Halloween

**Mom, don’t read this one**

I grab my phone out of the toilet and desperately suck the toilet water from its lower holes. I don’t even really think about the fact that I’m doing this in the moment, I don’t second guess my impulse to save my phone at any cost. The fact that I’ve pulled it out of a public toilet in a dive bar at 2am on Halloween night doesn’t really register.

Then I remember why I’m in the restroom in the first place and I try to mentally prepare for what’s to come. I put my phone on top of the toilet next to my purse which is still unzipped, it’s opening aimed at the water—the cause of the accident. I see that the lid to my lipstick is still floating in the bowl. I try not to think about the fact that my phone is probably dead. John the bartender enters and locks the door. He turns to me.

“I dropped my phone in the toilet,” I say, pointing to it, still wet beside my purse. As I point, I notice that my house key has landed in the no man’s land between the seat and the back of the toilet. I vow to remember to grab it later.

John doesn’t understand, or he doesn’t want to deal with this right now. He grabs my waist and pushes me up against the wall. We’re making out and his hand is up my dress and digging around inside my tights. That’s when I remember the bandages.

Earlier this morning I preemptively went to spinning class to “detox before retox,” as my instructor so eloquently put it. Not used to the incredible friction in my crotch area, I chafed something terrible and discovered later that the skin just inches from my outer labia was rubbed raw and actually peeling off in stinging sheets. I smeared on globs of Neosporin and bandaged the area. I vowed to not let any man anywhere near the region because all the bandages made it look like I had recently undergone labiaplasty. Not to mention additional rubbing would definitely hurt like hell. I decided my wounds would help me make better decisions, as I would have to weigh the man against the guaranteed pain involved in hooking up with him—would he be worth it? I didn’t consider as a real possibility that I would find myself in this dilemma with John. I just never imagined we would actually get to this point in our epic 11 month flirtation.

Earlier in the night, when I first arrive at the bar with my roommates in our matching understated yet elegant costumes of all black ensembles and masquerade masks, John greets me with a warm hug over the bar. I kiss his cheek and, when he says “Oh!” in a pleasantly surprised manner, I ask if I can have a real kiss later.

“I’m pretty sure you don’t get any more kisses,” he eyes me suggestively. I obviously know what he’s referring to—the last time I was here I went home with his brother. Why this trumps the fact that he still lives with his girlfriend, I'm not sure.

“Why?” I smile coyly.

“You know why,” says John. But he doesn’t look upset; he looks amused. I like this about him—he doesn’t seem to take it all too seriously. Underneath it all, he seems to understand that it’s just sex. Who cares that I fucked his brother and I still want to fuck him? He doesn’t slut shame me for it. He still wants me too. I find this incredibly hot.

I haven’t really been drinking lately so after a couple vodka sodas with a lemon and a lime (and a cherry that John adds without asking), I am completely hammered. I’m on the floor dirty dancing with a Jewish guy dressed as a Rasta. His dreadlocked hair keeps getting caught in my mask, so I take off my mask. I freak with the Rasta like I’m at a middle school dance, twerking my ass into his hips. He grabs my waist and tries to reach his hand into the top of my dress, grabbing at my boobs. I enjoy dancing with him—he’s fun and he can move (or at least I’m drunk enough, I think he can)—but I don’t want to fuck this guy and when he tries to kiss me, I hold my face away. When he tells me to come home with him to Pasadena, I laugh in his face and say, “Yeah, that’s not happening.”

I carry my friend’s vaporizer loaded up with weed to John at the bar and offer it to him. He takes it and puffs. I order a couple more drinks for my friends and “a shot of your choice” for John. I do this several times throughout the night but apparently he puts none of it on my tab because my bill comes out to $18 at the end of the night. When John hands me my drinks, I rub my fingers on his and we linger there for a moment. Later I make him lean in so I can tell him something and I lick his ear. Later still I suck on his fingers, which taste like lime. At some point, he declares, “You had sex with my brother.”

I say, “So? I like both you guys.”

He asks, “Was he good to you?” I think this is a classy question. Also kinky. I wonder not for the first time if these are the kind of Irish twins that would fuck the same girl in the same room at the same time. If this is a possibility, I need to do everything in my power to make it happen.

Suddenly, it’s 2am and the lights are coming on, the heavy metal designed to thin the crowd blasting out of the speakers. John comes around to sit in his usual spot at the bar to do the tip out on his computer. Naturally, I plop down next to him, and this is when things take a turn. I try to kiss him and he pushes his face into my neck and says, “I want to bury myself in you.” I try to get his number, asking if we can be friends. He says, “How am I supposed to be your friend when all I want is to fuck you?” I guess that’s a fair question. I can see that he’s struggling. He punches his number into my phone anyway.

He tells me I’m causing problems in his relationship. I tell him it’s not me. He doesn’t understand what I mean. I want to point out that if it weren’t me, it would be some other girl. He’s just not monogamous, at least not at this stage in his life. I decide not to get into it. Instead, I run my fingers down his back and along the top of his pants to the front. He grabs my hand and puts it on his fly. He’s hard. He reaches under my dress and grips my crotch.

“Now that just kills me.” He seems to be referring to the heat coming off me. He lifts his hand away from my crotch and runs it under his nose, along his lips. It's about this time that the DJ says, "This one's for you, John," and proceeds to play Britney Spears' Toxic.

John won’t kiss me but seems to want me to keep grabbing his dick. I guess because it’s under the bar and he thinks his coworkers aren’t seeing what’s going on between us. I ask, “Why can I do this but you won’t kiss me? Because it’s under the bar?” He nods. “So, do you want me to get under the bar and suck your dick?” I ask. He nods, slower this time. Wow, he actually thinks that we are being stealth enough to get away with this. I’m so drunk I actually consider it.

My friends are ready to hit the taco truck, so I bid John farewell. He looks disappointed, like he always does when I leave, and I want to say, “Make up your damn mind!”

“Do you need to go to the bathroom before you go?” He asks.

At first I don’t register what he’s really asking and I almost say no. Then I realize the meaning of this.

“Yes,” I answer and grab my purse. I march towards the restroom.

Inside, the first thing I do is put my purse down on top of the toilet, and then a couple seconds later register that I’ve dumped the entire contents into the toilet. I fish out my phone, lipstick, Altoids. Thinking at the time that all of these items are salvageable, even the mints. This is when I suck the toilet water out of my phone and immediately turn it off, remembering the advice I received the last time I dropped my phone in the toilet. That phone didn’t make it.

With John’s hand up my dress, I remember my bandages and I really don’t want to have to explain them to him. Instead, I move down and unbutton his jeans, squatting on the ground. I take his penis in my mouth. As I’m sucking on him, I reach into my tights and rip off the medical tape and gauze strips covering my outer vagina wounds. I drop these on the floor beside discarded bits of toilet paper.

Naturally, as I suck John’s dick, I can’t resist comparisons to his brother. I notice immediately that his brother was in much better physical shape and therefore (as is my experience) his dick got bigger and harder. John’s is hard but could probably be harder if he hadn’t been drinking so much. He’s been working long sweaty hours and there’s a faint smell of BO emanating from his nether regions. It’s not that bad and I don’t mind it. He’s smiling down at me in a very appreciative manner—that’s nice.

I’m not getting anywhere with his dick in my mouth, so I stand up and pull down my tights and underwear and turn away from him, putting my hands on the wall and pushing my ass into his crotch. I fumble for his penis, willing it to stay hard for just a little while longer.

“I can’t have sex with you without a condom,” he says in a moment of sudden clarity. I respect this decision, for his girlfriend’s sake. And because sex without condoms is a bad habit I need to stop. For some reason I haven’t brought one with me, probably because I really had no intention of bringing my vagina out tonight.

I lean with my back against the wall, underwear down, tit sticking out the top of my dress. John stands at the sink, staring at me and jerking off. He ravages me with his eyes. I can’t remember who decides we’re done here. Probably he says, “I should get back.” I pull up my underwear and tights but leave my tit out.

“Put that away,” he instructs before taking it in his mouth.

Then he’s gone. My roommate appears in the doorway.

“I just sucked John’s dick,” I declare. “And I dropped my phone in the toilet.”

It’s time to hit the taco truck.

After I order my nachos, I text John, “Hey John, it’s me. Let’s be friends.” With a winky face.

Him: “What”

Me: “What what”

Him: “Ok. Yes.”

Me: “Yes what?”

Him: “I don’t know”

“Our interactions are like a Pinter play,” I declare to my friends.

“What’s that?” They ask.

I tell my best friend Sadie about this experience and she asks why I want to fuck John. She thinks my story doesn’t sound very passion-driven and feels more like a challenge I’ve set for myself. She wonders if by fucking his brother, I simply upped the ante in this game of trying to fuck John—actually making it harder for myself, adding a new level to the game. I tell her I find the combination of John’s inability to have sex with me and his desire to do so incredibly hot. I wonder aloud if people who don’t know me would think my mission in life is to home wreck happy relationships. She doesn’t think so—she thinks it’s clear from my perspective on infidelity and monogamy that I don’t consider myself the cause of these men’s relationship problems. I’m a symptom.

Sadie says it sounds to her like I’m bored, that if there were anyone more exciting to come along, I wouldn’t be interested in John anymore.

“Well, of course. But isn’t that always the way it is? You mess around with people that aren’t the real thing until something more interesting comes along?”

She concedes this is probably true.

“If John said he was leaving his girlfriend and wanted to fuck you all the time, would you want that?” She asks. Probably not, but there are a thousand what ifs I could go through that have nothing to do with the actual situation.

“What will probably happen is it will turn out that John’s girlfriend is like your blog’s biggest fan.”

I laugh, “That’s what happens in the movie version of my life.”

“The brother will fall in love with you,” she goes on, “and you’ll fuck both of them and get pregnant and won’t know which one of theirs it is and you’ll all end up raising the baby together.”

I tell her about how I’ve made plans to see John’s brother over Thanksgiving when I’m up in the Bay Area visiting my parents.

“I wonder if he won’t want to see me anymore if John tells him I sucked his dick,” I muse.

She bursts out laughing.

“You are building yourself a fucking garbage fire.” Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am bored.