The Accidental Virgin (5 page)

“No good,” he said.

Stacy pushed him away and opened the door. On the bed, ass up on navy blue sheets, sprawled a naked young man. To his right, partially covered by the bed-clothes, lay a young woman. Her well-sprayed hair and makeup smears made her look like Whorey the Clown. She wore bulky jewelry on her wrists and ankles. Or was it…scratch the jewelry. Make that Velcro bondage straps. The lump at her left moved. Another college boy, groggily aroused. Make that groggily arose. He moaned, “My head,” softly. The sound of his pain stirred his bedmates. Stacy quietly closed the door.

“Bathroom?” she asked. Dogged, Stacy clung to hope, but the thin edge of opportunity was barely wide enough to stand on. In mules, she teetered wildly. If the bathroom weren’t sparkling clean, she resolved, she’d have to give up.

Tom pointed to the door opposite a small galley station. She ventured forth. The chrome on the sink shone cleanly. It reflected the red wink of her pedicure. The tub was dry, unused, white, circle-shaped and large enough to bathe a baby bison.

Removing her shoes, Stacy stepped into the tub. She said, “Lock that door,” to Tom and waved him in.

He kicked off his sneakers and jumped over the edge of the tub, nearly slipping in his socks. He grabbed Stacy around the waist and pressed her against his chest, kissing her hard on the face and neck. Without warning, he parted her lips with his tongue and began a full-out lingual assault. After two minutes of this oral frenzy, Tom unceremoniously unzipped his jeans and let them drop to his ankles.

“No hurry,” she said, twinges of nervousness and What - am - I - doing? surfacing. Yet Tom’s stomach was smooth, flat and golden as a beach.

“You’re the one who’s constantly checking her watch,” he said as he lifted her dress and pulled at her panties.

She checked the time again. Fifteen minutes. She glanced at the tent of Tom’s boxers. The absence of romance here had to count in her favor, she reasoned. She should be proud of her brazenness. It would make a charming little story in three or four months, the squashed food in the carpet, the bats and balls on Tom’s boxers, the light grit of Ajax on the tub floor. But right now, as she let Tom spin her around and she braced herself against the tile wall with her hands, Stacy was hard-pressed (literally), to find a single amusing aspect to this. And then, the rattle of the bathroom doorknob.

Tom, breathing heavily, shouted, “Get lost!” at whomever was now knocking loudly. He reached between her legs and touched her. She couldn’t deny the thrill. Male hands on her body. Her skin nearly jumped. She positioned her feet shoulder width, ready for Tom to do his part for gender equality.

But nothing happened. Again, he fumbled about, making her all the more prepared. But seconds ticked by without Tom making his point. Tom cursed a bit under his breath. The knocking of the door was now a rhythmic pounding. Stacy asked politely, “Is anything wrong?”

“Uhh. I’m…this has never happened to me before.”

Stacy’s quickened blood screeched to a halt. The phrase every man dreads to hear: “Is it in yet?” The phrase that kills a woman: “This has never happened to me before.” Stacy turned around. They both stared mournfully at what might have been.

“I want you too much,” he said desperately. “But this rushing. I’m hung over. It’s that idiot.” He gestured at the pounding of the bathroom door. “You have to give me another chance!” But the sight of Tom as he tried and failed to restore his pride and the sight of herself, panties stretched between her knees, her dress pushed up around her waist. She was not this desperate.

Stacy righted her clothes, stepped out of the tub and put on her shoes. She smiled (a gesture of infinite generosity, she thought) and said, “I’ve got to get back to work.”

She opened the bathroom door. A nearly naked young man was relieving himself in the mini-sink above the mini-bar. Stacy walked past him quickly. Tom pulled up his jeans and gave chase. “Please, Stacy, meet me tonight. I won’t let you down. You’ve got to say yes,” he pleaded.

“I’ve had all the female empowerment I can stand for one day,” she said, and left.

She wouldn’t blame herself. Her equipment had been operational. But the sting! An impotent 20-year-old. Who ever heard of such a thing? As she raced back to work, Stacy decided not to tell Charlie about the humiliating episode, even though she was sure he’d supply a comforting speech along the lines of “This happens to every guy” and “You’ve got the goods” and “He was way out of his league.” No need to seek reassurance. She would, instead, erase the entire seedy experience from her memory. She needed reliability. She needed a rock (no slam to Mr. Tom Softy). A good man was hard to find. But she knew exactly where to locate a perpetually hard one.

Tuesday night

S
tacy’s mental shift — from never thinking about sex to contemplating nothing but — was seismic (although, to be precise, her mind was locked on the pursuit of sex more so than the act itself). Her record so far: 0 for 2. First, a flat-out rejection from Jason, and then the crushing download of Tom’s floppy wares (his spirit was willing; the flesh was limp). Never in her life had she worked so hard for a little action. As a woman, Stacy was hardwired to blame herself when anything went wrong (consciously or not). She had to wonder: Is it me? Is this my destiny? Surely, at some point in the future, she would have sex again. She couldn’t imagine going another 50 years untouched. But the possibility was real: She could remain celibate for the next stretch of a decade. She could give Learning Annex seminars titled “Embrace Your Sexless Self Since No One Else Is.” Or “Advanced Masturbation Skills for the Sexually Handicapped.” Or “Celibate and Childless: Cursed or Careful?”

Needless to say, Stacy was useless in the afternoon meeting at thongs.com. As soon as she walked into the conference room to join the others and took a seat at the huge turtle-shaped table, Janice started in with the questions. She had to know
everything
that happened at lunch with her precious, darling boy. Stacy wondered if mother and son had a healthy relationship.

“We had sushi, and then took a short walk,” said Stacy safely.

“Where’d you go?” asked Janice.

“Around midtown.”

“Make any stops?”

“We just walked.”

“It’s a hundred degrees outside,” said Janice.

Stacy nodded. “We were hot.” No, not that. “We were warm.” Oh, dear. “We stepped in and out of stores for the air-conditioning.”

“So you did some shopping,” said Janice, a bit too excitedly. Stacy remembered with the thonk of cylinders in her brain that Janice had an impending birthday. A biggie. Make that a hugey.

Smiling slyly, Stacy said, “I shouldn’t say any more. I don’t want to spoil the surprise.” If Tom forgot his mother’s 50th on Friday, it would now be on Stacy’s head. She jotted a note on her pad to call the hotel later and leave Tom a message.

To her right, at the tail end of the turtle table, Taylor Perry spied Stacy’s note to self. On her own legal pad, Taylor wrote, “You didn’t miss much.”

Stacy hoped Taylor was referring to the lunch hour portion of the staff meeting and not her foiled encounter with Tom.

Fiona stood at the head of the Turtle. “Let’s get back to ideas for what to call the mesh line. I like Meshwear 2001. Anyone else?”

Silence at first, as always. Furious scratching of pens on paper. And then, the half dozen women in the room began shouting out suggestions.

“Mesh magic.”

“Mesh and match.”

“I’ll be meshing you.”

“A hole new look.”

“Monster mesh.”

“Mesh Pit.”

“Stacy?” asked Fiona impatiently. “We haven’t heard from you.”

“How about…” Stacy started, trying to snap her attention back to the matter at hand. “How about: What a fine mesh you’ve gotten me into?”

Nervous titters around the room, echoing off the walls. There she went again, words flying out of her mouth before her inner editor could stop them. She shrank in her leather chair. Fiona’s black helmet of hair seemed to expand with fury. Was it possible Stacy was purposefully pissing off her boss? she wondered. Was she like a wolf in a trap, gnawing off her own paw to save her soul, her life?

“Meshwear 2001 it is,” said Janice, attempting to snip the burning wick of the Fiona bomb. “Why go further when we have a clear winner? Let’s move on to design and production. Ladies? Ideas?”

The design team had a list to present. While the head of the department prattled on about metallics, Taylor, who had nothing to do with production issues whatsoever, scribbled excitedly on her pad. Stacy was impressed with her note taking (how resourceful of her). But then Taylor pushed her pad toward Stacy. “What a fine mesh we’re all in,” read the note. “I’ve been thinking about my options — jobwise, personally. We should go out sometime soon and talk. I like the way you think. I like you, too.”

Stacy swallowed hard, put a check mark over the word “soon” and returned the pad to Taylor. Stacy dared to look at her behaltered, braless colleague. Taylor was grinning coyly, circling Stacy’s check mark over and over again until the ink on the pad was thick and blotchy. Okay, thought Stacy, here was some new information to process. Could Taylor have sworn off men because she preferred
women
? Was she a New Lesbian? More importantly, would a girl-on-girl fling (not that she’d ever had one, or had ever wanted to — but she was in no position to be picky about the age, quality, stability or gender of her dates) would qualify as a de-revirginating event?

“Stacy!” barked Fiona. “Price list!”

Fumbling for her printout of proposed prices, Stacy felt her ears go hot. Their temperature didn’t return to normal for the goodly part of the hour. The meeting continued, sustaining its keen tension, for the rest of the afternoon. Nothing much was achieved except the brutal assigning of tasks. As Stacy limped (not that word) back to her office, she counted 37 items on her To Do list, from the commonplace (negotiating with importers, hiring models) to the creative (composing sexy names for each chemise, babydoll, G-string and teddy in the line). Most likely, for her composition, she’d stick to the Fiona-preferred vocabulary list, including words like Enchantress, Huntress, Risqué and Savage.

But no more fabrics and finery tonight. She was exhausted from the unswerving stream of Fiona’s disapproval. Stacy quietly tossed lipsticks and Altoids into her straw purse. She started to shut down her iMac. On the desktop, on a Stickies memo, was her other, personal To Do list. At the top, in red, all-cap letters: V DAY, JULY 23. Was she too tired and beaten down to make a call? Was it emblematic of her sorry sexual situation that she was always too tired and beaten down at the close of the workday? Not today, she vowed.

With renewed vigor (forced and contrived, but it was the best she could do), Stacy reached for the phone. She dialed an old number from memory.

Ring, ring, ring.
She almost hung up, but he answered with a groggy hello.

She said, “Brian?”

“Stacy?” he asked, surprised.

“Are you sleeping?” It was only eightish.

“This is so weird. I was just dreaming about you.”

They’d been happy — thoughtlessly, comfortably — in their early days. The familiar sound of Brian’s voice made her heart tight. She said, “I miss you.” At that moment, she felt a genuine tug for what they’d had when it was good. It was never true love. But they’d had tenderness. She wanted to sit in his lap, lay her red head on his shoulder and cry with great sobbing gasps.

He asked, “Are you okay?”

She remembered this about him: He was sensitive. He knew her well. He could intuit exactly what she was feeling. Just to be sure, Stacy took a deep breath and said, “Brian, I’m horny.”

The phone was silent for a moment. Then, he said, “You’d better come over.”

Stacy stood outside Brian’s apartment on West 72nd Street filled to the collar with nostalgia. This corner, this building. They’d never lived together, but she’d spent several nights a week at his place for three years straight. Memories flooded her senses: the smell of the Papaya King restaurant across the street; the sight of his name on masking tape by his buzzer; the cool marble walls of the lobby; the clicking sound of her heels as she walked toward the elevators; the taste of lipstick as she reapplied while standing on the other side of his apartment door. It was as if the year hadn’t floated by without him. As if she were arriving, cranky and tired after work, as she had hundreds of times before.

Before she had a chance to knock, the door swung open. Brian grabbed Stacy by the wrist and lassoed her in his arms. His embrace was like riding a Lifecycle. She sank into his beefy chest, smelling his shirt.

She said, “You smell nice.”

“You like?” he asked. “It’s eau d’Clorox.”

She pulled back and gave her ex the once-over. He’d put on a few pounds. And he desperately needed a shave. His hair was too long and his shirt had coffee stains. “You look good,” she said. “Good enough to eat.”

“You want dinner?” he asked, jerking a thumb toward the small kitchen off his living room. “I can scramble some eggs. Burn some toast, just the way you like it.” Brian’s cooking skills had never progressed beyond breakfast.

Stacy shook her head. “I said I was horny, not hungry.”

“Easy, girl,” he said, beaming the goofy grin she’d fallen for on the night they met, at a bar a few blocks away, at last call, when she was as close to blind drunk as she’d ever been (never, she promised herself after that hangover, would she underestimate the punch of a Kir Royale). In the morning, she could barely remember what had happened, and had no idea how she’d wound up in a foreign bedroom. To her great relief, she looked under the sheets and found herself dressed. She’d been wearing a complicated wrap shirt from Banana Republic. She didn’t believe a straight man — certainly not the preppy all-American guy holding two cups of black coffee and smiling sweetly at the foot of the bed — could figure out how to take off the shirt and put it back on again with the strings forming a perfect bow at her hip. She accepted the coffee. It went down far easier than Brian’s mortifying description of her behavior the night before. With gratitude for his generous and chaste protection, Stacy asked Brian to get into his bed with her. They slept for several hours. When they woke up, they showered together and made plans for their first real date.

“Do you remember the night we met?” she asked him now, four years later.

Brian nodded and then sneezed loudly. He pulled a used tissue out of his pocket and blew hard. “Summer cold,” he said. “I’m on the last legs. I’m not contagious at this point.”

Stacy made a practice of avoiding sick people. When stricken with a cold, she became a sniveling mess: her nose doubled in size from inflammation, her eyes teared, her hair went flat and greasy from neglect. She would OD on echinacea and vitamin C, but the germs in her body would cling to the cushy life inside Stacy’s membranes, causing any sickness, minor or major, to last and last. The phlegmy flavor of a cold would stay fresh in her nasal cavities for weeks. She hated getting sick. As she watched Brian wipe himself clean of visible sneeze residue, Stacy knew with the certainty of the damned that he’d left millions of undetectable germs behind. And if she were to kiss that mouth, they would step across his tongue and onto hers, only too happy to settle there, build a colony and multiply until they’d seized control of every mucosal cell in her head and chest. But, on this day in July, Stacy was willing to risk the delicate, thin skin around her nostrils, the luster of her hair, and the freedom of movement without a Kleenex plastered to her face. She would make that sacrifice.

“I haven’t had sex since the last time we saw each other,” she confessed.

Brian cocked an eyebrow. “I’m surprised,” he said.

“It’s been nearly a year,” she said, poised to launch into an explanation. After all, it was impolite to show up at an ex-boyfriend’s door and expect sex without first explaining why.

He sat down in the middle of his living room couch (really a scratching post that seated three — Brian let his cat do anything, which was just one more reason Stacy couldn’t have lived with him). Brian leaned back, and crossed his legs. Great legs, made for flat-front khakis and Timberland boots. She pictured them naked, remembering the muscles bunching and relaxing as he walked around the apartment in shorts. Stacy moved toward him. Just a step. Before she could get any closer, a 20-pound marmalade cat leaped onto the couch and hissed protectively.

“Batty! Darling! How I’ve missed you,” she said to the gigantic orange tom who stole food off dinner plates, sprayed weekly in each corner of the apartment, spilled his water on the kitchen floor, and due to improper feeding, suffered from what the veterinarian politely referred to as gastric insult (more of an insult to the humans who lived with him).

Knowing her true feelings, Batty greeted Stacy with a violent spit and settled solidly on Brian’s lap as if intentionally blocking her access. Stacy smiled, tight-lipped, and sat down anyway. Brian said, “He’s lost some weight. I have him on a new diet. Three cans of tuna fish and twelve ounces of Evian a day.”

“It’s working wonders,” she lied. “Kitty low-carb. Best-selling diet books have been made of less.”

Brian pushed Batty away and leaned toward Stacy. Her heart started pumping again (if nothing more, these erotic stops and starts were salubrious for her heart). He said, “Now, where were we? Ah, yes. Your extreme horniness and how it’s brought you to me. Go on.”

Saying that grating H-word had a salacious effect on Brian. Stacy was well aware. That’s why she’d used it. “Do we have to talk about it? Can’t we do something about it instead?”

“But I’m sick,” he said.

“I don’t care.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Stacy Temple?” he asked.

The question stopped her from lunging. What
had
she done with Stacy Temple? With painful recognition, she saw herself as an automaton whose awkward groping for passion and affection had brought her right back to the man she’d rejected because all he ever wanted was passion and affection. She’d miscalculated terribly a year ago. He was a sweet, kind, handsome guy who loved her (once). Sitting in his warm presence, despite his slovenly appearance and runny nose, Stacy couldn’t understand why she’d broken up with him. If she sufficiently humbled herself, maybe he would love her again.

“I should have paid more attention to you, Brian,” she announced. “I can’t believe I let you go. I want another chance.”

“Stacy,” he started, “a lot has happened.”

“A lot has happened to me, too. That’s why I’m here. I’ve learned painful lessons, and I want to correct my mistakes.”