Chapter 4: The Zipless Fuck
Tantalising new vistas of possibility opened up before me that evening. I stood in the kitchen of the house I shared with two women my age, staring at two chili con carne meals that one of my housemates had just cooked. The lightly steaming stews, with glasses of Coke alongside, almost beckoned me closer by just sitting there. One meal was for Gwen, tonight's cook, who had turned her back to me and was bent over in the fridge, rummaging for seasoning of some description. The other was for our other flatmate Trish - I had dined out earlier in the evening.
I had only a second or three while Gwen was busy spelunking for condiments. My hand had instantly gone to the clear plastic packet in my pocket containing two white seeds which I always carried around with me, but had only rarely got a chance to use. And never two at once! It had been many weeks since my doctor's visit, and since I hadn't gotten any answers, I figured the only way I was going to learn was further field testing. You can knock that argument down fairly easily, of course, because in retrospect it does seem rather flimsy, but it made sense to my 20-year-old brain at the time, flooded as it was with hormones both natural and sometimes unnatural.
Involving my housemates in this ongoing experiment hadn't been my plan, but it was surprisingly hard to find safe opportunities to slip my unique brand of Mickey Finns into random girls' drinks in any sort of social situation. Not that either of my housemates was unattractive. Gwen was a thin, statuesque blonde with a kind face and a heart to match. I had originally pursued her in the workplace when she was a co-worker in a previous part-time job but it hadn't gone anywhere. We remained good friends, and it was we two who had set up the share house together. She had still wanted to be the sort of friend who gave regular hugs, but I had declined once we moved in, in the interests of smoother household relations - which was my way of preventing myself developing stronger feelings for her. We found Trish through Craigslist, as you do. She worked in some agricultural job and had a country background, and was the sort of tall, well-built, handsome woman who you could imagine best on horseback doing dressage or showjumping, her dark brunette bob haircut bobbing along. Her strong, toned ass certainly looked good in the khaki-coloured cotton tracksuit pants she wore around the house, though apart from teasing her that she was wearing jodhpurs, again I kept things on a professional level.
Which is why I hesitated a little with my fingers on the packet inside my shirt. Would I be jeopardising what had turned into a friendly, stable household by ruining it with meaningless sex? I didn't have long to think about it, and I guess my lizard brain reflex took over, as out came the packet and in went my fingers to fish out not one but two seeds. I had enough rational thought processes left to make a split second decision over whether to drop the seed in their drinks or the meal. Any lingering doubt I had was squashed by the choice to drop them into the meals. I didn't know whether the little seeds would survive the mastication process, or even whether they had to pass whole into the stomach to release their chemical cocktails into the bloodstream that caused the aphrodisiac effect. The possibility that it wouldn't work at all was what allowed my conflicted conscience to finish the job by pushing one seed each into the middle of each meal, covering them with a flick of the finger and quickly sucking off the incriminating sauce.
Gwen turned around, oblivious to my crime, and continued the small talk we had been exchanging all the way through. She eventually took both plates and went up the stairs next to the kitchen, which is where both hers and Trish's bedrooms were. I retrieved a beer from the fridge and retired to my own bedroom, which was by the front door (I was the "watchdog", we had joked).
I sat on the bed, shaking a little. My previous conquests using this curious herbal weapon had been with strangers or acquaintances, in encounters that could be shrugged off or ignored as casual flings. This time I may have bitten off more than I could chew... or that my housemates could chew.
* * *
After I had finished my beer, I wandered back through the kitchen to bin my bottle. The noise from the stairwell told me that the TV was on in the lounge room upstairs... ours was a long, thin two-story house. I stood again in the kitchen and looked up at the faintly flickering lights reflected on the far wall of the stairwell. Yep, I thought to myself, time to go see if this worked.
I walked up the steps slowly. I could hear some girly TV show on, but I also picked up someone moving about on the couch. I reached the top of the stairs and saw it was Trish, illuminated in the darkness only by the glow of the screen, who had a guilty look on her face and a posture sitting on the far end of the three-person couch that was so straight that she must have just sat up from lying on it full-length.
I could smell a faint waft of the familiar lilac aroma. There was an answer to that question.
"What's on?" I asked, jumping past the landing and sitting on the near end of the couch. Trish didn't answer immediately, so I asked the name of the show. She remained silent, one arm balanced on the arm of the couch with her knuckle supporting her head, the other holding a cushion across her lap. We watched for a while until it became obvious what we were watching, though she started drumming her fingers softly on the cushion. The episode was about an urbanised woman frustrated in her romantic life, as were a lot of the shows Trish watched. Trish didn't talk much about that side of her life, especially not to me, but I had gathered from Gwen that she had been single for a while now, throwing herself into work.
Eventually I couldn't help but notice that she was staring at me, not the TV, still strumming away with her fingers on the cushion. Sheepishly, I darted my eyes to her and returned her gaze. "You know," she started, with more than a hint of annoyance in her tone. "You know, those shows aren't wrong. It's pretty tough for women in the city right now."
I could only grunt quietly.
"No I mean it, all that stuff about jobs and relationships, and how you can't have both at the same time, it's true to life isn't it? There's a seed of truth in all of those things."
The corner of my mouth twitched at her choice of words, but I nodded my head in support.
"I mean, look at me, I do alright in my job, but it's tough, you know?" She looked at me accusingly, as if I was acting as bouncer at the front door on a Saturday night, refusing entry to boys that she didn't bring home in the first place. "It's tough. To have it all."
