THE ONE WITH BETH
—–
I got home late enough Friday night that it was actually Saturday morning. Late enough to actually irritate my parents, who usually never cared about when I got in. But that night, I had been on a date. That made it new, and that meant that they were paying attention. My dad actually demanded to smell my breath as a joke. But joke or not, he did actually smell it. Fortunately, the beers were hours in the past, and even more fortunately, I had cleaned my face, washing away the smell of pussy. So much pussy…
In retrospect, it would have almost been worth the inevitable freakout to have seen the look on his face if he had smelled Mary and Maddie on me…
Mom was also worried about my being out late, but she was really only worked up in the first place over the fact that I had been out with a girl. I shrugged it off, telling her we just went to Red Lobster, then went back to her house and played Blind Man’s Bluff, a collectible card game she knew I liked and was about hidden identities, with Mary’s family. That was all sort of true… Mom relaxed when she heard the word ‘games’, something that finally made sense to her when it came to me, and immediately reverted to doting mom who is just glad her virgin son is dating… finally. I suspect that she was secretly extra relived that I was dating girls, but she would never have let on about that!
Saturday was spent packing, and saying goodbye, and having dinner at the club, where Dad discretely swapped his tall rum and Coke with my plain Coke at the table as a going away present. Dad is cool.
*
Monday, my connecting flight was delayed almost four hours, and it was nearly seven in the evening when I finally got into my single-occupant dorm room. I put all my crap away before I did anything else. As a Senior, I had no study hall. For those of us Seniors who had all already gotten into our college of choice, there was also little to no studying, even once the term got going again…
Instead of going to visit any of my friends, I just chilled out in my room. I blandly texted the D&D group that I was finally back, bitching about the airline. That way, I included Bridget in the know that I was back, without actually going out of my way to go see either her or my dudes. I got a simple {thumbs up} emoji from Bridget.
As for the guys, I got no return texts. But I knew what was coming. About three minutes after I made myself known, my dorm room door banged open and in piled Adam, Tres, and Ben, all having assembled before coming to see me. Ben almost slammed the door behind him and the three of them tried to loom over me. I may not be a muscular guy, but even sitting on the bed, it is hard to loom that much over someone as tall as me…
“Hey guys, good to see you,” I said casually. “What’s up?”
“Details,” Ben said sternly. “Give.”
“What are you talking about?” I continued blandly, enjoying myself at least ten percent as much as I did on either of my dates, which is saying quite a lot.
Tres tried to be cool and leaned against my closet door. “Dude. You went on a date over Spring Break. This is CNN-level news. Report!”
“Fuck that,” Ben retorted, perching on the edge of my desk like a hawk. “You claim to have gotten laid. Dee. Tails.”
“Actually, I went on two dates,” I said calmly, but practically jumping out of my skin inside.
“Two?” they all exclaimed. “I suppose you got laid on the second one, too,” Adam scoffed.
I leaned back against the wall, put my hands behind my head, and crossed my ankles. “My slugging percentage after the second date remains 4. 000,” I said, affecting banal superiority. Actually, if you understand baseball statistical math, when you included Maddie, my slugging percentage had gone up to an impossible 6. 000, but I had firmly decided that the Maddie Factor was something not to be discussed at school… unless and until I really had something to gain besides random incredulity. It would be good to have a reserve.
My boys all oohed at this revelation. I waited. I have intelligent friends, if almost as geeky as me.
“Hey!” Adam said, suddenly. “You said this Carrie chick left for Vail the day after your first date. What happened? She come home early to worship your dick?” he asked sarcastically.
“Second date was with a girl named Mary,” I said, still painting the world bland. “Actually, I’m not really being completely accurate,” I added.
“Thought so!” declared Tres, triumphantly.
“Mary and I actually drove down to the beach together, early in the week. Nothing happened other than putting suntan lotion on each other, but I guess you could call that a date, too. But we went out for real on Friday. I looked at them each in turn. “That’s when we had sex.”
They stood there silent for a gratifyingly long time. Then they all three, virtually in unison gave the full-throated cry of the Dude: “Bullshit!”
I silently removed my phone from my pocket, opened it, and pressed send on the text message I had already had primed. It was nothing but a selfie Mary and I had taken on the beach. I had chosen the one with the best view of that bathing suit, complete with its ample cleavage, tasty sideboob, and even a touch of underboob. I dropped the phone like a mike and just chuckled as I watched them lunge for their dinging phones.
They gave that picture a very long look. Then they looked at my smug-ass expression. Then they looked at the picture some more.
“Gentlemen,” Tres intoned in a deep, British-sounding voice, paraphrasing that centurion fromI, Claudius, which we had watched in Roman History. “The man has undergone a Meta-More-Phosis. He has become… a GOD.”
The questions came at me fast and furious. I answered those I wanted to, giving the guys enough details to have them dying, but playing the gentleman card liberally to withhold plenty of details that kept them thoroughly frustrated and probably imagining even greater heights of success than I had actually achieved. No, not that. Imagining anything beyond what I had been through would be impossible. I had scaled the Everest of teenaged dating.
At last, their questions were all meeting with sealed lips.
“So, what? You are just going to spend the rest of tonight sitting here like a cat who got a truckload of canaries all night?” Ben said in frustration.
“No,” I replied, letting some evil into my voice. “I am about to go down to the Tuck Shop and get a burger and shake, since I missed dinner. While there, I better not hear anything about my vacation from anyone outside this room… if, that is, any of you hope to ever hear one more word from me about any of it someday.”
In their disgust at my tightlippedness, they refused to go down with me to eat. That was okay. In my current state, my ego and I filled my booth all by ourselves. I had been there half an hour before I realized that I had said, “hello” to every person who came through the snack bar. This had never been my M. O. in the past, but I was feeling like I had nothing to be shy about. A few of the girls even smiled back at me when I said hello. I was little surprised that almost all of them seemed to know who the hell I was in the first place-barely.
As I was polishing off my fries, my phone dinged.
BRIDGET: Have your boys finally left you alone?
ME: Yes. Are you going to start now?
BRIDGET: Nah. I’ll leave you alone… tonight
BRIDGET: I hear tomorrow’s practice will be hard, but short. All three of us are going to corner you after. Expect to be late for dinner
Well, wasn’t that going to be just peachy.
Still, Bridget, Beth, and Carla were my buds, just like my D&D boys. They deserved the same treatment I gave the guys, and I would mine the same enjoyment from it. Like with the guys, I’d give them exactly as much detail as I needed to get the most entertaining reactions, and no more. I was dimly aware that giving them the same level of detail I had told the guys might be a little more awkward, considering that they were sort of the other team, but…
The thing was, I still had questions about what had happened to me. If I eventually decided to ask them, I thought those members of the opposite team would be more likely to give useful answers than my mangy dudes could. If I decided to ask those questions.
Probably not.