BOB:
I think we're in tune with this whole sex business. I sense we're in tune. O sweet cliché! Third date's the money date. I feel your compliance – okay, you're eventual compliance. You are here, aren't you? You are waiting for me, in the other room, anticipating my arrival, with longing and desire. Or so it seems to me.
"Do you want olive or a lemon twist?"
"Lemon!"
Lemon? You want lemon? Never trust anyone he doesn't drink coffee or take a martini with a lemon peel, you said. Yes, you said so yourself. What is your meaning? Do I care about your meaning, I mean, more than I care about the moist and sloppy inside of your left cheek? O God! To slip my cockhead in there and nestle for eternity. To see your cheek bulging from my head, your eyes a picture of submission.
No wait, first I'll put an ice cube in that corner of your mouth, and then my head. Or should I put the ice on my head and then my head in that boiling pocket of flesh? Yes, it's that contrast thing. Wait... Or I'll ask you what you prefer? Maybe... In any case, I'll bring the shaker out to the den with me, filled with ice, and if it ever comes to pass that we need it . . . well, there it is, ready to go, ice for your mouth.
Oh, that isn't too obvious! A shaker-full of ice for no reason. Oh please, Bob, some originality.
Wait, I'll leave a little martini left over in the shaker. That's a plausible explanation for having the shaker with me.
But first I have to make the damn things.
"Oh what a happy sound! Ice rattling in cold stainless steel!" you say.
"I'm with you on that one, Wendy!"
"Show me a man who doesn't weep for joy at the sound of a martini being made and I'll show you a man who's not an alcoholic," you say, and I laugh, authentically.
You show true wit, more wit than I've come to expect from my partners. (I hope I'm not too presumptuous to call you "partner"...) You had me with your beauty, you don't need to add wit to the mix. If you do, I might fall in love with you.
To be honest, you had me when you were born into your gender.
Okay, I'm not that desperate.
Maybe I am.
No, I have some standards.
My point is that you're way way way above my minimum standards for indulging in the sex business. I mean that as a compliment.
You say, "Before you come out here with those drinks, Bob: If you can tell me the four non-secret botanicals that go into Tanqueray gin, I'll give you a kiss!"
"Ha! Being an experienced lush I know them quite well already! What are you you trying to tell me? That you're easy?"
And that, friends, is what the French call repartee. Words are the greatest foreplay. Talk, drink, talk, drink, drink, talk, she moistens . . . And then comes that magic moment when the talking finally and thankfully stops and is replaced by the sound of moist flesh smacking and mouths sucking and pained moaning and coarse breathing.
Oh for God's sake finish the fucking drinks and get out there, Bob! You are not going to seduce her from the kitchen. Take the lemon, wipe it on the rim of the glass. (I wonder if we could use this lemon peel later. Shall I run it around the rim of your mouth, followed immediately by my swollen cockhead? Will that be a scene that shall happen to me tonight?) Pour the gin.
"I hope this is worth the wait!" you say.
WENDY:
Your awkwardness is starting to annoy me. I thought it was cute for the first two and a half dates but now it's getting stale. Why are you afraid of me? Am I making a mistake? Why does it matter that I think you're afraid of me?
Because it makes me think you're a coward.
But am I choosing my life's mate here?
Far far from it. I'm not even sure if I'm choosing to spend the rest of the night here . . .
Okay, now you sit down on the same couch as me. You get a few points for that. (You don't how many times you've come so so close to me sliding out the door, leaving you to whack off through your tears.) But a few points deducted for making zero body contact with me. What are you? Haven't you the guts? I'm not going to touch you first, you know. Not that I'm afraid. I've unzipped men for far lesser provocation (not that anything you've done could be consider "provocation"). No, I'm not going to touch you, you need to prove me that you're not afraid.
"Cheers!" you say.
"Down the hatch," I say, trying to hide indifference.
The cold burning liquor, sliding down my throat, image of my confused desire.
"Charlie's wasn't too crowded for a Friday night," you say.
"The college kids are on break."
"Oh right."
Pause. Are we going to talk about some shit all night?
Wendy, ease up. He's a human being, suffering to make his way through this world. Besides, what does Wendy have to say?
Plenty, but not in words.
"When does the break end?" you say.
I'm not even going to answer that!
Before I fall asleep or leave, I think it's time to bring out the Grail.
BOB:
What are you pulling out of your purse? Is that a bowl—
"What is that?" I say.
"This is the Grail," you say. You place it in front of us on the coffee table.
"What the fuck is it?" I say. It is made of murky dark glass and shaped like a bowl, but one so shallow that it couldn't really hold anything. At the base is a thick glass column, raising the bowl a couple inches.
"It's just a really cool piece of glassware," you say. "I found it with great difficulty on the internet. I bought twenty of them."
"Why so many? What do you use it for?"
"You'll see," you say. "Or maybe you'll see. I'm not sure yet."
Was that a pass? What the fuck does the bowl have to do with anything?
WENDY:
Time to move things along.
Shall I shift my ass and touch my thigh to his shy quivering thigh? Naw, too pedestrian. How about the old . . . Yes . . .
I lift this foot here and rest this ankle across the opposite lower thigh. There. With this skirt length I am now flashing an imaginary point directly in front of the couch, showing a full frontal view of my black panty crotch (you can almost smell it). Unfortunately, Bob, you are off to the side of me and can't see the show. You are desperate to have your perceiving consciousness float to the front to that wondrous imaginary point in space where it could see, See the panty show, unabashedly, at its own horny leisure. And then, when the time is right, float your consciousness forward until it is lost within my skirt, and then the darkness of my vulva enfolds you. Oh you can smell it, can't you.
Ah, you peeked at me! I saw that! You looked at my ineptly crossed legs! Yes you did. There may be hope yet that this evening will turn out right. You peeked at my legs, and now you are in pain. And now you must do something about your pain. You so want to resolve your pain somewhere—anywhere—between my legs.
And then you say, "I heard that they used to run numbers out of Charlie's. I don't know if they do anymore."
Oh Christ.
BOB:
That was not an accident! This is no accident! No adult woman would ever cross her legs like that! Maybe an oblivious girl, but not a woman! Not even one wearing pants. Let alone one wearing a mid-thigh skirt.
Does this mean you want me? Could you want me? Could you?
What would be so unusual about that? I've slept with enough women. Enough have decided I wasn't that homely (though plenty did decide to pass over me).
You really need to work on your confidence issues, Bob, I often say to myself as I shave.
Focus, man. Once you break on through you'll be fine. But how to?
Just reach out and touch her cheek.
No, her thigh.
That's too forward.
Her cheek, unless that's too lame.
Don't make it too romantic. Convey more wretched desire, more animal-scented, slapping desire. If you touch her cheek you're setting yourself up for an hour-long, ball-busting, makeout session, followed by many silent and lonely jerk offs once she's left for the night. No, do something more. Don't just touch her thigh. Take it in your hand and squeeze it. Make yourself plain. Don't fear rejection.
"How is the martini?" I say.
"Good."
"Just good? Was it better than the two at Charlie's?"
That's a good point. If she wanted to "keep her honor" would she be drinking three martinis? Oh no, this girl's in play! Hey wait . . . Three martinis, three dates. And last date she had two martinis. Coincidence?
I say, "Charlie's were better because they were the first two of the night. The first are always better."
You taunt me, but playfully. I like that. I sense we could be real friends.
I want you so bad.
Bob, you just reach out and take her. What's the worse that can happen? She runs out of the building. So what. There will be others.
