“Why didn’t you betray her?” Phyllis prodded. “Don’t tell me she’s dead.”
“No, she’s fine,” I replied. “She was the one who told me to date other women.”
“That’s harsh,” Zelda commiserated. She thought Kimberly had dumped me.
“Oh no,” I corrected her. “We stayed together until I graduated last month. Four of the best years of my life. When she told me to date other women it was because I was killing her. I have a voracious sexual appetite and she was desperate for a full night’s sleep.”
“Do you ever go home alone?” Marsha joined in.
“Does leaving a woman’s house at 1 a. m. count?” I requested.
“Did she throw you out?” Rivka interrogated.
“No. She and her sister were exhausted so I picked up my roommate and left,” I exaggerated.
“Wait!” Nicole held up her hand. “Sisters… and you told us your roommate was gay?”
“Morals and scruples,” I repeated. “See, I was dating one sister and the other sister wanted a date so I talked my gay roommate into being my wingman so I wouldn’t end up sleeping with them both. It didn’t work out so well. The second, older sister was horny, so my guy pretended to pass out.”
“Have you ever considered you are a horrible person?” Marsha studied me.
“Yes. Not only have I thought about, I’ve been told that a few dozen times. It usually is accompanied by ‘I’m going to kill you’, or ‘you had better make it up to me’.”
“Have you ever been hurt?” Phyllis appeared concerned.
“My body is a roadmap of poor decision making,” I responded.
“What was the worst thing to ever happen to you?” Rivka grinned. Her ability to be deceptively pretty had to have made her a frightening lawyer.
“When they were happening, I was a bit more concerned with what might happen to me as opposed to rating them,” I informed her.
“Except for being shot with an arrow, being chased around naked with a hot poker and having my bed dowsed with lighter fluid while I was still in it were probably the worst,” I nodded. “I’ve been stabbed a few times, tasered, occasionally thrown out of a window not on the first floor and had bookcase dropped on me once, so I consider myself a connoisseur of ex-girlfriend vengeance.”
“Have you ever been involved with a police proceeding?” Rivka became a tad bit more intense.
“Nah,” shook my head. “I had it coming. As you said, I’m kind of a horrible guy.”
“Domestic violence is no joking matter,” Nicole also became serious.
“That’s unfair,” I countered. “I’m not so slavishly devoted to the law that I’d ruin some girl’s life because I was a total bastard.”
“Domestic Violence laws are supposed to protect the innocent from the abusive,” I added. “I haven’t lied to you about my misadventures, but you should understand I chose to handle most of my problems myself. By the looks on your faces, you are about as disappointed in me as the policewoman I am currently seeing. This is who I am and I’m not going to apologize for it.”
“Mind you, I’m not some gun-toting, roughneck Libertarian,” I clarified. “I believe in law, order and the justice system. If someone pulls out an AK-47 on me at a corner bodega, I’m making 9-1-1 my bitch on speed-dial. I don’t want to be a hero, or fulfill my organ donor card. I just don’t equate that to a girl kneeing me in the nuts because I slept with her best friend in her lingerie.”
There was a pause as the ladies looked around. They were making an assessment of how much trouble I’d cause versus how much fun I would be. They all smiled at me. They always do.
“Who was wearing the lingerie?” Zelda smirked.
“I’ve worn women’s lingerie before, but it really wasn’t my thing,” I mused.
“I’ll go through a lot for good sex,” I winked. “It was my girlfriend’s lingerie on her best friend.”
“Wait,” Rivka noted. “Didn’t the best friend know you were dating the first girl?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure why that never stops them,” I shrugged. “Around the fifth time I stopped worrying about it.”
“Wow, do you have any idea how many women you’ve been with?” Rivka asked.
“Do you always use protection?” Phyllis piled on.
“Yes — 223 as of Friday. I’m hoping to break 300 before work replaces me with those guys from ‘Hamster Dance’,” I told them. “And yes, I always use protection.”
“I may not know where my partner has been, but I know where I’ve been and it scares me,” I snickered. “That’s why I always carry ten.”
“Ten?” Nicole snorted. “Do you regularly check the expiration date, or are you that ambitious?”
“Ambitious? I’d carry more except it’s hard to hide more than ten in a wallet — I’ve tried,” I sighed.
“Have you ever run out?” Marsha snickered. Our snickering, chuckling and laughter were drawing stares.
“Run out? Hell, I’ve gone door to door in a women’s dormitory at 2 a. m. trying to find some,” I related. “Ran into an old girlfriend doing that.” I slipped into a dreamy smile.
“Why do I think that despite it being 2 a. m. in her dorm with you seeking a condom for use with a different woman, she wasn’t pissed?” Rivka giggled.
“Oh God no,” I waved off. “She was freaking furious. That was some of the most intense ‘I’m lonely and it’s all your fault’ sex I have ever been through.”
“You have names for different kinds of sex?” Nicole was almost crying from laughing so hard.
“Oh yeah. The first time I run across a different sexual experience, I slap a name on it so when it happens again, I know what to do,” I explained.
“Isn’t every woman unique?” Zelda sniffled.
“That sounds nice in a love song, but ‘no’,” I smiled. “Women, and men, have a finite number things — needs and responses. Women can have different erogenous zones, but there all on the human body. Admittedly, it can be a bit like predicting the weather at times. It is not a perfect system by any means.”
“What’s my ‘thing’ then?” Nicole taunted. She didn’t think I could do it.
“Sex has to be an accomplishment with you, Nicole,” I informed her. “You need to be engaged mentally as much as anything else. You need a poet who runs marathons. Otherwise you end up staring at the ceiling after sex wondering what better use you could have made of your time.”
Silence. That was the norm for that kind of revelation. Women hated to be laid bare. They hated being misunderstood even more.
“Nicole?” Rivka prodded her friend. Nicole remained silent. I knew that look.
“Nicole, I’m bad news. Wouldn’t you prefer to keeps thing simple?” I hoped.
I was wrong to hope. I kept praying they would go ‘hey, great, mindless sex — let’s not blow it’, but they never did. I hated giving lame erotic encounters, despite the guarantee of anguish that always followed.
“We could go out on a date and see how that works?” Nicole offered. Doom.
“Cael Nyilas; I’m in the book and I work for Havenstone Commercial Investments,” I stupidly replied. “You probably have a killer workload were as I spot-check children’s toys for WMDs. Give me a call when you have a night free.” How was it going to turn out? Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex — let’s make a commitment — you cheating fuck-nut! I hate you.
Girls weren’t predictable — I was.
“Cael, we are going out to dinner, if you remember who you are supposed to be with,” Libra seethed as she and the others passed Nicole’s table.
“Yup, gotta go where I’m not wanted. Nice seeing you again, Nicole,” I grinned. “Ladies, I hope it was a pleasure. It was for me. Good night.”
Dinner — was — bad. Felix, hemorrhoid that he was, squashed Gene’s feeble attempts to draw him back to her as he made crystal clear that he was taking Brooke home — to fuck her into Paradise… instead of letting her go home with me. Problem being — Brooke wasn’t mine to take — never had been.
For the first time in his life, I thought Brian was about to be screwed. Libra was past uber-bitchy by the fifth glass of wine. Brian held a pair of Jokers and thought he was the boss, like always. Libra had four Queens and would be screaming my name when she orgasmed — Brian was sexually proficient. He was also a misogynist, I was now sure, and Libra was going to make him squeal.
Then she was going to grab up her clothes, storm out of Brian’s place and never want to talk with him again. It wasn’t that I was that unforgettable. I was that I knew what she wanted and had given it to her and not getting it Saturday afternoon while Brooke did was frosting her ass. What did that mean for me?
For the first time in a long, long time, I was pissed with another guy. Trent really wasn’t worth my time, but Felix was about to cross my here-until-now unforeseen line of what guys did to girls. It was dawning on me that this was the result of me. Someone was doing something wrong to a girl because of me. It wasn’t my fault. Felix was being a jerk.
That would be of cold comfort for Brooke. We split up after dinner. I didn’t have the heart to pick up Gene, who was easy prey right then. It was too much like what Felix thought he was doing to me. I took a cab to Havenstone, changed clothing and biked home. I barely had dinner ready for Timothy when he came through the door.
“That’s not a look I’m used to seeing,” he remarked.
“I should have beaten someone up,” I frowned, “but I didn’t and now some girl — Brooke — is going to have her heart kicked because of it.”
“Was it something you did?” Timothy asked.
“No. There is this guy at work who is using her to alpha-dog me,” I muttered.
“Brooke?” Timothy was confused. “You hardly like her. What a sleaze (Felix). If it was Odette, first I’d slap you around for still being here. Then we’d go get him.”
“I’m not even sure why I feel bad about this,” I grunted. “As you said, I hardly like her.”
“It is called a conscience, Dimwit,” Timothy snorted. That didn’t help much. Conscience? Man, I’d stop my bike to run across a highway to move a tortoise off the road. I used to feed some of the Bolingbrook wild hares during the winter. I did humiliating crap for charity. I was never mean to a girl — only dishonest and unfaithful.