The Washingtonienne (8 page)

I remembered I had lied about having a boyfriend the day I got hired. I didn’t have one now, and I didn’t have one then. I had Fred and Phillip, but neither of them was my
boyfriend
per se. I wasn’t even sure what I would call them.

“I’m dating around,” I said.

“Dating around? What does that mean?”

I finished my drink in one swallow.

“That means I’m going home with you tonight,” I told him, “after we have another drink.”

I gave him my empty glass.

“I knew that you would be fun to hang out with,” he said before going back to the bar to get me another drink.

I guess he didn’t have to leave so soon after all.

“So did you want to fuck me the moment we met or what?” he asked when he returned.

I nearly spit out my wine.

“Oh,
whatever
! Speak for yourself!”

“You’re so
vivacious,
” he said, putting his hand on my thigh.

Vivacious?
It was a lame come-on, but yes, I suppose that I was.

“I can tell I’m going to have a lot of fun with you,” I told him as we left the bar.

Sure, I was going to fuck him. But there was no way in hell that I wanted to
sleep
with him. Like I would want to snuggle up to an arrogant douchebag who made $30K a year!

Chapter 13

I
t was hard to believe that Dan was thirty-five years old. He lived in a sparsely furnished studio apartment that looked more like a dorm room. (This was common among men who spent too much time at graduate school.) There were piles of dirty clothes everywhere, and no place to sit down except for on his bed. I suspected that Dan kept it this way to facilitate hookups like these.

Once I was on the bed, he turned the lights off and sat down next to me.

I started removing my clothes, putting an end to any pretense as to what we were doing here.

“I’ve been dreaming about this for months,” he said, climbing on top of me. “I’ve been wanting to do this ever since we met.”

“Really? I had no idea,” I lied.

We fucked missionary for a little while, but it didn’t seem to satisfy him. He flipped me over in the doggie position, and we did that for a few minutes. Then he did something very interesting: He slipped out of Door Number One and tried to sneak into Door Number Two.

So, the anal thing: Since when did it become de rigueur? I mean, for us heterosexuals? I guess we figure we have some catching up to do. If gay men did it all the time, I was determined to prove that I could take it like a man.

“If you want to do
that
, we’ll need lube,” I told him.

I sort of hoped that he didn’t have any so I’d have an excuse to deny access. But Dan was a single guy, so of course he had a bottle of Astroglide. And it looked like a new bottle, as though he had bought it in anticipation of such an event. (But if he was expecting company, why not tidy the apartment up a little?)

Of course, I had reservations about letting someone from work butt-fuck me, but if he was game, so was I.

But it wasn’t enough for Dan.

“Hey, let’s do it in front of the mirror,” he suggested.

I looked around the room.

“What mirror?”

“In the bathroom.”

At this point, why not? At least he kept his bathroom clean.

In front of the sink, leaning over, I noticed that he used a lot of hair and skincare products, even more than I did. And the way he kept looking at himself in the mirror while he fucked me, I could tell this guy was pretty damn narcissistic.

He finished, but I couldn’t be sure if it was
me
that did it for him, or if I was just there so he had something to fuck while he admired himself in the mirror. Either way, it was all pretty funny, and the girls were going to piss themselves laughing when I told them about it tomorrow.

The wine I drank at 201 hit me as soon as I lay down. Dan was fawning over me, stroking my hair, kissing the back of my neck. It would have been very romantic if I hadn’t felt so nauseated.

“I should leave,” I said, trying to get up.

“Don’t go, don’t go,” Dan said, holding me.

At the time, these sounded like the most beautiful words I had ever heard.

WHEN I CAME TO, DAN
was awake, still in bed with me. He had been watching me as I slept.

What a creep,
I thought.

“You’re pretty when you’re sleeping,” he told me.

And I’m ugly when I’m awake?

“Whatev,” I replied.

“Am I the first guy on the Hill that you’ve had sex with?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I lied. “Why do you ask?”

“How many people have you slept with?”

“Since I got here, or in my lifetime?”

“Lifetime.”

“Not that many. Like, eleven or twelve. What about you?”

“Six or seven.”

I started laughing.

“
Six or seven?
” I asked. “I hope you’re lying!”

“No, really,” he insisted. “I don’t sleep around.”

What world was he living in? Did he really want me to think that this was
special
for him or something? He obviously thought I was simple.

“Of those eleven or twelve guys that you’ve slept with, where do I rank?” he asked me. “Top five?”

“Jesus, I don’t know,” I replied. “What do you want me to say? That you’re the best I’ve ever had?”

Of course, I knew that was
exactly
what Dan wanted to hear. People had sex for two reasons:

1. To have an orgasm.

2. To hear someone say nice things to them.

He stretched himself out on the bed, showing off the huge morning hard-on that he had, as if it were so irresistible that I’d want to jump on top of him. I thought about it, but I started putting my clothes back on instead. I got more satisfaction from turning him down than I ever could from fucking him.

“Why are you getting dressed?” he asked.

“I have to get going,” I told him.

“No, you don’t,” he said, pulling me toward him.

I looked into his eyes.

He didn’t get it, did he? Did he really think that I would let myself be loved by a jerk like him?

“I really have to go,” I repeated. “I have stuff to do today.”

I backed away from the bed and finished getting dressed.

“I’ll see you around,” I said, leaving him alone in his slovenly apartment.

APRIL WAS UP DOING
laundry when I came home. I was secretly happy that Tom wasn’t here for once, so I could give her all the dirt on Dan.

But she was not amused by my story.

“That is so skanky,” was her indignant response.

“Oh, dude, do you care?” I asked her. “Don’t make me sorry that I told you.”

“Jackie, you really need to stop having sex with people who don’t care about you,” she sniffed.

“Well, it’s not as if I care about him, either,” I replied defensively. “I hardly even know the guy.”

“That’s exactly my point. I hope you know that Dan has a reputation for hooking up with interns in our office.”

“So I’m just one of the many Capitol Hill sluts who has jumped into bed with Dan,” I said. “What’s the big deal?”

“I’m just very disappointed in the both of you.”

April was acting pretty uppity for someone who let strangers put candy up her ass. Obviously, she was jealous that I got to fuck her crush before she did.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” I tried to explain. “Maybe if you had answered my Instant Messages yesterday afternoon, you would have cancelled your plans with Tom and hooked up with Dan yourself.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” April asked. “I didn’t have plans with Tom.”

“I told Dan to invite you out for drinks after work, but he told me that you had a previous engagement.”

“Dan never asked me out for drinks,” April said. “That asshole! I’m going to call him right now!”

“And tell him what? That you’re mad because he had sex with me? Please!”

She ignored me and dialed his number.

“He’s not picking up,” she said after a few rings and hung up without leaving a message.

Then
my
phone rang. It was Dan. I went outside to take the call so that April couldn’t overhear.

“I was just calling to make sure everything is okay,” he said. “April just tried to call me. Did you tell her anything about us?”

“She’s my roommate,” I reminded him.

“Look at it this way,” he said. “If you can’t keep a secret, what makes you think that anybody else can? I just don’t want any trouble at work. You know how people like to talk.”

He had a point. But why did everything have to be a secret? If Dan was worried about his reputation, he should have been more careful about who he took to bed with him.

I went back into the apartment to set things right with April.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked her. “I hope not, because Dan is not worth fighting over. I’m sorry I made out with him.”

“Forget about it,” she said. “You and Dan can do whatever you want. I have a boyfriend, and I shouldn’t have been crushing on other guys anyway. If you want him, you can have him.”

“Uh, thanks,” I replied, “but I don’t really want him, either. He just called me, talking about, ‘let’s keep it a secret.’ What a scrub.”

“Yeah, but you’ll still have to see him at work,” she reminded me.

Damn, I forgot about that.

“What if I run into him in the cafeteria, or in the hall?” I fretted. “What if he sees me talking to other boys?”

“What if you see him talking to other girls?” she asked.

It was junior high all over again.

BACK AT WORK ON
Monday, I e-mailed the story about Dan to Naomi and Diane in New York. I felt sort of weird about forcing this bullshit into their in-boxes, but they IM-ed me back with all sorts of questions about what happened.

Obviously, I wasn’t getting much work done. By the time we finished, it was almost noon. Time to go to the hotel to meet Fred.

Chapter 14

“I
don’t know if we can keep meeting here,” he said when I slipped into the elevator behind him. “I just saw someone from the office in the lobby. The son of a bitch asked me what I was doing here when he saw me checking in.”

“What was
he
doing here?” I asked. “Probably the same thing.”

“He was having lunch at the restaurant downstairs, actually.”

“So what did you tell him?”

“That I needed to take a nap.”

“Oh, that’s an awful excuse. You should have just told him the truth, if he thinks you’re up to something anyway. He probably would have been more impressed.”

Fred unlocked the door to our room and let me in ahead of him.

“Have you thought about getting your own apartment?” he asked. “It would be better if we could meet someplace private.”

I had wanted to get my own place ever since I moved to DC, but I could never save any money. Even with all the extra income that Fred provided, I never had more than a few hundred dollars in my bank account.

As I undressed, I told him about my money woes and my mean roommate who was making my life miserable. Then I turned on the tears.

“Just find a nice place, and I’ll write you a check,” he promised.

It worked every time. I didn’t even need to ask. I kissed and hugged him to show him how grateful I was, then he carried me over to the bed and took it out in trade.

Because I was worth it.

WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE
Locker Room, my officemates complained that my phone had been ringing nonstop while I was out. I checked my voice mail, but there was only one message. It was from Dan, who wanted to go out to lunch this afternoon, but he was too late.

The phone rang again, but I didn’t recognize the number on my caller ID, so I didn’t pick up. Following a hunch that I had, I looked up Dan’s number in the Senate directory, and it was a match.

He called back a few times that afternoon without leaving any messages. I guess he didn’t want to look desperate. Too bad he didn’t know that I had caller ID, so I knew how crazy about me he really was.

This went on all week long. (My officemates wanted to kill me.) I didn’t want to answer the phone because I didn’t know how to act toward Dan. At first, I thought that he only wanted to use me for sex, which was fine with me since the feeling was mutual. I mean, all that raunchy behavior sort of set the tone.

But what was up with all of these phone calls? Fuck buddies weren’t supposed to sweat you that hard. It seemed as though Dan might actually
like
me.

I DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO
figure this guy out, especially now that I was in the middle of an apartment search. I found a newly finished English basement near Eastern Market, clean and freshly painted, unlike all the other places I had seen. I was tired of looking at dumpy studios with dirty floors and ugly kitchen cabinets, so I took it right away, even though there was no way I could afford it on my own. But this pretty one-bedroom fit the lifestyle I imagined for myself so much better, and I had both Fred and Phillip wrapped around my pretty little finger.

Of course, I had terrible credit, so I convinced Phillip to sign the lease during one of our preintercourse cocktail hours at his place. Sure, he was drunk and horny, and it was probably wrong to take advantage of him the way I did, but if he really cared about me, he would have signed it anyway, right?

Moving was easy since I didn’t have any furniture of my own. Fred actually got away from his wife for a few hours to help me pick up my new bed in his SUV. He told her that he was playing eighteen holes up at Burning Bush that afternoon.

I guess that was why so many men took up golf: It gave them an excuse to get away from their wives and run errands with their girlfriends.

April didn’t know whether to be happy that I was finally moving out of her apartment or pissed that I was doing so on such short notice. Women! I don’t know how men put up with us.

Oh, that’s right:
sex.
Otherwise, what good were we?

“Maybe now that I’m moving out of your apartment, you can ask Tom to move in,” I suggested to April over lunch.

“Get this,” she said, “he says he’s going to propose ‘sometime this fall.’ How fucked up is that? I just want to get married, the sooner the better. I’m sick of being poor. I’m sick of sleeping around. I just want to get it over with.”

It was always frightening to hear somebody talk this way about marriage.
I just want to get it over with.
That’s what suicidal people would say. Marriage. Suicide. Same difference. Either way, you could say good-bye to your friend.

“If you’re in a hurry to get married, you should just get pregnant,” I offered. “And you know that Tom wouldn’t make you get an abortion because your senator is pro-life. Ha!”

April thought on this.

“Isn’t it incredible that women have so much power to utterly wreak havoc on men’s lives?” she marveled. “And men can’t do shit about it?”

“They can beat us up,” I said. “They’re bigger than we are.”

“Well, that’s what jail is for. But it’s not illegal to get pregnant and mess up someone’s life? There ought to be a law.”

“April, we’re in the right place. You should bring it up with your senator first thing when you get back to the office!”

“I’m serious, Jackie!”

I shrugged.

“Most of the men I know are totally oblivious, or else they would be more careful,” I told April. “They say and do things that you just
shouldn’t
say and do to a stranger. I don’t know if they’re crazy or lonely or what.”

“They think that you don’t have any power,” April surmised. “To them, you’re just an object.”

“An object?” I asked, getting up from the table. “Well, that’s
their
mistake.”

I had to get back to my desk in time to catch
Law & Order.
I hurried up the stairs and down the hall toward my office. Just then, I saw the senator step out of his office on his way to the gym, according to his official schedule. (He really went there just to take naps during the day.)

“Hi,” I said to him as we passed in the hallway.

He looked at me blankly and kept right on walking.

He could have at least nodded or something, but it was obvious that he had no idea who I was. I guess when Janet introduced us, all he saw was a new pair of tits.

I watched
L&O
and did some work until the office closed at six. On the way over to the Hart Building, some random dude from one of the committee offices tried to pick me up, but I already had plans for the night.

Dan was waiting for me under
Mountains and Clouds
in the atrium.

“Where are we going?” I asked him.

“Let’s go to your place. You live closer,” he said.

Well, why not? I had about six hours between the time I got off work and the time I went to sleep. What was I going to do with all that time? Call me crazy, but drinking and fucking seemed like a good way to pass the hours.

We stopped at a bar on the way to my apartment, so that Dan could feed me enough alcohol to get me in the mood. Sex was always so much more fun when I was drunk. Any freaky thing that the guy wanted to do seemed like a great idea, even breaking into the Senate offices to have sex on his desk.

“We could go there right now,” Dan said. “I have a key.”

What was it about sex in the office that men loved so much? I wondered how many staffers were sneaking into the buildings at night to get it on. All of us had keys, and there were so many rooms, so many desks. How could we
not
do it?

The Capitol Police let us into the Senate complex even though we were obviously up to no good. I stopped to examine the security log that Dan and I had signed in our most illegible penmanship. There were at least a dozen other people who probably had the same idea as we did. Some of them were still somewhere inside the Senate buildings, doing things in places they shouldn’t be, excited by the fear of getting caught.

Every sound we made seemed to echo throughout the entire building as we entered Dan’s office.

He switched on the fluorescent lights, and suddenly, it didn’t seem like such a sexy idea anymore.

“Damn. The senator’s door is locked,” Dan said, trying the knob.

He pulled a credit card from his wallet.

“You’re breaking and entering!” I said as he tried to card the lock.

The alcohol was wearing off and watching Dan try desperately to break into his senator’s office wasn’t exactly turning me on.

“Let’s go,” I said. “This is stupid.”

“Then let’s do it on my desk,” Dan suggested.

I looked over at his cramped cubicle, and there was nothing sexy about it. He had a Me Wall with a large photo of himself standing next to Janet Reno.

“Are you serious?” I asked. “Let’s just go back to my place.”

“Oh, come on, Jackie. You know you want to,” he said, backing me into the desk.

I rolled my eyes.

“No, I really don’t,” I said, pushing him off me, “and I’m a Taurus, so you can’t make me change my mind.”

He grabbed me by the waist and threw me over his desk.

“Dan! Stop it!” I shrieked, thrashing around beneath him. “Are you crazy?”

“Shhh,” he warned. “You don’t want this incident to end up on the front page of
Roll Call,
do you?”

I stopped struggling.

“That’s a good girl,” he said, unzipping his pants.

“I need to be drunk! I need lube!” I kept telling him.

“No you don’t,” he said. “Just relax.”

I took a deep breath.

“But it’s going to hurt,” I said, squirming.

“I want it to hurt,” he told me, spreading my ass cheeks apart. “I want you to feel every
vein.”

It was always interesting to give yourself over to a man and see what he would do with you, to see how far he would go, to find out just how nasty he really was. You learned a lot about a person this way. I would just watch guys do whatever freaky thing it was that got them off, and I would think to myself,
Whoa, this person is totally crazy.
And my next thought would be,
I can’t wait to tell the girls all about it!

On the way out of the building, one of the security guards asked us if we had a good time.

I asked the guard if he had ever caught anybody while they were doing it.

“Only once,” he told us.

“Did you arrest them?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” the guard replied. “I just said, ‘Excuse me, Senator’ and closed the door behind me.”

I rolled my eyes at Dan as we exited the building.

“Do you believe that story?” I asked him as we walked back to my place. “Would a senator be stupid enough to do something like that?”

“What about us? Are we stupid?” Dan asked.

“Yeah, but we’re not elected officials,” I reminded him.

“We could still lose our jobs if anyone found out about this.”

“What about that security guard?” I asked. “What’s stopping him from blackmailing us or something?”

“That guy isn’t looking for trouble. He just wants to get his paycheck and go home at the end of the day.”

“And you’re counting on that?” I asked. “What if he’s some evil genius?”

“Then he wouldn’t be working as a security guard,” Dan tittered.

“And he wouldn’t be wasting his time trying to hustle a no-money bum like you,” I said only half-joking. “He’d stick to catching congressmen with their pants down if he wanted to cash out of here.”

“For your information, I’m looking for a job,” Dan told me as we rounded the corner on Pennsylvania Avenue. “I can double or triple my salary on K Street.”

“Really?” I asked. “You’re leaving the Hill?”

“I’ve been here long enough,” he replied. “It’s time to start making big money in the private sector.”

With these magic words, Dan suddenly became potential boyfriend material. If not, at least he would be gone soon. No more awkward moments running into him on the Senate campus.