As Seen On Tv. Sarah Mlynowski
to be doing, unable to compute what’s going on down there. It’s a waste, I tell you. A complete waste.
“I’m in the mood to do you,” I say. Is it possible for a woman to be in the mood for a blow job? Except, of course, for porn stars who crave them anytime, anywhere, pool, library or den.
Steve has the Hot ’n Sexy Channel, and I’ve become a porn connoisseur. A porn critic, actually. For instance, the shrieking woman is something else I find absurd. Why does the woman sound like her partner is yanking out her nails, while the man can’t even get out a simple grunt? I guess the lone male viewer prefers his action stars silent. This way he can pretend that the Brazilian-waxed blonde’s “Oh God!” and “Oh baby!” or my personal porn favorite, “Fuck me, big cock man, fuck me!” refers to him.
Since no guy in the history of mankind has ever turned down a blow job, Steve lies back.
“Your turn,” he says a song later, just in time, too, because my lips are starting to numb. He turns me over on my back and kisses his way down my body. Mmm.
Two songs later I’m moaning and wet and he looks at me. “Tell me what you want,” he says.
Steve always wants me to tell him what I want. I want him to stop asking.
“Sex?” I ask.
He thrusts himself inside me, sending waves of heat through my body. I squeeze his shoulders.
He pulls out of me and tries to make me orgasm with his hand. The song changes. The song changes again. His fingers must have lost feeling by now. “Does it feel good?” he asks.
“Yes, almost there,” I say. Why aren’t I orgasming? I hate when I can’t orgasm. I’m not sure what the problem is. He’s doing all the right moves. I’m certainly aroused—there’s a wet patch under me to prove it. But it’s as if I’m in a hurry and waiting for the subway—obviously when you have somewhere important to go, it’s not going to come. There’s some sort of jam at the last station, sorry, take the bus.
The look of concentration on Steve’s face is intense. Is this how he looked when he wrote his college exams? Maybe if I distract myself with thoughts of him studying, I can trick myself into forgetting that I want to orgasm and then I’ll orgasm. As soon as you climb upstairs to hail a cab, the subway speeds underground into your station.
Steve’s penis droops to the left.
“I’m coming!” I lie. I’ll come tomorrow.
The first time a guy put his hand down my pants, I came the instant his finger touched my clitoris. Since I thought this was abnormal, as no one had ever mentioned it in Seventeen, I didn’t shriek out one “Oh God” or “Oh baby” or even one “Fuck me, big cock man, fuck me!” and he kept at it until I was sore, and the whole time I was worried that the girl on the camp bunk bed above me could feel the frame shaking.
Unfortunately that party trick only worked once, my being able to come with just one touch. Now I have about a forty-percent success rate, which isn’t a bad rate. As long as it’s not your oncologist who’s doing the quoting.
“I love you,” he says and slides back inside me.
“How much do you love me?” I ask him later, tracing the letters I L-O-V-E Y-O-U on his back. He doesn’t know what I’m spelling, because I’m using the cryptic Palm Pilot alphabet, Graffiti. I even draw the underscore it makes you use to create a space between words. Sometimes I give the letters extra swirls at the end to confuse him in case he’s catching on. Not that he’s ever used a Palm Pilot. L-O-V-E M-E, I write next.
“Who said I love you?” he asks.
“Fuck you.”
“Again? Can’t we eat first?” He pushes his groin into my thigh.
“You’re not going to change your mind, right?”
“I can change my mind?”
I slap him on the back. “Once I move here, it’s over. You’re going to have to love me forever.”
He bites my earlobe. “Forever?”
“I’m serious, Steve.”
“You’re always serious.”
“It’s a serious thing. I’m about to quit my job and move to a strange city to be with you.”
“You think NewYork is strange?” He pulls himself up. Our skins make a slurping sound as we separate. “Let me tell you about strange. Did I tell you that someone asked me for a French fry yesterday? I was in Washington Square Park minding my own business, eating some fries, reading my book—” he points to The Tommyknockers, the Stephen King novel lying on his floor “—when some guy comes up to me and asks if he can have one.”
“We were being serious here, Steve.”
“He was being serious.”
I picture him waltzing me down a hospital corridor an hour after I have a miscarriage, offering fries to the orderlies. At least he’d make me laugh. “So what did you do?”
“I gave him a fry. And some ketchup.” He moves to the edge of the bed and tugs his boxers back on. “I’m going to make my chicken stir-fry, okay?”
I love his chicken stir-fry. He tosses random ingredients in the wok and it somehow ends up tasting gourmet. “What should I do?”
“You come tell me about your day.” He takes my clothes from my hands. “But you have to stay naked.”
“All weekend?”
“Buck naked.”
“Should I go to my interviews naked?”
“Definitely. Isn’t it a man who’s interviewing you?”
“One man, one woman. At nine and four. I’m not sure if they’d get the joke.”
“Okay, you can wear a sweater. You might get cold on the subway.”
I might get lost in the subway. I open my suitcase and take out a clean pair of panties. I can walk around topless, but his plastic chairs are cold. I take out my laundry bag and put my pants and sweater inside. “Is the place I’m meeting my dad for dinner tomorrow subwayable or walkable?”
I open my purse and take out my birth control. I pop the blue Friday pill into my mouth and swallow. I can even do it without water. Every night at ten o’clock. I’ve never forgotten. It’s kind of impressive, if you think about it.
“Eden’s is in the West Village. Walkable.”
Tomorrow night is dinner with my dad and his new lady friend. His new thirty-one-year-old lady friend who years ago was in Dana’s bunk at camp. Needless to say, Dana refuses to acknowledge the relationship. “Carrie was a slut, and still is,” she reminded me. “When we were Butterflies, she had the top bunk beside me. She used to give Michael Slotkin head under the covers. It was disgusting. How does she even know the jackass anyway?” It doesn’t matter anyway—he never keeps a girlfriend around longer than three months. And every three months they get younger and blonder.
Carrie was my counselor for two summers in a row, when she was eighteen and nineteen. Unfortunately, she always had more time for her blow-dryer and male staff than for us. She was somewhat apathetic about me. She seemed to like me more than the nerdy girls who stared into space while writing letters home and listening to the Backstreet Boys on their Walkmans, but less than my twelve-year-old bunkmates who had blond highlights and early onset eating disorders. As a teenager, she was tall, blond, tanned, busty, talked with her hands and brought her nail file along to every activity. Until two months ago when my father started dating her, I hadn’t heard her name since I stopped going to Camp Abina.
Steve moves his sweatshirt and T-shirt combo off the floor and back over his head. “Is she hot?” he asks, his voice muffled.
“Yes.