Sex in the Title (3 page)

“All right, so then you’ve probably been with many more women than sixty-seven?”

“Yeah. But I don’t keep track of those.” Evan suddenly wondered why he didn’t bother to keep track of anything but consummation.

“I see…So when did you get started on these sixty-seven women?”

“You mean, how old was I when I lost my virginity?”

“Yes.”

“Twenty.”

“So you’ve slept with sixty-seven women in just nine years.”

“Well, actually I’ve had six serious relationships that together took up about two years.”

“Serious? Let’s see…Six serious relationships in two years…So each one lasted an average of four months. You call that serious?”

“Well, it was an intense four months. And I wasn’t seeing anyone else. You know, that’s kind of a big deal in New York,” he added ironically. “Dating someone exclusively for four months in New York is like four years in Anchorage.”

Tina chuckled at Evan’s joke. “All right, so not counting the serious relationships, you’ve slept with...” She crunched some numbers in her head. “You’ve slept with sixty-one women in just seven years…That’s an average of almost nine per year…A new woman every forty days.” Tina seemed impressed, which suddenly made Evan feel rather promiscuous.

“Do you think that’s a lot?”

“You probably have a few STDs by now, right?”

“None that I know of, thank God.”

“So you’ve been tested? I have to get tested before each of my films.”

“Yeah, I actually just got my AIDS test last month. And I’m clean.”

“But were you tested for herpes, gonorrhea, and hepatitis?”

“No.”

“And you might have chancroid, crabs, HPV or molluscum contagiosum.”

“I hope not.”

“What about scabies, chlamydia, syphilis, or Trichomoniasis?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you were only tested for HIV.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have genital warts?

“Nasty! No, I don’t have warts.”

“They’re actually not all that bad. An actor who used to work on my films got them and couldn’t work anymore until he got them removed. But they’re really just a cosmetic nuisance.”

Evan was feeling overwhelmed by this sex education class.

“You sound really knowledgeable about this stuff…Do you have any STDs? I mean, with your line of work, you’ve probably slept with a lot more people than I have.” After Tina’s grilling, Evan felt emboldened – and relieved – to turn the microscope onto her.

“I told you that in my line of work, which is soft porn, I don’t need to have actual intercourse with any of the actors.”

“But you said that you have to get tested before each film.”

“We do. The producers don’t want to take any liability risks, in case there’s some kind of accident…And certain scenes do require quite a bit of skin-to-skin contact, even though there’s no actual intercourse or head involved. So if anyone has anything that could spread by accident, it could slow down production – particularly with STDs that don’t look good on camera…So our producer is extra careful about these things.”

“Oh.”

“There’s something else I should ask you.”

“What?”

“Are you comfortable with homosexuality?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I do a lot of scenes with other women, and I’ve had some sexual relationships with women, and I just need to know that you’re comfortable with that sort of thing.”

This question gave Evan some hope. Tina had just asked for explicit reassurance on a personal and sexual topic – something that she wouldn’t have done if she had absolutely no interest in him.

“Oh, well, I’m totally comfortable with it.”

“Have you ever had sex with another man?”

Evan was again faced with a conversational dilemma: should he lie and try to impress her with just how comfortable he is with homosexuality by claiming to have had at least one experience, or should he honestly report the truth because Tina prefers her men to be unflinchingly straight?

“No. I’ve never had sex with another man…I mean, I just never really had the urge.”

“Oh. That’s what I figured. That’s cool. So now I just have two more questions before I can reach a decision.”

“A decision?”

“Yeah. A decision about you.”

“About me?”

“Yeah. You know, whether you’re someone I’d want to date.” She grinned mischievously. “Or just have a fling with.”

Evan’s face broke into a huge blush of relieved optimism. He didn’t have a clue where the conversation had been going, and now he finally received a clear signal that things had actually been going quite well.

“Sure. Bring on the questions.”

“Now this may strike you as a bit forward and vulgar, but we’ve talked about quite a few intimate issues, and I’m feeling very comfortable with you…”

“Ask away.”

“Are you hung? All of my men have been really well endowed. So I’m a bit spoiled in that department. And I always need to check.”

“I’m very well hung,” Evan replied, proud to be answering such a promising question from such a sexy woman.

“But all the boys say that.”

“Well I can prove it,” Evan replied, blushing a little.

“All the boys say that too.”

“But not all of them can.”

“True…Do you know why that is?”

“Because not all of them are hung,” ventured Evan.

“Nope…Because not all of the boys who are hung are uninhibited enough to prove it. Which brings me to my second and last question.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m a very sensual and uninhibited person, so it’s very important for me that my man be equally sensual and uninhibited.”

“I think I probably am.”

“Well, the way to find out if you are, in fact, as uninhibited and well hung as you say is really quite simple…” Tina seductively licked her lips and suggestively looked down with interest at Evan’s groin area. He suddenly realized where she was going with all of this.

“So your next question is whether I’m uninhibited enough to prove to you, right here, that I’m well hung?”

“Right here. In the Bowery Bar.”

Evan was dumbfounded because he had never before encountered such a request, and felt genuinely torn about whether to grant it. He looked at the inviting, azure eyes in her ravishing face, and then passed over her sultry, perfectly curved body, as if to weigh carefully the certain humiliation he would experience upon publicly revealing himself against the joy of a potential “score” with one of the sexiest women he had approached in years. He remembered that he hadn’t come this close to succeeding with anyone, much less a stunner like this, in a painfully long time. Evan imagined how he would later think himself a coward and a fool for having walked away from the opportunity. He looked around the bar quickly and didn’t notice anyone in particular paying attention to the two of them. He calculated that he could probably drop his pants quickly and then pull them back up before anyone could see. “Hell, I’m still young and crazy,” he thought. “At the very worst, I’ll just have a funny anecdote to tell everyone,” he told himself.

Evan tried to look Tina in the eyes with complete cool, but he started blushing as he fumbled awkwardly with the button at the top of his pants. Tina just stood there, propped up against the bar, looking mildly amused but slightly unimpressed with how long Evan had taken to reach his decision and implement it. She glanced at her watch. It was 12:50 a.m. Evan thought she might actually begin timing how long it would take him.

He finally unfastened the top button and quickly unzipped his pants. Tina still looked unimpressed. He knew he had to be more adventurous about the whole thing if he was going to prove to her that he was as uninhibited as he claimed to be. So, after tucking his thumbs under the waistband of his underwear, he looked her straight in the eye again, smiled for a moment, and then pushed everything down with a confident and unreserved extension of his arms.

As he stood there exposed, Evan became acutely aware of the many people in the immediate vicinity who – up until that moment – had seemed oblivious to him. Evan noticed the thirty-something barman in black trying to sneak in peeks while serving some customers at the bar. He noticed an attractive young couple that had stopped making out by the bar to watch. He looked at them for a moment, and they laughed self-consciously, returning to their tongue lock but occasionally angling themselves for another view. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed four slick-looking guys in their mid-twenties, joking amongst themselves about this guy just twenty feet away whose pants were dropped in front of this babe. “Now that’s what I call balls at the Bowery Bar!” one of them yelled. Evan pretended not to notice this group or hear its heckles only because there were too many of them for a threatening stare to do anything but goad them into even more obnoxious behavior. The only thing to do now was get it over with as quickly as possible, and walk out with the gorgeous prize that would vindicate virtually anything he had done in public. Who could argue with his manliness or his judgment if, after he pulled his pants back up, Tina gave him one of those triumphant, Hollywood French kisses, and then took his arm and walked out of the bar with him?

As he stood there with all of his manhood dangling in the cool, smoky air, he thought only of that glorious moment. He didn’t see all of the people watching him with a mixture of fascination and repugnance. He focused only on Tina. He waited for her to acknowledge his courageously stupid act with some look of impressed gratitude and/or validation of his size. He waited for her to signal in some way that he had gone well beyond the call of duty, and that he could now pull his pants back up and receive his reward. But he saw none of this in Tina’s face, which just looked slightly amazed that he had actually gone through with the whole thing.

So Evan ended up holding his pants down for longer than he had originally planned to, and lifted everything back up only after realizing that he would receive no instruction from Tina to do so. As he zipped his pants back up, he heard some ornery howls from the crowd of guys, and saw the couple quickly resume their kissing with another you-caught-us-staring blush. He couldn’t tell how much the barman had seen.

“So?” Evan asked, looking expectantly at Tina. “Did I pass your test?”

Tina looked unmoved by Evan’s Bowery Bar boldness. Somewhat reluctant to answer his question, she replied, “Well…To tell you the truth…I don’t think you did.”

“Really?” Evan felt a devastating humiliation barreling his way, but – in what was to become a pathetic pattern that night – he felt perversely determined to confront it head on. “Why not? I’m not hung enough for you?” he asked, preparing himself for the worst.

“No. I actually think you’re probably hung enough.”

Upon hearing this confirmation, Evan exhaled a small sigh of relief, but was still waiting for the bad news.

“So what is it? I mean, I’m obviously uninhibited, right? I mean, you weren’t expecting me to dance on the bar naked, were you?”

“No, please. Spare us.”

“So what is it? Why didn’t I pass your test?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Do you really think I would take home someone who drops his pants in public just because I asked him to? I need a man with a little more self-respect than that.”

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.”

“But you get naked in public all the time. Hell, you even simulate sex for the public.”

“No, I don’t.”

“What do you think being a soft porn actress is?”

“It’s definitely getting naked and simulating sex in public, but I’m not a soft porn actress.”

“What do you mean?” Evan asked in dismay.

“I develop swaptions, derivatives, and other hedge instruments for the futures markets at Morgan Stanley. Princeton grads generally don’t go into soft porn.”

“But…But you…”

“I know that’s what I told you. But that’s just my screener. I get hit on by a lot of guys, so I like to filter out anyone who’s really promiscuous, bisexual, infected with an STD, or willing to drop his pants in public…I’m too busy to waste a bunch of dates finding out deal-breaking data that I could have uncovered from the get-go…Life’s too short not to cut to the chase, right?”

And when Tina finished that reply, 104 anvils, each carefully crafted and weighed in the best metal workshops of the American heartland, came crashing down onto Evan’s head.

Chapter 3
Desperately Seeking a Rebound

Escape. That was the only thing that Evan could think of. What was the quickest way out of the Bowery Bar? He saw an opening and navigated a focused path to the door, blurring out of his mind the obnoxious jokes and comments trailing from various areas near Tina. He shuffled past the glam squad and various hotties piling in, and didn’t say goodbye to the doorman or bouncers as he usually did, hoping that if he looked down and moved quickly enough, they wouldn’t notice his emergency evacuation.

He jumped into the nearest taxi and said “Just drive!” – as if he were in the midst of some dramatic, high-speed getaway. As he sailed away from the disaster area, with the soft, summer night breeze blowing against his face through the open window, he slowly began deliberating about his options. “I should just quit while I’m ahead,” he thought.

Ignoring his own advice, he pulled out his cell phone and a printed list of phone numbers.

Back in autopilot mode, he called a cell phone number off the list.

“Can I speak to Sayvyer, please?”

“Who the fuck is calling here after one in the morning?”

“I’m returning a wallet that she lost.”

“You have the wrong number.”

He tried the next number on the list.

“Can I speak to Sayvyer, please?”

“You’re looking for the savior? At 1:15 a.m.?”

“No. Her name’s Sayvyer.”

“There is no savior here. Especially not at 1:15 a.m.”

Evan shook his head in frustration and wondered for a moment whether the comely brunette had given her real name to Evan. “It had to be her real name...She knew way too many jokes off the top of her head that involved her name,” he recalled. “And she told me how – when she was young – she thought her hippy parents were cruel for giving her such a weird name and how later she thought the name made her hip and distinctive…And two of her friends called her ‘Sayvyer’ that night…So it’s definitely her name…” Evan crossed out the two numbers he had just dialed and shook his head in frustration. “But why couldn’t she have had a more normal name?” he thought.