Julia Hubbel Responds to Terri DelCampo-Nelson’s Bizarre-Ass Interview

In between bizarre-ass kickboxing routines

1. What bizarre-ass guilty pleasure do you imbibe in way too often?

My buzzer. Delivers up to sixty orgasms in one session. And you thought my six-pack was from exercise. Silly you.

2. What bizarre-ass book/movie scared the crap out of you so bad it changed your behavior (left lights on, made you look in the back seat of your car before getting in, make you look around your house to make sure you were alone, etc)?

Day of the Triffids, 1962. I was terrified of holly-hocks for thirty years.

3. What bizarre-ass thing instantly pisses you off?

Oh, you mean mindless stupidity, disguised as President-Pus face? Please see:

4. What was your most bizarre-ass vacation/trip?

All of them. Given my penchant for extreme places and extreme conditions it’s simply a matter of degree. Although there was that eight-day camel trip across Tanzania. I had busted ribs, which I’d taped. Then the tape opened up three big weeping holes in my right side. We were three days from the most limited clinic by camel, and hours and hours from a hospital. My group: four Maasai and a Meru man and me, had among us one tiny bar of pink hotel soap. No first aid kit. You learn to effing deal.

5. What’s your most bizarre-ass writing spot?

On small writing pads on the back of a trotting horse going up the side of a very steep mountain. Back of a camel. No. Really. You can’t make this stuff up. Hard to plug in the laptop though.

6. Ever do some bizarre-ass thing that almost got you arrested?

I still could. Kindly if you don’t mind, I’ll admit to having sex in the back of a VW bug in a public parking lot once (I couldn’t walk for a week, which had nothing to do with the sex and everything to do with putting about 300 lbs of lurching humans in the back of a VW bug). Other than that, I ain’t telling.

7. What’s the most bizarre-ass thing you’ve ever eaten?

You’re asking me this knowing I’ve been to 45 countries, most of them developing? Really? You ever been to a SE Asian night market? HERE TRY THIS. Um, what did I just eat? DEEP FRIED MAGGOT. Oh. Yum. I passed on the rib and horse rectum sausage in Kazakhstan. No. I didn’t make that up:

8. What bizarre-ass joke made you laugh so hard you almost peed your pants?

What I look at in the bathroom mirror every morning before I put my dentures in. This is why I wear Depends at night- I never quite make it to the toilet in time.

9. What bizarre-ass thing have you written just for living-expenses money?

My resume.

10. What bizarre-ass thing have you fantasized about but would never, ever do?

Oh hell. I already did it. April of 2018 I was on a traditional phinisi boat in Indonesia. Multiple masts. We moved at night, mostly. I slept on the top deck. As I tend to wake up at three am, one early morning I stripped naked and climbed to the top of the tallest mast. Totally off-limits. Yeah. I hung there for an hour, in the full moon, bare-ass naked to the wind and spume and flapping of the sails below. I have never seen so many fishermen scream “HOLY SHIT” and head for the shoreline.

Oh. And I also scratched the balls of a stud horse in a stable in Phuket Thailand. No. He was asking for it, he backed his butt right up to me ( I am NOT making that up; here’s the look on his face when I stopped) to wit:

As soon as I get the hell out of quarantine I can’t wait to see what’s next on the menu. I rarely fantasize. I just do. Long as nobody and no animals get hurt, I’m up for it.

11. What’s the most bizarre-ass thing you ever did on a dare? Brag about it or regret it?

Oh, Terri, I thought you said date. That’s unprintable. The rest is just…..illegal. But then, nobody has ever had to dare me to do anything.

I’ve got 130 skydives, river rafted Class 5 rapids in Uganda, I’ve paraglided for hours over Mendoza, scuba dived with bull and Great Whites and hammerheads, mostly after sixty. It’s one hell of a lot harder for me to dare to do nothing. I eat too many chocolate almonds and out comes that buzzer.

12. What bizarre-ass experience changed your life forever?

Joined the Army at 21 in 1972 in the waning days of Vietnam. What was bizarre ass was actually believing-no really- first, that I was safe, and second, that officers really were gentlemen. No. Too many were rapists. Still are. Shall I walk you through Arlington Cemetery and point out the headstones for the generals who were rapists? Those heroes? Women have two battlefields: the enemy, and the enemy you are sworn to protect as your brother-in-arms when he has no intention whatsoever of protecting your female ass.

13. As a kid, what was the longest/worst punishment you ever got and what bizarre-ass thing did you do?

According to my parents, being born.

14. What’s the most bizarre-ass hair cut/do you’ve ever had? Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words…heh, heh, heh.

Nobody got a photo of this. After I got out of the Army in 1978 with my hair (worn for years in a braid), it hung down to my ass. I marched into a high-end NYC salon (stupid) and said, “do what you want (stupid). They shaved my head (stupid). Sold the hair (stupid). Good thing I no longer had my M-16. (smart)

Counter challenge to every single one of us: What do people never ever guess about you?

My answer: that my IQ is actually more than two digits.