The Worst (Attempted) One Night Stand of My Life
I hadn’t been laid in some time and had learned that bachelor life was a complete fraud. For six months, it had been me drinking alone at night, sitting there like a monk who’d just discovered the treasure trove of internet porn. One night I landed on Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Milkmaids. A film, apparently, about art and culture. This was a new all time low. So when I found myself drunk on beer, smoking fruity flavored cigarettes, in Mexico, in bed, with a woman, it was naturally an accomplishment.
“Do you want to get naked?” I asked.
“You’re so strange.”
“Why?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“You just phrase things very strangely,” she explained, “but yes.”
She got naked first. She stood at the edge of the bed. Long black hair. Olive skin. She was big. And not in the sense that she was fat. No. She was five feet and a hundred and twenty pounds of pure body. Big tits. Big ass. She was big where it mattered. Then it was my turn. I got undressed erratically. I took off my shirt. I took off my pants. I took off my underwear. I threw everything somewhere. Then there I was. Naked. Hard. Immediately.
“Look at me,” I said. “I’ve got this weird veiny curved thing. It does all sorts of tricks. You’ll get a kick out of it.”
She looked. “Wow!”
“That’s all you’ve got to say?” I asked. “Look at it. It’s so ugly.”
Then she climbed onto the bed with me. She was not shy about it. Nakedness was nothing to her, and I was the only one making the whole thing strange.
“Are you sure you can handle me?” she asked.
“I’ve been with a few women here and there,” I said. “And some of them were very crazy. This shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But you’ve never had anyone like me.”
“No?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I’m passionate and loyal,” she said. “But if you cheat on me, I’ll cut your dick off.”
She looked over at me and made a little snipping sound with her mouth. Then she grabbed my cock and kept doing it. Snip snip. Snip snip. She seemed very amused by the whole thing, which was troubling, considering what she was holding. I had just been threatened with losing my dick, and somehow my only thought was that Lorena Bobbitt had never looked so good.
Then I mounted her. I’d imagined this moment many times over. I was going to be the kind of man who took control and said things like, “Many a woman has tried to saddle this bull, but none has come close.” I took every lonely night, every poorly scripted romance film, every accumulated ounce of bachelor frustration, and drove it into the mechanical act of sex. Thirty seconds and twenty strokes later, I fell to her side.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “But who cares if there’s a little rust?”
She sat up and smiled.
“Look,” she said. “I’m going to teach you about the body of a woman.”
“Alright. I’m listening.”
She spread her legs open.
“Pay attention.”
“Noted.”
“See this?” she said, pointing. “Those are the lips. They don’t do much.”
“And then this,” she said, going lower, “is where you go in.”
“I knew that one.”
“Congratulations.”
“And this right here,” she said, pointing at the little ball. “That’s the clit.”
“Oh, this is great!” I shouted.
“Why are you so excited?”
“The clit,” I said. “The fucking clit. I finally found it.”
“That’s good. I guess?”
There had been many great explorers. Amundsen had reached the South Pole. Nansen had crossed Greenland. Hillary had reached Everest. Armstrong had reached the moon. But for thousands of years, men had searched for something far greater. And now I’d found it. The clit.
“You better not forget this,” she said. “I’m giving you gold here.”
“I won’t.”
A little while later, we were outside. Still drinking and still smoking. Still naked. We talked about things for a while. She was a traditional lover girl. A deep believer in soulmates, marriage, and the general idea that two people could belong to each other forever. But this wasn’t Manifest Destiny type shit, and I was a guru of pessimism. I believed in right person wrong time, ulterior motives, and people eventually showing their true colors.
“Don’t start,” I said.
“You never like to talk about your problems.”
“I do talk about them.”
“No. You just mention them then change the subject.”
“It’s easier that way. If I talk about them I just get bent all out of shape.”
“You onion,” she yelled. “You fucking onion. I’m going to take a knife to every one of your layers.”
Then she grabbed me by the shoulders and pretended to stab me.
“Just tell me,” she said. “What’s your tragedy?”
“My tragedy?”
“Yes. Everyone has one.”
“I don’t like relationships.”
“Why?”
“I’m just not very good at them,” I explained. “I’ve been lied to, cheated on, used. But I’ve also done my share of lying, cheating, and using. So I get jealous. I expect things to go wrong, and when they don’t, I figure they will soon, so I help them along.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I don’t know about being alone. I just don’t want all the complications of a relationship.”
I was a better lover than a boyfriend and a better boyfriend in theory than in practice. The more serious things became, the worse I was at them. Meeting the family. Making plans. Answering questions about the future. I couldn’t stand that major league bullshit.
“I’m a simple man. All I want is a woman I can eat with, sleep with, and sit in silence with, interrupted by the occasional burst of laughter.”
“That isn’t unreasonable.”
“It always becomes more than that. Then you’re depending on each other and making promises and planning your life around something where anyone could walk out whenever they wanted.”
“You think everyone is going to abandon you.”
“I know they can.”
“And that scares you.”
“It pisses me off.”
She went quiet. I grabbed another beer from the box, cracked the bad boy open, and took a long swig. Then I lit a cigarette and slammed the lighter on the table.
“Imagine coming home to nothing but the stink of dishes rotting in the sink while your woman walks out on you every fucking night. You ask where she’s going and she tells you not to worry. You ask when she’ll be back and she doesn’t know. Then you sit there alone and wait for her anyway.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I’ve heard that a million times before.”
Then she told me how she was loyal. That she would never cheat. That she wanted something real and wouldn’t disappear when things became difficult. I had an answer for every one of them. I told her I’d heard loyal from the lot lizards, forever from the runaways, and I love you from the loveless.
“I could take care of you,” she said. “Help you. Lighten the burden.”
“I can’t trust that, I just can’t. Because in the moment I need you is the moment you can destroy me.”
“I’m not going to destroy you.”
“I’m not saying you will.”
“Yes, you are. You’ve already decided what kind of person I am.”
“I’m trying to be honest with you.”
“So am I. But every time I tell you how I feel, you tell me why I’m probably lying.”
“I don’t think you’re lying.”
“You just think I’ll become the liar later.”
“Maybe.”
“This isn’t fair.”
“I know.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Believe me. Stop making me answer for every woman who came before me.”
“Trust me. I’m trying.”
She looked away and smoked for a while.
“I can’t keep proving something I haven’t done,” she said.
“I’m not asking you to.”
“You are. Every time I tell you I care about you, you don’t believe me.”
I chugged the rest of the beer and set the bottle beside the chair. Then I punched out my cigarette on the floor.
“I don’t know how to do this any differently,” I said.
“You could let me help.”
“And if you leave?”
“Then I leave. But I’m here now.”
I looked at her. She was angry, probably frustrated too. She had small tears welting up in the corners of her eyes she wouldn’t let fall.
“I don’t want you to leave,” I said.
“Then stop pushing me away.”
“I don’t know if I can stop.”
“I’m not asking you to change tonight.”
She wiped her eyes and reached for another cigarette. I took it from her, lit it, and handed it back. I wasn’t a fan of change. The status quo was safe. I knew how to sleep alone, eat alone, sit up drinking after anyone else had gone to bed. There was comfort in knowing exactly what the next day would look like, even when it looked like shit.
The next few days were easy. We ate when we were hungry, slept when we were tired, and could sit outside drinking and smoking without needing constant noise. She remembered how I took my coffee and always handed me the first cigarette from a new pack. She was dangerously close to completing the dream of the ideal woman.
A few days later, she drove me to the airport. Neither of us knew when we’d see each other again, if ever at all. There were countries between us, separate lives to return to, and all the complications I had spent the night telling her I didn’t want.
“If this is where it ends, I understand,” I said.
“And you’re alright with that?”
“I’ll be alright.”
“There you go again.”
“No,” I said. “I’d rather it didn’t end.”
She held me for a while. And I kissed her lips and looked into those coffee brown eyes one more time. Then I picked up my suitcase and walked into the airport. But it didn’t end there. We kept calling, kept visiting, and slowly I stopped pretending that whatever existed between us was temporary. There were the laughs and the fights and the eating together, some sleeping together.
What had started out as a solution to six months of non action, and a good excuse to put almost a thousand miles between me and my problems, became something unexpected and, at first, unwanted. It’s been almost a year since our attempted one night stand. We’re engaged now. The wedding is planned for next year.
Horror Sleaze Trash 