Posted by Lex Konrad in Sex | Mar 14, 2006
Leslie’s in her white wig and retro Seventies shades. She looks like a porn star. It’s appropriate for where we are, at Crash Mansion, with its stuccoed slate interior and subdued lighting. Producers, genuine porn stars, vendors and press people flit about. A young woman asks us if we’re part of the production and we both laugh. Someone else corners us, plies us with champagne, promises to send us a lifetime supply of sex toys.
“How did my life turn into Boogie Nights?” I ask my fiancee.
Perhaps it’s just that I have a hard time saying no. My default setting always seems to be “why the hell not?”
I run into Dacia and the two of us chat for a while; I tease her about being a porn celebrity. “So how do I compare to my blogging persona?” Dacia asks me, her breasts threatening at any moment to tumble out of a corset that barely contains them.
I think about her question for a moment. “I guess you’re more charming than I thought you’d be, and, um, well,” I pause, smiling, looking her up and down, “you’re even hotter than I expected.”
Tired from partying all weekend, Les and I pack it in early, grabbing a couple schwag bags on the way out. I rummage through my goody bag as we cruise uptown; among the many promotional items are two butt plugs and a bullet vibrator. I have an idea.
The next evening, after Les calls to tell me she’s on her way home from work, I try out one of the butt plugs, intending to surprise my babe upon her arrival. Now I’m no stranger to ass toys (I’ve indulged Leslie’s curiosity on a few occasions) but I’ve never had anything up there for an extended stay. The butt plug isn’t painful really, just mildly uncomfortable. I try to do a little work and find myself unable to concentrate on anything other than the thought that I have something up my ass.
And this is just a wee little thing, squat and fat, sure, but small compared to the ones you might find in a Chelsea sex boutique.
The minutes tick by. I fidget.
And then the phone rings: it’s the Swedish girl. I take a deep breath and answer. While we talk I have to fight the temptation to conclude every sentence with: “and by the way I have a butt plug up my fucking ass!”
I wonder what she’d think of me if she knew?
When Leslie finally arrives I promptly drop my trousers. “Touch my ass,” I command.
She appears confused at first but then palms a cheek. When her fingers tap against the flattened base of the buttplug she squeals with delight and begins to giggle uncontrollably. Her girlish noises cease when my cock enters her mouth.
“Don’t get too excited yet, babe—I’m gonna try your toys on you.” I lead her into the bedroom, undressing her, pushing her onto her back, warming her up with my tongue and then slathering her jiggly behind with lube. I insert the silver bullet into her cunt and hand her the controller: “Go ahead and turn it on.” As she cranks up the amplitude she squirms and laughs. I take advantage of her distracted condition and push the long, slim, jelly-like buttplug into her ass.
“Oh this is fun,” she says.
I pull both toys out and reinsert the silver bullet, this time choosing the narrower opening.
“Hey!” Les says.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I want you to fuck my pussy and see if you can feel the vibrator.” And sure enough when I enter her I feel the silver bullet buzzing away in her other hole; the vibration doesn’t get me off, exactly, but it does add something. With each thrust my butt plug threatens to fall out and so I take a break to remove it—I find it too distracting to try to hold the thing in—and as soon as the toy vacates my ass a feeling of relief washes over me. Why do I bang my head against the wall? Because it feels so good when I stop.
My girl’s eyes grow wide as I remove the fatter butt plug from its packaging and brandish it before her. “You wanna put that in me?”
“C’mon, it’s not that big. I had mine in for like half an hour.”
She relents. I watch, fascinated, as her little asshole expands to accommodate the plug at its widest cross-section and then collapses around the narrow neck above the base, locking the toy into position. Leslie sighs. I pull her to the edge of the mattress, push her legs against her chest and plunge into her cunt. “Now you have both holes filled, you little slut!”
And when she comes the butt plug shoots out of her, bouncing off the wooden floor like a rubber ball. We both giggle. I switch holes—if the butt plug won’t keep her rear-end occupied I will—and it’s not long before I burst inside her, my knees threatening to buckle.
We’re both looking forward to more pervy schwag. Sure beats the hell out of an iPod.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Mar 09, 2006
Roaming aimlessly along like this on the public street with all kinds of people, he always had a strange feeling as to who he was. As he had said to the Lions types there in the hall, he looked like a doper when out of his scramble suit; he conversed like a doper; those around him now no doubt took him to be a doper and reacted accordingly. Other dopers—See there, he thought; “other,” for instance—gave him a “peace, brother” look, and the straights didn’t.
You put on a bishop’s robe and miter, he pondered, and walk around in that, and people bow and genuflect and like that, and try to kiss your ring, if not your ass, and pretty soon you’re a bishop. So to speak. What is identity? he asked himself. Where does the act end? Nobody knows.
Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
It kills you sometimes: going out when all you want to do is curl up on the couch and cocoon for the rest of the winter. You’re the extroverted introvert, going against all your natural instincts. But something—you don’t know precisely what—drives you into the night; something makes you brave the frigid, howling abyss that is mid-winter New York.
And, really now, for what? To collect yet another sordid tale? To document yet another misdeed?
Fuck yeah.
Female genitalia stretched across hi-rez flatscreens. Undulating dancers. Nipples and tits and cunts and asses. Backdrop to this life you sort of have.
The pretty black stripper wants something from you. Give her a cigarette and she’s your dark angel, head wreathed in a twisting, sinuous halo of smoke. Such a shame—you’d fuck her but it has to be organic, unsullied by commerce—and anyway for a couple hundred bucks you could have a girl over for an afternoon; take pictures even. Have her all to yourself.
It’s all models and bottles, as Anya will describe this sort of affair to you days later. Models and bottles: fake tits and fake hair and fake tans, dudes in suits(!), the stink of moderate affluence trailing them along with cheap cologne. Somehow this isn’t entirely off-putting—it’s just The Big City on training wheels, a different subculture of voyeurs and newbies and weekend tourists outta longeyeland.
Talk to some people you know. Watch your fiancee slink around in that sheer red dress of hers, all tits-n-ass, nothing on underneath.
Time for a change of scenery. Whoville at Love, an underground cave-like structure complete with an indoor waterfall that scents the air like chlorine and makes your skin feel a little clammy. Jimmy’s there, and Lisa, and Porno Jim and the whole crew of midnight marauders. People are in costume. Time to rock your orange shades.
Time to play the fool, the fixer, the charlatan, the good-times-guy, the seen-it-all-before-guy. The idiot. If this is your business then your business is monkey business.
People pose in front of a wall covered with glow-in-the-dark material. A bright light clicks on, then off. People move on and leave their shadows behind, set in relief against luminescent green. You decide there’s probably a metaphor in this somewhere, a rainbow story perhaps, but you don’t care—instead you’re watching your fiancee lock lips with some sweet young thing, a refugee from the Rated X party.
“Lex!” another girl says to you later.
Wha?
It’s the raven-haired Swedish lass, your bathroommate from whatever night that was (they all seem to run together, don’t they?). She says she’s been thinking of you. Get the correct number this time and watch as she whips out her cell and calls you via Sweden. Funny how everything works these days.
Take your fiancee’s hand and leave with Porno Jim and Dicey. Go back to their pad and watch porn and talk and inhale THC out of a strange device called a Volcano. In addition to the weed there’s a whiff of expectation in the air. Didn’t see that coming, did you genius? It doesn’t play out that way though. You’re too out-of-it. Too mellow. Ride it out until the wee hours, until the underwear-party couple arrives to whisk you uptown in a hippie van and you find yourself in a diner staring at a plate of corned beef hash-n-eggs, trying to hold up your end of the conversation.
Your body’s winding down now. Your brain’s melting. The clock on the wall reads half-past-ten. The couple’s female half looks at you, curious. “How do you guys manage to stay up all night without doing any real drugs?”
It’s a damned good question.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Relationships | Feb 21, 2006
Fry: “Hey, wait! I’m having one of those things. You know, a headache with pictures.”
Leela: “An idea?”
Fry: “Mm, hmmm, hmmm.”
Saturday night I answered an age-old question, one that’s been on my mind ever since I hit my first real party in New York. Why do people always think I know where the drugs are?
When the third dude approached me looking for pills or coke or whatever I pulled him aside. “So what is it about me that makes you think I’m a drug dealer?”
“It’s the orange shades man.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. And you smile a lot.”
Would-be drug kingpins take note.
It sure didn’t hurt that I wore my checkered seventies retro shirt unbuttoned half-way to reveal my ‘Porn King’ wifebeater. When I stood in the slow-moving bathroom line a young woman placed her hands on my chest, parting the shirt.
“Are you really a porn king?”
I had to think about this for a minute. “Actually, well, yeah. I don’t make the stuff though.”
I’m convinced Porno Jim is a minor deity: he seems to be everywhere at once, at least as far as these underground parties are concerned. I told him about the project Anya and I are cooking up.
“Have you seen her stuff?” he asked me.
“Oh yeah. She’s a freakishly talented and prolific writer.”
“Sounds like it’s gonna be great.”
“Listen, I want you to do a podcast for us.”
“About what?”
“About this. We need to capture this shit somehow—all of it—because this is the real New York. Plug your show at the end or whatever. For me this is about the love first and the money second.”
Our conversation segued into sex, as it always does. Porno Jim was telling me about his favorite position, in which the two girls soixante-neuf each other while the lucky guy fucks one of them doggy style. “I call it the winner’s circle,” he intoned.
“That’s the perfect term for it,” I said.
“Cause everybody wins!”
The night thundered on. The loft was huge, well-worn, cold in some places but comfortable nonetheless. People wore elaborate carnivale-themed costumes, giving me an eyeful of jiggly asses and breasts. Friendly faces lined the hallways. I milled about. I danced with Les and Emma. I ran into people and the conversations all ran together.
“I always dreamt of this New York,” I was telling Mort, a recent arrival to party central and a friend of Emma’s. Earlier in the evening we’d dropped by his birthday soiree in Manhattan. We returned to the conversation we’d struck up a few hours ago regarding the varieties and vicissitudes of hooking up in this city.
“I’ve learned a lot from you,” Mort said.
“I’m no prophet,” I replied. “I just have a certain… perspective on life. You wanna know the secret? Just connect with people in whatever way works for you—that’s all I care about anymore.”
By now I was clipping a pretty good buzz. I found Emma in the back room. She’d straightened her hair for the occasion and I’d been eyeing her all night, imagining myself plowing her from behind while knotting her ponytail in my fist. I pulled her close and slipped my hand down the back of her jeans, grabbing those little pale asscheeks—I was sorely tempted to take her up against the wall. She wrapped her arms around my waist and stumbled into me.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m just a little drunk.” She took a seat upon the window ledge.
“Just don’t fall out the goddamned window, alright?”
She laughed. I pivoted and saw Anya dancing by the deejay table so I shuffled over to say hello. “I love that man,” she sighed, gesturing at her boyfriend. He was busy working the turntables.
“You seem so much happier nowadays,” I said.
“That’s what a good relationship will do for you.”
I smiled broadly. It’s nice having her back in my life. You see, her journey has paralleled mine: we’ve both experimented and fucked up and been fucked up and been fucked only to tumble out the other side happier and wiser.
Nature called. As I reached the head of the bathroom queue a willowy young brunette materialized by my side. “I really have to pee,” she said in accented English. I raised an eyebrow. German perhaps?
“Darling, there’s a line.”
The girl furrowed her brow and hopped up and down for emphasis, pleading with me now, “But…”
I slipped an arm around her waist. “You can come in with me but you have to pretend you’re my girlfriend,” I said, cocking my head toward all the people queued up behind us.
“They won’t be mad?”
“Not if you’re my girlfriend.” She leaned into me and I buried my nose in her fragrant hair. We entered the bathroom together amid howls of protest. “No fucking in there!” someone yelled. Indeed, there was a sign posted on the door that admonished partygoers against using the facilities as a bordello—and encouraged people to fuck wherever else they pleased.
I went first—no need to be too charitable, after all—and when her turn came she matter-of-factly dropped her pants and plopped down. Evidently untroubled by my gaze, she looked up at me and grinned.
“Kannst du Deutsch?” I asked, figuring there was no need to address her formally at this point.
“Yes, but I’m Swedish.” Her task completed, she rose from the seat and gently dabbed her well-groomed cunt with a neatly folded square of toilet paper (funny how everyone’s bathroom ritual is different—Les, for instance, dabs first and then stands), then lifted her leopard-print thong along her creamy thighs, finally wriggling back into her trousers with a sigh.
“Nice pussy,” I said, and she laughed. People were already pounding on the door so we made exaggerated orgasm noises as she stood over the sink. I took her hand when we exited the bathroom. “You have to meet my friends.” In the back room we came upon Leslie, who was dancing with a fetching lass in pigtails.
“I have to go,” said my bathroom mate, “my friends are leaving.”
I winked at her. “That’s really too bad.” The girl gave me her number and we parted with a kiss.
By now the party was beginning to thin out, body heat no longer serving as a bulwark against the frigid air seeping in. I’d given my parka to Emma and was now missing it. And her. I checked in with the usual suspects—Les, Mort and so on—no one had seen her. Eventually I located my coat, stuffed next to Leslie’s in an oven that doubled as a turntable stand. And eventually Emma called from home, safe and sound; it seems she couldn’t find us and decided to make a break for it. Even though I had told her the bathroom would take awhile I couldn’t be angry. I’ve grown accustomed to her skittishness.
I located Leslie and her new friend Peggy-with-the-pigtails, whereupon we wound up in a darkened apartment downstairs chatting about everything and nothing while two naked people rolled around on the floor. The sun came up. The day brightened. The three of us gathered our things and took the F-train back into Manhattan, Les and I parting ways with Peggy at 14th.
I napped most of the way uptown only to be awakened, ironically enough, by a large group of Swedish students barking in a tongue that’s both familiar and frustratingly incomprehensible. Les and I shared stories of our separate adventures; I learned she’d shared a three-way kiss with Peggy and another girl, and that she’d licked still another woman’s buttocks.
“You know,” I told my sweetheart, “this is part of what’s so great about us: we take our own paths but we always find each other in the end.”
She peered into my eyes and we then made out like hormone-poisoned adolescents.
“By the way,” I said, pulling back from Leslie’s pillowy lips, “I finally found out why people are always asking me for drugs.”
Posted by Lex Konrad in Sex | Nov 10, 2005
V.
We’re standing downtown amid a throng of party people. It’s probably in the 40s. I’m dressed in my tunic, with shorts on underneath, and sandals. Over that I’m wearing a light trench coat. Oddly, I’m not as cold as one might think. “Why didn’t you double-check the date?†I ask Les.
“I don’t know; why didn’t you double-check the date?â€
Here we are—right place, wrong time. “We’re such dumbasses. Heh, looks like it’s just the two of us tonight.â€
We walk toward Girl from Ipanema—well, I walk and Leslie shuffles in her mummy wrap. Her costume proves to be every bit as popular as I’d imagined it would be. People call after her: “Cleopatra! Cleopatra!â€
I’m relieved to have another day of rest before the party. The second consecutive night of drunken debauchery sometimes finds me hanging by a very thin thread indeed.
VI.
I see the better and acknowledge it, but I follow the worse.
-Ovid
I call them sex parties but not all of them are actual sex parties. In swinger lingo the type of event we’re attending tonight is known as an off-premises party, which means that people may talk and flirt and dance but they’ll have to go somewhere else to get naked. In theory anyway. In reality—nudge-nudge, wink-wink—things can get a little out of hand. The off-premises party is our preferred venue for just this reason: we can transgress in a way that’s simply not possible when everyone is expected to be transgressive. Or else, if we’re not interested, we can stand around and socialize without feeling out of place.
And so our journey to the underworld begins. The party is our first One Leg Up affair, soirees I’ve avoided in the past because I found Palagia’s shtick to be a little pretentious. But what the hell. Variety is good. A woman on stilts greets us at the door—I think she’s supposed to be a tree but I can’t be sure. We utter the password: “My climax.” As we walk across the Park’s airy, tree-lined foyer Cleopatra grabs my arm, tittering, “She’s still looking at us. Ohmagawd that’s so creepy!” And the woman is, indeed, bending over at the waist (oh but how does she keep her balance?) and peering at us, pantomime-like, through the doorway.
“I’m freakin’ out maaaaan.” All I can think of, though, is how she’d look naked on those stilts, and what kind of view I’d have if she stood next to me.
On my way up the stairs I unsheath my weapon and brandish it menacingly at no one in particular. “Izzat a dagger I see before me?” I pray I’ll be able to unsheath my other, fleshy dagger at the earliest opportunity. We slip on our masks before we reach the upstairs door, mine gold and Leslie’s black, ornate, very cat-like—we’d prefer not to be wearing them but the party is officially a masquerade ball. Jimmy and a few of the others in our group have to buy theirs from the ticket-taker. We’re admonished against removing our masks until the appointed hour of 1 AM. See what I mean by pretentious? “This isn’t fucking Eyes Wide Shut,” I grumble. Oh well. When in Rome…
Generic Slut #69 is still in abundance but at this party she’s undergone a metamorphosis. Her erect nipples, for example, might poke through a sheer mesh top. She might eschew the customary short shorts for lacy panties. Not that I have a problem with these wardrobe tweaks. One such specimen, a pretty girl with loopy eyes, approaches. She has that vacant, coke-whore aura about her, something so prevalent in this city that I’ve nearly begun to find it sexy. “Are you Caesar?” she asks.
I’ve gotten this two nights in a row. I was annoyed but now I’m mildly amused. “Naw. I’m Mark Antony. I came here to bury Caesar’s ass.” The woman runs off in search of another source of amusement—or perhaps another bump.
I’m talking to Lisa, the badass sheriff in her busty, badass leather outfit. “You look like a black, female Will Smith,” I’d told her earlier when we were having drinks at Jimmy’s apartment. A newbie couple latches on to us and we talk about the wonderful world of sex parties. Inevitably, wherever I go, people see me as some sort of urban sherpa. On the street they’ll single me out for directions. At a club they’ll ask me where the drugs are. At a sex party they’ll grill me on etiquette. I think my perceived authority derives from primal instinct: only the tall ape-men could peer over the brush and spot them sabertooths coming.
The girl on stilts is upstairs with us now, dancing. She’s still doing that creepy mime thing but snaps out of it when I ask her whether her stilts feel as natural as her own legs. She assures me they do.
Les and I wander over by the hot tub, a swinger fixture we’ve missed out on all these years. Juanita, our Barrio neighbor, is in there with Jimmy and a couple other guys. She beckons us to join them. Les pinches my thigh. “Are you kidding me?” I protest. “The girl-guy ratio is all fucked up.” The girl laughs as I eye her neat strip of pubic hair. It’s not that Juanita is unsexy, but she’s painfully heterosexual and most definitely on the hunt for a borefriend—I’d just as well not get all worked up over nothing. I’m talking to Les now but out of the corner of my eye I can see that one of the men in the hot tub is standing up and the other guy is blowing him. I nudge Les and then smirk over my shoulder at Jimmy. Cause I just know he’s a little freaked out.
I cannot recall whether he was the giver or receiver, the guy who’s standing in front of me now in his underwear, still dripping wet from the tub. He has a bit of a Marilyn Manson look. And he wants to see my cock. “You should get into the tub with me. I’ll take care of you.”
Smiling, I say, “No thanks, man. I’m only into ladies and trannies.” This isn’t entirely untrue. I had, after all, kissed Ophelia just a couple nights earlier but s/he is so pretty it almost doesn’t count.
“I’m bored,” I’m telling Les later on. “Other than that guy getting a foot job over there and the gay sex, this party is remarkably tame.”
“Yeah, what gives? I thought these parties had a reputation.”
I shuffle over to the bar and order more drinks. I return to find Les in an animated conversation with a couple—he a friendly-looking fellow in semi-formal attire and she a very pretty, very petite brunette in a bottomless ensemble that reveals her lacy red boy shorts. I soon learn he’s Swedish and she’s German and they’re married and new to this. I tell the husband I spent a week in Göteborg without ever seeing the sun. I speak to the wife in her native tongue. Leslie, always more direct with women than I, employs her tongue in a more obvious fashion, and before I can process what’s going on here the German girl’s lovely tits are out in the open. The guy grins broadly and grasps my shoulder, “Don’t be shy. Touch my wife. Please.” Even after all the time we’ve spent touring swingerland this still sounds weird to me.
“If you insist.” I take a swig of gin and stash the glass somewhere. The girl smiles up at me and places her hand on my waist. I place my palms over her breasts. She’s still smiling. I bow before her and let my mouth explore, sucking and teasing, my lips pursed and pulling at her pink eraser tips. She moans. I kiss the nape of her neck and breathe deeply; the smell hits high and sweet like roses and I’m not certain whether it’s her hair or some perfume she’s wearing. I’m touching the girl from behind, obscenely, my middle finger tracing a path from her clitoris to her tail bone as she locks lips with Les. The husband watches, still grinning and egging me on. The girl shifts her weight against me now, pressing her thigh into my erection, so I lift my tunic and press her hand to me, my eyes fixated upon the small patch of red fabric between her legs. I watch as my hand slips under it, into something soft and warm and wet. My hand is a practiced hand, a relationship hand: after a thousand and one nights of bringing Leslie off as she lies next to me in the dark, it just knows what to do. Deft fingers find the girl’s clitoris, begin to dance over it, subtly varying pressure and speed, perfectly attuned to her movements. Sex is language. Her pivoting hips tell me she wants my fingers inside. Going slowly, careful not to poke or prod, I oblige. When my fingers emerge I offer them to Les, who, closing her eyes, takes them into her mouth and suckles them clean. I kiss my girlfriend, tasting the German girl’s nectar on her lips. Les reaches under my costume to paw at my shorts and I pull them down to relieve the awful swelling between my legs. She squats and wraps her mouth around me, the golden beads in her hair tickling my bare balls a little. I place one hand on Leslie’s crown, the other on the German girl’s breast. I remember we’re standing in a high traffic area. I realize we’re being watched and I don’t care. People mill around us, gathering speed, coupling and uncoupling at a breakneck pace, seeking but not finding, spinning until their colors all run together…
VII.
I’m in a cab. Juanita is seated next to me, I know, even though I cannot lift my head. Leslie is on the other side of her. May as well be a million miles away. I am drunk drunk drunk. Dunno how I got this way. Every bump sends my head bobbing, amplifies my discomfort. Just wanna stop moving. By Jove I swear I’ll never drink again. Never. Again. Just get me home.
VIII
Who keeps company with wolves, will learn to howl.
-Latin proverb
We’re out with Sara at a pub across the street from our old place in Chelsea, having decided to make a stop here after seeing a lackluster horror flick. Sara’s dressed as the tooth fairy, wearing a little pink wig and carrying a jewel-encrusted wand. Les and I decided to forgo our costumes tonight. Movie and a drink. Then sleep. I’m perfectly happy to have a conventional night out for a change.
“Just one beer to bite the dog back,” I tell Les. “I promise. Woof.” She rolls her eyes. I get no sympathy for my overindulgence.
“So what was the party lake?” Sara asks.
“It started off a little slow, but it ended up being fun, even though I wanted to leave before Lex and he was being an ass about it.”
I throw my hands up in mock surrender. “Hay, I was tarbly dronk at the tame.” Sara laughs at my ridiculous attempt to simulate her accent. Clearing my throat, I continue, “It’s about what you’d expect—you flirt a little, dance a little, maybe get a little naked and fool around. Come to think of it, that’s an average night out for us, innit?”
“If one includes the part about you being an ass, then yes.”
“Ouch. So anyway, it was kinda like Friday night, except way more expensive.” I scratch my head and turn to Les. “Wait, why do we go to those parties again?”
“Well, we did have nice costumes.”
“Right? And then there’s the sex addiction. Care to analyze that, doctor?”
Sara smiles. “I’m the last person you should be talking to about seggs addiction. I masturbate three times a day.” Les raises an eyebrow and touches Sara’s leg.
“You know, I tried to jerk off today. Thought it might ease my hangover. Can you believe I nearly bored myself to death? I have access to all this free porn and absolutely nothing did it for me. Hell, even my fond memories of that sexy bitch from last night didn’t do it for me. It was like that Twilight Zone episode where the guy’s all alone in the library, surrounded by books, and he drops his glasses.”
“Do tell about the sexy bitch,” Sara insists. Les relates the whole sordid tale but I’m fuzzy on some of the details.
“Did you—did you blow me last night in front of everyone, or was I just imagining that?”
“No, that happened.”
“Okay, and what was this about them getting mad and storming off? Because I seem to recall—”
“The Clockwork Orange guy—”
“Little Alex!”
“Yeah, little Alex. Anyway, he was eating her out in the hot tub and her husband got angry about it.”
“Oh, well I was sitting next to her, fondling her or something like that, and little Alex came by and stole her from me. Next thing I knew, she and the Swede were gone.”
“No no, that was later.”
“Then where the hell was I when all this was going down?”
“That’s when we were arguing over leaving. I went to get their number, remember?”
“Ach. Scheisse. I can’t believe I missed out on all the sexual intrigue. There’s one thing I still don’t understand, though. I was doing all kinds of stuff to her. Why was that okay?”
“He told me they liked the two of us. Basically we had his blessing.”
“Who was that little Alex guy anyway? Such a fucking vulture. He didn’t even seem to be there with anyone.”
“There were a few creepy guys there, like the one who tried to touch me while you were talking to your boyfriend.”
“Ha. I was busy deflecting his advances. Sorry I didn’t lay the smackdown dear.”
A quiet night out with a nice girl. Thank the gods. I tell Sara she need feel no pressure to attend such debaucherous soirees with us, that we actually prefer nice girls who know something about intimacy. “That’s the reason we stopped going to the on-premises events,” I tell her. “Too many creeps. Everyone had something to prove and there were so many dysfunctional pseudo-couples. It was like high school all over again.”
“So what about the off-premises parties, then? Aren’t they similar?” Sara asks.
I take the last sip of my beer and sigh. “There’s less danger of forgetting your shoes at the end of the night.”
