The Ex-Mermaid: Maria's story.
Author's Note, this is a retelling of the events of the first two chapters of "The Halloween Party" from the female protagonist's side. It has a ton of back-story because, like Maria, I'm an over-thinker. And she's nervous about getting to the sex part. Hang in there, I hope to make it worth your while. The naughty bits will be more intense and frequent as things continue, as so often happens. But Maria has a very busy internal monologue. If that turns you off, sorry. If that turns you on, good. And if it makes you think Maria needs a shrink, well, probably.
Continuity purists: I tried to make the sequence of events the same. There's one change i made deliberately, for narrative reasons. if you find something jarringly distracting, that might be it. Any other continuity lapses can be chalked up to memories being variable.
Writing a different perspective, but making the dialog and events match up, was a fun challenge. Maria is a pretty interesting character.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gawd, they were at it again. I could hear the moans and groans all the way down the hall and through two closed doors. Bill and Abby seemed to have a ton of loud sex. Most of the time, I'd just put on some headphones and watch Netflix on my laptop. Tonight, though, there wasn't anything I was interested in watching so I just sat up in bed, streamed some music, and picked up my book.
After trying to read a few pages, I found I wasn't listening to the music so much as trying to listen around it. I took off the headphones (I can't stand earbuds, they just feel icky to me) and opened my laptop again - but this time, instead of Netflix, I went to a site that publishes racy stories. Most of them were way more hardcore or just weird than I wanted, but the site had a category called "Exhibitionism and Voyeurs" that seemed right for the moment. I slid a hand into my pajama t-shirt and traced gently around a nipple. I was already getting excited from the x-rated sounds, and the story of a girl playing with herself while spying on people screwing seemed to fit my mood.
The story was pretty good, and gave me some mental images to go with Abby's cries. I slid my hand down into my panties and began to stroke myself. Sometimes I wished I could trade places with the people in these stories. More rarely I fantasized about watching my roommates, who were having a pretty good time from the sound of things. I had tried watching porno. Sometimes it got me going, but it was mostly too degrading to women to get me turned on. The videos seemed to be mainly aimed at men, and the girls in them were made up like Barbie dolls.
I could feel my vagina getting more wet and slippery, so I dipped a finger in and started massaging around my clit, with more sliding now that I was lubricated. I was getting going pretty well, imagining I was the woman in my story. She was on her apartment balcony in the dark, and across the courtyard a couple was making love with the lights on and the curtain open. The description in the story and the sounds from Abby and Bill's room meshed together, and I found my peak pretty quickly.
The next morning I was microwaving some oatmeal when Abby came down. "Good morning, Maria. How's it going?"
"Abby, you two were a little loud-"
"Oh my god I'm so sorry! I hope we didn't bother you too much."
"Ummm... actually, no. Usually I just put on my headphones and ignore it."
"What do you mean, 'usually'?", asked Abby with a grin that was immediately replaced by a blush.
"Last night, listening to you guys, I got kind of worked up and - "
"Whoa! Stop right there. It's fine, it's normal when you are alone and horny. But we need to get you a boyfriend."
"Fat chance. I have size-A tits, barely more hips than a boy, and I'm shy. Plus I'm a virgin anyway. I'm going to be twenty-five in a couple months and it feels like I might never have a boyfriend."
"Oh, Maria, you will. You're smart and funny and sweet, and your hair is so adorable. Somebody will come along who cares more about brains than boobs."
"Maybe. But I don't ever go out on dates and I don't get to meet many guys at work."
"I know a few pretty nice guys. A couple from work but more from school. Some of them are Bill's good friends from Adamson. All nice guys. So would you like me to introduce you?"
"That seems like the Matchmaker from 'Fiddler on the Roof'", I said. I'd been a peasant girl in a high school production, which had gotten me my first boyfriend, Brandon, another peasant in the ensemble choir. Unfortunately, after six months of hanging out and holding hands, we hadn't even gotten to first base. As it turns out, he was gay and closeted. He came out during college and is now happily partnered.
"'Find me a find, catch me a catch'", Abby sang. "Look, everybody gets introduced somehow. I'm so grateful to my friend Cathy for setting me up with Bill. If you're interested, I can try to organize something."
"Oh, god, I'd be mortified if you just said 'here, you two, you should date'. I'd feel... too chosen, sort of?" The last thing I wanted was a pity date, or to be displayed like a sales sample.
"Okay, okay, I'll back off. But there are nice guys out there, and if you want to meet my single guy friends I can help you out." Abby patted my hand comfortingly. "And it's not a big deal if you are still a virgin. Sex is great with the right person, and Bill is that person for me."
"Maybe I'll find out someday. But how can you be so lucky, with millions of single men in the world, to find The One already?"
"Look, that's the wrong attitude Maria. You don't just find the one man in the whole world destined for you. There are lots of guys you might find attractive, there are lots of guys who will find you attractive. Take the overlap of those groups. Within that, there will be people you like to talk to and people you don't. And further on, you can begin to see if sexual desire begins to work its magic."
"That makes some sense. Hearts are for pumping blood, brains are what matters." I was, I guess, willing to talk to a few guys if Abby knew and trusted them.
"Well, brains important but they aren't the only thing. Bill is caring and kind, plus he has a really big-"
"Shut up! I do not need to know any more about my housemates' sex life than I already do." With that slip I blushed hard.
Abby just looked at me blankly, then smiled guiltily. "Again, sorry for disturbing you last night. Hope we didn't keep you awake."
"Umm, no, I... I kind of... liked listening." My blood was rushing to my face until I thought I'd burst into flames.
"Wow. I don't know whether to be complimented or offended. I guess I will go with complimented. But if we ever do bother you too much, it's OK to say something later, or even come knock if we're too annoying."
I had no idea how to respond and I was mortified, so I finished my oatmeal and got ready to go to my boring office job. But all day, Abby's take on meeting a partner percolated in the back of my mind. And so did the thought that the ecstatic cries she made would certainly be more fun if I was feeling what she was, not just hearing it. Like that would ever happen, I told myself.
--------
A few days later, I sat down with Abby and a bottle of wine. Bill was off watching some dumb superhero movie with his man friends, so we'd be alone for at least another couple hours, longer if they went for beers afterwards. I had made a decision.
"Abby, I've been thinking about what you said. You're right, there has to be more than one man, among the four billion male humans on this planet, who might be right for me. And I want to meet some men who can at least check the attractive and fun-to-talk-to boxes. But I don't want a blind date or something - that seems like artificial pressure."
"Bill's been talking about a Halloween party. Knowing him, his plan would be a case of beer and a couple bags of chips, plus a few of his friends, watching slasher movies on TV. That's a good start but we can do better with some feminine organizing. Would you be up for it?"
"I guess so, Abby, but if you want to invite guys I might like please do me a favor and don't point them out to me, or me to them. I need it to be almost natural."
"Done. We have three weeks to plan. Can you come up with a list of people you want to invite?" That idea worked for me. I knew my old theater pal Brandon would be game for a costume party, so he and his boyfriend were first on my list. There were only boring older married people at my job, no co-workers were going to be in the picture. Anyway, they'd mostly be taking their kids out for trick-or-treats, or staying home to dish out candy. I could probably think of a few more people, though.
--
A week and a half before the party, I still had two problems. The first, and simpler, was a costume. I wanted to be a little more risqué than usual, but I wasn't about to pay good money for a crappy polyester "Slutty Whatever" costume.
The big problem was that I was going to be a quarter of a century old in exactly one month, and I was determined that I'd have sex before then. The thought excited me and terrified me in almost equal proportions. My childhood and adolescence had not raised me sex-positive. When I got my period, Mom called it "the Curse of Eve" and told me that I needed to keep my legs together at all times. I had no idea what she was talking about until a few years later, when I began hanging around with Brandon from theater. After our second "date", Mom told me we needed to have The Talk. I didn't know much beyond the basic biology and what I learned in "Girl's Health" class in fifth grade. What she said about how miserable she was during her pregnancy, and the thirty hours of labor she had before the C-section that produced me, was scary as hell. And there was no discussion of the emotions or the physical sensations that accompanied sex.
The physical sensations I more or less figured out in my own teenage way, as I explored the newly growing hair at my crotch and the new sensitivity of my not-very-developing breasts. It wasn't until I got out of the house and went off to the university that I ever even saw my first live penis, and that was on a passed-out-drunk fraternity pledge who had been stripped naked and left in a lawn chair outside the Phi Rho house. Not exactly lust-inducing. I had few dates, which mostly were duds, and only two of which even led to a kiss.
It was Judy Blume and the like who had first given words to the hormonal and social turmoil I felt in adolescence. Later, romance novels hinted to me that wary indifference was not the only appropriate response to the male sex. I realized after a year of reading one or two a week that (a) you could guess how explicit the books were by the amount of skin on the cover, and (b) the emotions in them were almost as cartoonish as the sex part was in pornography. Yeah, of course I knew about porn. You can't be on the internet in the 21st century without at least a possibility of seeing porn, especially if your parents won't explain certain things that you then have to find online.
