Zen and Sex

by Dermot Davis

“I guess,” I say, hoping for maybe some brotherly advice. “I’m kinda scared.”

  “First time is scary,” Mike says, sarcastically.

  “Fuck you,” I say jokingly but secretly mean it.

  “I mean first time with a new chick. Not first time, ever. What are you nervous about?”

  “I don’t know. She’s older than me.”

  “Older women are trouble. Remember Veronica? Always two steps ahead. Knew what I was going to say before I even thought about it.”

  “Veronica wasn’t an older woman, what are you talking about?”

  “She was two years ahead of us at college. That’s a fact.”

  “Two years, yeah, that’s ancient.”

  “You going to bring the new chick around? We can double date.”

  “Not tonight. We’re going to a party.”

  “Her party or your party?”

  “Her party. Why?”

  “You know why a chick brings you to her party, right?”

  “No, why?”

  “To see if her friends will like you. It’s a chick initiation. If her friends like you, you’re in. If they don’t…you’re out. Unlike men, women need the approval of their friends.”

  “Great. Just what I need: more pressure. Thanks for the support, bro.”

  “You’re welcome. Anytime.”

  Mike finishes what he’s doing at the wash basin and leaves but quickly returns and places a condom on the sink. He gives me a thumbs up sign: “They’re going to love ya!”

  Frances said that she would come pick me up because the party was on my side of town and it was easier for her to swing by my place than to have me drive over to her, and then all the way back again, which makes perfect sense. Problem is, I’m not used to women I date making perfect sense. Most of them would insist that I pick them up no matter what the driving logistics were. Why is this chick so different? Does she act like a woman but think like a man?

  Or maybe she’s assuming I drive an old, beat up Japanese car (which, in all fairness, I do) and she’d prefer to be seen driving up in her luxury German sedan. Perhaps it’s a control thing; if, for some reason, it doesn’t go so well, she can simply drive herself home and not be dependent on someone else. I know so little about this woman, I should just try and chill and take it every minute at a time. She’s late. What if she doesn’t even show up?

  Frances shows up driving a late model BMW and right away I decide that I don’t belong in this relationship, if that’s what it is. She greets me with a kiss and an amazingly warm hug and right away I feel like this is where I belong: in her arms. The rightness of our connection confuses me; why does our togetherness feel so good? I’ve never felt like this with any other woman, Roxanne included. Is Plato right? Is Frances my missing other half who makes me feel whole? It sure feels that way.

  Frances looks amazing in a tight-fitting, cute, two-piece dress thing that I don’t know the name for. She even drives like a man, with poise, focus and intent. I don’t mean to sound sexist but all the women I’ve seen driving…well, they tend to be scatty, uncertain and especially terrifying when making a left turn or wanting to pull out into oncoming traffic. That includes my mom, so I know it’s not an age thing.

  Even the music she’s playing is cool, young and hip. Most older people I know, well, let’s just say that their musical tastes never made it past the eighties, blah. I made some positive comments about her musical tastes and we talk uncertainly about music that we like and don’t like. I’m not sure if she is feeling it but we’re really awkward with each other, which is a concern.

  There’s a few times in my life where I met some chick at a bar with whom I had an amazing time with and we seemed to totally click. We’d go on a date a day or two later and it was like we were strangers from two different alien planets. We’d be so awkward with each other that after a few glaring pregnant pauses in conversation, we’d agree that it must have been the alcohol that tricked us into thinking that we were made for each other. In the cold, hard light of day, it was obvious that we more suited as contestants for the Mr. and Mrs. Mismatch TV game show than legitimate candidates for a lasting, long-term relationship.

  I’m not saying that that’s how I’m feeling towards Frances but there is a definite whiff of awkwardness among us. Maybe it’s nothing a glass or two of wine won’t fix. I’m pretty much assuming that this is not the kind of party that forces everybody to knock back half a dozen jello shots before the serious drinking begins but they’ve got to have some wine, right? I have no idea what to expect and I’m really thinking that going to a party on our second date is not a good idea. We should have gone the traditional route with dinner and a movie instead, which is much less pressure and it would give us a chance to first explore and then cement our togetherness.

  Apart from the fact that the party attendees are going to be all her friends, going to a party with your date is a very risky proposition. Every party that I’ve ever gone to with a date has had one main hazardous drawback: there are far too many single men on the prowl.

  Let’s face it, hosting a party is really agreeing to turn your pad into a meat market for the evening. Some may argue that no two parties are the same but as far as my limited experience goes, as far as I can tell, all parties are exactly the same: a party is a formalized mating ritual which facilitates the hooking up of single people in a socially acceptable way.

  Picture the scene… people begin arriving and quickly decide to form themselves into various, individual groups: coupled people, single guys and single gals. The coupled people only group with other couples that they know and pretty much exclude themselves from the real meaning of the party.

  Single guys will form their group, not in the kitchen or any other secluded part of the house, no, they will gather wherever the single women are. Pretending to be interested in each other, what they really are doing is checking out every woman in attendance, single or accompanied. Single women form their own group and do exactly the same.

  As every man knows, unaccompanied, single women at parties are usually not very pretty. If they are, then, generally, there’s something wrong with them, maybe some emotional damage you’d rather not involve yourself in.

  Attractive women always come with a guy. It doesn’t matter whether she’s into the guy or not, cute chicks will always be accompanied. It’s the accompanied women that men most like to hunt at parties.

  A single guy will already have pinpointed one or more women worth hunting. He will tell jokes and goof around with the single guys, all the while keeping his eye on the attractive women. What he’s waiting for is that cute, accompanied woman to leave her group or date. When she does, she becomes immediately vulnerable and subject to approach.

  Meeting her at the drinks table, casually, as if by accident, he musters up all the charm he can with the express purpose of making her laugh. As every guy knows, if you can make the cute chick laugh, she is entirely stealable. If her date doesn’t see the danger signs and catch on pretty quickly, then he’s going home alone or maybe with that other boring couple he’s being so chatty with.

  As I think about this, a horror scenario erupts in my head. I’m at this party with Frances and I know by looking at the guys that already she has made at least three single guy’s hit list. We’re sitting/standing at an armchair talking to a couple that she knows and I’m drinking too much but managing to be polite in conversation and successfully giving the impression that I’m a perfect match for Frances. Meanwhile, out of the corner of my eye, I’m keeping watch on the guys that I know have Frances locked into their sights.

  Aside from perfect vigilance, taking a woman to a party requires excellent bladder control. Unfortunately, in the scenario in my mind, I have drunk too much and finally I can no longer hold it in. I must find somewhere to pee. I excuse myself, find out where the bathroom is and hurry upstairs through a pokey hallway where the newly acquainted single people can flirt and get to know each better away from the maelstrom of th
e other hunter-gatherers downstairs.

  There’s a line for the bathroom and every woman that goes in takes an age to come back out again. My heart starts beating faster with every minute spent away from Frances. I can imagine every single guy in the place, positioning themselves closer to her group: people they would never normally be interested in, even if they were the last people on earth.

  When I finally get my chance to relieve myself, I rush downstairs and instantly check out the armchair where I just left her: it’s empty. My heartbeat increases as I rapidly scan the room, seeking her presence. She is nowhere to be seen. I try not to panic as I come up with possible places where she might be. She could have found that secret bathroom that every party seems to have, the hidden downstairs half-bathroom, the one only the females seem to know about.

  Or maybe she’s in the kitchen, exchanging cheese dip recipes with the host’s mother and the elderly next door neighbors. But deep down, in my gut, I know…she’s been stolen.

  When I finally find her, my heart flat lines: it’s worse than I’d imagined. Sitting on the stairs at a party is like putting up a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the motel room front door, yet there she sits in bubbly conversation with a cosmopolitan, wealthy guy who looks like he just walked off the front page of GQ Magazine. Worse still, their knees are touching, which is a very bad sign.

  I know that the thing to pay attention to in these types of situations is how she reacts when she sees me. If she runs down the stairs, swings her arms wildly around me and plants a big kiss on my lips, I will know that my fears are irrational and that I have been totally overreacting.

  When Frances finally breaks her gaze away the most handsome man in the world, she reacts like her fun is over and that it’s now time to go back to doing the laundry.

  “Hi, Martin,” she’ll say, “I want you to meet Roger…” but she doesn’t know his last name which tells me that they have just met.

  “Papasmear,” the guy will help out, “Roger Papasmear.”

  Of course he’ll say it with some continentally inflected accent that makes the last name sound sophisticated and not, well funny. As he talks about the economy or some such gibberish, I’m not able to tell if he’s from Paris, Sicily, Timbuktu or is merely a recent immigrant to the oppressed people’s ghetto on the other side of town where he’s sleeping rough with some fellow ex-pat winos.

  “We should get going,” I’ll say to Frances as she reluctantly extracts herself from his deadly charms. I will feel like a parent who has just ruined his daughter’s life by embarrassing and telling her, in front of the hot, mature guy, that it’s way past her bedtime.

  “Where did I leave my coat?” Frances will say as a ruse to get me to go find it and leave them alone for a few more seconds. I don’t fall for it, as I know how critical it is not to leave them alone for any further intimacy. Standing watchful of them both should prevent the dreaded exchange of business cards (the grow-up version of scrawling your phone number on a prospective date’s palm with a ball point pen).

  “Let me give you my card,” Papasmear says brazenly, almost sneering at me, as if he fears little for my proximity and, at this stage, fails to take me seriously as a rival. If Frances offers up one of her cards in exchange, I will know that I am history. She goes one step further and writes her personal number on the back of one of his cards. I am so toast.

  “What are you thinking?” asks Frances, taking me out of my finely constructed mental horror story, “you’re miles away.”

  “Oh, nothing. Just wondering what this party is going to be like.”

  “To be honest, I’m kinda apprehensive about bringing you.”

  “How come?” I ask.

  “All day long I’ve had these images of how disastrous it could turn out to be.”

  “What kind of disastrous images?”

  “We’re at the party and it’s going fine, we’re talking to some people. But at some point I go to the bathroom. It takes a while because it’s mostly women that are using it. When I come back, you’re not where I left you. You go missing. So I go looking for you and I eventually find you outside by the pool, sharing a hammock with some ditsy twenty-year-old cheerleader type.

  “So I’m thinking maybe I’ll just leave you there and go home. I then decide that I’ll be braver than that and so I go up to you and immediately regret it. Your reaction to seeing me is to act like your father just opened the bathroom door and caught you jerking off to a girlie magazine. The cheerleader seems to think that I’m your aunt or something, and she brazenly writes her phone number in a crudely drawn heart on your wrist with a Sharpie.”

  Frances smiles at her own horror scenario, which relaxes me into a state of abject mellowness. She even thinks like me. She’s gotta be “the one.”

  “I guess I’m afraid someone young and really cute is going to make a play for you,” says Frances and smiles over at me.

  “Forget it, Frances,” I console her. “Not going to happen.” I smile reassuringly to her. Something has shifted with us and we both have grown more comfortable and calmer with each other. She smiles back and I reach out and place my hand on top of hers, which I can tell, she likes. We’re so clicking.

  When we finally get to the party I’m not surprised at how civilized the whole thing is. What I am disappointed, and taken aback by, is that people over forty don’t seem to know how to party. First of all, there’s no keg of beer. Having a party without providing a keg of beer is like inviting someone over for thanksgiving dinner and not serving turkey: it’s a wash. Why? Because not only does a keg of beer provide unlimited booze for everyone for the entire evening but it’s also the grand central meeting point around which everyone circulates and gets to know everyone else at the party. No keg. No beer. No fun.

  Another disappointment is that these older folks don’t drink; okay, so maybe they have one or two drinks which they sip on for the whole evening and no one, not one single person gets drunk and goes on a screaming rampage through the house or running up and down the stairs carrying his best buddy over his shoulder. Boring.

  I don’t see anyone sneaking around to the rear of the house to throw up or pee in the bushes when the line for the bathroom gets too long. And where’s all the single guys? There are maybe one or two single guys but I suspect that their sexual orientations are questionable; not one of them seems interested in hitting on women, single or accompanied. Granted, I don’t see any single women, hot or unattractive, either. It seems that everybody here is coupled already, probably all married since forever.

  Aside from a few waves to people she knows and a couple of quick hellos, Frances stays real close to me and holds my hand the entire time, which makes me feel really wanted. She also seems to be engrossed in everything I have to say, as if my opinions about everything and anything really matter. Her attention and the way she engages me makes me feel like I’m important and have things to say.

  We talk exclusively to each other and I can’t remember the last time that I’ve had such a connection with someone. We talk about subjects that I never seem to get to talk about to my friends: the state of the American economy, where we’re going, and how civilizations seem to rise and fall in a cyclical way; places in the world that we can’t wait to visit; celebrity culture and the dumbing down of the American civilization; the best freeways and shortcuts to take in L.A. getting from her side of town to mine …the discussion is riveting.

  And movies. No conversation in L.A. is complete without discussing the latest movies and the general decline of movie-making in America. From movies in general, we drift into favorite movie genres. Hers is romantic comedy and to her, and only to her, do I admit that this is my favorite movie genre also. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good action movie (as long as it’s not about a super hero with comic book magic powers, whose appeal I just don’t get) but I love the warm and squishy feeling in my heart when I watch a good romantic comedy.

  We then talk about romantic love, something that I’v
e been ruminating over this recent while.

  “Romantic love is what we’re conditioned to believe is real love,” Frances says. “Life’s a bitch until you find your one true love? Then, when you find that one person, you magically live happily ever after? It’s a crock.”

  “It’s a fairy tale,” I agree. I don’t mention it but I secretly believed that Plato was wrong.

  “It’s a myth and it’s totally responsible for the annihilation of adult relationships in the twentieth century.”

  “Say, what?” I say, not following her at all. I stare, riveted at this beautiful and unbelievably intelligent woman.

  “We’ve so bought into the romantic relationship fairy tale,” France continues, on fire as she delivers her thoughts as quickly as they come to her. “We’re told that we’re miserable without it and that it’s the only thing…the only thing that can bring us true and lasting happiness.” Oh, now I get it.

  “I’m up shit’s creek until I meet my “Princess” and you’re screwed until your “Prince” comes along.”

  “Exactly,” Frances concurs. “Think of the pressure that puts on modern day relationships.”

  Suddenly realizing that we are one of the few couples left at the party, with just a nod of acknowledgement toward each other, we both finish our drinks and leave the party, still heavily engaged in our riveting conversation. There is no break in thought or discussion, even when we got into the car.

  “Romantic love has its place, don’t get me wrong,” continues Frances, “but to define relationship solely in romantic terms is like describing marriage only by what a couple does on their honeymoon.”

  “Wow, that’s so true. I’ve never heard it being put like that… in those terms before.”

  We get to Frances’ apartment, in what seems like no time, and she automatically opens the door and we both casually walk in, still engrossed in our conversation.

  “We can blame it all on the movies,” I pontificate, “but in fairness, who wants to see a movie about a middle-aged married couple with a bunch of average, well-behaved kids? People pay to see romance. The audience wants that warm and gushy feeling in their hearts that only a romantic movie can deliver.”