I closed the front door behind me and leaned back with a sigh. Another date with another loser. Sean had seemed promising at first -- a handsome student assistant from the university bookstore with warm, caring eyes. He had been the one to ask me out (as I never could quite seem to get the guts to make the first move with anyone) and I'd been looking forward to the date all week.
The night had started out well as we caught an early movie. If we had parted ways after that, perhaps I would have agreed to a second date. But instead, we made the fateful decision to go to dinner. Big mistake.
It was at dinner that I realized that the only reason the movie was the best part of the date was because he didn't have a chance to open his mouth. Over appetizers he went over his entire high school football career as a varsity quarterback, the salad course conversation covered his famed debate team (he was captain of course), and the entrées were accompanied by a large side dish of "I was prom king and was banging the head cheerleader."
By dessert, it was obvious that the jerk was never going to ask a thing about me and that he was pathetically stuck in high school. I couldn't wait to get out. Worst of all, when I politely offered to pay for my part, he agreed and held his hand out for the money. What a turn off. I knew that I was still young and had many years ahead of me, but man, was I getting tired of dating.
I threw my keys on the tiny entry table next to the door and sighed again deeply as I headed into the living room. I was more than a little tipsy as during the course of the "date" I had polished off at least 5 glasses of wine. I didn't drink very often but tonight it had been a necessary survival mechanism just to get through the evening.
I wondered if my roommate Jessica had fared any better. She was like me in that she had no serious relationship to speak of but, unlike me, she managed to have a full date schedule practically every night of the week. She was much more outgoing and had no problem with asking a guy out who caught her eye. In the year and a half that we had lived together, she rarely brought anyone home (at least that I knew of) but it wasn't uncommon for her to be out all night and come in nonchalantly around noon the next day.
Since it was rather rare that I had a date tonight and I was a little nervous, we had discussed possibly making it a double so that I would feel a bit more comfortable. At the end we decided it would be awkward - good thing since it was bad enough that I had to deal with Mr. Me, Me, Me without subjecting someone else to the boring blabber as well. I was also more than a little embarrassed that my first date in over a month turned out to be such a dud. Jess was probably still out enjoying her date and her "dessert" course was probably a lot sexier than mine....
As I turned the corner into the living room, I was startled to see Jess sitting on the couch with her back to me. I could see the TV screen and it looked like she was watching a movie. She was alone on the couch in her fluffy robe and I could see a big bowl of popcorn sitting on her lap. Wow, her date must have been even worse than mine? I thought. I came up behind her and squeezed her shoulder. She screamed and jumped about 5 inches off the sofa as popcorn flew everywhere.
"Oh my God, you scared me!" she shouted as she swatted at me.
"Whatcha watchin?" I flopped down on the sofa next to her, propping my feet up on the table, and soon recognized snippets of The Exorcist on the screen.
"Well no wonder you're scared! Why are you watching this when you're all alone? That's not very smart y'know?"
"There was nothing else on," she replied, "besides, I knew you'd be home early." With this last comment Jess looked sideways at me and smiled. I wanted a good comeback but unfortunately she was right.
"The question is, why are YOU home so early?" I asked.
"Eh" she shrugged, "this one was a throwback -- not worth my time."
"And what, may I ask, is a throwback?"
"You know, like a fish that you catch but he's too scrawny to eat so you just throw him back," Jess took a handful of some popcorn that had spilled on the couch, "guess I'm getting picky in my old age." With that she giggled and then snuggled into the sofa to watch the movie.
I'm not a huge fan of horror movies, but I'll watch them occasionally for the good scare. It was weird that both Jess and I were home on a Saturday night and I had nothing else to do so I decided to finish the movie with her. It hadn't been on for long and I had never seen The Exorcist so I was able to finally experience firsthand the vomiting and headspinning in all its glory. We both jumped more than once when we'd hear noises in the apartment or coming from outside.
As the movie neared the end, I started to wonder if I was ever going to find Mr. Right. Hell, I would even settle for a really good night of passion. It had been a long time and I was really getting to the point where I would have sex with just about any guy who was willing, if I could just get past all the small talk and the "date" part without being so enormously annoyed that I couldn't wait to get away from him.
As I was musing about my lackluster sex life, I suddenly realized that between my "jumping" and Jess' "jumping" we were sitting very close together on the couch. In fact, our hands were almost touching. I suddenly became very aware of her sitting next to me, although she was still completely engrossed in the movie. I glanced over at her and noticed that the top of her robe was gaping open and in the shadows I could see the outline of her full breast and nipple.
To my surprise, my eyes lingered on her breast and I felt a tingling in my thighs. "What the heck is going on?" I thought to myself. I'd lived with Jess for a year and a half and never had it occurred to me to see her naked or try to be close to her or even to look at her in that way. I'd had lots of girlfriends in high school and we used to strip together to try on clothes or change into pajamas and I had never found myself aroused in the least by any of them. Why now? Was I just tired? Depressed? Isolated?
Whatever the reason, I couldn't take my eyes off of the shadowy outline of her breast. It sloped perfectly into her nipple and rounded out at the bottom. Hers looked to be much larger than mine and perhaps that was part of the intrigue. I had always had a fetish with breasts -- although up until this point it had been my own. In my previous sexual encounters I loved for my partners to suck on my breasts -- sometimes soft and slow and sometimes hard depending on the levels of my passion. I'd even been known to ask a lover to bite my nipples when I was in a particularly aggressive mood and the pain felt delicious.
Given my particular fondness for "breast play" perhaps it wasn't surprising that I found Jess' breast to be so captivating in that moment. What was surprising was that I found myself actually considering doing something about it.
I finally pulled my eyes away from her breast and stared back blindly at the TV screen. Inside I was shaking and my head was spinning -- partly from the wine and partly from what I was wanting to do. My mind raced through the possible reactions from Jess should I try to touch her breast -- first and foremost was the most likely possibility that she would freak out and run upstairs and never talk to me again. That would end a friendship and a roommateship that worked well. I would hate to lose her and wouldn't be able to even look her in the eye again. She had never indicated that she looked at me in any way other than a friend so to try anything would probably be suicide.
But what if? My mind kept returning to that possibility. What if it was ok? What if she responded? What if she wasn't freaked out? I decided to make a list of my excuses in the event that I did try something and she did freak out and I did have to explain myself. This was my list: 1) I was drunk; 2) I was depressed; 3) I was lonely. The entire list was not only true, but convincing, I thought, and I would probably forgive a friend for making a pass at me if she was one or all of the above listed items. Just as I had finished my list and talked myself into the possibility of moving on my instincts, another scary part of the movie passed. At this point, I was really too aroused to be scared and I didn't really have a clue what was going on in the movie anyway. Maybe it was the alcohol that prompted me to act but I jumped in response to the scare in the movie and teasingly hid my eyes by burying them into Jess' fuzzy shoulder as I threw my arm across her waist and let it linger.
After a few seconds, I dared to peek out from her shoulder and tried to see her face without looking too obvious. She had her head turned towards me and she did look a bit surprised, but she didn't move away. I sat there, tense, for at least a minute waiting for her to shift a little further down the couch.
