Rules of the Game (53 page)

“Go slow,” she said. “Be gentle,” she said. “Only maybe for a second,” she said. Everything a girl would say after making the decision to have sex for the first time, she said.

And then she hesitated, like an orange bobbing on the branch one last time before breaking off its stem. Over the years, she had imagined this act in so many variations of scenery and colors of emotion, denying suitor after suitor who wanted to take it from her because they were like bounty hunters who wanted to put an outlaw in jail not to serve justice, but so they could claim the reward. It had to be just right, so that ten or twenty or thirty years later, she could call to mind every sensation and smile with the conviction that she'd done the right thing.

A giggle—nervous, childlike, womanly, awkward—escaped from her lips as she lifted herself and turned around decisively, sitting astride my bony hips and facing my feet. She set her gaze on a rectangular mirror atop the flimsy pine dresser that had loyally kept her secrets through every age, stage, and metamorphosis. She watched closely as she twisted her torso a little to the left, so that it arced like a model's, then focused her gaze on her face, so she could see what it would look like in the moment of surrender that she so carefully controlled. This was not about me; it was about her. And, in a slow second, charged with nineteen years of being a daughter and a sister and a child, it was done.

And now I sit with them, Maggie on the left in summer dress, Linda on the right in suede skirt, both holding my hand, both thinking I will take them home tonight.

Their grips mirror their beliefs: Maggie's hand lies softly over mine, without worry or urgency, because she knows there will be plenty of time for intimacy later. But she is wrong. She is unaware that two feet away, the hand of her younger sister squeezes mine tightly, possessively, in tacit conspiracy. In her innocence, Maggie has allowed her conniving sister to accompany her on this date. And so the plot in the theater seats is thicker than that on the screen. Two sisters torn apart by a worthless man. And just like Esau and Jacob, Aaron and Moses, Bart and Lisa, the younger must win. That is the way of things.

And I, who thought I was the great seducer, who boasted of sleeping with model sisters, who validated himself in their embrace like a vampire drinking youth, was nothing more than a doll in their playset.

“We connected right away on a very deep level,” Linda had told me that first night in bed. “But then Maggie threw herself at you, so I was just like, whatever.”

But perhaps we'd never connected until Maggie claimed me. Perhaps, like me, Linda envied Maggie's freedom and spontaneity, and wanted to take away something of her older sister's. Perhaps she'd decided, on a subconscious level, to lose her virginity with the worst of intentions. And then, with love in her heart, with a smile on her face, with innocence in her eyes, she could once more make her sister feel like the black sheep. Perhaps waiting so long to lose her virginity was never a moral choice for herself, but one intended to make her sister seem like a slut in comparison.

The weapon of the youngest is never physical strength but emotional cunning. And now I am complicit in this trap. I must play my role: Maggie has slept with twenty-six men; I am just a footnote in her sexual history. But I am Linda's entire sexual history and its caretaker. I must keep her memory of the moment preserved in a bell glass. If it shatters, and one shard punctures her heart, the damage will be permanent. She is too smart: She chose the right man, one cursed with a conscience, which dictates that I not ruin her—or any woman—for other men.

And so I have no choice. Someone is going to get hurt tonight, and better the happy slut than the melancholy prude.

Maggie will never forgive me for this, nor will she ever forgive Linda. As I lie in her younger sister's bed that night, Maggie consoles herself with an ex-boyfriend.

A month later, with love in her heart, a smile on her face, and innocence in her eyes, Linda tells me—the one-man army she has used to stage her coup—that Maggie has moved in with him. Three months later, he has gotten Maggie hooked on crystal meth. A year later, Maggie has broken up with him for abusing her. Two and a half years later, Maggie is no longer recognizable as the carefree youth who once climbed dripping out of my swimming pool. She has married him. And, like air bubbles trapped in cement, the decisions we make in a moment haunt us for the rest of our lives.

She said she would pick me up in an old car.

“You'll hear it before you see it.” Apologetically.

It was the first time I'd fallen in love with a car.

It was from 1972 and looked worse for the wear. The surface was pocked with small dents, dings, and patches of primer; the bumpers were rusty and looked like they'd seen a lot of action in their day; and the leather interior was torn up from years of constant use and neglect.

But its body was beautiful. It was sinuous and curvy, without a single flat edge; its front tire wells arched smoothly above the surface on either side, sloping into a hood so long you couldn't see the end of it from the passenger seat. When it glided out of the Phoenix airport, people turned their heads. It stood out from the other cars. It was magnificent, proud, unafraid of its defects because it knew its body shape compensated.

“This was the last year they made Corvettes like this,” she said. “After 1972, they switched to plastic bumpers.”

Her name was Leslie. And, though I'd never met her before, I was going to sleep with her. It was prearranged. Justin, one of my students, had offered me his cousin as a birthday present. It was above and beyond the call of duty. Normally I wouldn't have taken him up on such a creepy proposal, but he promised me that she wasn't just a lay. She was an education.

“She's been studying Tantric sexuality half her life,” he said. “And she's discovered a G-spot in the back of her throat.”

“That's kind of interesting,” I replied, meaning weird. “How does that work exactly? Am I supposed to stick my finger down her throat and massage it?”

“No, something else.” He smiled. “She's like a deep throat expert. She can take it all the way in, and work her throat muscles to make you experience something you've never felt before. This is next-level shit.”

I was interested, in the classic sense of the word.

A newspaper columnist named Fanny Fern coined the expression that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, proving to the world just how little women know about men. We can always go out to eat. But if a woman wants to make an impression that we'll never forget, even when we're eighty and on our deathbed and thinking about the two moments that made life worth living, all she has to do is give us the most masterful blow job of our lives. If she even hints that she's great at it, we'll chase her all night. Then, if she actually delivers, she'll never have to worry about a phone call the next day.

It's funny how much time women spend trying to figure us out when we're so simple. I think what's complicated is accepting how simple we actually are.

As Justin pitched me on his cousin, I thought about all the people in my lifetime who had promised to get me laid and never delivered. I remembered Marilyn Manson's bodyguard telling me he had two girls in his hotel room giving a sex show, but because he was married and couldn't sleep with them, he'd send them to me. I lay expectant in my hotel bed for hours, fresh from the shower, trying to stay awake in case sleep turned my breath bad, waiting for the knock. But the knock never came.

Only I came. Alone. Again.

So before my next trip to Phoenix, just to be safe, I called a thin, buxom Iranian girl named Farah, with heavy-lidded, glittering brown eyes. I'd met her last time I was in Phoenix and she mentioned buying a book on Tantric sex. This way, I figured, the Tantra thing would happen one way or the other.

“Yeah, I'm living with my father for now in Sedona,” Leslie gabbed as we drove to the James Hotel. “I stay with my sponsor sometimes in Scottsdale, but he's been an asshole lately.”

I wanted to ask her what she meant by sponsor. Was he her mentor in a drug rehabilitation program? Her sugar daddy? A client of some sort?

But the question seemed inappropriate, as did all the others I wanted to
ask. I wasn't sure yet if the sex thing was really on—if she had also been informed that she was going to deep throat me tonight—and didn't quite know how to confirm the appointment.

Leslie wasn't the type of girl I normally slept with, or even talked to. Experienced would be a polite way to describe her face, which was a weird shade of red—not from the sun, but from some style of makeup application I'd only seen used by bag ladies on public buses. She had teeny teeth pressed close together, which would have been cute if they weren't out of proportion to her broad face, sabotaging every smile.

Her body, however, was glorious. She was a big girl. Not fat, but solid. Mighty would be a better word. Her pink-powdered breasts heaved out of her dress, daring you not to look at them. Her thighs were thick and muscular, and looked like they could perform all sorts of functions on construction sites. And her posture screamed sexuality and multiple orgasms. You could tell by the way her back arched away from the seat and thrust the full force of her tremendous chest into the steering wheel.

This was all so exotic to me. Though I tell girls I weigh 140 pounds, I've actually never been able to get above 126, no matter how much I eat or work out. Until recently, I had only dated really small women with low self-esteem, because that was all I could handle. This girl was an Amazon, a really trashy one, possibly even a real-life whore. It doesn't get any worse than that. And worse is what I'm all about.

When we arrived at the hotel, she reached behind her seat, grabbed a small overnight bag, and brought it with her into the hotel. As soon as I saw this, I knew Justin had made good on his promise.

I just had one major concern left.

“So, what are you doing for work these days?” I casually asked during dinner.

“I used to be a dancer,” she said, “but now I'm between jobs.”

As we talked further, I tried to pull more details from her. The best I could gather was that she'd been a stripper for six years, made a few adult films, and now used certain former clients for shelter, gifts, and travel. I suppose that makes her a prostitute, just as much as it makes any woman who dates or marries for money one.

After dinner, we took the elevator to my room. There still hadn't been a word or gesture of intimacy between us. Even though she was doing this for blood and not for money, there was something unsettling about the whole arrangement.
Some guys enjoy having sex as a transaction, rather than an act of passion. But I get my rocks off as much through connection and, on a shallower level, validation as through the friction of flesh. I need to know that the woman I'm with wants to be with me because she genuinely likes me as a person—whether it takes three minutes or three years for her to come to that decision—or else the mutual surrender so key to the transgressive pleasure of sex never happens.

I decided to take some time to connect with her before the deep throating commenced.

“If you had to choose one thing in the world that makes life worth living, what would it be?” I asked as we walked in the room.

“Hmm,” she said, nodding her head and pulling off her dress. Still thinking, she unhooked her bra. Her breasts were gargantuan. I could have placed a dictionary between them and they'd hold it like bookends.

She knelt in front of me and began unbuckling my belt.

We can always connect afterward, I decided.

“Why don't you stand in front of the bed?” she suggested as I stepped out of my pants.

I complied, as if following a nurse's instructions for a physical. She climbed onto the bed, rolled over, and dropped her head backward over the edge of the bed. I realized that this must be her special trick.

I stood in front of her and approached her open mouth with my dick in the air. It felt like some sort of carnival game.

She brought her hands up, wrapped them around me, and nudged me into her. Then she began adjusting her head in small movements, guiding me into her throat like a maze, until her mouth was at my base.

Euphoria swept through my body. In that moment, I knew my answer to the question I'd asked when we walked in the room.

She began sliding me back and forth inside her, slowly at first, clamping her throat and lips around me every time she hit bottom. Glancing down, all I could see were her outstretched neck and chin and, for some reason, they reminded me of the belly of a penguin. It was solely due to this image that I was able to refrain from orgasm and proceed to intercourse.

“I want to bring a girl out with us tomorrow,” Leslie said, greedily puffing on a cigarette afterward. “She's got a gorgeous body. I've been trying to get with her for years. Maybe you can help me out.”

My uncle used to warn me, “When pigs become hogs, they get slaughtered.” I was about to ignore his advice and try to arrange a foursome.

“That would be cool,” I told Leslie. “I was actually thinking about bringing along this Iranian girl I know who wants to learn Tantric sex. I told her you were a guru, so maybe you can show her a few things after dinner.”