Last month, at the party, the Year's Last Virgin had failed in his attempts to have sex with Carol. Could an encounter with a haunted TV from the Twilight Zone alter history...?
Electro rhythms pulse up through the floor. They vibrate the bed softly. And the crumpled duvet and mound of coats that rock in warm drunken waves of darkness. And Carol. Mounting her is like sinking into an airbed of warm flesh. She's grinning up at me like some kind of challenge, short skirt hitched up somewhere around her waist, as though she's simultaneously trying to get out of it, or trying to get back into it, bare legs spread as I fumble between them stupidly. The sound stops abruptly. A muted drift of conversation from the party filters through whoever's bedroom this is. I try to kiss her – girls expect that sort of thing, don't they? But she doesn't seem too interested. 'Put it in' she teases, 'put it in.' Sensations crawl up and down my spine as I shift around. A surge of alcohol canting in the back of my brain, transmitting a tingle of anticipation to where my quivering penis bobs out bare and eager between my shirt-tails.
The music resumes, a slightly different rhythmic throb, one that matches my own accelerating sexual momentum. I hold my breath desperately, bite my lip as it begins. 'Come on' she hisses in growing impatience, 'put it in.' And the first thermonuclear-storm hits my gut, the first spurt of orgasm, gushing white fluid spasming wildly across her fluffed-up pubic hair and soft white belly. Gooey strands of festive Silly-String bursting prematurely. 'You dirty sod... you dirty sod... you dirty sod...'
Her voice repeats in his head like a looped sample on a Dance track. The same accusation. The same disgust as she wriggles away from him, and he's wiping and apologising, wiping and apologising. Premature Ejaculation – hell, that's the kind of thing that takes all the poetry and romance and tenderness out of shagging the arse off someone. He stalks up and down his flat trying to drive the memory away. But it persists. It haunts like a ghost of Christmas Parties Past. The TV is dead. His room is drab. He crosses to the sideboard beneath the bookshelves and scattered DVDs, and hefts a can. Genuine German Lager. He slumps down deep into the couch. It should all have been different. It should all have been better. He rips the ring-pull back and it foams up in spurts of white fluid.
One month ago tonight, at college. They'd quit the Night-Class Computer Course for Xmas recess, and drifted down to 'The Tiger' in the Old Town. From high-brow to Lowenbrau. He had nothing better to do, and when someone mentions a party, an open invitation, he goes along for no particular reason. He seldom gets a party invite. The year's last virgin. The city's last virgin? Probably. He's seen photographs and facsimiles. Books and magazines full of it. Milan Kundera, Charles Baudelaire, Georges Bataille, Henry Miller. He's seen films and blu-rays – Nagisa Oshima's 'The Realm Of The Senses' (1976), Luis Buñuel's 'Diary Of A Chambermaid' (1964), Béatrice Dalle in 'Betty Blue' (1986), and 'Nine-And-A-Half Weeks' (1986). But sex is touch and taste too. Love and sex and eroticism and desire and sweaty bodies stuck together in lust too. There's nothing like actually DOING it. Nothing like actually having a proper wriggle in the naughty naked nude with a greedy sexable nymphet.
So why can't he achieve that squelchy moist reality? Gangly-tall and greasy-dark, acne like meteor impact craters, but not too bad looking, surely? He studies his face in the mirror, looking for clues. The night was sharp and cold as they gang-scrunch down the row of terraced houses towards the party address. The thump of electro-beats audible a street away. He's nervous and awkward already. The house is crazy with people. A shag-fest of erotic alchemy. Festive? Humbuggery! Once inside he hangs around feeling conspicuous, studies the array of CDs defensively, reading and rereading the liner-notes while the rest of the class dissolve into the girls and the booze.
And then there's Carol...
He curses and slurps viciously from the can. Another stupid month gone by. And still the city's last virgin.
He thumbs the remote and the TV fades up into... a Game Show. The prompted laughter ripples artificially at each of the slick Host's well-scripted innuendos. The girl contestant smiles up coyly at her live-in lover. He looks back deep into her eyes. Layering her soul-naked in their shared intimacy. He hits the button. A wildlife documentary. Turtles flip and shimmer across a white beach into a crystal-blue tide. Undulating down through swaying fronds of weird weed, ugly rainbow fish and Disney castles of coral. Two of them touch tender flippers and nuzzle snub snouts. Curling around each other in some spiralling aquatic mating ritual. He hits the button so hard his index finger hurts. The screen is dark and mottled. Which button did he select? What channel is this? The red LCD says '888'. It separates out slowly. There shouldn't even be a station tuned in here.
He pulls a long self-indulgent mouthful of amber fluid from the can and thinks dull thoughts. This must be some new digital station he's picked up by accident. A programme beamed in from somewhere just south of Saturn. He applies pressure to the volume control. A soundtrack of edgy electro rhythms that pulse through warm drunken waves of darkness. A bedroom of heaving shadows that sprawl across a mound of coats and a crumpled duvet on a bed that vibrates softly. He watches in dumb incomprehension. His crotch crawls in prickly anticipation. He runs through the channels again just to be sure. The Game Show. Copulating turtles. American football. The Minister for the Environment attempting to explain away the latest eco-disaster toxic-spill. Then channel eight-eight-eight again... and that same bedroom. That same party.
He watches intensely. His palms moist with sweaty arousal. The drab room around him becomes less distinct as he concentrates his attention obsessively on the expanding screen which draws him in like heavy heavy gravity.
