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  “Oh shit, really?” And suddenly, I was nervous because I had never been anyone’s first before. There is a lot of pressure and responsibility with being someone’s first, especially when it’s not your first. If I do this, I thought, this isn’t going to be some casual experience for her, she’s going to remember me for the rest of her life. With so little experience, there was absolutely zero chance Eva was going to be a mind-blowing sexual partner for me, but this was an opportunity to give Eva something most people never got—a phenomenal first time. I looked at her, standing there all cute and shy and you know what? It would be my honor—nay, my duty—to welcome Eva to the queer world with a climactic experience. If I was going to be her first, I might as well also be her best.

  “There’s no need to be nervous.” I smiled at Eva and pulled her back down on my lap. “I’ll take good care of you.” I wrapped my hands around the small of her back, brought her lips to mine and kissed her.

  Eva and I had fun together, but that’s all it was: one sweet night. Eva will make a great girlfriend to a lucky lady someday, but I’m not going to be that lady.

  THEO

  I took the Chinatown bus to New York City to spend Thanksgiving with Izzy because it was easier than flying back to Ohio.2 She hosted her medical school friends in her tiny apartment for Friendsgiving, but she spent the entire night ignoring me, so I started chatting up a hot, Black psychiatry student named Theo. After dinner, Izzy left with her friends to hit up a bar, knowing full well I was too young to join her, and Theo offered to stay back and help me clean the dishes.

  I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow we went from lathering pots and pans to tying each other up in my very first attempt at light bondage.3 Theo was no Eva. He wasn’t a virgin, he wasn’t timid or shy. He wasn’t an Anders either. He didn’t fumble with my bra or stick it in the wrong hole. He was confident, strong, hot. And when I played the dominant role and had him tied to the bed, he was into it, fully committed and submissive. It was fascinating to watch him open up like that and I thoroughly enjoyed controlling the situation, only allowing him to come when I said he could, but when it was my turn and the roles were reversed . . . I just couldn’t get there. Something was still holding me back. Don’t get me wrong, the whole night was hot as hell and if I lived here I’d definitely put him on my U up? text list, but it wasn’t the holy grail—it wasn’t what Rose had described. I mean, maybe it was for Theo—but not for me.

  “To be honest, I don’t think I would make a very good sub,” I told him after we finished playing our games. We were sprawled on my sister’s bed, tangled among the sheets, naked and sweaty and sleepy from all the sex and turkey.

  “What are you talking about? You were great!” He reassured me. He reached over and gently kissed the inside of my wrist. It was still red and sore from being tied to the bed.

  I flipped on my side to face him. “Theo, I’m a big girl. I can handle the truth.”

  “You definitely don’t like being told what to do,” he said with a laugh. “For what it’s worth, I think you might enjoy it if you found the right partner.”

  “Why would who I’m with matter? Either you enjoy being controlled or you don’t, simple as that.”

  “When is anything ever that simple?” He rolled onto his side so we were facing each other. “Think about it. In order to let someone control you, you have to trust them, and trust only comes through emotional intimacy.”

  “Oh god, you’re talking about that whole desire versus intimacy thing, aren’t you?”

  “I am going to be a psychiatrist so . . .”

  I roll my eyes. “We studied that in my Love and Eroticism in Western Culture class.”

  “It sounds like you have an opinion on it,” he said.

  “Yeah, I do,” I said, sitting up in bed. “That whole philosophy is about how desire requires distance and space but in order for intimacy to happen, two must come together, i.e., closing the distance. Therefore aren’t you sacrificing desire in order to achieve emotional intimacy?”

  His head turned to the side in thought. “I suppose . . .”

  “So by that logic then, in order to achieve maximum desire, a.k.a. Boner City, space and distance are required, i.e., zero emotional intimacy.” I felt light-headed. I hadn’t realized I was getting all worked up in my argument.

  Theo debated himself in his head for a moment and then he sat up and leaned back on his palms. “If that’s true, then why didn’t you come? You just met me, you have no emotional attachment to me, so if your theory were true you should have been able to reach maximum desire as you said.” The question is so shocking, it hits me like a bucket of cold water. This whole time, I’d been operating under the assumption that I could have amazing sex if I just experimented with different ways to get off with a wide array of people, like throwing a whole bowl of spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. But it wasn’t working . . . at least not in the way I thought it would.

  “Wait, hold up. I’m a stranger to you too, right? So how come you were able to let go and come so easily then?” I asked, flipping the script on him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I just have an easier time letting my guard down. Or maybe I actually feel emotionally connected to you.”

  I made a face. “Ew, gross, stop that.”

  “I’m serious!” He laughed. “I think you’re really great. I’d like to see you again.”

  “Thanks, you’re cool too, but I live in Boston and you’re here and you’re one of Izzy’s friends and I think you get my point. But for real, thank you, you’ve given me a lot to think about.” I threw the covers off us and got out of bed. I grabbed one of Izzy’s many skater dresses cluttering the bedroom floor and pulled it on, and when I found his pants in the corner, I kicked them up to Theo.

  “Are you seriously kicking me out?” he asked.

  “Yeah dude, my sister is gonna be back any minute.”

  “It’s Thanksgiving!” He looked at me like he’d never been kicked out of a woman’s bed before.

  “Sorry, but I’ve got this essay I need to work on and whatever, you get it. This was fun though, I’m sure I’ll see you around sometime, or not. Either way, have a good one.” He groaned, but got out of bed and dressed at a glacial pace. He only had one shoe on when I ushered him out the front door.

  “You have real intimacy issues,” he said as he hopped out into the hall.

  “Yeah yeah yeah, I know. Anyways, thanks, doc. See ya.” I tossed him his coat and shut the door. I plopped down on Izzy’s couch, opened my laptop, and started writing down my thoughts for the essay.

  Had I been going about this all wrong? I’d discovered what a whole lot of other people enjoy, but me? What do I want? What do I need? When I started Project Tender Chicken, I was hoping for a strong conclusion, a clear understanding of exactly what good sex is and how to have it, but in the end I was left with more questions than answers.

  * * *

  1 Lol, let’s be honest. The essay is a bonus. I was gonna do this regardless.

  2 You remember Izzy, right? She’s my older sister who also moonlights as Satan’s mistress.

  3 Okay, that’s a lie, I know how it happened. I was sitting on the kitchen counter drying dishes while Theo scrubbed the pots in the sink and I straight up asked him, “Have you ever had sex while tied up before?” And he said, “No” and I said, “Wanna try it?” and he said, “Oh, fuck yeah” and that was it.

  CHAPTER 8

  It’s the week after Thanksgiving break, a month since I started Project Tender Chicken, and here I am, back at the place where all good sexual awakenings begin—the library.

  “Can you show me where the sexual fetishes section is, please?” I ask. The student librarian whose cheeks are now two shades redder than they were a minute ago begrudgingly ushers me to the sexual health section at the back of the library.

  I’m supposed to be meeting Kenton and Lucy, but I decided to get here early and work some more on my essay. I d
idn’t want to start getting bizarre search engine results by Googling, nor can I buy anything online without the credit card company notifying my parents, so I’m cobbling together information with the material available in the library. Well, lesson learned, because the pickings here are slim. I’m flipping through this old book from 1940 titled Sex Knowledge Wrecked Lives in the Twentieth Century1 when I spot Anders in the next aisle over. Shit shit shit shit shit shit. I throw the book back on the shelf and dart into the next section of the library as quickly and quietly as possible before he sees me. I never responded to his last text.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Kenton says when he catches me hiding out in the classical literature section.

  “Oh yeah, sorry,” I say, breathless. “I was doing research for a class. Should we grab one of these study rooms?” We walk down the aisle, passing occupied rooms until we find an empty one at the end. I dump my crap on the floor. “Is Lucy here somewhere? I can go find her—”

  “She bailed . . . again,” Kenton says through clenched teeth. “She’s doing an extra shift at the Emerson Fund and then she’s going home to help her grandma remodel her kitchen or some shit.”

  “Wait, I thought she went home last weekend to help her grandma?”

  “She did and she’s going again today,” Kenton grunts. “Do you mind if we don’t talk about Lucy?”

  “Excuse me?” I glare at him.

  He attempts a recovery and offers me a humble smile. “Sorry, things are just . . . frustrating right now. I feel like I never see her.”

  I reach across the table and put my hand on his arm. “Dude, you got to spend Thanksgiving with her, but I do know what you mean. The closer we get to finals, the less I see her. I think she’s got too much on her plate. I mean, it’s been great for my project to have the room to myself so much, but I miss Luce.”

  “Oh right, your project.” Kenton leans back in his chair and looks at me curiously. “Lucy told me about that but didn’t go into detail.”

  “It was just supposed to be an essay, but now the professor wants us to present our essays to the class as part of our final grade. I had this whole final bit about my own experiences, but I wasn’t able to come to any sort of firm conclusion. I’m hoping if I spice up the presentation, the lack of definitive substance in the essay will be less noticeable. All I know is I cannot wait to see the look on my professor’s face when I start talking about the female orgasm.” I wait for the same shock, awe, and applause I usually get from everyone else when I explain Project Tender Chicken but Kenton doesn’t look shocked—he looks bored, which weirdly bothers me, so I try another angle.

  “I’ve decided to dedicate a whole section to S&M . . .” This time he perks up.

  “Interesting.” Kenton leans forward and rolls up his sleeves. “Will you be focusing on one particular discipline or on the relationship between doms and subs?”

  “Oh, uh, neither, actually.” I side-eye him. How come Lucy never told me he was into S&M? “The S&M stuff is a small part of it; it mostly just covers its portrayal in movies and my own brief dabble with it.”

  “What does that mean then? You tried out S&M and wrote about it?” he asks.

  “Yep! I tried a lot of things with a lot of different people over the past six weeks, but I’m only going to talk about a few of the more memorable experiences in my essay.” I lean back in my chair and look him up and down. “But the bigger mystery now is, how come you know so much about this stuff?”

  “Have you been to The Dungeon in Downtown Crossing? They have a pretty wide selection of toys if you want to include props in your presentation.” His smile is weird as he adjusts the beanie covering his floppy black hair. There’s a look in his eyes right now, something ignited, frantic even. As long as I’ve known him, Kenton has had the emotional range of a block of ice. I’ve never seen him get excited about, well, anything. But then again, that could be my own fault. I have made a point of limiting our interactions to the occasional dinner and whenever I walk in on him and Lucy. Maybe I just haven’t gotten to know him all that well.

  “How about tomorrow night?” he asks.

  “What about tomorrow night?” I’ve been so lost in my own thoughts I didn’t realize he was still talking.

  “Do you want to go to The Dungeon tomorrow night? I can reschedule dinner with Lucy if you want.” He pulls out his phone and starts texting Lucy.

  I reach across the table and swat the phone out of his hand. “Don’t you dare cancel on Lucy! Besides, I have plans tomorrow night with Micah. I’ll check it out some other time though, thanks for the recommendation.” He puts his phone away and we fall into an awkward silence for the rest of the hour. I don’t get much done. It’s hard to focus when you discover your best friend’s boyfriend has a secret sexual fetish. I wonder if Lucy even knows. If she doesn’t, there’s no way I’m going to be the one to tell her.

  But I do tell Micah the next day when we pay a visit to The Dungeon.

  “Wait, I thought you were still pursuing that guy from MIT—what was his name?” I ask Micah the next day during our visit to the sex shop. We move from the cabinet of ball gags to the wall of whips. I pick up a short, black riding crop and play with it.

  “His name is Eric,” Micah reminds me. “And haven’t you been keeping up with my Report? I quit that game a few weeks ago. He’s straight.”

  “I told you that whole ‘gay by May’ thing wasn’t going to work.” I rest the tip of the riding crop on his chest. “Now, bend over and accept your punishment for not listening to me.” He sighs, bends over, and I smack his ass a few times. I set the whip back in its place on the wall and walk over to a clothing rack filled with an array of apparel.

  Micah picks up a pair of leather assless chaps and hands them to me. “You should wear these during your presentation. Your ass will get an A.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize that’s what the A stood for. B must be for boobs, not butt, then.”

  “And C is for clit and D is dick.”

  “And an F means you’re fucked.” We laugh a little too loud and an embarrassed-looking customer checking out the nipple clamps shushes us, which only makes us laugh even more. We put the chaps back and skitter off to a different section of the store. The Dungeon is bigger than I imagined, not that I have been to that many fetish shops in my day, but it is surprisingly tasteful. It’s well-lit and each department has been carefully merchandised—despite its name, The Dungeon is anything but.

  “What about you?” Micah asks as we approach a table neatly arranged with dildos and vibrators in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. He picks up a giant pink monstrosity—it’s unclear which hole it is meant for—and waves it in my face. “Are you in the market for one of these or will you be paying a visit to one of your playthings again? Maybe you should give Anders another shot . . .”

  “I don’t take victory laps. I do have some standards.”

  Micah pushes the button and the vibrator violently spasms out of his hands, falls onto the floor, and starts scooting away from us. Micah picks it up, blows the dust off, and offers it to me. “Here, you’ll need this then. I bet you can get it half off since it’s been on the floor.”

  “Hard pass.”

  Micah heads to the back while I continue exploring the front of the store. I walk the aisles, run my fingertips over leather floggers, silk blindfolds, and feather ticklers for another ten minutes until I get bored. Something about this place is bumming me out. I work my way to the back of the store and find Micah trying on a shiny black latex catsuit over his clothes.

  “We should go. I already have some of this stuff, I don’t need any more,” I say as I take a seat on a purple velvet couch and watch as he admires himself in the mirrors.

  “You’re not gonna get anything? Why are we even here then?”

  “Kenton recommended this place and I was curious. As you know, I’ve spent the last month on a journey of self-discovery.”

  “Yesssss,” Micah says
as he twirls in front of the mirror. I’m not sure if he’s being supportive of me or himself in this scenario.

  “I’ve learned quite a lot, actually, about what other people like. This one girl on the fifth floor only likes having her nerps tweaked. That’s it! Nothing else! And over Thanksgiving break, I went down to New York to spend time with Izzy and I got with one of her med school friends and we tried out some light S&M. And there’s this one dude on the digital culture floor who likes to hook up with American Psycho playing in the background. At first I thought it was just a coincidence, like he already had it streaming and just forgot to turn it off, but the second time he stopped us mid–make out in order to put it on.”

  Micah spins to face me. “Ohmygod, are you talking about Brendan Fromme?”

  “Yes! How’d you know?!”

  “We totally hooked up the second week of school! He put on American Psycho with me too! He is so weird—hot, but weird.”

  “I know!” I nod. “I’ve been trying to stay open-minded about everyone’s predilections but that was one I just could not get on board with. But I dunno, I think I might be done with Project Tender Chicken. Or at least I think I need to put it on the back burner for a while.”

  “No sign of the holy grail of sex then?”

  I sigh. “No, no holy grail. I mean, I got what I needed out of it to write up what I think is a decent essay and I’ve had fun, but it’s not quite right. I had some pretty good sex, but none of it was great. There was just something . . . missing for me, and I don’t know what it is. It’s weird but I just spent the last six weeks being with all kinds of people but I feel . . . lonely. Know what I mean?” I look up to see if Micah is listening but he tuned me out some time ago. I watch as he spins around and around, trying to grab the zipper in the back, but he can’t reach it. “Do you need some help?” I get up and try to unzip the back but it keeps getting stuck over his clothes. “How did you even get in this by yourself?”