skip to main |
skip to sidebar
he dressed himself in blue that night. a blue tweed jacket, over a checkered blue shirt, which lay under a blue tie with scattered bamboo leaves as decoration. all this because she mentioned once that the color suited him.
when she saw him she thought, he looks like he robbed his clothes off a trendy smurf. but she told him he looked nice, since she was hungry and broke, and because she felt his lust for her was great enough that any kind of insult would damage him. and she wasn't a bad person -- she was just hungry and broke.
the way she figured, she wasn't doing anything wrong. obviously he liked her (even i could see that, from way over here), and being able to spend time with someone he really liked for an insignificant portion of his paycheck was a favor, if anything. sure this was the fourth dinner, and he'd sent her flowers earlier in the week and bought her a cashmere scarf yesterday (it's currently wrapped around her neck), but she never asked for any of those things. some people find pleasure in giving. she'd give too, if she wasn't so hungry and broke.
but she wouldn't sleep with him, no. he wasn't bad looking or anything like that, but he was alarmingly passive, which bothered her. and he had these small, creepy hands. whenever he put his hand on her back (which was all he'd dared to do physically) she thought of the time she slow-danced with her nephew at her sister's second wedding. that was the kind of impression he left -- that of a nephew. definitely not a lover.
the dinner went similarly to their previous three, mostly in silence, with the air of awkwardness only relieved by the sporadic visits made by their waitress. the lighting inside the restaurant seemed to make his blue outfit luminate, and with their table situated next to a giant aquarium, all she saw was a floating head whenever she looked to her right.
the meal went by uneventfully, but it was when the server brought them their dessert that she saw his eyes follow the waitress back to the kitchen. he'd been doing it all night, but she had been too busy staring at the floating head. she felt indignant. why would he stare at the waitress when he had a more attractive woman sitting right in front of him?
she reached across the table with her left hand and gently stroked with two fingers the back of his small, creepy appendage. "you think she's pretty?" she asked with a coquettish smirk.
he looked up from his cake and gave no reply.
"i'm prettier than her, right?" she pressed the back of his hand a little harder to indicate she wanted a response.
that was when he blurted out, "i'll give you a thousand dollars to sleep with me tonight."
**********
a thousand dollars is a lot of money, she thought. but i can't say yes! i'll seem like such a...like such a...
her thoughts trailed away as she heard him speak.
"i don't mean to offend you, and you can say no if you want. but you're obviously not with me because you like me. let's stop fucking around. i've spent more than that on you already. what's the difference?"
to this, she had nothing to say. she said nothing as she wrapped her scarf around her neck, nothing as she left the restaurant with a full stomach, nothing as she realized she was short on her rent for the month. and after fifteen minutes of silence, when her mouth finally began to form words again, what came out was, "i'm gonna need the money first."
and just like that, the matter was settled.
today was the annual Jeopardy! online qualification test. i took the test last year, but seeing as i've yet to be a participant on the show, i'm guessing i didn't do very well. or maybe i did? the selection process after the test is random, so i might have just been unlucky.
the test itself is quite simple. they basically ask you a question and you have fifteen seconds to come up with a response. the test consists of fifty trivia questions, and based on your test results, the show will randomly select you for an in-person interview.
now, i don't know if you've ever watched Jeopardy! around me, but sometimes i kick ass. if there's a sports or a literature category, it's game over. but a lot of times, they ask inane questions about things like opera and modern economics, things of which i'm unfamiliar beyond the very basics. so the test is quite a challenge for me, it really is.
so i cheated. all i had to do was google the question and find the answer within fifteen seconds. i can confidently say i knew the answer to about thirty questions on my own, and i used google for about an additional ten. a few i couldn't find the answers to, probably because my query was too vague, and a few i ran out of time because i kept on making typos in the search. but overall, i think i did pretty well.
my point is, though, that anybody with internet access is smart. google will tell you anything you want to know at the click of a button. twenty years ago, i was amazed by the fact that mario would jump on my tv at the click of a button. it's great how technology has enabled us to become socially secluded geniuses while still being "connected" to everyone. i'm not so sure if this is a good thing.
the first time i had sex, it was in the backseat of her mom's infinity SUV parked somewhere near woodland hills on Mulholland Drive. the car was parked on an uphill slope, which in hindsight means i could have used gravity as leverage, but these are things you don't think about when you're having sex for the first time. the only thing i remember was that she seemed to enjoy it a lot more than i did, but after having watched so many movies where the virgin blows his load before anything good can happen, i was just happy for being able to last longer than ten minutes. small victories is what life is about. whatever liquid that wasn't mine, we smeared all over the leather like it was Armor-All.
the second girl i ever had sex with, she accused me of impregnating her with my seed, then disappeared off the face of the earth. i'm still unsure whether one had anything to do with the other, or if her accusation carried any verity. but she's gone now, so it matters little. when i told a friend about the problem, he connivingly suggested i threaten to report her for statutory rape. it's good to know i have smart people in my corner. and if a twenty-three year old grad student shows up at my doorstep when i'm forty and demands that i pay for her student loans...well, i'll deal with that problem as it comes. this is assuming i'm done paying for my student loans by the time i'm forty.
(i suppose my obsession with thinking up names for my unborn children goes back to this incident. in all likelihood, she was lying. i mean, why else would she never contact me again? but if she wasn't, it probably means my baby was aborted, which makes me sad. for the record, i would never have taken that Jew's advice and reported her for sexually deviant behavior. never.)
the third girl i ever slept with, my friend and i bet a steak dinner over who could get her into bed first. i think i'm still owed a steak dinner, now that i think about it.
the fourth girl i ever slept with was the first girl i ever fucked, if you get my meaning. i met her at a bus stop in Santa Monica, and she was a pro. she did things most girls would slap you for suggesting, or so i thought at the time. i have since learned most girls will do most things, as long as you buy them dinner first. i'm kidding, i am so kidding.
the fifth girl i had sex with, i had the same boring, two-to-three position sex with only her for almost a year (around here we call that kind of boring sex "lovemaking"). the residual kinkiness from the fourth girl almost made me cheat on her several times. i didn't, though, because in spite of it all, i am a good guy. but wait, define cheating first.
i think i was about twenty at his point in my sexual history. that was the age when i moved outta my dad's house, mainly because i was tired of having sex in cars or hurriedly putting on clothes whenever a parent came home earlier than expected. trust me, there's nothing like rushing downstairs to greet your dad while breathing heavily and smelling like a combination of sex and guilt.
"You never know for sure how girls' minds work (do you really think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?)..."
