Ian MacAllen

MR. F arrived in town from Indiana. He wanted to party. Since MR. F and Charles are both graduate students, neither of them worried much weeknight about partying as neither had any obligations. I worried a lot about partying on the weeknight; the office expected me in at 9. I did the sensible thing and agreed to meet them in the Lower East Side.

I met them two of them at bar. This bar was the second bar they had been to that night. The first bar they had gone to gave away NYC CONDOMS offered up for free like after dinner mints. Charles stuffed one in my breast pocket. I like the brand because on the wrapper are the words NYC CONDOM written out as if they were subway letters. And they are free.

MR. F stepped outside the bar to make a phone call. Charles wanted to mess with his head, so he snapped off the tab on MR. F’s beer can. No normal person would have a problem with returning to a beer can with a missing tab. But MR. F endures a serious bit of neurosis.

On one occasion, while we were on the subway, a stranger bumped into MR. F. For most people, bumping into a stranger on a crowded subway is a normal routine. MR. F however, was convinced that this stranger had slapped a patch on his arm that would slowly leach poison into his body. And then there was the incident with the poisoned beer. Apparently everyone is out to poison MR. F. We were standing at a bar ordering drinks and MR. F turned away from his beer to pay the bartender and then during the three seconds he was not looking at his plastic cup of beer, his neurosis convinced him that someone had drugged his drink. I drank his beer when he decided he didn’t want to die from poison.

So when MR. F returned from his phone call and discovered that Charles had snapped the tab off of his beer can, and was now convinced someone was poisoning him once more.

We left the first bar when MR. F threw a fit over the tab on his beer. The sensible thing for me to do just then would have been head home having both eight hours of work ahead of me the following day. But the sensible thing is hardly as much fun.

Instead we went to a dance club. The place is modeled after a Chinatown massage parlor. In the basement there are old shower stalls that have been converted into booths. People like to sit in these shower stalls and look out at the dance floor through the glass stalls, but the showers always remind me of the scene in Schindler’s List when all the women are herded into similarly shaped rooms unsure if they going to be gassed or showered down.

We stay at the massage parlor long enough for me to buy an overpriced drink, but then in a remarkably sober moment I decide the time has come for me to go home. I tell MR. F I’m leaving. Charles is missing somewhere in the club and I don’t have the patience to find him. I leave anyway and start walking towards the World Trade Center subway.

I’m halfway to the station when Charles calls demanding to know where I am. I tell him I left.

“We’re leaving now too,” he said.

“Okay, well hurry up,” I say.

Then this girl starts talking to me. This fact is unusual for two reasons. First, Church Street is usually deserted at midnight because the I-Bankers are all at off doing coke with hookers or having non-consensual sex with women in the back of the Patriot Bar by midnight. And second, because a girl was talking to me.

“I have to go, I’ll call you back,” I said to Charles because I want to talk this girl who is talking to me.

“Which way is the East River?” she asks me.

“That way,” I point to the east.

“No, I think it’s that way,” she said pointing towards the World Trade Center.

I correct her. But she refuses to believe me. Charles calls again, but I ignore the call. I am talking to the girl.

She introduces herself as Lisa. I briefly consider telling her my name is Jack. Talking to this girl seems like something Jack would do. But I tell her my real name anyway, suddenly regret that I did.

“Where are you trying to go?” I ask.

“The East River. I live next to the East River.”

Again I correct her, but she refuses to believe me. We keep walking and now we are at the World Trade Center and I have irrefutable evidence.

“This isn’t the East River.”

“No, it’s the World Trade Center. “

“I need to go to 14th Street,” she says. “You should come with me.”

“But my train is right here,” I said.

“You should come with me,” she says. She starts waving down taxi cabs.

“Really, my train is right here.”

“You want to come with me.” This she says as a statement, not a question.

I open the cab door. I begin telling the driver she needs to go to 14th Street, but before I finish she has pushed me into the backseat of the cab. She was not a little girl.

So then we are riding north on the FDR Drive towards 14th Street. The cab was flying. I don’t really have time to notice because before we’ve passed the Brooklyn Bridge she is putting her lips on my mouth. She is kissing me. Badly. But kissing me just the same.

I’m less concerned now that we are racing away from the subway. I am concerned though that the cab driver is judging me for me making out with this girl in the back of his cab. I think it’s a trashy thing to do. Luckily the cabbie is all wired up with his cellular phone and starts having a conversation with someone and ignores us. This cellular phone business is an excellent distraction as Lisa shoves my hand up her dress.

I like sticking my hand up women’s dresses. Partly, I think, the act seems like a naughty way of having fun. But with my hand up Lisa’s dress, there is something wrong. No, this does turn into The Time I Made Out With A Cross Dressing Man Story. She was a big girl, but not that big. The problem was that Lisa was wearing vacuum sealed panties. They were thick, polyester and squeezed tight around her body. They were too tight, too tight to get into them.

Then Charles calls.

With one hand wrestling the vacuum sealed panties and another hand struggling to keep us from slipping off the seat, I am unable to answer his call. The vibrating phone is distracting. With the hand that is not up Lisa’s dress, I wiggle the phone free. I press the ignore button and squeeze the phone back into my pocket.

Charles calls again.

And again.

And again.

With one hand up her dress, I am incapable of turning off my phone. I kept hitting ignore. Charles kept calling. I needed to make him stop. I slipped the phone out of my pocket and typed out a message: “Stop it. Call you later.”

He ignores me, and calls again.

And again.

Finally we are at the destination: 14th Street and the East River. Well now I’m on the complete opposite side of the city from the subway that I need, but at least I can turn off my phone so Charles can’t keep calling.

“What’s your name again?” she asks.

For a moment I think I’ve already told her this. I think I cannot lie to her now. I tell my name is Jack anyway. Jack will go back with her. I worry she will catch me in the lie, remember I’ve already told her my name is something else.

If she does remember, she doesn’t say anything because then we are walking to her building, to the elevator.

We exit the elevator and wander through the serpentine halls. We come to a corner. “Wait right here,” she says, “don’t move.”

She rounds the corner and I hear keys unlocking the door. Suddenly I’m concerned as to why I am standing here. How long do I wait in the hallway? Is she ditching me here? What is she hiding me from? Is this like the scene in Trainspotting when Renton realizes that Diane is a schoolgirl living with her parents? Is it too late to dash down the emergency stairwell and pretend none of this ever happened?

The door opens and she comes around the corner and then pulls me into the apartment. She tells me to be quiet. Don’t say anything. She leads me into a bedroom.

Thick curtains have been pulled across the window, and, more importantly, across the window air conditioner unit. Behind the curtains the unit is blowing air into the curtains in a futile effort to cool the room.

Her laptop is on the bed. It is the only thing illuminating the room. She is checking her email while I stand there wishing the air conditioner was blowing at me. I am beginning to sweat. When she closes the computer the room is pitched into the sort of darkness I’ve only seen when they flick off the lights at Carlsbad Caverns. She lays back on the bed and indicates I should join her. We are making out.

We are making out in the sloppiest way possible. It is too dark to see anything so I accidentally kiss her nose. I’m groping for her breasts. We are sweaty. This is horrible.

“I want you to fuck me,” she says.

I am kissing her.

“I want you to fuck me,” she says more insistently.

“Ok,” I say unsure if I will. She is well hidden the dark.

I start removing her clothing. I start with those vacuum sealed panties. They are tight around her legs as I pull them down. But I really can’t see anything which makes the task of removing her vacuum panties even more difficult.

She lifts my shirt off. I am able to undo the bra clasp. This task is the one thing I can do in the darkest of night.

“I want you to fuck me,” she says.

I’m beginning to wonder if there is some sort of catch. What have I stumbled into? She starts rummaging through her nightstand drawer, I assume for a rubber. I produce my own, the one Charles stuck in my breast pocket jokingly only hours earlier. NYC CONDOM to the rescue.

I know enough though not to try unfurling a condom in the pitch black. So I strip down, struggle with the pants around my ankles. I need some light. I flick on the floor lamp.

“Turn that off,” she says.

“I can’t see anything,” I said.

I unroll the rubber over my almost erection—I’ve had a lot to drink. She is laying naked on the bed, and I think that if I make out with her this will solve the problems caused by heavy drinking. She stops me and tells me to turn out the light.

“I want you to fuck me,” she says as I lay back in the bed with her with my mostly erect penis now wrapped in a thin but protective latex sheath. The temperature in the room is rising; the air conditioner has been blowing directly into a thick curtain for the last half hour and the heat from our bodies has turned the room into a sauna.

As she says this over and over again I begin to wonder why she is so enthusiastic. Maybe she is a virgin frustrated over never having had sex. She is a big girl. Maybe she has just forsaken Jesus and wants a clean break with some casual sin. Then I begin to think about sexual transmitted diseases. I think about the worst STD: pregnancy. I consider my drunkenness and wonder if she is too drunk. She did just picked me up on the street and shoved me in taxi cab, and that sort of thing usually only happens in fantasies.

“I want you to fuck me,” she says again.

Fine, I’ll do it, I think to myself. People have casual sexual encounters all the time. Only the problem is that I’ve had a lot to drink and it’s hotter than Dubai and I’m not erect enough to give her the plowing she wants. I admit I need a little assistance. She tugs at me a few times. Not too much is happening. I rub up against her. She tugs at me again. And then that’s it, I’m done, I’m finished, right into the condom as she is tugs me a little bit with her hand.

Well that’s that, I think. I want to leave right then, get out of the hot bedroom, be back in my own bed, asleep. But that isn’t a very nice thing to do, so I keep making out with her for a few minutes. Then I stop and mention that I need to head home.

She offers me a place to stay, begs me to stay. She says she wants me to fuck her. I stand up. I want to express to her what is not going to happen tonight, which is that I am not going to fuck her.

“Wait right here,” she says. This gag, again, I think.

She pulls her dress on and runs out of the room. I’m sweating everywhere, but I pull on my shorts and pants and shirt. I’m fully dressed now except for my shoes. I wonder where she is. What is she doing out there? I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to have ever been here. I take the rubber from the floor and stuff it back into its plastic wrapper and place this in my back pocket. I’m taking any drip of me away when I leave.

She returns to the room with a bottle of water and for a moment I think she is a perfectly reasonable human being. I need water so badly now. I am sweating underneath my pants. My legs are sticking to my jeans they are so sweaty. We drink some water. I sit on her bed. She puts her water down, and she comes towards me: “I want you to fuck me so hard.”

She pushes me down on the bed and begins to rub against my jeans. The jeans are tight from sweating. Rubbing herself against is unpleasant. There is chafing.

She is still wearing her dress. She is trying to love my jeans. I’m not sure she understands how fucking works. I have sweat out the entire bottle of water I just drank. Her bedroom is so hot. I look at the clock. I have to be at work in seven hours. With the subway schedule, I’m still an hour from home. I need to go home, I say, I beg her.

I say this two or three more times before it sinks in. She finally relents.

She instructs me to wait right here, again. I am putting on my shoes while I wait for her to give the all clear signal. I’m not sure what we’re hoping to avoid. When she returns and says I can leave, I bolt. She closes the door behind me and I hear the chain slide across the door. I can’t wait for the elevator; I’m down the stairs and outside and even though outside it is ninety degrees and humid the air feels fresh and cool.

I call Charles. He doesn’t answer. I try him again hoping to disturb him. He doesn’t answer. I chuck the used rubber sitting in my back pocket into a trashcan on 14th Street.

When I get home, MR. F is sleeping on the couch in his underwear. Charles is asleep in his room. I have to leave for the office in five hours.