Flavor of the Week: More Bang for My Buck
I WAS A 21-YEAR old serial blue-baller when I moved to the city. I wish I could blame my prudishness on growing up Catholic or on a fear of STDs, but I couldn’t. At 21, I just wasn’t ready to let someone enter my life—or anywhere else.
Let’s be honest: the only banging I was ever prepared to do was on the bathroom door when I was running late for work. I didn’t know what doggy style was and, for all I knew, missionary style was a command George W. Bush was yelling into battle intercoms during the war on terrorism.
I left Rhode Island, where I had hurt four guys, in bed, pretty badly. Compared to New York City, this may sound a bit low for earning an honorary degree in Blue- Balling, but Rhode Island is so small that four guys was probably a quarter of the dateable population in my age range in the entire state. Either way, it was time to move on to bigger—and better things. So my big cherry and I made the jump to the Big Apple to pursue a career in television.
During my first several months in the city, I would sit in bars after work and flirt with lonely married men, then call it a night. I am not sure I ever blue-balled any of them, but I definitely left them at the bar thinking, to myself, that I certainly could have. Losing my virginity to a married man wasn’t in my playbook. At the same time, I was starting to wonder if I was going to be past my prime when it came to having sex for the first time.
After five months of crashing on the floor of my brother’s apartment, I moved in with a couple, an older Argentinean man and a Northern Californian woman, in Astoria. The two were out most nights, working their restaurant jobs, and I spent most days at my office in downtown Manhattan, or outside running in preparation for races. Without getting too well acquainted with either of them, I became friendly with their pup, a beautiful golden retriever who sat by my side while I cooked my dinner and washed my dishes. Once in a while, the woman and I would exchange a hello, ask how the other’s work was going, and comment on how training was coming along for each of our separate races. The truth was that I didn’t know much about either of them, and they didn’t know too much about me.
One night, my roommates made an attempt to try and get to know me—but not in the most conventional of ways. As I fought, halfnaked, for a decent night’s sleep in the heat of the summer, I heard a knock on my door. I scurried to put my clothes on and opened the door to find my female roommate in booty shorts and a tank top. "Um, so, we are a little… drunk, and please don’t think I am weird for asking you this." I feared that she was asking me if I could leave the apartment so that they could have ungodly loud sex—and I wasn’t completely wrong.
"Do you… or do you know of anyone, a female, who would want to hang out with my boyfriend and me tonight?"
At first, I told her I was unavailable and that all my friends were working. Naively, I had thought she was asking for a girlfriend for a male friend. Then it hit me like a hard one: She and her boyfriend weren’t looking for a team to compete against in Parcheesi—they were looking for a one-night-threesi.
My face flushed, I told her I didn’t know anyone, then shut the door and cowered in the corner of my room. Had I just blue-balled two people at once? While it would have made a great story for my friends back home, I wasn’t prepared to lose my virginity this way.
Several minutes later, I heard a knock on my door again, and as I attempted to hide my jitters, I opened the door a crack. Still clothed, my female roommate stood there, smiling. "I am sorry, Lib… But we’re pretty drunk. Are you sure you don’t know anyone? Do you know any bars we could find someone at, preferably a gay female? We just keep talking about it. " I said, "I know some lesbians in Pennsylvania…and a couple in Rhode Island…"
Upset, she said, "If we decide to go to Pennsylvania or Rhode Island, we will knock again."
As far as I know, they never knocked again. I booked a ticket to Vatican City, thinking a visit to the Pope would cleanse me of that creepy midsummer’s almost ménage-a-trois. Before I left, I took my own trip to Rhode Island, where I landed in bed with a close friend from college. Like Picasso, I found that my blue period was finally over.