It happens again, like it always does.
I'm in the checkout line at the corner store. I walked here, I'm in a hurry, my arms are already aching in anticipation of carrying the bags all the way home. I've set my basket down next to my battered Chucks.
A guy just ahead of me in line glances back at me, a few too many times.
Here it comes.
"Are you single?"
Okay. Let me fill in some details.
First off, I'm petite, pale, and muscular. My hips are small, my ass is small, my tits are non-existent. I have wavy brunette hair that conceals buzzed sides, which are getting a little shaggy lately.
I'm pushing 40, but people typically underestimate my age by at least 10 years. The compliment I get most often is "cute."
It's a balmy mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve in Southern California. I left the house in a string bikini top, as I often do when the breeze is warm. The cups are small--just enough coverage to keep me decent.
The rest of me is plunged into combat fatigue pants that are a little too big for me. They ride low-slung around my hips. The wide waistband of tomboy-style boxer briefs peeks an inch or two over the top.
I didn't forget to wear my Santa hat, either. 'Tis the season.
There's something deep within the brain of the clueless straight guy that treats bare skin as an open invitation. Which is the situation I currently find myself in.
"Are you single?"
He's not bad-looking. A smallish guy, young, slender in that way that's easy for guys before they hit 30. I'd have pegged him for a twink if he weren't wearing a wifebeater and basketball shorts.
"I have a girlfriend," I say. My usual prepared answer, and it isn't a lie.
"Oh," he says, sheepish. Then, "Sorry, I didn't know."
Weird that my sexual preference is something that he should have to apologize for, but at least it seems to get his mind off me and back onto the middle distance immediately in front of him.
If I weren't scrupulously trying to avoid conversation with him, I'd ask him when he last went in for an eye exam.
I mean, come on. Look at me.
I used to just tell guys I wasn't interested, but it never seemed to work as well as telling them that I wasn't straight and-or that I was already spoken for. Go figure.
He checks out with his groceries and heads for the door. I hoist my basket and start putting items on the belt.
The cashier is adorable--maybe 20, 25 at the oldest--with short hair that she's dyed red and swept to one side. She has a septum piercing that she's hidden by flipping up inside her nose. Her nails are short.
She takes one look at me and gives me The Nod. I give her The Nod back.
A minute later, I step outside, two straining grocery bags in each hand. In one of the bags is the receipt, which, I'll discover later, has the cashier's number written on the back.
(I may give her a call. I'm not single... but I'm not exactly taken, either.)
The guy in the wifebeater is between me and the crosswalk that will take me home. He looks like he's waiting for a ride.
I'm in the middle of planning an alternate route, which will probably take me about half a mile out of my way, when he notices me standing there.
"Sorry again about earlier," he calls over to me.
Fuck.
Okay.
I walk up to him, fully intending to have this over with in 10 seconds so I can be on my merry way.
"No worries," I say. "Happens all the time."
"I bet," he says.
I start to say, "Well, see ya." The words nearly make it out of my mouth before he starts to talk again.
"I'm Ty," he says.
"I'm Carol," I say. I immediately regret it.
"Like a Christmas carol," he says, smirking.
Damn it.
I should have just shut him down. I'm too nice to people, I'm a pushover, I'm--
He says, "I know how it is. Some of my friends are lesbians."
What I should say is:
"Good for them. Well, see ya."
What I actually say is:
"I mean, I'm not technically a lesbian, per se."
The kicker is, as I say this, I'm putting the bags down.
Right there on the pavement, I put them right the fuck down.
His eyebrows go up. "Really?"
"I have a girlfriend, but neither one of us really identifies as a lesbian. It's a little too rigid a category for how we see ourselves..."
(I can hear myself explaining this to him, faintly, over the sound of me screaming at myself inside my own head.)
He looks politely interested, but his eyes are salacious.
There's a very specific look that straight men get, in the precise moment when their brain makes the leap from
"This woman has sex with men and women."
to
"This woman might have sex with me and another woman at the same time."
I'm sure he's fantasizing about this now, even as he talks to me. And I'm sure his fantasy bears zero resemblance to what it would actually be like if I brought him home to Sheryl for a threeway.
...Oh shit.
Sheryl.
FUCK.
"So, Ty," I begin, very nonchalant.
So, Ty, I was supposed to pick up Sheryl's Christmas present and I completely forgot. So, Ty, the store's been closed for about 15 minutes now, and I didn't even think about it while I dawdled all day.
So, Ty--
"--Why don't you come over? My girlfriend could probably explain it better than I could."
The invitation is clumsy and transparent.
But, even as I'm kicking myself for the brilliance of my fuckup, I know what's going through his head.
Sheryl has intimated to me several times recently that it's been too long since our last threesome. ("I have a hankering," she'd say.) In the absence of a proper gift, I'm going to have to improvise.
It looks like today is Ty's lucky day. All his dreams, straitjacketed as they are by bad pornography, are about to come true.
I'll just have to make it look like I planned it.
With a minimum of small talk, I manage to get him home to the small bungalow that Sheryl and I rent.
When I open the door, he sees Sheryl standing at the other side of the foyer, and his face falls.
Sheryl is about 5'11" barefoot. Taller than Ty, much taller than me, Latinx, covered in tattoos and piercings, her hair dyed dark purple, almost black. She's a fat hourglass with big tits and a wide ass.
Today, she's wearing a sleeveless floral sundress with a deep V-neck that plunges all the way to her deep navel. It puts the pendulousness of her breasts and the stretch marks on her belly on proud display.
The first time I ever saw Sheryl, from across the room at a party, my second thought was that I'd fallen in love. My first thought was that I wanted her hands inside my body immediately.
She looks like she just finished doing something in a hurry. Something present-related, no doubt.
"Hey, babe," I say, "I brought you something."
I can almost feel the wheels turning inside Ty's head.