The Randy Romance Novelist

by Meghan Quinn

  “Fuck . . .” My head fell in my hands as I leaned up against the bar. Derk patted me on the back.

  “Congrats dude, you got your girlfriend pregnant. And judging by your timeline, I’m guessing you planted your seed on your first try. Did you condom it up?”

  “Of course I did, Christ!” I shook my head, shock shaking my entire core. “Fucking condoms, what good are they anyway?”

  “They really aren’t. My dad always told me the best form of birth control is abstinence.”

  “I hate you right now.”

  I wanted to plow my head through the wooden bar right now, anything to help me forget this moment. Anything to erase the knowledge I just stumbled upon. My girlfriend was pregnant.

  “Hey, it’s not that bad. You want to marry her, right?”

  “Of course, I do.” I answered honestly. “I want nothing more to make her my wife and start a family with her, but I wanted to do that with time. We’ve been together for a few months. We’re still figuring each other out. I don’t want her to think I want to marry her just because she’s having my baby, plus, I don’t feel financially ready for this. Babies cost a lot.”

  “That they do, but it’s the risk you take when having sex.”

  “Fuck you,” I laughed. “Shit, and I’m up for a promotion; I need to get that job now. If I have any hope of making a good life for us, I need to get that job.”

  “You’re up for a promotion? That’s exciting. I’m sure you’ll get it.”

  I snorted, straight up snorted, and couldn’t believe my damn luck.

  “Yeah, guess what I have to do in order to get the job?”

  “Don’t say suck your boss off or anything. I would lose all respect for you, man. Not because it would be some guy-on-guy action, but because you don’t have to get ahead by performing sexual favors.”

  I held up my hand to stop Derk. “That’s not it at all. I have to come up with a brilliant campaign for Legacy.”

  “Legacy?” Derk thought about it for a second and then threw his head back and laughed. “The condom company? Oh, fuck, that’s great. How perfect. How’s that going for you?”

  “Not good now,” I huffed, downing the rest of my beer. “And to make it better, I have to go up against Tasha for the job.”

  “Tasha, as in your ex-girlfriend?”

  “The one and only,” I replied.

  “Does Rosie know this?”

  “She knows about Tasha, not the promotion. I didn’t want to get her involved, or have her worry about it. The only reason she knows about Tasha is because I was working late one night and lo and behold, she tried to surprise me by showing up in nothing but a trench coat. To her demise, Tasha worked late as well and was all up in my business.”

  “I can only imagine how well that went over,” Derk chuckled.

  “Not the best time of my life.” I ran my hand over my face. “What the hell am I going to do?”

  “I would say talk to Rosie, see if she’s really pregnant.”

  That thought crossed my mind, but then again, if she was clueless to being pregnant, maybe it would be a good thing right now, given the insanity draining from her every second of the day. If she was pregnant, then I would want to at least get past the campaign proposal first so I could make sure I was there if she needed me. This was going to stress her out, I wanted to make sure I was able to take care of her to the best of my ability, not blow her off because I had to work late.

  “Yeah, I’m probably going to wait to talk to her about it.”

  Derk shook his head. “Don’t you watch movies and shows? Never wait to discuss important things; it only blows up in your face later on down the road. Don’t be that guy.”

  He was right, I didn’t want to be that guy, but once again, this was real life and I knew what was best for us. Rosie was going to need me when she found out she was pregnant. The next two weeks was going to be full of meetings and refining my proposal . . . a lot of late nights at the office. If I could just get through those few weeks, then I could devote myself to her after. I was just betting on the bachelorette party to keep her busy.

  “I know, and I will bring it to her attention. I just have to get past this proposal first, then I can be at her beck and call. Please tell me you can keep this conversation between us.”

  “I don’t keep things from Delaney.”

  “Give me two fucking weeks; show some loyalty, man. I’m throwing you your boring bachelor party anyway . . . on a Sunday.”

  “Delaney’s decision,” Derk added.

  “I know, but help me out here. Give me two weeks. Your party is coming up; it will be perfect timing. I’ll talk to her after the parties, once everything dies down.”

  Derk gave me a skeptical look. “I don’t know, man. I can see this going wrong in so many ways.”

  “How so?” I asked. “I can fake it. She doesn’t know that I know she’s pregnant. And it might not even be true, she might just be . . . I don’t know having some whacked-out hormone thing going on.”

  “She’s pregnant.” Derk didn’t play games; he called it as he saw it.

  “I know.” I squeezed my eyes shut in defeat. “She is so fucking pregnant.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Man Balls Mahki

  ROSIE

  “Get ready, up your tension, and . . . go!” the instructor screamed into her microphone. “Eat that hill, push through it, pump those legs and eat it!”

  The only thing eating anything in this psychedelic room of spin torture was the bike seat, chomping away at poor, poor Virginia.

  I met Delaney at one of her spin classes for the third time, and what I’d come to find out was people in these classes didn’t have any sort of private parts. I was tempted to take a peek at Delaney’s vagina to see it was still intact while in the locker room, because there was no way in hell she still had any kind of peeing parts.

  The seats on these spin bikes were made for Barbie and Ken dolls, in the land of plastic where sexual organs didn’t exist.

  Every time the instructor told us to speed up, I swear to Jesus himself, the spin seat opened its jaws and started to chomp away at my vagina. Pedal after pedal, the digging of the seat against my area, drilling my underwear into my sensitive skin made me want to puke, to the point that I was numb for hours on end, unable to see if Virginia was still breathing.

  It was painful.

  Then there was the classroom.

  Up front, on either side of the instructor’s bike were screens playing what looked like screensavers from the ’90s. Neon geometric shapes floated across the screen, changing colors at a rapid pace, causing any sober human to feel like they were tripping on acid.

  Music blasted from every direction, and not basic music like Roy Orbison, talking about a pretty woman walking down the street. This was Kidz Bop on growth hormone steroids. The beat was entirely too fast—apparently to help you ride faster—and the singers sounded more like robots resurrected from the graveyard of an abandoned Star Wars set, than actual human beings.

  Combine the music and screens with all the black lights—yes there were black lights—in the room, and you’ve got yourself a sensory overload of epic proportions. Kind of like cosmic bowling, but on shrooms.

  Delaney claimed to love the atmosphere. I, on the other hand, despised everything about spin class. I wanted to ditch the class, but after putting on my spandex workout pants the other day, I realized, they weren’t lying, I needed to hit up the gym, so that was where I was, letting the bike seat eat away at my crotch in the worst way possible.

  Ever have the sharp part of a pen cap try to jab its way through your slit? Yeah, me either until I came to this class.

  I really wondered what it felt like for men to ride these torture devices. Were their balls shriveled up so far in their body that it didn’t affect them anymore? That was my only guess as to how they were able to exercise in the spin room.

  “Let’s move! Up, down, up, down.”

  In tandem
, the whole class moved their bottoms up and down with the music, alternating from hill to flat in seconds. I looked around while I barely pedaled and marveled at all the numb genitals.

  Good for you guys, I complimented in my head.

  “Brunette in the back with the handkerchief in her hair who is pedaling like a grandma carrying her dog in a bike basket, pick it up, or I’m going to keep the entire class a half hour later. Move it!”

  I looked around for the brunette who was ruining everything for us when Delaney smacked me in the arm from the side. “Hey, idiot, she’s talking to you. Move your effing legs, I have a date with Derk after this.”

  “Is she talking to me?” I pointed at myself.

  Over the speakers, the instructor’s voice boomed. “Yes, I’m talking to you. Now, get moving.”

  Embarrassment seared through me.

  I pedaled faster, ignoring Virginia’s protests. You know how people wear shirts that say, “Sweat is just fat crying?”

  Well, in my case, sweat was my vagina crying out to all other vaginas for a lifeline, for help in any kind of capacity, even it was a pussy tap from one lady to another.

  “Well, she’s rude,” I hissed at Delaney.

  We could barely hear each other over the music, but what I did hear fly out of Delaney’s mouth was, “Want that love chub forever?”

  She knew how to hit me where it hurt. Therefore, I spent the last ten minutes of class pounding out my crotch until I didn’t think there was anything left. Every full rotation of the pedal was a knife up my core, slowly disintegrating any sexual organ I grew myself.

  After the music stopped and Lance Armstrong took off her clip-on shoes, she smiled at everyone and told them to enjoy their day. From beneath the towel I dried my face with, I flipped her off. There was a special place in hell for people like her and Marta.

  “You know, if you’re going to go to that class, you should really try to work out,” Delaney chastised me, as we walked down to the locker room.

  “Excuse me for wanting to save the nerve endings in my crotch.”

  “It doesn’t hurt that bad; you just have to get used to it.”

  “I don’t think I will ever get used to having a bike seat eat me out.” I spoke the words, just as an elderly woman was heading off to water aerobics.

  Her look of disgust barely affected me. I was feeling too delirious from Satan’s spin class.

  “Speak a little louder about your sexual acts with a bike next time, Rosie. I don’t think the kids in the play area heard you.”

  I huffed and followed Delaney into the locker room.

  Locker rooms were weird. There were some women in this world who had zero regard for keeping their bodies private, and it was always the women who had string beans as boobs hanging off their chests and grey bushes that would make the goliath, Marta, faint.

  I was opening my locker when I leaned over to Delaney, “What’s with the old ladies in here not wearing clothes?”

  “It’s a locker room, Rosie. They don’t need to wear clothes.”

  I pointed my finger at the ground. “This is America; we wear clothes in public.”

  Delaney rolled her eyes at me and shut her locker. “I don’t know why I drag you to the gym . . . all you do is complain.”

  “It’s really not my kind of place. I found that out rather quickly when the man next to me on the first day of spin class was spewing sweat all over me. How does salty water drip off someone at that rate, and then fling about the room? It was like he was trying to give the entire class a shower with his bodily fluids.”

  “I can’t handle you right now. Are you taking a shower?”

  “I have to. I have that meeting with Jenny.”

  Delaney perked up. “Where are you going?”

  I stuck my chin in the air and headed toward the showers, not forgetting a towel this time. First go around, I had to dry off with my sweaty clothes; it wasn’t a productive showering time. “That is none of your business.”

  “Does it have to do with male strippers and their dicks hitting me in the face?”

  I paused, and so did everyone else around us. I whispered to Delaney, “And you thought I was too loud about the bike. Jeeze, Delaney, everyone probably thinks we are a couple of pervs.”

  “Let them; maybe they’ll keep their dangling boobies away from us.”

  “One can only hope,” I laughed.

  I took a pretty quick shower and got dressed in the stall. l was a prude and I was okay with that. I worked quickly because, just like Delaney, I had a date to make.

  ***

  “Thank you so much for coming with me, Jenny. I didn’t want to pick out strippers by myself, and there was no way Henry would go with me, plus he’s working late . . . again.”

  Third night in a row he’d stayed late at the office, and every time he’d gotten home, he’d been too tired to fulfill my sexual needs. If I thought my vagina felt heavy back then; she now felt like fifty pounds slung around in my underwear. I’m surprised my underwear hadn’t snapped in half from the weight. I needed to get laid . . . badly.

  I told myself every night not to overreact, not to lash out irrationally at him. He was working hard, and I should honor that. But there was a nagging voice in the back of my head that kept saying he was hiding something.

  My insane imagination tried to tell me that instead of working, he was banging Tasha on the conference room table, but I knew that couldn’t be the truth. I continued to tell myself that over and over again. He told me, to my face, I was all he ever needed. But maybe he’d changed his mind since I couldn’t fit in my jeans anymore.

  “I’m just glad we’ve been able to get together. I hate that we don’t get to see each other at work right now.”

  “Me too, but I’m not going to lie, I enjoy working from home, except that I have to take care of Sir Licks-a-Lot. I can’t sleep naked anymore because I wake up in the middle of the night to him hovering over me, batting at my nipple as if it were his own personal boxing bag.”

  “Such a sick cat. I don’t know why Gladys loves him so much. I’ve never seen the appeal.”

  I leaned closer to Jenny as I spoke. “And to make things worse, one time I woke up horny from it. I was so confused that night, not quite sure how to react.”

  “What did you do?” Jenny giggled.

  “I sat up in bed for a second, wondering if I should wake up Henry to take care of it, but I couldn’t fathom the idea of the foreplay being with Sir Licks-a-Lot, so I went back to sleep all wound up.”

  “Completely understandable. I think that was a smart move on your part. You don’t want to give that stupid cat any satisfaction over his nipple play.”

  “That’s how I saw it as well.” I took a sip of my water bottle, I was trying to flush out all the toxins in my body; I read that it helped you lose weight. “Have you heard anything about moving back into the building?”

  “Nothing. Gladys only emails me back after she’s read an article. I think she’s lost her mind, kind of gone postal since they took away all the cats. I think she’s trying to look for a building that will allow us to run a cat commune.”

  “She will never find that in New York City, maybe upstate in the country somewhere.”

  “Don’t even joke about that,” Jenny warned. “I’m not all that excited about writing about painting your cat’s nails, but I don’t want to lose my job because she decided to move the company location upstate.”

  “Might be fun to live out of the city,” I replied, thinking of one day living in the suburbs.

  “Yeah, you can say that because you’re in a relationship with a sexy man who wears tailored suits that rival David Beckham’s. You can live away from the love mecca; me, on the other hand, I’m still trying to look for a man who doesn’t want to test the weight of my nipples on the first date.” Before I could say anything, Jenny said, “Don’t ask.”

  “Fair enough.” I sighed, thinking about Henry. “He really is sexy in suits and e
ven better naked. I have a question . . . have you ever felt like you couldn’t get enough of the person you were with . . . sexually?”

  “Oh, yeah, I’ve had those moments.” The tension building up in me eased a bit from Jenny’s admission. Maybe this feeling was normal after all. “Especially when you’re with someone like Henry. I remember I dated this guy back in college, he had abs for days, I swear I was straddling him every chance I got. Why? Have you been sexing it up a lot?”

  I could feel the heat overtake my face from embarrassment. Would I ever feel normal talking about sex with other people?

  “Yeah, but I’m glad it’s normal.”

  “It is, don’t worry about it. So, tell me, is he good?”

  “I’m not going to answer that,” I responded with a wink.

  Jenny clapped her hands and laughed. “I knew he would be, even though he drives me crazy, I could tell he was good in bed. I think all men who wear tailored suits like that are good in bed. If they are confident enough to have their slacks plastered to their ass, then they have to be good at driving the bologna pony.”

  “You’re ridiculous.”

  “Rosie Bloom?” the receptionist called. “We are ready for you.”

  “That’s me.” I stuck my arm up in the air like a nerd. We followed her past a curtain and into a big room with a stage that reminded me of a scene from Magic Mike. “Have you ever been to one of these?” I asked Jenny, feeling out of place. Stripper auditions weren’t my thing. Then again, were they anyone’s thing?

  Yes, they were Delaney’s thing. Damn her.

  “No, I’ve never been to an audition, but I have been to a bachelorette party where there were strippers. I snapped a man’s G-string that night.”

  “Charming,” I smiled and followed the lady to the seats we were supposed to sit in.

  The room was dark, deep shades of blue were woven into the seats, and bright lights surrounded the stage. I was grateful it didn’t smell, which was a weird thing to say, but after the porn booths at the sex shop, I had to keep my guard up. Plus, I wasn’t sure what kind of establishment I was going to be visiting to test out strippers. Delaney did say this was the best company for hiring male strippers, but that still warranted a cautionary sniff when arriving.