The Walk of Shame

Posted by Lex Konrad in Sex | Apr 14, 2006

We sat in a gay bar uptown listening to the trannies, the dykes, and the midnight cowboys belt out karaoke hits. Emma asked me whether I was going to take a turn. I told her there was no way I could compete with the Gay Men’s Chorus.

The night wore on. I doubled the two-drink-maximum I’d set for myself. I placed my hand upon Emma’s thigh and then, remembering where I was, withdrew it (alas, when in Rome…). “I should go,” I said. It was a school night. Leslie was out of town.

“Just one more drink,” Emma insisted. How many times have these words been uttered? How much trouble have they caused?

I ordered a beer. Emma pulled her blouse outward and showed me the reusable latex pasties she had on, accessories which seemed to serve utterly no purpose under her sweater. “You’re a strange chick,” I told her.

She pressed my hand to her mannequin breast. I peeled the latex circle from her tit and tweaked the firm nipple underneath. Mr. Penis got a little hard and I remember thinking it had been a while. “Your place or mine,” I intoned.

“I have to work early.”

“What’s early to you?”

“Eleven.”

I laughed. “Your place then.”

Emma almost never explicitly assents to anything—it would ruin the air of nonchalance she’s so carefully crafted over the years. So I followed her home, and when we arrived at her door she held it open for me. She stood in her bright living room, expectant perhaps but not letting on if she was.

As we lay naked, entwined upon the comforter in her darkened bedroom, I was struck by the thought that being with her alone wasn’t all that different. I pistoned into Emma, twisted her little body into a series of improbable positions, searching for that perfect angle—the ideal configuration of hips and limbs that might let me have her properly. Smooth and deep. Maybe I was searching for something else too.

When Emma’s alarm cried out I awoke with a start, disoriented, swiveling my head in search of familiar surroundings. It’s a panic I used to associate with marathon business trips, when I’d tumble out of bed only to find myself in Tokyo or Helsinki or—God forbid—Little Rock, Arkansas. Lying there in Emma’s small bed, I realized that perhaps my overnight visitors sometimes feel this panic too.

And so, on a bright, beautiful spring morning, I walked from West Side to East Side across the top of a flowering Central Park, sneaking into my building in the clothes I wore the night before, avoiding eye contact with the neighbors, and finally opening the door to an empty apartment that looked just the same as I’d left it.

Turnabout is fair play, I guess.

More: Emma | Drinking

Comments Off | Top ↑