Available

by Matteson Perry

  “Couldn’t close the deal, eh?” Kate Middleton asked as we rode back to their place in a cab.

  “That, my friend, was the slow play. Tomorrow I will follow up and ask her to get a drink and come off as a proper gentleman, rather than a drunken horndog just looking to get laid.”

  “But you are a drunken horndog just looking to get laid,” Dustin said.

  “Tomorrow I won’t be drunk,” was the only defense I could offer.

  * * *

  In the morning, I got in touch with Simone through Facebook. I had plans in the East Village that night, where she lived, so we agreed to meet for a drink afterward.

  I emerged from dinner excited to see her, but with a problem. Simone didn’t actually live in the East Village. Technically, she lived south and west of the East Village in NoHo, but probably hadn’t said so because no one wants to say they live in NoHo, as it’s the wannabe cousin of SoHo.

  Manhattan geopolitics aside, a mile lay between Simone and me—far enough to be discouraging, but too short a distance to respectably take a cab. Now, a mile is not far, particularly in New York City—I had a commute that involved over a mile of walking when I lived there—but I lived in Los Angeles now, where a mile is VERY far.

  Here is an all-inclusive list of reasons why anyone would walk a mile in LA:

  • They’ve had their license revoked because of a DUI.

  • They’re doing a walk-a-thon to raise money for Chihuahuas allergic to avocado.

  • They’re a method actor preparing for a role in an action film called The Walker. (Tagline: You’ve got to walk . . . before you die.)

  • They’re getting some practice in for the zombie apocalypse.

  • They’re protesting a new law that adds a 5% tax on frozen yogurt.

  • They’re a tourist.

  For me, walking was like using a fax machine—I’d done it before, but why would I use that arcane technology? Yet, sex was on the line, so I set off.

  Within a few blocks I was sweating profusely. Perspiration raced down my forehead and dripped off my nose. My T-shirt was turning from light to dark blue. You’d think I’d just run a marathon. All I needed was a tiny cup of Gatorade and a bib number. The worst situation was going on below the belt, where the humidity had caused a condition known medically as Swamp Ass.

  A couple blocks before I reached the bar, I stopped at a drugstore and bought deodorant, baby wipes, and baby powder. Next, I went into a thrift store and purchased a shirt for $7. In a dark corner of a relatively quiet block, I threw away my old shirt, put on the deodorant, wiped down my undercarriage, and sprinkled some baby powder in my undies. I gave myself a sniff. Not bad. I might pull this off, “this” being “not seeming like a sweaty garbage monster.” I walked the last few blocks as slowly as possible, willing my body not to sweat any further.

  * * *

  “You were all the way up at Fourteenth? That’s a long walk on a hot night,” Simone said as we hugged hello.

  “Ah, I didn’t notice. It’s fun to be back in New York, walking instead of driving.”

  We sat at the bar for more than two hours, sipping cocktails and getting to know each other better. She was originally from Minnesota, a sports fan, and one of the few people I’d met in my life who knew as much about Saturday Night Live as I did. Her smarts—she’d gone to Ivy League schools for both her undergrad and MBA—blended with her midwestern upbringing, creating an approachable sophistication.

  I walked her home, and though it was still warm, a slight breeze cut the heat on the now quiet city streets. Of course, there was the ever-present New York City smell of warm garbage, but that aside, a very romantic scene.

  “So, this is my apartment,” she said when we reached her building. She turned to face me, readying for a good-night kiss. I’d spent enough time proving I was a gentleman. Time to be bold.

  “Well, we should go in there.”

  “Okay,” she said, her eyebrows rising in pleasant surprise.

  The tension kept us quiet as the elevator rose to her floor. We walked down the hall without a word. As soon as the door lock clicked, I grabbed her shoulders and kissed her hard, pressing her against the wall. She kissed me back with equal force and we stayed there for five or ten minutes before moving to her bedroom, shedding clothing as we went. The sex was fast, aggressive, and over quickly, leaving us both panting. After a brief break, we had sex again, before finally going to sleep only a couple of hours before Simone had to get up for work.

  In the morning, I rode the elevator down with a guy in a sharp suit about my age who was probably headed to a job on Wall Street. I, unshowered and wearing the same rumpled clothes from the night before, was clearly doing the “walk of shame.” But, here’s the thing—I didn’t feel any shame. I was the Boy Toy of a High-Powered New York City Businesswoman! No shame in that at all.

  * * *

  Two days later, on the Fourth of July, Simone and I sat jammed together in a round booth with six of my friends. Fireworks were popping above the East River, but we hadn’t wanted to leave the air-conditioned bar, figuring it would be more patriotic to keep drinking anyway. Above the table Simone and I talked with the group, but below we were having a private, nonverbal conversation. A roll of the eyes from Kate Middleton let me know we weren’t being as discreet as I thought.

  Around 2:00 a.m. we left the bar. There was talk of more drinks at another venue, but Simone and I departed. In the last hour the hand flirting had escalated to whispered promises of what we’d do to each other that night. Finally alone in the cab (cabdrivers don’t count as people), we started making out before we reached the first stoplight.

  As the sun started to snake in between the Manhattan high-rises the next morning, we were still awake, cuddling in bed and taking in the fourteenth-floor view. Instead of staying at Dustin and Kate Middleton’s place, where I had an air mattress with a slow leak and an insufficient fan, I was in bed with a naked woman, cocooned in AC. This was the exact scenario I’d hoped for when I’d started The Plan—jetting off to cities around the world to enjoy two of my passions: bedding strange women and central air.

  For the first time since I’d started dating casually, the postsex cuddling didn’t feel strange. I could fully indulge the affair without worrying about leading Simone on with my wondrous cuddles because I was leaving in a few days. I’d stumbled into the perfect situation—A Relationship with an Expiration Date. We had the good stuff of a relationship (sex, intimacy, fun) without any of the nasty side effects (commitment, serious talks, or gross, disgusting feelings).

  * * *

  “So I would rate your penis a one,” Simone said.

  “Excuse me?”

  I was nearly asleep and hoped I’d misheard her. I wouldn’t expect penis raves, but a one? Yes, it was ugly and weird-looking, but so are all penises. Compared to a sunset or a Monet painting, yeah, my penis deserves a one, but versus other penises I felt it had a fighting chance.

  Simone saw the look of dread on my face and continued.

  “No, one’s a good score. See, my friend and I have a theory that instead of judging penises on objective size, with bigger being better, it should be about individual fit. So we judge on a scale that only relates to us. So less than one means it’s too small for me, over one means it’s too big, and a one means it’s a perfect fit.”

  “Okay . . .” I said, still not sure how to take this information.

  “It’s good! Trust me!” she said.

  “Well, thank you, then. Or you’re welcome?”

  * * *

  Simone and I hung out once more before I left and our last night, like the first two, consisted of drinking and sex. The next morning at breakfast was the first time we were together alone, sober, and not having intercourse. It was slightly awkward. Conversation that flowed easily while we were naked felt stilted in a standard dating scenario. It’s weird to make small talk with someone who has ranked your penis.

  “Does your offer for me to st
ay with you when I’m in Los Angeles still stand?”

  She had mentioned a trip to visit friends the last time we’d hung out, but I didn’t remember telling her she could stay with me. I was pretty sure all I’d said was “we should get together while you’re there,” but I wasn’t going to correct her.

  “Of course,” I said, deciding I’d worry about what the visit meant when the time came. For now, I had bigger things to think about—Burning Man was only a few weeks away.

  It had been ten months since the breakup and eight months since I started dating again. In that time, I’d dated almost twenty different women and slept with five of them. Not exactly Wilt Chamberlain numbers, but for me, a lot. Plus, I’d certainly increase my tally at Burning Man. Maybe I’d have sex with five women that week. Maybe I’d have sex with five women on just the first day!

  13

  * * *

  WELCOME HOME?

  My Burning Man adventure started in San Francisco, in a store on Haight-Ashbury, where I was shopping for “Playa-wear.” Playa-wear is the crazy clothing people wear at Burning Man. (The desert where the event takes place is called the Playa, from the Spanish word for “beach”). Playa-wear usually includes one or all of these things: bright colors, lights, bondage gear, masks, lingerie, and thrift store clothes that used to belong to that art teacher you were pretty sure smoked a lot of pot. Basically, you dress like a five-year-old whose parents let him dress himself.

  I was shopping with a friend of Grant’s named Logan, who was going to ride in to Burning Man with me. So far, my big purchase had been a leather bracelet. It was far from extravagant, something you’d see on the wrist of your average farmers’ market vendor, but as I never wore jewelry, it seemed PRETTY WILD. In fact, when I wore the bracelet out of the store, I immediately felt self-conscious and took it off. No need to start the radical-self-expression just yet.

  If a leather bracelet felt out there, I certainly wouldn’t buy anything from the second store we visited, which looked like the closet of a sex clown. All the clothes were kitsch, tight, and from the “electric” section of the color wheel. I was flipping through a rack of pants, when a salesgirl wearing yellow bell-bottoms and a neon-orange tube top (standard retail uniform) asked me if I needed help.

  “Just looking,” I said.

  “I’m guessing you’re going to Burning Man. Are you set for sparkle pants?”

  She said this as if sparkle pants were a human essential, like water.

  “I would say I’m not well set in the sparkle pants department.”

  She asked my size, grabbed six pairs of pants, each a different color and pattern, and took me by the hand to the back.

  “It’s a coed changing room. Do you mind?”

  “Uh, that’s fine.”

  Burning Man had begun.

  She opened the curtain to reveal an area fifteen feet square occupied by a topless woman and two huge Irishmen in their underwear. While I tried on the different pairs of pants, the salesgirl kept popping her head in and saying things like Damn, your ass looks amazing in that pair or You’re going to get so laid in those. She was good at her job is what I’m saying.

  Eventually, I settled on a pair of skintight marine-blue pants worthy of an Olympic figure skater.

  “Great choice,” she said. “Would you be interested in purchasing a matching bow tie?”

  HELL YES, I would be interested in purchasing a matching bow tie.

  * * *

  The next day Logan and I rose before the sun to head into the desert. On the way we picked up Logan’s friend Alenka, though I wasn’t sure we had enough room for another person and their belongings. The trunk was almost full and we still needed to pick up food, water (seven gallons per person recommended), and booze (seven gallons per person recommended).

  “Think it will all fit?” Alenka asked. Born in Estonia, raised partially in the United States, and now living in France, Alenka spoke with a subtle, strange, and cute accent. She had angular Eastern European facial features and a fit body, evident despite the hoodie she wore. Sitting on the sidewalk was a growing pile of her stuff. I didn’t see how I would make it work.

  “I’ll make it work,” I said. Incredible what you can accomplish when an attractive woman asks.

  We stopped in Reno for groceries and found Whole Foods full of Burners pushing shopping carts filled to the brim and shouting advice back and forth. The amount of dreadlocks, tattoos, and “free spirits” was high, even for Whole Foods. I thought our next stop, Walmart, would be less popular with Burners, given the mythos, but it was even more crowded, every register four carts deep. Spending a week without commerce requires a lot of commerce. Our supply cache secured, we departed civilization.

  Burning Man is located approximately a hundred miles from Reno. The first twenty miles were an easy drive on the interstate. The remaining eighty miles, spent in a bumper-to-bumper line on a small country road, would take seven hours.

  We crawled along, rarely exceeding fifteen miles per hour, sometimes coming to a standstill. Logan and I talked a lot. Alenka alternated between sleeping and bouts of rapid-fire questions on a wide variety of topics: Where are you from? Are there showers at Burning Man? What do you think about death? What’s Brooklyn like? How much art is at Burning Man? Who is Quentin Tarantino? She was kind of like the hot foreign exchange student I’d hoped would show up in high school.

  We passed by a small town, part of an Indian reservation, a blip of civilization amid swaths of barren land. Every home and storefront was dedicated to servicing Burners. Hand-painted signs advertised camping supplies, Playa-wear, bikes for rent. One notice promoted the services of “The only lawyer within 100 miles.” The majority of the population’s income probably came during the week of Burning Man, for better or worse.

  Strangers that morning, by midnight Logan, Alenka, and I were like roommates, riffing on inside jokes and making fun of each other. The sky had darkened completely and a snake of red lights stretched out before us into the darkness. Our energy ebbed and flowed as we tried to manage the purgatory in which we were stuck, at Burning Man, but not yet at Burning Man.

  As we inched along toward our destination, some of my excitement turned into nervousness about the week ahead and one aspect in particular—the drugs. Many people attend Burning Man and stay sober the entire time, but drugs are common there.

  I’d only done a drug “harder” than pot once in my life and it had come a couple months earlier at a Phish concert while I was in New York. I was not a fan of the band, but Grant had an extra ticket and I thought it might be a good opportunity to try some drugging. A few minutes before the band took the stage, Grant dropped a half-dozen shrooms into my hands. The gray shriveled fungi, each about two inches long, looked like something you’d find while cleaning out a nasty fridge.

  “Is this one dose?” I asked. Dose. Look at me, using drug slang!

  Grant nodded. I looked at the pile of mushrooms again. It looked like more than one dose to me. Shouldn’t one mushroom equal one dose? Pouring them into your hand like trail mix didn’t seem like a good form of measurement, but I shoved them into my mouth anyway. They tasted horrible, the kind of flavor that makes your body say to your brain, We are eating poison. I’m going to keep chewing and swallowing, as you command, but just so you know, this is poison.

  After worrying for the first hour that I might throw up, I was able to relax into the sensation. My body tingled, the light show mesmerized, and the music sent my mind pleasantly drifting. I decided I liked doing tripping. It was fun!

  So, my first and only experiment with drugs was a positive one (other than getting me to like Phish), but I was still nervous about what was to come at Burning Man. I’d always been anxious around drugs. This is because the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program in elementary school had REALLY worked on me, convincing me drugs weren’t just unhealthy or dangerous, but inherently wrong and evil. As a ten-year-old I’d vowed to “Just Say No” to drugs and, if need
be, happily step up as a snitch. I was a proud American, eager to help George Bush Sr. win the war on drugs.

  In college, as drinking and pot use became ubiquitous, my attitude mellowed. Maybe the roots of the marijuana plant didn’t reach all the way to hell. But I still didn’t partake in drugs, other than very occasional pot use, and even being around them was rare.

  But my year of being single meant trying new things, so I wanted to experiment with drugs at Burning Man. I worried my inexperience would make me look foolish, though. What if I snorted some cocaine and everyone stared at me like Don’t you know you’re supposed to put that kind of cocaine in your butt? And then I’d be the dipshit who couldn’t tell the difference between regular cocaine and butt-cocaine.

  Knowing Grant would be there calmed my nerves a little. After our successful trial at the Phish show, he’d agreed to be my Drug Spirit Guide. I told him that whatever he got, to get some for me too, and tell me how to use it. With Grant’s guidance I would get through it, I could do it, I could be a drugger.

  * * *

  Around 1:00 a.m., we turned off of the road and onto the dry, silty lake bed, the “Playa.” We were close, but our progress remained slow. During another stop, a woman jumped out of the RV behind us, removed her shirt, and started dancing topless in front of the headlights. She spun and gyrated, the long scarf in her hand trailing behind her and contorting in the wind. People honked their horns in support and others joined the woman in celebration.

  “Is it time for beer yet?” Alenka asked.