Sex in the Title (5 page)

“Yeah…It’s been nice knowing you.”

“Good night, Evan.”

His cab was at East Fifty-sixth Street and Third Avenue when Evan realized that he was headed in the direction of – rather than away from – the scene of his latest disaster. He leaned forward to redirect the cab driver.

“Actually, can you head back downtown again?”

“Where do you want me to go? Can’t you make up your mind?” The cabbie’s heavy Pakistani accent somehow magnified the exasperation in his voice, and he had clearly forgotten that he was profiting from Evan’s indecisiveness.

Evan concluded, incorrectly, that he had hit the nadir of his evening and could now go back to his studio apartment in Gramercy and privately lick his wounds.

“Let’s go to Twentieth and Park,” he instructed.

The cab driver shook his head impatiently as he made a left at Fifty-seventh Street.

But Evan suddenly remembered two buddies who were often awake late and possibly still looking for a good time at 1:40 a.m. on a Thursday night. On a whim, he called each friend. The first call went to voicemail. “At this hour, he’s probably getting laid or dancing in some club that can’t get cell phone reception,” Evan figured. But the second friend he called answered his cell phone.

“Dude, let’s meet up,” Evan urged. “It’s beautiful out, and there are babes everywhere.”

“Tell me about it. Where are you?”

“My cab just hit Fifty-seventh and Park.”

“Funny, I just came from that area.”

“So where are you now?”

“On Forty-third and Eleventh, about ten feet from my futon and TV.”

And with those words, Evan knew that getting him to come out was a lost cause. Evan had once coined the term “The Law of Subjective Progress” to describe the psychological aversion that prevents any New Yorker from retracing a path just taken. He recognized that this psychological allergy afflicted humans everywhere, but because New York was so compact and relatively easy to navigate, it always struck him as doubly irrational when – for example – someone who had just crossed from Midtown East to Midtown West would rather go to a slightly farther destination in a different direction than return to Midtown East. Evan’s psychological theory posited that humans subconsciously associate their geographical location with their overall life progress, so he knew that it would be impossible to convince his friend to come back to the area he had just left. The Law of Subjective Progress was too powerful – especially after 1:40 a.m. and with a New Yorker over the age of thirty who was steps away from his futon.

So Evan wished his friend a good night, leaned back in his cab seat, and finally resigned himself to calling it a night.

But about ten minutes later, when Evan’s taxi was waiting at a stop light at the intersection of Thirtieth and Park, a boisterous bevy of babes playfully waved at him. The scantily clad college students seductively beckoned him to follow.

Despite the lingering suspicion that he was on too serious a losing streak for this omen to be a good one, Evan decided to get out and follow them.

“Actually, I don’t need Twentieth and Park. This is fine,” he said to the cabbie, who was just as happy finally to rid himself of the most fickle passenger he had had in the last year.

Evan paid his fare, got out, and closed the cab door, at which point he heard one of the four young women exclaim, “Oh my God, he’s actually coming over!” As he looked over at the group, he saw them giggling immaturely and scurrying ahead of him a little faster, as if to escape the very adventure they had provoked.

“Hey wait a sec!” Evan hurried up after them, but this only made them move away faster. Evan followed briskly in their direction, alternating between a fast walk and a run, not sure if they would be amused or frightened when he finally reached them.

At Twenty-eighth and Park, he caught up to them, and tried to catch his breath and introduce himself, but they were all giggling too hard, as they exchanged accusations.

“You called him over here!” said a tall redhead in a tight mini-skirt and a black silk top that barely managed to cover her bouncy breasts; she seemed to be the leader of the pack.

“You did!” protested a shorter brunette in a similar outfit.

“No I didn’t! Liar!”

“You both did,” Evan began. “But don’t worry,” he said between breaths, “I don’t bite…I just come when I’m called.”

“Can you roll over and play dead?” the redhead asked, as her sophomoric gang broke into laughs.

“Only if I’ve got someone to roll with,” Evan replied. It was the best answer that came to mind, but he knew it wasn’t great.

“You’re way too old for us to roll with you!” the shorter brunette quipped.

“How old do I look?” Evan replied, suddenly more concerned about the true answer than what it would ultimately mean for this particular encounter.

“At least twenty-eight,” opined the redhead.

“Why twenty-eight?”

“I don’t know. You can just tell…”

“Well, I’m twenty-nine.”

“That’s even worse.”

“Why? How old are you?”

“We’re all nineteen.”

“Oh.” Evan could sense that he was about to start desperately grasping for straws. “Well don’t you want to know what it’s like to be a decade older?” he asked.

“Not really,” replied the redhead.

Because Evan’s question assumed that these women were profounder than they actually were – at least at the age of nineteen – it only succeeded in highlighting just how much older he was. Evan, of course, was not in any state to appreciate this paradox.

“But aren’t you curious about my wise perspective on life?”

“We’ve got the rest of our lives to learn what it’s like to have a wise old perspective,” replied the redhead, on behalf of her clan. The others all laughed in agreement, as she hailed a taxi.

Evan shook his head in frustration as the college girls all loudly piled into the back of the cab and drove off.

Chapter 4
The Painfully Unforgettable Brandy and Bonnie Encounter

Evan started down the eight-block walk back to his apartment, assuming reluctantly that his night was over, but occasionally looking around with the faint hope that someone – a lone female or even a few men headed for a nearby party – might somehow salvage, or at least extend, his pathetic night.

At the corner of Twenty-third Street and Park Avenue, Evan’s hope was suddenly realized. A giant, shiny white SUV pulled up next to him. Its dark windows were shut but Evan could hear hip-hop beats blaring inside the vehicle. The rhythmic thumping grew louder as the SUV’s backseat window slid down slowly, exposing a beautiful black woman with a seductively tough, no-nonsense expression on her face.

The window opposite the driver’s seat whirred down, so that Evan could see the entire plush interior of the SUV. He looked at the delicious driver, an olive-skinned woman with an enticing smile. She winked at Evan as she lowered the music volume enough to permit conversation. He smiled at her self-consciously and then looked back at the black woman next to him, catching a glimpse of her tempting cleavage – two firm, pendulous mounds tucked under a skimpy, leopard-skin bikini bra.

“Where you goin’,” she asked, her head moving slightly to the faint beats in the background.

“Home,” he replied, realizing that she was definitely a prostitute. Evan had always thought himself above paying for sex, but this woman looked positively delectable and Evan desperately wanted to save the night somehow. So he decided to see if he could somehow talk her into a freebie.

“It’s too early to be goin’ home, sweetheart.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah…You wanna blowjob?”

Her segue from casual conversation to commercial negotiation caught Evan by surprise.

“Well…Is it on the house?”

She turned to the sexy driver and reported in amusement, “Bonnie, the fella wanna know if this one’s on the house.”

Bonnie looked at Evan for a moment, checking him out.

“Why not?” she replied, “He’s cute enough.”

The backseat prostitute turned back towards Evan and eyed him up and down, sizing up his physical appearance a little more. “Yo’ dick best not be stanky,” she warned. “Because you sexy enough for a freebie but I charge extra if you stanky. So if it’s on the house and you stanky, you still gotta pay.”

“No. I’m not stinky – I showered a few hours ago…So is it on the house now?”

“Yeah, you kinda tasty-lookin’…Come on.”

Bonnie, who had been listening in, flashed a smile and returned the stereo to its former booming volume. She hit a button and a dark window separating her from the backseat area rolled up, creating more privacy for her partner and Evan.

With an excited and slightly nervous grin, Evan climbed awkwardly into the hip-hop-filled SUV, stepping carefully over the young woman’s long legs as she shut the door behind him. The side windows rolled up and the large vehicle drove off.

“So what’s your name?” he began, awkwardly.

“Since you ain’t payin’, you ain’t namin’,” she replied, tongue-in-cheek. “Only payin’ customers get to pick my name.”

But Evan could barely hear her because the music was so loud.

“What did you say your name was?”

“It’s Brandy.”

“What?”

Brandy leaned forward towards the front of the SUV and tapped on the dark window separating them from Bonnie. The tight, white miniskirt around her waist accentuated her hourglass figure. Bonnie slid the window down.

“Whassup gurl?”

“Turn down the music,” Brandy said.

“What?” Bonnie asked.

Brandy leaned closer still and repeated the request into Bonnie’s ear, and then whispered something else. Bonnie nodded an “OK,” and lowered the volume, as the dark partition window hummed back up and Brandy moved back to where Evan was waiting.

“That’s better, now isn’t it, sexy eyes?” she said with a seductive smile.

“So what did you say your name was?”

“Brandy, to your cheap ass…But don’t worry: I still think you sexy.”

“OK Brandy…Hey listen, I’m not cheap – I mean, I don’t mind buying you drinks or taking you out to a nice dinner and a Broadway show…I’m just opposed to the idea of paying a woman for sex…”

“And whatchyu think buyin’ dinner and theater tickets is? That shit cost more than I charge for a blowjob.”

“You’re trying to tell me that when I take a woman out to dinner and the theater I’m paying for sex?”

“Look, if yo’ ho won’t fuck you unless you take her out to dinner and the theater, she makin’ you pay for that shit.” Brandy’s large brown eyes lit up with interest, as if she had spent many hours considering this issue. “I don’t care what you wanna call it, but that’s just another form of payment...Me personally, I prefer cash.”

“But I can’t just pay you cash. That would be paying for sex.”

“Well, what if you gave me all the money for our date upfront, so that I could pay for our dinner and theater date for you and me? ‘Cept that I wouldn’t spend no hundred and fifty dollas on no front row seat for me, and I wouldn’t eat no food at no five-star restaurant where they charge you forty dollas for a slice a cucumber’n shit? Instead, I just watch yo’ ass eatin’ forty-dolla cucumbers, and then I read about the play in a newspaper, so we could still talk about it after we fuck. How ‘bout that?”

“But that’s not the same thing. I mean, that’s not really a date then…That’s back to prostitution.”

“Don’t gimme that bullshit, fella.”

“My name’s Evan, by the way.”

“Evan, eh? That’s a pretty sexy name you got there, Evan…In fact, I think I’m goin’ call you Sexy Evan. Is that cool?”

“It’s cool,” Evan replied, amused.

“Aight…So lemme repeat my last point, Sexy Evan. You tryin’ sell me some serious bullshit. You know damn well that if you hit on me in some bar and I went straight home with you – without no date – then you wouldn’t think of that as prostitution.”

“No, that would be a huge score. But I wouldn’t be paying you the equivalent of a date afterwards.”

“So what if you just hit on me at some bar and we made out a bit, and then I told you that I wouldn’t sleep with yo’ ass unless you took me out on some really expensive dates? Caviar’n shit. ‘Cuz I’m old-fashioned and I need lotsa winin’ and dinin’ ‘n shit, befo’ I remove my panties fo’ anyone...And that if you wine and dine me for at least four dates, at one hundred dollas per date, then you was pretty likely to get some.”

“If I was really interested, I’d probably go for it.”

“You mean if I was a really-frickin’-fine-lookin’ woman, you’d probably go for it.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Well do you think I’m really frickin’ fine-lookin’?”

“I’d say you’re somewhere between frickin’ fine-lookin’ and really frickin’ fine-lookin’, which means that I’d probably hold out for three $100-dates, but not four.”

Brandy looked appalled at Evan’s qualified endorsement of her good looks: “In that case, you betta get yo’ cheap ugly ass the fuck out my car.” Brandy started to move towards the driver area, about to knock on the window to tell Bonnie to pull the SUV over, when Evan grabbed her arm and tried to save the situation.

“No, no. I’m sorry. I meant you’re really frickin’ fine. I just…I just…”

“You just what?!”

“I just didn’t want your good looks going to your head…Because…Well, because you already seem confident enough about the fact that you’re really frickin’ fine-lookin’ so there’s no need to dwell on that point.”

“Nah, nah, nah. You got somethin’ all wrong there, sweetheart. You can never say or understand that truth enough. So you need to repeat it again, after me: Brandy, you are the most really-frickin’-fine-lookin’ woman out there and I am thankin’ the lord that you still talkin’ to me at this moment…Say it.”

Evan had lost any hope of controlling the situation, and now felt bound to do as Brandy said.

“Brandy, you are the most really-frickin’-fine-lookin’ woman out there and I am thanking the lord that you’re still talking to me at this moment.”

“That’s what I thought…See, I was tryin’ to make a point, Sexy Evan. Don’t you understand that you was killin’ my point with that last ugly comment you made?”