Rules of the Game (56 page)

I once told the story of Sleeping Beauty to a young cousin of mine. “How can a prince fall in love with a girl who's sleeping?” she asked afterward.

“Good point,” I replied. “She may be beautiful, but they haven't even spoken. What if she's a complete bitch?”

This is probably why relatives don't allow me around their kids.

At the time, I didn't have an answer for her. Now I did: He loves her simply because he has the power to wake her.

At Century 21, I tried to flirt with Alicia, choosing the ugliest outfits and insisting she try them on. But no matter what I did, I couldn't break through her reserve. She still saw me as an antique collector rummaging through the closet of her grandfather's mind.

She left the store two hours later with a purple satin dress, a lace skirt, and an extra-large men's polo shirt. The shirt, she said, was for her boyfriend.

This complication would have been much easier to take if the shirt had been a size that was easier to compete with. Like extra-small.

That night, I had plans to see a stylist I was sleeping with named Emily. I'd talked to her for a few minutes at a party once. Afterward, she found my e-mail address online, wrote to me, and suggested getting together for coffee.

“You're like heroin,” she said when I arrived, late from shopping with Alicia. “All my friends say to stay away from you because I'm starting to fall in love with you.”

When she pulled me into the bedroom and began undressing me, I imagined that her hands were Alicia's hands; I saw Alicia's mouth wrapped around me; I grabbed Alicia's thick black hair.

I had sex with Emily three times that night, and every time, I closed my eyes and imagined she was Alicia.

It was the most passionate sex Emily and I had ever had.

The following evening, after watching Alicia's grandfather perform, I went backstage to pay my respects and invite Alicia to a party at the Tribeca Grand Hotel that night. Slowly, languorously, as if she'd been asked to pass the sugar at the end of a long meal, she gave her consent: “Okay, pick me up at my hotel after I take Granddad back.”

Because it was my last night in New York, and I didn't know whether or not Alicia would go out after the concert, I'd invited a date to the Tribeca Grand earlier that day. Her name was Roxanne. She was five foot two and one of the most sexual girls I knew.

An hour and a half after the show ended, Alicia emerged from her hotel, wearing the tight purple dress she'd bought. The cabdriver, the students across the street, some guy riding past on a bicycle all did a double take.

“I had to talk to my boyfriend,” she said, apologizing for her tardiness. “We haven't spoken in like a week. He's so boring.”

Sleeping Beauty was mine again to wake. Suddenly, extra-large meant nothing to me.

Roxanne was waiting for us in the lobby of the Tribeca Grand, wearing a spaghetti-strap top that exposed her little-doll back. She hugged me tightly, peering up through heavy black mascara. There was something mischievous in her eyes, her smile, her carriage that communicated she was willing to try anything anytime.

I had met Roxanne at a concert last time I was in New York. She worked part-time as a model for illustrators and had appeared on everything from biscuit tins to sex-position guides. Her boyfriend played drums in the small local band we were watching. And she invited me to the afterparty at the singer's apartment.

Roxanne, her boyfriend, and I spent most of the party lying on the host's bed, while he sat in a chair nearby. As Roxanne and I talked, her boyfriend rose to his feet, walked into the front room, and dragged a very drunk blonde onto the bed with us. Within seconds, he was making out with her. Two minutes later, he had her naked.

Roxanne didn't seem to mind, chiefly because she was too busy flirting with
me: unnecessary touching, unsubtle innuendoes, unmistakable body language. Hesitantly, I took the bait. I looked over her shoulder as we kissed to see if her boyfriend minded. He was already fingering the drunk girl.

This is typically a sign of an open relationship.

I began making out with Roxanne more intensely. She grabbed me through my corduroys as her boyfriend began fucking the drunk girl. Some sort of jewelry glinted off his dick, rattling with each thrust. It was at this point that the singer left his own room.

As we fooled around, Roxanne kept glancing over at her boyfriend. She seemed upset, not necessarily because he was having sex with someone else, but because he was being inconsiderate of her while he did it.

She pulled down my pants and gave me an aggressive blow job. Then she grabbed a condom from her purse, slammed herself on top of me, and tried to outfuck her boyfriend. She ground herself vigorously against me, stuck a finger in her ass, and moaned loud enough to wake the whole building. This seemed to be how they fought.

It wasn't a good experience, but nobody ever said all experiences had to be good. Sometimes they're just experiences.

They broke up a few months later and, now that Roxanne was single, I was looking forward to sleeping with her under normal circumstances if things didn't work out with Alicia. Every single man needs a sexually adventurous woman he can count on to distract him from the fact that he is unloved.

“I brought some Ecstasy,” Roxanne said after buying the first round of drinks at the Tribeca Grand. She pulled an orange pill bottle out of her purse and dumped a white tablet into her hand.

I'm not a fan of psychedelic drugs, mainly because they last too long. The word trip is appropriate: Like an airplane ride, there is no way to get off until you land. More important, I didn't think hugging a speaker for six hours would improve my chances with Alicia.

Pinching her teeny fingers together, Roxanne cracked the pill in two. One half instantly crumbled to pieces in her hand. Without even asking if I wanted it, she lifted the hand full of Ecstasy dust, clamped it over my mouth, and dumped the contents inside.

I tried to keep my cool, but my eyes widened in horror, as if they'd just seen the devil. I needed to find a way to keep from tripping. I couldn't just start spitting
all over the club. So for the next five minutes, I kept bringing my glass of Jack and Coke to my lips and, instead of taking a sip, casually drooled the contents of my mouth into it. Then I went to the bathroom and poured the drink into the toilet. For the next hour, I was on edge, paranoid that the pill had absorbed into my bloodstream anyway.

Then I noticed Roxanne giving Alicia a massage on a couch upstairs. She'd already gotten further than I had with Sleeping Beauty. And that was fine with me, because it meant two things: The first was that I had succeeded in expelling the Ecstasy, because she was clearly in a drug-induced, tactile state and I still felt normal. The second was that a change of plans was in order. I might not have to choose between Roxanne and Alicia after all.

“My friend Steven has a great loft where I'm staying,” I told them when their rubdown ended. “He and his roommates usually have parties every night, so we should see what's going on.”

Roxanne, Alicia, and I took a cab to Steven's house, detouring at a corner deli to buy supplies: a bottle of Cabernet, Sun Chips, and turkey sandwiches on stale bread.

Inside the loft, the party had long since ended. Not only were Steven and his roommates sleeping, but two other guys were crashed out on couches in the living room. Unfortunately, I didn't have my own room. I had been sleeping on a futon on the floor across from the couches.

Roxanne and I sat on the guest futon. Alicia took a seat at a breakfast table a few feet away, unwrapped a turkey sandwich, and casually began eating it. I admired her ability to remain unaffected no matter where she went and what she saw. However, I was running out of time. There had to be some way to break the glass box in case of emergency.

“Hey,” I whispered to Alicia, trying not to wake the two guys sleeping on the couch. “I have to show you the coolest video before you go.”

My best wingman is my laptop.

She walked to the futon and perched on the edge with her arms wrapped around her knees. I showed her a clip of a species of bird that actually moon-walks across tree branches. I probably oversold the video, but it served its purpose, getting her on the futon.

It was now time to kiss Sleeping Beauty. Otherwise, she would return to the hotel and actually go to sleep.

I told Alicia and Roxanne that I'd recently had an amazing experience where two masseuses worked on me at the same time, in perfect synchronization. This procedure was known as the dual-induction massage, and I'd used it many times to segue into a threesome.

First, Alicia and I gave Roxanne a massage. Then I took off my shirt and they massaged me. Finally, I told Alicia to lower the top of her dress and lie on her stomach.

Typically, during the dual-induction massage, the energy in the room begins to shift and the inevitability of a safe, fulfilling, three-way sexual experience begins to dawn on everyone.

But this time, there was no shift in energy. Rather than relaxing into the touch and the sexual possibilities, Alicia lay there and quietly accepted the massage. Running my hands down the smooth, broad expanse of her back was as satisfying as it was frustrating, like smelling fresh bread in a locked bakery. I began to worry that she was politely waiting for her opportunity to leave, thinking we were some kind of creepy swinger couple who did this all the time.

Afterward, Alicia rose off the futon, pulled her dress up, and went to the bathroom. She didn't seem happy. She didn't seem upset. She didn't seem much of anything.

At least I'd tried. I was fooling myself by thinking Roxanne and I were Prince and Princess Charming anyway; we were more like the villains she needed to be rescued from.

“What do you suppose Alicia's thinking right now?” I asked Roxanne.

“I have no idea.”

“Let's just check out her vibe when she comes back from the bathroom. And if she's not down, we'll put her in a cab.”

Alicia returned from the bathroom to her perch on the edge of the futon, as if waiting to be dismissed. I'd definitely pushed her too far.

“Well, you should get some sleep before your trip tomorrow, so let's find you a cab.”

She laid down next to me, hugged me good-bye, and said, “Thanks.”

In the moment she hugged me, I sensed it was on. The energy shift I'd been waiting for had occurred.

I raced toward her lips, worried that if I hesitated for even a second, she'd be out the door. She melted into me. I could feel the glass box heating and
cracking beneath my touch, falling off her skin in large panes. Faint murmurs of pleasure bubbled up through her lips.

Roxanne lay on the bed behind me. I turned around, pulled her close, and made out with her. Then we began massaging and licking Alicia's breasts through her dress. Alicia lazily raised her arms, signaling that she was ready for it to be taken off.

Alicia was not a giver, but she was a great receiver. Her back arched and her hips flexed, showing off a body so perfect that all the owner had to do was possess it to be a good lover.

When I removed Alicia's panties, she was drenched. I ran to my suitcase, dug for a condom, and returned to the bed. I positioned both girls on their backs and entered Alicia as I made out with Roxanne. Then I entered Roxanne and made out with Alicia.

To my surprise, the girls didn't hesitate once, even though there were two guys sleeping—or pretending to sleep—on couches in full view of the action. One of my friends, when he's having sex with a beautiful woman, thinks, I deserve this. I kept thinking, I can't believe this is happening to me. Are they blind?

A swinger couple I know used to tell me about their threesomes and, with delight and wonder in his eyes, the man would talk about his favorite position: the triangle.

The time had come to experience the legendary triangle. I lay on my back, and told Alicia to ride me. Then I had Roxanne sit on my face, opposite Alicia, so the two of them could make out.

However, I never felt the cosmic sexual flow my friend used to talk about. Instead, I felt blind and smothered. Roxanne was sitting on my eyes.

Not that I'm complaining.

Afterward, Alicia spoke first. “That's the first time I ever did anything like that,” she said quietly.

“You mean a threesome, or being with a girl?” I assumed she wasn't talking about the triangle.

“Both,” she said.

“How do you feel?”

“It was …” She paused. “… good.”

She was never much for words.

Alicia and I stayed in touch after that. We had long phone conversations, during which her glass walls continued to fall away, exposing a goofy personality and wry sense of humor.

“Grandad likes you,” she said one night. “He wants you to come visit us at home.”

A week later, I flew in to spend the weekend and continue the interview in a setting few journalists ever got to see. Alicia picked me up at the airport and we drove to his home.

“I don't do this for just anyone,” he said in his barreling voice when I arrived.