She was wearing a tight white t-shirt and short-shorts that said "Cocks" across her ass

When Barney dropped me off he said, “I know she’s like your landlord or whatever, but do it, it’s worth a shot.”

He was talking about the girl who worked at the front desk of the apartment complex from which my roommates and I were about to be evicted for acting too much like – well – college students. She was the girl I used to go down and rent horrible VHS movies in the lobby rental place from, just because I knew she’d be working. She’s the girl I’d once purposely passed out on the stairs near her apartment so I knew she’d at least have to think of me that day. She was the girl who, when she showed us the place and the train went by blowing its whistle so loud the whole building shook, I said “Yeah we’ll take it,” just because I couldn’t stop staring at her. She was the girl who had just seen me in a bar that night, on a Sunday when the stores don’t sell beer and said, “Hey, you live in my building, you should stop by some time.”

In some states it’s against the law to sell beer on Sundays. Blue Laws, they’re called. For all I care they can add Saturday to their list as well, because on days you can’t buy liquor, if you have any in your house, it gives you an excuse for almost anything. So when Barney honked his horn and waved out the window leaving me on the steps of my apartment building that was an old textile mill converted into over a hundred apartments, I decided to call up that girl. Hey, I had alcohol. Let’s give it a shot.

When I got to her apartment I had to ring the doorbell with my face. I know it must have looked weird to the little Indian guy in the hallway jabbering away on his cell phone, me trying to juggle a box of beer in my arms and four or five more bottles stacked on top of it, ringing her doorbell with my tongue pressed against my cheek. But so what? I was trying to get laid, all bets were off.

She had on a small tight white tee shirt and shorts when she answered. They were the kind of shorts that girls at the University of South Carolina wore that said COCKS across the ass. The kind freshmen and sophomore guys will make bets about who can sneak into Sorority Sally’s room and write “Insert” and “Here” in White-Out above and below the inscription. She had her hair down and there were no lights on in the entire place.

“Hey,” she said and smiled and it was obvious we were both kind of nervous.

I set the beer down on the kitchen floor and turned on the light real quick.

“Ahhh, turn that off!” she said. “I can’t stand lights, seriously.” Later on I’d tell everybody it was then that I realized I’d never seen her without sunglasses on when we were outside.

Five minutes later we’re making out on her couch. No TV, no radio. And we aren’t talking to each other either, which just makes it more weird. I mean I kind of figured I’d eventually hook up with her, but this was so – I guess, sterile. We stop kissing and we just sort of look at each other, she laughs and I laugh and she pulls a piece of her hair behind her ear and we start again just to do something. The apartment is dead silent. The blinds are all down so even the streetlights in the parking lot don’t shine through.

We stop again and I look around the room.

“Um,” I say, “Do you maybe want to do this in your bedroom?”

Very quickly she says, “Yes! It might be easier,” and laughs.

Her room is big and there are bookcases filled with weird things like stuffed animals and strings of party beads. The reflection of the swimming pool outside makes the ceiling of the bedroom look like it’s moving. Part of me wants to just get out of there, but the other part is saying, whoa you’ve thought about this way too long to bail out now.

We start to kiss again, and nope, nope, no less awkward here.

Finally I just stop and laugh. She asks me what I’m laughing at and I say I don’t know. I don’t know what to say.

“Do you want to get drunk?” is what I end up saying.

“I think we better,” she says, “Because…”
“Yeah, I think we better.”

So we run to the kitchen and start killing beers. Naturally I’m ready after the second one and start acting like a jackass. She’s laughing at me already, but she’s not drunk so I’m thinking Oh, God, it’s Sunday and we can’t get more beer. I say I have some liquor at my place, it’s right upstairs.

We go and start taking shots. We get drunk.

Now this is easier, right?

Wrong.

No, it’s not any easier, I still can’t think of a goddam thing to say to this girl.

We’re sitting on my futon in my bedroom with a bottle of Absolute Citron and two shot glasses on the floor, looking outside as a train passes four floors below and blares the horn nearly shattering the picture windows.

“Okay, I have a question,” she says and I think either Thank God, or Oh, God, I can’t remember which.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, if um…if I go home right now. Like right now, if I just go home…”

I down a shot to keep me from saying anything stupid.

“Yeah?”

“If I go home right now…will you give me a second chance?”

I almost spit out my vodka in her face by mistake.

I thought I was the one fucking this whole thing up. But, this is classic “women think,” right here so I’m not going to blow my cover, of course not.

So, “of course,” is what I say. “Of course I will.”

“Yeah right,” she says and sips from her tiny glass. Blows a piece of her hair out of her face from the corner of her mouth and leans back looking somehow sexier though I can’t imagine how.

And I say, “No, I’m serious.”

And I’m drunk.

“You just want to get laid,” is what she says, and I say, “No, no, I really don’t.”

And I’m drunk.

“Oh, yes you do,” she says and reaches for the bottle.

“No, no, I really don’t, I mean…I mean do but, I mean…”

Drunk.

She shakes her head and takes her final shot. Stands up and walks toward the door. I’m still sitting on the futon like a jackass as she opens the door. I start to think what Tom Cruise would have done in Jerry McGuire. I start to think if this were a movie, how would Ben Stiller make this all better.

So I get up and run to the door.

I stop her at the stairs.

I say, “WAIT!”

She stops. Looks at me. Her in her tight white tee shirt and her short, short, COCKS shorts. Her legs so smooth and her bare feet with prefect toenails painted red.

I’m leaning against the doorway to stand up.

“One second,” I say. “I…have an idea?”

It wasn’t supposed to sound like a question and she’s looking at me like it better be good or I’m never going to get laid in this town again. By anyone.

“Wait here,” I say.

“What are you doing?” she asks, but smiles.

“Just…wait here. Like a second.”

And I’m drunk.

And being drunk, I do the only sensible thing a drunk kid trying to get laid can do and I run into my roommate’s room and grab a candle off his dresser. Yeah, a fucking candle. And I run into the bathroom before she can see what I have and I put it on the back of the toilet and I light it with a match and drop the match in the toilet and I turn on the shower.

I kill the lights.

I come out and say, “Look…”

I say, leaning against the hallway wall, halfway to where she’s standing at the metal spiral stairs that will take her down to the living room, out into the hallway and leave me as that joke on every stall wall in every girl’s bathroom in every bar in the city, I say…

“Look, I’m going to go take a shower. If you want to leave, that’s cool. But if I’m in there…and you come in…hey that’s cool too.”

She just stares at me. I’m thinking, Okay I’m either going to get slapped, spit at or laughed out of college for good. I’m thinking somehow I’m going to get a call tomorrow from my father who says “I heard what you did you little fucker, you’re coming home, you’re done, your little vacation is over. Look at him, the class clown who can’t even get laid, oh, he’s funny all right, funny like a funeral. Done.”

But she just stares at me.

And I’m drunk.

Not knowing what to do I start backing up.

Down the hall.

Still staring at me.

I pause at the bathroom door.

With her still just staring at me from the top of the staircase, I back into the bathroom and lean against the door when it shuts.

I want to do the whole dramatic thing and slump to the floor, but honestly for some reason I just start laughing. I shake my head and I stumble a bit, and right before I go to turn on the light, I hear her running down the hall.

The bathroom door opens and she throws her tight white tee shirt at me and she’s taking off her bra, strap by strap faster than I’ve ever seen in any Skini-max soft core on after 1 a.m.

She pushes me back into the bathroom and says, “Fuck it.”

Once we’re in the shower, and I’m thanking God for alcohol, it’s a whole new ballgame. I’m watching the awkwardness of an hour ago go sliding down the shower drain in a mix of soapy splatter and alcoholic friction.

The only thing is…there’s no condom in the bathroom.

With one of her feet up on the soap holder and her holding onto the shower rod with one hand, I ask, “Hold on. Do you want me to go get something?”

She nods, and out I go, soaking wet with no fear of roommates or water spots or sexually transmitted diseases.

I can imagine what it looked like when Wes and his girlfriend came home from the bars and turned the lights on in the living room to find me ass-naked with a hard-on they could swing from leaping over the couch soaking wet, a condom wrapper in my teeth and my pogo stick dong, bob-bob-bobbing away as I fly past them up the stairs screaming drunkenly.

When I get back in the shower she’s started without me. I spit the wrapper over the shower curtain and, kissing her, I hand her the rolled up condom.

She stops and looks at me like I’m a fucking moron.

I want to say, “Well, what did you THINK I was going to get? An elephant? Some fucking balloons? The hairdryer?”

“This isn’t going to work,” she says, and right when I’m thinking This is classic women-think right here, she says, “Standing up like this, I mean. Let’s use your bed, huh?”

The next morning, waking up next to her she tells me how there’s been a file with our apartment number sitting on the front desk for days. She says there’s an $800.00 fine in there for ruining the carpet and breaking some windows and a note about shooting bottle rockets at the train. As she’s leaving my apartment that day she tells me not to worry about it. I tell her I’ll figure some way to get out of it. She says don’t bother. She says there’s no way she can let them charge me, not after she saw the kind of shit I pulled just trying to get laid.