Recently, I went out to lunch with my best friend Carrie. I'd been very sick for a long time, incapacitated with a nearly fatal tropical virus (long story) and this was the first time I'd been out in over a month. As always with Carrie, the conversation eventually came around to sex. The question of my "number" came up, how many guys I'd been with. Carrie announced proudly that she had just passed sixty.
"How do you even keep track of that many?" I asked.
"I keep a diary," she said. "I've written down every sexual encounter I've had since . . ." She smiled coyly at this point, but I knew that she had been an early starter.
I did some quick calculating. "Do blow-jobs count?" I asked.
"I count them as half," Carrie said. "But, you know, you have to come up with your own system."
So after some deliberation, I said: "Five."
"Five?" Carrie said incredulously. "Bullshit. I know you've been with more than five guys."
"You said I could come up with my own system," I said.
"OK," Carrie said. "Who are your five?"
"Number one, Jerry," I said.
"A.K.A. dickhead," Carrie put in. She'd never liked my first boyfriend.
"I wasn't sure if I should count him, since we never actually had real sex, only anal."
"I count anal twice," Carrie noted.
"Number two, Tom Petty."
Carrie laughed. "That was fun." She and I had been groupies for one night, meeting Mr. Petty and his Heartbreakers in a hotel room. Tom Petty was actually the one to technically deflower me.
"Number three, all those guys I slept with before I met Will."
"You can't lump them together as one," Carrie protested.
"Why not?" I said. "I barely remember their names, they all blur together when I think about them, and all told they equal about one good man."
"Cheater," Carrie scoffed.
"Number four is Will," I said, smiling as I thought of him. Will, with whom I finally understood the phrase "making love."
"OK," Carrie said. "Then who's five?"
Lucius. My demon lover. Or ghost, or zombie, or whatever the hell he was. Probably just a figment of my imagination, but I had to count him. He gave me the best fuck I'd ever had. I couldn't really tell Carrie about it, though, despite the fact that I could have told her just about anything else. Not only would she have thought I was crazy, I doubted I could have put it into words that she could have understood.
"I counted Will twice," I said.
"Oh, please," Carrie said, disgusted. "He hardly touches you. Or has that changed?"
I shook my head sadly. I had complained to Carrie many times about Will's frustrating lack of libido. She had suggested several strategies to overcome this, but so far none had paid off. So we went off on that tangent for a while. Carrie thought Will was gay, as she could see no other explanation for his refusal to give me the sexual attention which Carrie truly believed was mine by rights.
"He's not gay," I said. Of that, at least, I was reasonably certain.
"It's criminal," she shook her head sadly. "A young, hot, sexy woman like you, wasted."
That was when Carrie came up with the idea of a Vegas get-away, just the two of us. I warmed up to the idea quickly. After my long convalescence, I felt like getting out and having some fun.
"Who knows?" Carrie said. "Maybe we can hook you up with some young casino stud."
"I'm not going to cheat on Will," I stated firmly.
"It's not cheating if he doesn't give you what you need," Carrie said. "Besides, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."
"I thought that was Mexico."
"Whatever," Carrie said. "Go home and start packing. We're leaving Friday night."
When we arrived in the fabled city late Friday, I was a bit dismayed to learn that Carrie had booked us in a rather seedy motel located very far off The Strip. I'm sure this had to do with the fact that she insisted on paying for half of everything. When I told Will that I wanted to go to Vegas, he went to the bank and drew out a thousand dollars in traveler's checks, then gave me his Platinum credit card in case that wasn't enough. Carrie, on the other hand, had to dip into the meager savings she had accumulated with her waitressing tips. I wouldn't have minded paying for the room, at least, but for Carrie it was a matter of pride. Which was how we ended up at the E-Z Rest.
We were lugging our luggage up onto the second floor balcony when we saw two teen-age boys lingering before one of the rooms. They started guiltily when they saw us coming and hurried away, so of course we had to stop in front of the room and see what it was that had caught their attention.
The curtain was drawn back on the window, and all the lights in the room were on. Laying on the bed, her back to us, was a young woman, asleep, wearing only a pair of sheer yellow panties.
"Holy shit," Carrie said.
We could see the woman's ass clearly through the nearly transparent material, and with the way she was laying, also the side of one naked breast. Her face was buried in a pillow, so all we could see there was a tangle of black hair, but she did have a nice body. Seeing her exposed like that was both unsettling and more than a little arousing. I felt guilty for staring, but at the same time could not drag myself away. That is, until a man appeared behind us carrying an ice bucket.
"Enjoying the show?" he said to us, smiling ghoulishly, then went into the room and pulled the curtains closed.
Shaking my head in disgust, I made my way down the row to our room.
"That guy deliberately pulled the curtain open so people walking by would check out his wife," I said once we were inside. I was absolutely appalled.
"Yeah," Carrie laughed. "I think you're right."
"That's disgusting."
