Boys Life

We are back at her car. A fucking Scion. I love this. In LA, where those few minutes at the valet are everything, and she is driving a Scion. Adorable. Against the Scion, we kiss. Still Soaring. We climb in the car and kiss more. No longer a precocious eight year old playing adult while making a mess with my cookie, I’m sixteen grabbing at breasts, steaming up the windows. Still Soaring. We kiss more and joke about the absurdity of the situation. I already want to tell her I write Boys Life and we’re less than an hour in. She reads the blog, she’s told me so. Not ‘me’ but the blog me.  She e-mailed Boys Life and inquired about the face behind the scenes. Not knowing we were already acquainted, not in real life mind you, but acquainted on Facebook and connected through the calls and texts that led to tonight, to the breath steamed windshield behind M Cafe. When I showed my best friend that my Facebook crush had emailed Boys Life he had only one thing to say:

“What a whore!”

I agreed. But I also thought it was cute. I felt like I was living in my own Romantic Comedy/Choose Your Own Adventure. I decided a while ago that one of my goals was to have great stories to tell my grandchildren. Middle aged sons and daughters yelping “DAD!” as I tell tall tales of conquest and rejection around the turn on the millennium. This was shaping up to be a great one, subtly sexist and slanted in my, the man’s, favor just like You’ve Got Mail. In the Scion, something in her way compels me towards honesty. I feel cheap but don’t say anything. I wonder if I’ll fuck her without divulging. I doubt it, I like her 2 much already to be that cavalier. She takes her right index finger and writes from right to left in the moisture on the window. When she lowers her arm she has written HELP ME! backwards. We laugh and kiss some more.

I tell her I’m staying at the Roosevelt. She lights up. Man, do women love hotels. Not flea bags but anywhere that’s nice or cool; they go nuts. If you ever want to spice things up, drop a few hundred on a dope hotel room. A quick drive and were valeting the Scion and heading towards the elevators. Still Soaring. In the room now; it doesn’t go too far, but it goes pretty far. Her body feels wonderful. No Skinny Fat, no real flaws. Without the constraints of the Scion, my arms are carnival mirrors as we explore each other. Mirrors that shrink and trick the eye, make her feel girlish and small. Her personality adds inches to an already imposing 5-11; when I touch her she is 5-5. This is the best hook-up I’ve had in god knows how long. We laugh and talk, and we touch and play. I get out of bed and grab the over-priced plastic bottle of Perrier from the mini fridge. We are sharing the water now, she is on top of me, sitting on my midsection, both of us shirtless. She takes a drink and holds the liquid in her mouth for a moment. She makes a face, then spits cold mineral water all over my naked belly. Bold. I could be the kind of guy immediately turned off by this recess foreplay. I’m not. Perfect. Exactly something I’d want her to do.

Some part of me is annoyed. Annoyed that I am having so much fun. Annoyed at having what seem like genuine feelings for her. It would be comfortable to turn off and perform. Make all the right moves: choke here, spit there, slap, pull hair and on and on. Just being the guy that’s good in bed. A seasoned Broadway star giving a shit performance. The star knows the difference, knows how average he is, but the audience is mesmerized. After years of dinner theater and high school plays, a first experience with Broadway is breathtaking. The more we talk and touch the less like calculated show business it becomes. We take a break. I get my phone from the nightstand and bring up the Boys Life E-mail account. I think she’s cute and funny and smart, and I want to tell her before things go much further. I want to brag to my friends that I made her come, then handed her the phone with the Boys Life e-mails to read. I want her to like me, to like my writing, to not be a dick, to tell her sweetly.


Maybe I’ll toss the phone on the bed: Read this. Then walk casually to the bathroom. Mid piss, I’ll hear her scream: “oh my god!” Just like she screams on the Internet.

Or I could climb back into bed and tell her I have to be honest about something. Timidly hand her the phone, exposing my identity, hoping to not be thought of as some inter-creep.

I’m waiting for the verdict now. It takes a minute for her mind to register what she’s reading. A couple minutes more for her to tell me she’s not mad and that she loves it. It is a great story. It’s ridiculous and totally of my design, but I’m not the Rube Goldberg of dating. There’s no mathematical equation to determine how fast down the chute and through the tunnel she’ll travel, or that she’ll end up in my bed. And I’ve barely engineered, a couple of calculated decisions maybe, and that thing where I started my own blog, mostly I’ve just gone on gut. I’m really not this clever. She’s telling me she’s hardly read any of my posts, that the pictures of the Misshapes bird turned her off. I explain that it’s an essay, a statement about women in New York, not really a fan piece.

Both of us naked now, she is on top of me. Have I mentioned how fantastic she looks with no clothes on? Not a flaw. One scar, scars are meaningless in the measuring of beauty, even enhancing occasionally. Looking harsh, somehow feeling softer than the skin around them, little bumpy stories that add depth, suggest trauma, complexity. I push myself closer to her.

“I really want to, but I want you to come over tomorrow and play the Sex In The City Board Game.”

I laugh, and tell her I will, that I look forward to it. Her delivery was adorable, perfect breasts, and big eyes looking down at me, so matter of fact, as if that’s what everyone should do when entertaining horny out-of-towners. She’s saying she wants to fuck me, but also that she won’t be treated like a whore, that it will be on her terms not mine. She’s also just being funny, charming me. And I am charmed.

We laugh and play for a little while longer but soon it’s time for her to go home, her decision not mine. It’s half past one, and I can still catch up with my work people, see some of the friends I’m dissing to hang with her. As we prepare to leave the room she suggests I pay for her valet. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not attuned to the LA customs, but it strikes me as kinda off. I let out a quizzical: “Pay for the valet?” Is that the deal, I think to myself, men pay for the valet? I have no idea. It is my hotel, so, if we got downstairs I’m sure I’d have paid, but her asking, I’m not sure how I feel about this. It’s like she wants me to be the kind of guy who pays for the valet, so instead of hoping I do it, then reading too much into whether I do or do not, she’s taking preventive measures to ensure that I AM the kind of guy who picks up the entire tab, all the way down to the valet. Women, I think, have a right to ask for flowers because we guys never think of buying flowers, and it’s a man’s duty to pay for dinner and drinks WITHOUT BEING TOLD TO DO SO. I mean I fought her at M Cafe to pay for her latte so why did she think the valet thing would escape me? Because I’m from New York, and I don’t know whats up with chicks and the valet? This night’s been awesome, why tarnish it with some debate over something I don’t even have an educated stance on. I make sure I have cash, and we head downstairs.

Back in the Scion. I had forgotten to see what was playing on her stereo before. Our make-out session behind M Cafe didn’t need music. Now, feeling a bit more relaxed and comfortable, I go for the radio; playing iPod detective. Little Wayne is suddenly rapping to the “Kryptonite” instrumental. Really, Facebook crush? Little Wayne mix tape songs? Before I have a chance to pass some type of superficial judgement, she does her little dance. I recognize the moves from the Internet, and again, in person, it soars. So fucking adorable. I don’t mention the dance, or how cute she is at that moment, I keep it for me.

I get a text after she’s dropped me off. Suggesting I not fuck any other girls tonight, to not tarnish the virtuousness of our date. About five minutes later, I’m face to face with a repeat. The repeat looks thrilled to see me. UH-O. We greet each other, she goes for the lips, I give her the cheek. I tell her I’ve been through at least one cell phone since my last visit to LA, and we re-exchange information. We chat it up a bit. I’m contemplating sleeping with her. I know I won’t, I don’t want to. But I contemplate being that guy.  For a moment I want to live this Rôle, fuck this girl right in front of me, fuck the Internet girl tomorrow, be someone who really doesn’t care, who reaches for a cigarette the first thing in the morning, who tears apart everything, everyone in his path. I quit smoking this year; every day I don’t smoke, or don’t hurt someone first, before they can hurt me, every day I can be decent for more hours of the day than I’m unbearable, every day I do these things, the more apparent the Rôle’s truth becomes. I put my left hand in my coat pocket and feel the stickers for her blog, I don’t take them out or show them to anyone, but the little rectangle reminds me I have a date tomorrow; Sex and the City board game, at her place. I end the night with four of my boys at Bossa Nova with a chicken sandwich, no fries, and all the things dudes talk about at 3 am.

BL