How Long You Should Wait to Have Sex: a Novel (17 page)

“Nothing. Although I really don’t understand why you won’t give him a chance. He’s a great guy and a true talent. It’s a shame more people don’t know about him.”

Oh my God! People should know about him. That’s my job. Here I was skirting around the issue of how I read his book because it came into my firm, and not once did it cross my mind that I should represent him! How did I not come up with this sooner?

“I have to give him my card!” I gasp, inspired by my new idea. I quickly dig a business card out of my purse and turn back toward the store to go talk to him, but Lacey grabs my arm, flipping me back around toward her.

“Forget it. He already likes me!” she says. Doesn’t she understand that I’m about to help her?

“Lacey, I could do this for you. I’m a publicist. He’s sex. Sex sells. I can sell him!”

“Do you mean, you think you could make him rich?”

“Between radio, TV, movies and the internet, I don’t see why not.”

“Well, if you can fix him, I’ll be the one to give him your card!” Lacey snatches the card out of my hand and walks back to the bookstore, but not without first telling me, “And by the way, you can go salsa dancing with John Saturday. You’re uninvited to my party.”

“Why?”

“I’m taking Marty as my date instead. I’ve gotta snag him now, before he knows he has money.”

“Now you’ve put the pressure on me to succeed,” I call after her.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna sleep with him until he actually has it.”

“Oh,” I practically yell down the street, “so I guess now, we’re not having sex together.”

I think my joke is pretty funny, and so do a couple of pervy guys walking by us on their way to the strip club across the street.

Now that I’m free to go salsa dancing with John, the question is: do I want to?

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I want to!

Chapter 19

Over the course of the next few months, John and I start really dating. We do everything we talked about doing and it is amazing. We go salsa dancing. We go out to dinners. We cook together. We go to concerts. We go on bike rides, and hikes, and to fairs and festivals. We do every fun thing we can think of, except have sex.

When the topic comes up, which of course it does, I just say, “I’m not ready,” or “I’m enjoying getting to know you,” or “I really want you, but not yet,” or, “Soon, it’ll be soon.” I just keep that carrot dangling in front of him, and those hormones keep him calling and courting.

On the surface, all signs would point to us being in a legitimate relationship. He opens my doors, and calls me every night before bed, and texts me his every move and whereabouts throughout the day. He tells me stories about his patients at the hospital, and dramatic close calls on the operating table, and what that disgruntled nurse Norma said today to try to ruin his day, and what the obese nurse Janie had for lunch, as usual setting a bad example for the patients she’s asking to eat healthy foods. We visit my parents, who adore his perpetual smile, his magnanimous chuckle, his good manners, and his ability to instantly diagnose all their physical ailments. How nice it would be for them to have a doctor in the family, just as their bodies start to degrade.

Most relevantly though, we laugh all the time. At everything that happens to us, good or bad. I was right about us being great for each other. We get along like we were made to be best friends. And without the sex, that’s exactly what we’ve become.

Don’t get me wrong, we still make out a lot, but if my clothes start to come off too much, I leave or ask him to go, depending on where we are. Once in a while, I let it go until we get incredibly hot and heavy. This is a bad idea, as it only makes it harder to pull myself away.

One time we came close. He had me so excited. My shirt was wide open, and he had me pressed against the wall moaning, even before he lifted up my skirt and kneeled down to kiss me in the land of no control. I considered letting myself go, as he kissed me once, twice. I didn’t see how I could pull myself away when all I wanted was to strip off his jeans and stick him inside of me. But I took a deep breath, thought about losing him, and suddenly found the strength to jump over his arms like a stuntwoman, somersaulting my way to the door, which I promptly opened to show him the way home. Had I waited another split second, I don’t think I would have gotten away from my overwhelming desire for him.

When I started avoiding sex, it was because I wanted him to truly love me first, but it’s gotten to the point where I love him so much that I’m just plain scared of having sex with him. Considering our past, I can’t help but worry that sex will be the end of all this. I would be crushed if he left me at this point. Now, I actually know what he’s like, and I’m happy! He makes me feel like a princess, which kind of makes me feel guilty for stringing him along. I mean, I am planning to have sex with him! I want to. I just don’t want all this to go away. I wish he would hurry up and tell me he loves me, already, or give me some kind of a definite sign, so I can finally feel secure about how attached he is to me.

~

Meanwhile, Lacey is going on multiple dates with Marty, and also not having sex with him. In fact, it seems she’s playing it safer than I am. She’s not even letting him get to first base. She proudly reports back to me all the ways in which she avoids his advances when they part ways, by jutting out her hand for a shake, or turning her head to give him the cheek when he tries to kiss her. The closest Marty has gotten to action is the time when he managed to steal a hug from her, during which he pulled her in so tight that—as Lacey put it:

“He was basically feeling up my boobs with his chest!” In her description of the situation, she adds that she made sure to tap him on the back during that hug, so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea about how close he was to getting lucky. Personally, I hate it when people tap me on the back in an intimate hug. It’s so condescending. I guess she made her point.

I’ve been secretly hoping that Lacey would get to know Marty so well that she would recognize what a great guy he is and fall for him despite his financial status. That’s why I haven’t exactly told her that when I brought up the idea of representing Marty to my boss, he didn’t go for it at all.

~

“You want me to take on a client who can’t afford to pay us up front?” Henry asks me incredulously.

“I was thinking we could work out some kind of a pro-bono, contingency deal. We set certain financial goals for his business, and after we help him reach them, he back-pays us at a higher monthly rate. Like double, say $6000 a month, instead of our standard $3000 to $5000 retainer.”

“And he’s a sexology teacher at U.C. Berkeley, you say?”

“A sexology
professor
,” I correct.

“I don’t know, Samantha. I just don’t see a big enough market to make it worth the risk.” Henry is all about the bottom line, but in this case, I think he’s wrong.

“It’s sex. There’s always a market for sex,” I argue.

“Maybe if he were Kinsey or Masters or Johnson, but this guy is unknown.”

“I know, but he’s good. And two of the three people you just mentioned aren’t even living anymore.”

“You know as well as I do that being dead doesn’t stop a person from being profitable.”

“Fine, but my point is that Marty is funny. He approaches biology like Jon Stewart approaches the news. He injects it with a humor, which makes it young and light and modern. He makes science fun.”

“And ‘making science fun’ is a great pitch for a biology book geared at elementary school kids, but adults either like to read about science or they don’t, and those who like it, don’t need for it to be fun.”

“I see this as more than a book though. It could be a conversation on the web, web shows, advice columns, sex toys. There are so many directions we could go with him.”

“You really have a strong gut feeling about this guy?”

“Yes! That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Well, okay. Then what I think you should do, is when you have your own business, you should represent him. But so long as you’re working for mine, I don’t think this is a good use of your time. If he wants to pay for our services, fine, we’ll have a chance to see if you’re right. But I just don’t think there’s a strong enough guaranteed upside on this, to take him on contingency.”

My disappointment at this outcome helps me recognize that I’m not just upset because I’d told Lacey I would do this, I’m also upset because I really want to do it. I became so inspired by his book, and I could use a client once in a while who’s just plain fun to work on. So I guess one of the reasons I haven’t told Lacey about Henry’s response is because I’m still deciding if I’m going to take his “no” for an answer.

~

I decide to sneak out of the office and have lunch with Marty, so that I can talk to him about becoming his publicist. May as well start with seeing how that goes.

“Hey, thanks for coming so far out of the way,” I say, as Marty sits down at the table in the remote diner I’ve chosen for our secret meeting. “I just didn’t want to risk running into anyone from the office… Yet.” My plan is to tell Henry about this as soon as I’ve made so much money for him, behind his back, that he won’t have any choice but to give me another promotion plus a raise. I’m gonna make Marty so big, Henry might even offer to make me partner! He’ll see that my instincts are worth trusting.

“I should be the one thanking you,” Marty says. “I don’t know what you said to Lacey, but she’s totally changed her tune about me. I even think we’ve been going out on actual dates.”

“You’re not sure?” I tease.

“Well she does this one weird thing at the end, which is… completely avoid my advances.”

He has the most endearing way of expressing himself. He’s never afraid to be honest about parts of himself or his life that most people would be embarrassed to admit. He just puts it out there with a laugh in his voice, as if he accepts the comedy inherent in the tragedy of being him--a great guy, with inoffensive but extremely average looks, and a profession that makes most women think twice about how trustworthy he might be. He’s simply jovial about all of it. His acceptance of his own lot in life causes you to naturally accept him for it, too. At least that’s the effect he has on me. I get him. Unfortunately for him, I probably get him better than Lacey does.

“Lacey just doesn’t realize yet, how lucky she’d be to get a guy as great as you.”

“Wow! Thanks,” he says, genuinely taken off guard by the unsolicited compliment. Then he adds, “What are you doing later?” again with a desperate humor that implies that he thinks you’re out of his league, but has been turned down so many times that he’s gotten in the habit of always taking the shot anyway, just in case. Obviously, in this case, the fact that he’s joking goes without saying, since we both know that he’s dating my best friend, and hitting on me would be inappropriate.

“I wanna help you get her though,” I continue on my previous train of thought about Lacey, “I mean, if you want that?”
“Yeah! So what am I doing wrong?” he asks, quickly adding, with perfect comic timing, “but don’t be too harsh about it, I’m more sensitive than I look.”

I chuckle and say, “It’s not a big deal. It’s just that you’re too… let’s say, ‘small’.”

He looks surprised, as his brown eyes drop toward his penis, “Did somebody tell you that?”

I protest, wondering why I phrased it like that, “No, I—“

He interrupts me to joke, “Because we know it wasn’t Lacey.”

I can’t help but laugh at his lightheartedness, which seems to inspire him to go on something of a comedic rant about it.

“Unless she saw those nudes of me on the internet. But I only did that to put myself through college! And they promised me the shots would be artistic. Okay, nobody said that. But they did say they’d Photoshop my balls bigger. You know society puts so much importance on the size of a man’s balls.”

I’m laughing hard, like the one-woman audience to the standup routine he’s kept bottled up inside ever since he decided to follow a career in sexology instead of comedy. My unabashed enthusiasm eggs him on.

“Oh, no!” he continues, pretending to realize for the first time, “There’s my problem, the giant balls make the shaft look small. Why didn’t I think this through better?... Wait, am I being unprofessional?”

This sends me over the edge laughing, because he is. In fact, this type of off-color humor, which I grew to love in his book, is exactly why I’m so excited about what he could become. Now I’m literally having a laugh attack, which he is clearly enjoying being the source of, so he doesn’t stop.

“Geez, I haven’t got a girl laughing this hard since—I guess since the last time one saw me naked.” See? Hysterical! “You know, with Mr. Small Stuff hangin’ out, and all. Okay, I’ll give it to you, it is pretty funny. I mean, to look at. It’s so teensy-weensy. You wanna see?” He pretends to unzip his pants to show me, and I protest as best I can through the laughter, which is making me fairly incomprehensible.

“No! Please don’t show me. I can’t have that on my conscience!”

“But wait,” he goes on, “if Lacey knows about my size, then the thought of seeing me naked wouldn’t scare her at all. Which leads me to believe, that can’t possibly be what you’re talking about… So tell me, Samantha, how am I too small?”

He brought it back full circle. He did not lose sight of what we were talking about, despite the five-minute detour. I didn’t even remember what we were supposed to be talking about, myself! Now I’m impressed.

“Let me catch my breath,” I pant, trying to calm down from the laughter long enough to refocus on the purpose at hand, which is my masterful, carefully prepared, don’t take no for an answer pitch. “I just meant that you’re a college professor, with a great book that nobody knows about. And you should be so much more.”

“But I’m happy at U.C. Berkeley.” Is he turning me down? “I love that young, influenceable kids sign up for my classes, and in so doing are instantly forced to memorize my every word and thought or I get to flunk them. I mean, come on, what more could a guy possibly ask for in life?”