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I gather the box and head for the break room, where I dump it next to the coffee machine. My coworkers love unexpected gifts, and relish reporting back to me how useful they are–or are not. I always listen with interest, wondering how everyone else can lose themselves in orgasmic pleasure, but I can’t.
I return to my desk, relieved at getting rid of evidence of my inadequacy.
I have to write a story about my first orgasm. How hard could it be? People lie about stuff like this all the time. Hell, I know women fake it half the time anyway. I could surely just make some shit up.
But what if I really, this time, try to write something truthful? It doesn’t feel good to be a fraud, and it’s even scarier knowing what happened to Danny this morning could happen to me too.
I glance at his empty office, random papers scattered on his old desk, blank spots where his artwork has been taken down.Why, Danny?Why didn’t you try?
I have to do this. I have a secret to protect, a deadline to meet, and an orgasm to chase.
Besides, if everyone else is doing it, why the hell can’t I?
* * *
4
AVA
I letmyself into my apartment with a sigh of relief at having the place quiet and to myself. It’s a sizeable two-bedroom, hard if not impossible to come by in Manhattan. But thanks to Aunt Dede, who made it clear when I first moved here that she didn’t house New York ingenues, I was quickly dropped into this great apartment after she enlisted the help of her far-reaching tangle of connections. And because she is so proud to have set me up in such a nice pad and loves to remind the family of her acumen and largesse, she strong-armed me into letting my older brother Andy’s friend Jasper Russo crash here while he’s getting himself set up in the city.
I needed to ‘share my good fortune,’ as she put it.
The truth is, I don’t really mind having a roommate that much, even if Andy’s buddy is someone I’d never be friends with. We’re cordial and all but have our own lives. It’s just nice to have someone to split expenses with. But would I live with one of my brother’s friends from college if I had the choice, a dude-bro if ever there was one?
Not really. And in the end, I had very little say about it.
Jasper is a nice enough guy. Just not my cup of tea.
Andy even helped Jasper line up a job. Actually, he didn’t help him as much as the ever-connected Aunt Dede, who knows all the higher-ups at Bonded Crest. She got Jasper an interview atSports Incorporated,just like she got me one atGlisten.
I love that she likes to help people, but hell, this Jasper guy isn’t even family. So, thanks to her, I not only see him at home, I also occasionally run into him in the elevator at work.
But he’s out tonight like he is most nights, which means I can chill and think through my predicament. Before I do, I turn on an old Sex and the City rerun, always guaranteed to help me clear my mind. Just as the opening credits have Carrie twirling around in her pink tutu, from outside my window comes the familiar roar of a motorcycle.
Damn.
Yes, Jasper the dude-bro brought his motorcycle to New York, and uses it—successfully, I might add—as a chick magnet. I turn up the TV to drown out the noise of his bike, and even when he’s shut it off and I hear the downstairs door slam and him run up the steps to our place, I don’t turn it back down.
Let him listen to Samantha drone on about her latest conquest, something about rotten-tasting semen. See if I care.
“Ava!” he calls, rushing inside. “Didn’t think you’d be home so early.”
Thanks for pointing out you have a better social life than I do.
And it’s even more evident when a willowy brunette follows him in the apartment.
Great. Just great.
“Hey,” he says, gesturing at his date, “this is my roommate, Ava. My best friend’s sister.”
“Hi,” she says to me with a bored wave.
Without responding, I turn back to the TV, where Samantha continues to complain about ‘funky spunk.’ Jasper and his date are unfazed. They leave their helmets on the table by the door—where I’ve asked him not to—and head for his bedroom.
In the few months he’s been living with me, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him come home with the same woman twice. Actually, I can’t be sure about that, since the women he goes for all basically look the same.
His date-night-return-home was always a precursor to an evening where I could count on getting little sleep, kept awake by his amorous love life, filtering through the walls separating our rooms.
