mere hour and a half after the poop incident. Maura, will you, Stephen asked, oh so properly, with a twinkle in his eye. Seriously, she responded, and it wasn't a rhetorical question. There was no way in her mind that this man was presently of sound mind and able to make.

15:56 Important life decisions. How could it be? But there he was, on his knees, holding a gorgeous sapphire ring as serious as a heart attack, which was apt because that's exactly what Maura thought was gonna happen to her. Yes, Maura, he said, I want you to be my wife. I love you, I love everything about you. The crowd that had now grown by the second wasn't shy about awe this statement. Maura looks Stephen dead in the eyes. You love everything. Steven's face responded with an interesting mix of suppressed. Laughter and also a pinch of utter horror.

16:39 More didn't blame him, she felt the same way. Almost everything was Stephen's honest reply. The awe Scott louder. The crowd seemed to appreciate his truthfulness. I love almost everything about you, too, cried Maura at that moment. The only thing about her significant other that she wasn't totally sure about was his timing. Was this really the best choice for But she didn't have time to follow through with the rest of that thought. Nope, because before she knew it he'd slipped the ring onto that finger, pulled her into his arms, and gave her a kiss that she swear she'll remember for the rest of her life.

17:23 Yes, Mara cried, Yes, yes, Yes, don't. Get too excited. Steven whispered in her ear. Let's never do that again, and Mora agreed. The next year, after they went to the crabshack, they slept in separate beds, and yes, five dogs, two kids, and three iguanas later, they're still married. We told you, we promised happy endings. We are anxiety Atics bedtime Stories. Please rate, review, subscribe. And DM us your stories, Sweet Dreams.

18:14 Thanks for listening to anxiety addicts bedtime Stories. We're here to help you take your mind off whatever is making you spiral by listening to a story about someone else's hilarious or mortifying experience, and we know you have your own. Please DM or email your stories of bad decisions, miscommunications, and Murphy's law. Your support helps us keep doing what we love and don't forget to like, rate, and subscribe, and as always, Sweet Dreams. This episode was written and recorded by Joe Newman, with editing and sound designed by Morgan Walsh.