I need his cock, perhaps more than I've needed anything recently. My fingers fumble at his belt. I don't waste time on cursing the delay. I force myself to take a deep breath and focus on slowing the pounding of my heart. I press my mouth to the front of his pants and blow my hot breath through the thin linen to distract him. When I reach for his belt again my hands still tremble but they're capable of unfastening his belt buckle.
***
I'd enter the club with no real expectation of satisfying the lust that had been building for weeks now. The man I had been sure was the "one" had turned out to be the "one" for the woman he had neglected to mention he was married to. There is no drearier place to be depressed and, as I'd tried to convince myself, heartbroken, than Milwaukee in January. I had plenty of vacation time. I took a week of it and search the internet for a cheap hotel room some place warm. I'd packed my bag and a few hours later, with surprisingly few airline-induced irritations, I stepped off the plane in St. Maarten. There'd been a bit of a wait at the rental car counter but the hotel wasn't too far away. I'd been checked in and was on the beach sipping my first martini before the sun went down last night.
I'd spent today, back on the beach, reviewing the romantic disasters of the past two-and-a-half years. Unfortunately, the one constant in all of them had been me. It hadn't matter if I'd met the guy at work, one, or online, two, the result had been the same. Thank God, I'd only fallen for one married asshole's bullshit. I tried to push it all away but not even the sun, water and a few more martinis proved to be enough to distract me from the utter desolation that was my love life. It was while lying there, telling myself no more martinis before dinner, that I decided what I needed to do was to forget romance, tell romance to fuck off, to kiss my ass and die. What I needed was some dick and to get laid.
That's how I ended up at the club.
***
I'd taken a seat at the bar and ordered a martini. I almost left when the bartender, extremely attractive with amazingly blue eyes, asked if I wanted gin or vodka. A martini is made with gin, not vodka or apple or chocolate; it's made with gin and a bit of vermouth and olives. The blue eyes and dazzlingly smile undid my irritation at the question and I simply ordered a gin martini made with a local gin I was assured I'd love. It came and I sipped it, turned now toward the dance floor. I rarely dance. It occurred to me as I munched on the last olive that that fact was probably a large part of why I rarely went to clubs.
I ordered the tuna poke and another martini and went back to wondering how it was that some people could move their bodies and not look like they were having a seizure and others of us were reduced to sitting on the sidelines pondering such mysteries.
"How's the poke? More importantly, how's the martini?"
I had to swivel to look at my questioner. He appeared to be roughly my age. His hair was cropped short and based on his four- or five-day growth of beard, dark. His eyes where hazel. He wore the loose shirt and linen pants as if they were his standard uniform. He smiled at my frank appraising stare.
"Martini is quite good and the poke, excellent."
"Not to be rude but I'm very picky about my martini's, might I try a sip of yours?"
I slide the glass toward him. He picked it up and took a sip, watching my eyes the entire time. I stared back, doing my best to give nothing away, though my heart rate had already kicked up a notch. I was out of practice, not that I'd ever been very good when it came to the bar scene, which explains the online dating fiascos. I reminded myself that it would be hard for this to go any worse than those encounters and that it would behoove me to fucking relax.
He took another sip and motioned to the bartender. "Two more martinis and another poke, please." He turned to me. "You're right. The martini is good. I'll trust you on the poke." He smiled. "You've passed the first test."
"I didn't realize this was an examination," I retorted.
"Isn't every interaction between people an examination?"
I shrugged one shoulder. "That's a somewhat dreary view, isn't it?"
"Not at all. It's simply practical." His smile widened. "Let's flip the question around. If I had been sitting here, drinking, say a daiquiri with an umbrella in it, would you have talked to me?"
"Probably not," I admitted. "On the other hand, I might not have spoken regardless of what you were drinking."
"That's harsh. Am I that unattractive to you?"
"What? No, that's not what I meant," I stammered, feeling more inept by the second. "No, you are exceedingly attractive. I meant I tend to be too introverted to approach men at bars."
