Pumpkin Pounder

by Laura Lovely

  He catches my hand. “C’mon. You’re not leaving like that.”

  I freeze. I’m not?

  He pulls me into a hug, kisses the top of my head. “You’re going to write down your phone number, and I’m going to ring you tonight.”

  Okay, that’s a little presumptuous, but I like it. He puts a piece of paper into my hand and turns me around so he can hug me from behind while I write down my number. I hold the pen over the paper, unsure. “You’re sure you want my number?”

  “I’m going to ring you so much, you’ll be sick of me.”

  “You don’t have to do this, you know. It’s okay if this was….” I stuff the paper into his hand.

  He tips my chin up. “Do you want me to ring you?”

  I shrug. “If you have time, but I don’t expect it.” That’s a lie. I want him to call me. I don’t know why I’m lying so much.

  He searches my face, but I keep my expression cool. Finally, he does what’s been working on me for the past sixteen hours. He gives me that dopey-hot look and says, “Well, if you want to be weird about it, we can do that too.”

  I punch his arm. “I’m not weird!”

  “Yes, you are. But you’re my kind of weird.” Then he kisses me until I’m breathless.

  “Fine. You can call me.” I let myself out and walk away.

  Outside the hotel, an orange pumpkin candy bucket is smashed on the curb, like it got run over. I shiver like someone just walked over my grave.

  * * *

  It’s not until I’m waiting on the subway platform that I pull out my phone. There’s a few notifications from my group text with Seiko and Rachel.

  From Rachel at two a.m.: hope your lady parts are river dancing for their life. Irish flag emoji, dancing woman emoji, peach emoji.

  At three a.m., Seiko sent the face palm emoji.

  I send a cry-laughing emoji. Then, goooood morning.

  Rachel texts immediately, HOW WAS IT.

  I appreciate the all caps level of excitement. I send an Irish flag, five flame emojis, and four red hearts. We had pizza at a place with tablecloths.

  Like a real date?, Rachel replies.

  A REAL date.

  Rachel sends a shocked face emoji. AND WHAT ELSE?

  I smirk. Went to his hotel. Two explosion emojis (one for every orgasm).

  Rachel sends a series of exclamation points and applauding hands. He gave you pizza and ORGASMS??!!!!

  I KNOW!, I write back. I can hardly believe it myself. Now that I’m talking about it, I feel downright giddy. Is this real life? A hot guy, a good time, and the possibility of more? Rachel and I were right last night. Everyone does get lucky on Halloween.

  The train arrives. I settle onto the subway seat in a near-empty car. Rachel’s next text comes in just before I lose service.

  Does the magical sex muffin have a name?

  The train speeds into the tunnel and I drop my phone onto my lap. In horror, I watch the subway tunnel walls flash by. My heart slams to the bottom of my stomach. Without caring who sees, I bury my face in my hands and cry.

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I like him so much. I want him to think about me all day and smile when he does it. I want him to call me, I even want him to tell me again that I’m weird. He bought me pizza, made me laugh, calmed me down, and made me come. He’s the sweetest man on the planet…

  ….and I’m the asshole who took two orgasms and never even asked his name.

  If he doesn’t call me, I am so screwed.

  Chapter Three

  A good lover who ghosts you can torture you more than an ex who won’t disappear.

  Days, weeks, months pass by. No phone call. I pretend to my friends that I’m not surprised, but I am. A Pumpkin Pounder shouldn’t care if a one-night stand doesn’t last past the next morning. Except this time, I do care.

  Daily, I am attacked by memories of him. His beard along my thigh. The candle’s shadow on the tablecloth and his hand reaching for mine. His chin snuggling into my shoulder as we slept. The lilt of his accent when he called me “fecking beautiful.”

  The ghost of a great lover is usually followed by what I call “the parasite of regret.” It sinks its teeth in and won’t let go until I’ve replayed every way in which I monumentally messed up. First I cover every existential mistake. How I didn’t linger in every moment. How I rushed everything to the next step. If I’d known what I know now, I would have made out with him in the captain’s room all night. I would have made every second stretch out.

  Then I torture myself with every practical mistake. Why didn’t I put my number straight into his phone? Why didn’t I take his number as well? Why didn’t I check his room number or get the name of his company? Why didn’t I ask his goddamn name?!

  I know why. I was too busy noticing all the wrong things. I had the perfect romantic New York evening, the kind that only happens in movies, and I wasted it on thinking only about how to score.

  I try to Google him but all the things I know about The Irishman can’t be entered into a search bar. He’s tall, freckled, sweet. His cousin once lived in Boston. There are a ton of tech companies in Dublin. County Limerick is big. Cloud computing lives in…the cloud. I even search Instagram for a gaggle of Gaga’s and find none. I’m like Cinderella’s prince, except I don’t even have a shoe to go on. I might as well have made him up, because I don’t know anything real about him.

  The ache in my chest is real, though. For the millionth time, I kick myself for not asking his name. Then, I try to think of another way I might find him, but I come up empty.

  According to Google, the sum total of what I know about The Irishman is null. Since he never called me, I have to assume I am null to him as well.

  Which leads me back to the beginning of the cycle and how much, in every way, I fucked this up.

  Then there’s the part that really makes my stomach clench at night. The thought I can’t shake, the thought that creeps up in all my vulnerable moments. It keeps me paralyzed in the shower, where I try to disappear in between the water drops. I can admit that I didn’t treat The Irishman like a human being; I treated him more like a goal. I can forgive myself for that. I was honestly looking for only one thing, and he in his ginger glory fit exactly what I had wanted to find. The tenderness I had avoided all of that night only sunk into me as we were falling asleep. Before that, I had been mostly panicking that I would ruin my chance to sleep with him. I didn’t even think about what I wanted beyond that.

  The part I can’t forgive, the part I’m trying to outrun, is that the person I most disrespected, the person I was the most cruel to, the person I most tried to screw and discard, was myself.

  Why do I assume that I’m a girl someone only wants to screw once? Maybe they’ve all wanted to screw me twice. Maybe they’ve all wanted to take me on vacation or to meet their mothers. What if I wanted that too? But I never even considered that it could be an option.

  I’m too caught up in this aggressive, claw-my-way safe mentality, so caught up in “achieve ABC and XYZ, put Tab A in Slot B.” My feet pound the New York City pavement to a constant refrain of “prove I’m here, prove I matter, prove I can do, achieve, accomplish, consume, and conquer.” Nail something down before it nails you. I see a guy, I want his dick, I fuck him. I don’t ask him what he wants at all. Worse, I don’t ask myself what I want. I don’t think of either of us as people. I think of us both as something to be fucked. Fuck something before it fucks you. Don’t make room for anything else.

  That’s why I try to disappear between the water drops, why I turn the shower so hot my skin goes numb. I’m not ashamed to be a woman with a sex drive. I’m ashamed to think I might have valued my sex drive over everything else. That’s the part that got left behind on Halloween, the part that haunts me still. If my life were that haunted mansion ride, the ghost of myself as a total package would be twirling in the ballroom, arms draped forever around the ghost of the one lover who saw me as…well, who saw me at all.

&nb
sp; To be fair, we were both consenting adults who did what we did. I know he liked being with me, he liked my boldness, liked the initiative I took—what guy wouldn’t—but while he tried to get to know me, all I focused on was cramming him into my vagina so I didn’t have to think about anything real. Or feel anything real. I was literally trying to fuck my way into being disembodied.

  So, did he ghost me, or did I ghost myself first?

  The ghost of the decisions I didn’t make, the questions I didn’t ask, haunts me until I find myself in the office of Emily, my therapist. My hair is dirty, my eyes are vacant. My throat has been burning all day. Now I’m on Emily’s couch, trying to work up the guts to say the words that are screaming to get out.

  “You said you were sad…” she prompts.

  “I don’t…I don’t want to slut-shame myself….” I keep my focus on the fringed edge of her carpet.

  “We’ve established that your desires are normal and healthy. Your sex life is active and important to you. I’ve also never heard you mention a behavior that puts you at risk.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat. “I know that. I know I take care of myself. But…somewhere in the back of my mind is the thought that maybe…it’s my fault he didn’t call me.”

  “Why would it be your fault?”

  “Maybe I did something that made him think that he shouldn’t call me.”

  “How do you mean?”

  This is the part of my therapy sessions where I always want to rebel. I want to make a big joke like “maybe my blow jobs suck.” But I’ve been here enough times to know that the impulse to joke means I have to keep talking. I have to get to the bottom of this or I won’t feel better. “He was so sweet, and I kept…I kept pushing the physical stuff. Even when he asked for my phone number, I almost didn’t give it to him.”

  “Why wouldn’t you give to him?”

  “I don’t give men my phone number. Usually, I assume we’re done after a night. I move onto the next one.”

  “Did you feel differently on Halloween?”

  I glance to the window. “I think I did.”

  “How did you feel differently?”

  I stare at my shoes. “I think…I think I’m so used to playing it casually that I got confused.”

  “What confused you?”

  I scratch at my nose. I look at her bookshelf. I know I’m not making eye contact with her, I can feel it. But I can’t look at her just yet. “Can I close my eyes while I say something?”

  “If that helps you feel safe.”

  I close my eyes. I feel tears burning behind my lids. I put my hand over my heart, the way she showed me to when I feel scared to say something big that might be true. Deep breath. Count to three. I say the sentence first in my head. It sounds true, so I say out loud.

  “I think I’m so used to assuming that these kinds of encounters will be a one-night thing, I automatically discount myself from letting it be more. So when he acted like what we were doing could be more than one night, I got confused, or maybe I didn’t even believe him. Like my default is to count myself out of the long-term game. Like it’s not even a possibility for me to have anything serious. Which I don’t think I consciously feel about myself, but maybe now I’m realizing that that’s how I’ve been acting in some of these situations. So when something comes along that could be more, I don’t even know how to act or what to think. I think—without meaning to—I played it casual when what I really wanted was to play for keeps.” The room is quiet except for the sound of her fan and a distant siren.

  “Do you think you’re a keeper?”

  I am silent for a long moment. She holds the silence with me.

  “You’re really good at your job,” I finally say.

  “Thank you. Do you want to open your eyes?”

  I open one eye. The world has not exploded from my truth telling. It’s safe to open my other eye, so I do. I manage to look Emily straight in the eyes. Good for me.

  “Do you think you’re a keeper?” she repeats.

  I’m silent for another long minute. A tear slides down my cheek. She nods and keeps holding the space for me. She’s so nice to me that sometimes I wonder if therapy is as much art as it is science, the art of being kind to people in pain.

  I pull a tissue from the table beside the couch. I wipe my tear away. The lump in my throat is back. I swallow the lump down, but it’s replaced by another one. Then I take a shuddery breath. “Maybe that’s something I should work on.”

  “We can do that,” she says. We take a deep breath together, and this time, my exhale is more stable.

  “One more thing before we end,” she says. “It’s okay to change your mind about what you want. Your desires are allowed to evolve. It takes time to learn about ourselves, and it’s normal to make mistakes while you figure it out.”

  “But, Emily,” I joke. “I’m a modern woman. I want it all.”

  * * *

  Later that week, Rachel and I are lying on the couch. We are engaged in our favorite ritual, “Broads Night In.” This sacred tradition involves selecting a bottle of wine based only on the picturesqueness of its label and watching an episode of Broad City followed by an episode of Golden Girls. Sometimes we insert an episode of Sex and The City between the two, to obtain maximum exposure to the full range of socially approved, sexually active female icons.

  When I’ve worked up the courage to ask Rachel my question, I pause Golden Girls. “Can I ask you something?”

  Rachel sits up, moves the cushion from behind her head to her lower back. “Sure.”

  “Do you think I’m a keeper?”

  She cocks her head, then sets her wine glass down on the coffee table. “Absolutely.”

  “For real? Like if you were a dude, you would sign up for this?” My gesture indicates the hair stuffed into a pile on top of my head and my threadbare yoga pants, but we both know I am really pointing to my confused little heart.

  “Definitely.”

  “Not just because I’m amazing in bed?”

  Rachel folds her hands in her lap. “Even if my dick fell off, I wouldn’t care, because I could still get off every night merely by talking with you.”

  Shit, that’s so nice. “Even if your dick fell off, you’d still want to be with me?” My voice is so small it’s a squeak.

  Rachel draws an X over her chest. “I swear I wouldn’t even miss my dick if it fell off. I’d just feel lucky to be with you.”

  “So you think I’m a keeper?”

  “Fuck yeah. You have excellent taste in wine labels. You’re the funniest person I know. I can do literally nothing with you and still have the best time. Now that you mention it, I’m pissed off that the whole stupid world is missing out on you.”

  “They’re missing out?” I drain my glass and put it on the coffee table. I never thought about it like that.

  “Yep. Big time.” She refills our glasses. “We need a new goal.”

  “We do?”

  Rachel flips open our beloved goals notebook on the coffee table. She scribbles something in it, then hands it to me.

  GOAL: Practice treating myself like a keeper. DEADLINE: Next Halloween.

  Rachel taps the notebook with her pen. “Initial here, please, to confirm your commitment.”

  I meet her eyes, loving and stern. I take the pen before my tears well over. I sniffle as I write my name, Daisy, with a little flower next to it for good measure.

  Rachel takes the notebook from me and clinks her glass to mine. The wine burns as it goes down and joins a new warmth in my belly. Something sparks in there. Something that feels like the teensiest bit of admiration for myself. People like me better than their imaginary dicks, and that’s pretty cool.

  * * *

  That night in bed, my hand strokes the tender skin of my inner thigh. My fingertips trace over my vulva. It’s smooth and silky, a treasure I discover for myself. This time, when my thoughts drift to The Irishman, I imagine something different. I’m not thrashing a
gainst him, desperate and aching. He comes to me slowly, lays his body gently over mine. I don’t clutch at him, fearful that he’ll disappear. In my mind, I feel him push into me. Stay there, I tell him. Right there.

  He does what I say. He stays inside me, thick and pulsing, and whispers back, Whatever you need. I come on my hand with a soft grunt, but still my hips buck against his invisible pelvis, looking for something more. He kisses my cheek. Tell me what you need.

  It’s a fantasy, so I can say what I really mean. I need to know what I want from this, whether or not you’re there too. My hips still. I let out a big sigh. I roll to my side and let the ghost of him fade into a deep, deep dream. For the first time in awhile, my life feels like less of a nightmare.

  Chapter Four

  The next Halloween…

  * * *

  “Get your tail out of my drink, fish-woman,” I say to April.

  She’s perched on the bar of The Tug Boat in a full-on spandex mermaid tail. Seiko convinced her to dress up and sit on the bar “as decoration.” All April has to do is help hand over buckets of Coronas and collect tips. Kevin is, of course, her bodyguard. He’s dressed like Tom Hanks in the Cape Cod scene in Splash, damp jacket and tie, sand on his face, the whole works. Kevin steers April’s fins away from my plastic cup and lovingly pats her feet, which are stuck inside the flipper at the end of the tail. April’s thrilled to have a real excuse to wear this mermaid tail in public. She beams at Kevin. Damn, love really will set you free.

  Not that I would know. I’m the girl wearing last year’s Nightmare Before Christmas costume, pretending it’s because I don’t want to think of a new idea. The truth is, I’m trying to hang onto some of the magic I found at last year’s party.

  Rachel scoots in beside me at the bar and hands me a basket of fries. Seiko had said to come to this year’s Halloween party early, before the deejay started. The Tug Boat has a grill now, and the hamburgers are delicious. Management has added a few more lights, some additional safety railings. It’s still an awesome place to go but now twenty-five percent less of a death trap. If we meet before the party really starts, we can actually talk to Seiko before she gets too slammed. The Tug Boat has grown up a little bit, and so have we.