“Love, listen here.” I back myself onto the top of the hotel desk chair across from the bed and rest up against it with the palms of my hands. “If you didn’t want my cock tonight, it’s not like it was ever going to get much smaller.” A laugh escapes my lips. “So maybe, on the contrary, I’m just doing you a favor. You know. I’m saving you from potential heartache. Who is to say if I had gone down on you tonight, that you wouldn’t have fallen head over heels for me but if I can’t stick my dick inside of you, because you’re too afraid of it, what kind of a relationship is that? I mean, don’t get me wrong. I would love nothing more than to please a woman for the rest of my days, but I believe that would become a wee bit one-sided and well, all is fair in love and war right? Equality is what we are striving for?”
Good god, I sound like an idiot when I’m rejected.
She starts clapping her hands together, giving me a resounding round of applause, which isn’t demeaning in the least. I deserve it though. I’m just too proud to admit to it.
“Congratulations. I used to think narcissists were a myth, you know. It was more of a projection of insecurity than anything else, but,” she pauses and takes a good look at me. “I think I have officially met my first narcissist tonight, so thank you. Truly. Wow. What an honor.”
The rational side of me desperately tries to reign me in, like I’m a feral cat that is on the verge of an attack, but the irrational side of me, the one that usually gets me into bed with random women on the nightly, is the one that is poking a finger into my ribcage chanting fight, fight, fight!
However, at this point, the more of an argument we get into, my dick might actually get smaller or fucking fall off for Christ sake. That or else it will grow five sizes larger and I’ll have her running out of here like she’s the star of a horror movie. Either way, the outcome isn’t looking too pretty.
Besides, I don’t need this. I didn’t ask for this. All I wanted tonight, all I want any night, is a woman’s body. I want her warmth. I want her comfort. I want her smells. Her tastes. Her sounds. I want her to give me release and reciprocate the same for her. I want us to distract each other and for a split second in these robotic lives that we lead in this almost inhumane rat race we fight through daily, to just feel. Something. Anything.
Something different.
I try to help her to her feet off the bed, but she swats my hand away.
“Don’t fucking touch me. I don’t need your help.”
My hands shoot up in front of me as if I’m begging for her to not verbally assault me again and watch as she begins to cover herself, buttoning up her pastel blue blouse, button by button, slowly shielding my wanting gaze away from her white lace bra that barely contains those luscious tits that I had planned on sliding my dick between at some point during this night.
Damn. What a missed opportunity.
I suppose that’s my cue. I grab my trousers that have balled up around my ankles and yank them back up my legs, having to shove my half hard and very sad dick back into its holster. I button up the front clasp, zip the zipper back up to the top of my waistline and pull the leather of my belt through the buckle, while catching her finishing up redressing herself in my peripheral.
“So that’s it.” She keeps probing me, prodding, trying to get a rise out of me. I can’t stomach these good cop bad cop routines women have become proficient at.
Do you know what us men appreciate? Honesty. What a concept. Just be honest with me. Don’t pretend you want me one minute and then, the very next, make it seem like you’re completely uninterested in me and I’m the most repulsive person you have ever met. It makes everything you say and do seem illegitimate. It doesn’t make me want to chase you and change your mind. It makes me want to throw you in the loony bin because I think you’ve lost your wits about you.
“You don’t get what you want so you throw it all away. How are you going to meet someone if that’s all you ever do?” She questions me further, refusing to accept my decline at face value, sure in herself that if I can make her wet like that and my dick is still interested, there is obviously more between us to explore. Or at least I interpret it as a question.
Who fucking knows what kind of mind games she is playing now?
“Yes, that’s it.” I pay her no mind and continue to redress myself. “And I’m sorry I have failed you in making this crystal clear, but I am not interested in finding love. I’m interested in fucking.”
She scoffs, almost hissing at me between her teeth. “You know, I’m sorry for what she did.”
The statement synchronously haunts and intrigues me. I brace myself, because I have this feeling, deep inside of my shaken core that this is going to sting. I also know that I don’t even need to prod further, because she’s about to continue on this soliloquy, regardless if I permit her to or not.
“I’m sorry that she, whoever she may be, has hurt you this badly that you have so many walls up and you refuse to let anyone get close enough. What a sad life to lead.”
I laugh. “So, do you charge by the minute or the hour? And whom shall I address the check to?”
She shakes her head and slowly slips her feet back into her black patent heels. She continues gathering the remainder of her belongings scattered throughout the room. A fallen tube of lipstick here on the floor and a gold plated ring there on the bed.
All I can do is stand back, partially because even though I have been in this position many times before, I never really truly know what to say. She’s got me completely wrong, her guttural instincts on what a bad guy is, fails her, but I can’t be bothered to try to get it through that tiny skull of hers. She’s not worth it. Most of them aren’t.
In truth, she’s not completely wrong. It’s not that I never want it to not be more than sex; I just have yet to find someone that leaves me hungry enough to want seconds.
My eyes trace her movements throughout the room and finally settle as she stands near the door to the hallway, her hand extended out, gripping the handle, ready to turn the latch and never see me again. She turns around one last time and we lock eyes.
“You know, there is so much more in this world than just sex and you would see that if you just opened yourself up to it.” Her persistence is agonizing and rather annoying.
“Like what, long kisses in the rain, butterflies in your tummy, and going weak in the knees?” Even though I know full well that I sound like a royal jackass, it’s not my intention. I swear. I’m not trying to ridicule her. I’m just trying to understand her. I’m trying to understand, and have been trying to for the majority of my sexual life, the fundamental difference in sex that men and women face and why it creates such massive divides. How our expectations and desires are so far apart and how it is nearly impossible to find any subtly of compromise.
How the hell did this one night fuck become so complicated?
“Do you know what I think you wanted tonight or what you want every night?” Her lecture continues.
Absolutely not, but I know you’re going to tell me anyways and when you’re done, can you finally leave?
“Someone to fill a void inside of you; to distract you from the pain that haunts you every day. So you find someone that you deem to be attractive enough to amuse you that night, use them for your own sickened sense of validation and leave them, convinced that you were so sexually liberating for them that they will never forget you. The truth is, though, you aren’t memorable and you will be forgotten, just like someone forgot all about you in your past.”
“You know, love, you’re certainly reading into this entire situation more than you should have.” I walk up to her, closing the gap between us, trying to prove my dominance to her, because in all honesty, her words did sting a little, but hell if I’m ever going to reveal that to her. “Because all I wanted from you tonight and all I want from any woman any night,” I stop my motion inches away from her, my breath warm on her skin. “Is to get my dick wet.”
“You’re just like the rest of
them, Oscar Rose.”
“And I’ve already forgotten your name.”
Her right hand has heat behind it, as it connects with the stubble on my cheek, the nerve endings beneath the thin skin erupting in flames, as though there is an inferno in my face.
I feel pain and lots of it.
Wait, did I just get bitch slapped?
“Fuck you, asshole,” the door slams in my face.
Well, that went down like a treat.
two
The closing of the latch on the hotel room door acts as a metaphor for my Friday night. Door shut. Case closed. I didn’t cum so now what? I did get a little slap though, so I’ll chalk that up to a little kink play. What? I’m just being optimistic.
Time to check out of this musty room and head home? Time to go downstairs and see if I can find someone else? Time to log onto this wretched dating app on my phone and see if anyone is down for swiping right for a late night fuck? Not to mention I’m still slightly shaken from that blonde’s tongue and not in the fun way.
Bloody terrific. So now how am I going to spend my Friday night?
I know what you’re thinking. How common is this for me?
And the answer? Very.
What is there to explain or defend? I’m a man.
I’m a single man living in New York City, who just so happens to be one of the most ruthless, throat slitting, neck snapping, sharp tongued sports agents that ever lived. Do I sound cocky? Of course I do, but rest assured; I’m only this cocky when it’s this accurate.
I can’t even pretend that this is new territory for me or foreign in any way, because it isn’t. I think I was born this cocksure. I mean, I am a Brit after all. Is further explanation really necessary?
My mother, when she was still with us, often reminisced, sometimes in horror or sometimes in amusement, all rather dependent upon how many wee drams she had, about the story of my birth. Rumor has it, the doctor held me upside down, dangling my infantile body in the air like a bloody puppet, while jollily parading around the hospital room serenading me ‘happy birthday’. Obviously, I wasn’t coherent enough at the time or able to regain recollection of this but I can bet, that if I know myself as well as I believe I do, that I would have wanted to punch that cheeky wanker even if my fragile life was at stake.
Also, even if my motor functions hadn’t developed yet, I am stubborn. I would have found a way. Trust me.
This tough exterior was only hardened through the years. Most of the time, it was just me and my mum. The man who impregnated her, who knows where he was or where he is, is someone I never met. My aunts and uncles always resented me for never referring to this stranger as my father, but I thought he was never deserving of such a title. The word father is so much more than just a word; it’s an honor. A privilege. How could I possibly call someone a word defined as my caretaker and protector if I didn’t even know their name or what they looked like?
All that I did discover about this fleeting stranger whose biology is a part of me, was that he was Scottish, which is something that slipped out of my mum when she had to come rescue me from a potential expulsion in middle school after I whacked a kid so good, he lost his two front teeth. When you hear the words ‘you’re just like your father’ for the first time in your life after you do one of the most malicious things you have ever done in your life, it really throws you for a tailspin and makes you question your very existence but also, makes knowing the truth about you that much more terrifying.
The onus of never meeting him was never on my mother. It wasn’t like she withheld any of this information from me. It was always readily available, but I just never cared to know, so I never asked. It’s not that curiosity never got the better of me, but I just figured, if he never cared to make his presence known, why bother? My mum respected that and even though she had her own mum breathing fire down her neck and hate-fuelled speech from the other family members in regards to why she never told me who my father was, she never waivered. I was her boy and I came first.
I never got to tell her how much that meant to me.
Over the years, and the older I got, she was always between partners or as I always referred to them, fuckheads. No man was ever good enough for her. She deserved the world and would always settle for less. A chameleon, she always transformed who she was and what she believed in to appease the next man in her life. I always saw it differently though, and with every new partner she settled upon, she lost more and more of herself until, at the very end, the woman who I had struggled with the majority of my life, was unrecognizable to me.
I believe I lost my mum a lot sooner than I’d like to admit.
We never grew up with money of our own but my mum was a master at the art of seduction and her ability to attract wealthy idiots never ceased to amaze me. I figure it’s where I garnered my ability to seduce women. I never saw a stable relationship, so never felt it necessary to have one.
We were comfortable when she was in a relationship but the second it was over, we were back on the sofa of my grandmum’s, with nothing to our name and no place to call our own. I shouldn’t complain though; I always had food in my stomach and clothes on my back. All I wanted though were stability and security. It was such a tumultuous way to grow up and one hell of a way to induce anxiety in adulthood.
I remember pickpocketing strangers through market strolls with my mum and her latest fuckhead, getting my hands on any loose change or bills I could scrounge up, just in case he would wake up the next morning and leave. I got right good at it too. You would too if you had as much practice as I did.
It started as bills and loose change, but the faster my hand got and the wiser I became with age, the easier it was. I identified luxury timepieces on the wrists of wrinkled old men and how easy they were to slip off as long as you kept the distraction and conversation flowing. After four or five times of ending up back on grandmum’s sofa, I wanted a place of our own and I wanted to help pay for it. So at 14, I started slowly selling off my stolen fortunes, while fronting to my family that the reason for my newfound cash flow, was from washing dishes in the neighborhood café.
So the next time fuckhead was going to wake up one morning and decide that he needed someone younger, bolder and better, I was prepared. I was going to save us. I was going to save her, but they always ruined her and the more men that left her, the harder it was for her to recover. She always thought it was because of her but I know, deep down in my heart of hearts, it was because even though on paper they had wealth, they could never see her for the true treasure she was and that she was worth more than any pound in their bank account. A shame for them but a blessing for her, because she truly was the most incredible woman I have met and none of them could ever even hold her purse.
I saved and saved, for years, but one particular fuckhead stayed around for longer than usual. The longest of them all. She was with him for 7 years. Gave every ounce she had left to him, but then, everything changed so suddenly.
She went from having stomach pain one night to having a full-blown terminal cancer diagnosis in 24 hours. Fuckhead left as soon as the news came in, robbing her of the promise of true love she had been fighting her entire life for. The doctors swear it was the cancer that killed her but I disagree; I think my mum died of a broken heart.
The night she died, I stayed with her until she took her last breath. I lied with her in the hospital bed, clutching her hands tight to my chest, lying with her frail body in my arms. We laughed about the adventures we had been through. She cried knowing she would never see me grow old. I cried knowing she would never meet my future wife. It was agony in its purest form, but one of my fondest memories with my mother. I know it sounds macabre, but it was the only time in our lives, where she wasn’t fighting or trying to impress anyone. She wasn’t trying to put on a brave face for her family, she wasn’t trying to put on a show to lock down her next potential lover; it was just her and I.
I saw her for the woman she genuinely was and who
m I always knew was there. We laughed and cried into the wee hours of the morning and before I felt the life inside of her release itself, she spoke about her previous partners and the heartache she had endured and said to me, with her withered hand upon my cheek:
“I think I was never able to fully love another man because I had already met my one true love. It was you. It was you all along. You’re the only man I’ve ever truly loved.”
Just recalling the words is enough to make me break.
Following her death, I needed an out. I was never really close with my other family members and never had any siblings, so I felt that the chapter of living in London was closed for me. I needed something new and honestly, I just needed to get out of a city where everything that surrounded me, always reminded me of her.
I had every penny I had ever saved, which was more than most young men in their twenties and hell, probably most men that were in my circles, so I set my sights west.
I don’t know what most people’s definition of The American Dream entails, but I knew mine was a posh apartment, a luxury car and to be surrounded by the elite and most beautiful woman I could get my dirty little paws on.
So before I knew it, the hustle and bustle of New York City tantalized and teased me, until it sucked me right in and made me its captive. It was exactly what I needed then and I’m still chasing it now, still desperate to learn its every filthy secret.
I like to think of this city as my lover and my confidant. It’s the only thing that has kept me this interested this long and I’m still utterly infatuated with it. I have yet to find a woman who can provide that for me. I was close, once, but I refuse to live in the past. It’s there for a reason.
When I first landed, I settled into a quintessential bachelor pad, which suited me nicely for my elementary years in the city. It had a bed, a shower, a loo, a microwave, and a fridge. That’s basically all I needed; a place to sleep, fuck, wash, and hold my beer.
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