Whats that?

             Jen and I went to a gay bar for new years because we had no plans and we both desperately wanted to make out with someone when the clock hit midnight, but I think more than anything we had created a fantasy of meeting our future spouses.  We ended up making out with each other, but I still managed to meet this man named Jet and within five minutes of our conversation we were sucking in helium and talking like mice, during which time I had already formulated the story we would tell our kids about how we met.  “You should have seen daddy with that balloon in his mouth, he was so handsome.  He sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks!”  I don’t know why but in the event that I do ever have children, I see them enjoying a show with an annoying caliber  parallel to Alvin and the Chipmunks, so I think my kids would enjoy my reference to their father sounding like their favorite television personalities.   I didn’t really think we would get married and have kids, but it was just nice to pretend for a moment that something might work out, and that maybe I had met a gentleman.  Before we departed, I sucked in the last bit of helium and asked him to make out with me.  He didn’t, he just took my number and kissed me on the cheek, like a perfect gentleman.
          He called me the next day and asked when my next day off was,  I could barely contain my voice from reaching an obnoxious octave I was so excited.  I told him Wednesday, and our date was set.  We were to spend all day together, and there is no doubt in my mind that would have happened had I not taken him up on his invitation at 2:00 am, Tuesday night, to come over to his house for a “pajama party.”  I knew when I read his invitation via face book messaging, that it was probably a booty call, but the fantasy husband I had made Jet out to be in my mind would never stoop to that level of sex, a level I have not been down to in years.  The level people get to when they are lonely and horny and send a message to a stranger for a quick blow job or finger up the ass.  No, Jet was a gentleman, he would never do that. But just to set some boundaries, I was sure to tell him that we would not be having sex, as I do not have sex with people that I don’t have feelings for, and he agreed to my terms and conditions.
    When I pulled up to the address he gave me, I was greeted by valet parking, and escorted into the 10 story building on the plaza.  Jet met me by the elevators, and we rode up in complete silence.  I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk over my loud intuition, which was telling me that this guy was not my future husband but just a rich guy I was probably going to hook up with.
     When he opened the door to what I thought was going to be a nice apartment, my eye balls were sucked into my face and rocketed out of my ass hole, at the overwhelming sight of this mans 10th story penthouse.  What wasn’t engulfed with marble, granet, stainless steel, or onyx was coated with an indescribable shimmer that can only be afforded by the rich and famous.  “I’m home” I thought to myself.  I felt like Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” and Carrie Bradshaw with Big, I felt like a fucking princess who had been returned to the castle she was violently separated from at birth by her well intentioned yet inadvertently evil parents.  Jet was leaning against a glass statue of an elephant looking at me.  He stood 6”3’ but maybe a little taller on account of his Armani boots, his perfect jaw structure was  grinding back and fourth, and his hair line, however reseeding, was overlooked in light of the 12 foot Thomas Kincaid  painting hanging above and behind his head.   He must have known I was week at my knees because at that moment, he made his move.
     I was wearing a very ugly sweater that somehow looked only a little ugly on me and resembles something the late Mr. Rogers would have worn to a petting zoo before molesting every young boy able to take directions but not talk.  Jet saw this as an in, and approached me slowly and with a sensual stride I have never seen exhibited in a man, and though it appeared to be rehearsed, I could feel the hair on my neck become erect.   He unbuttoned the first wooden button to my sweater and sang, “So, let’s make the most of this beautiful day, since we’re together we might as well say,”  he unbuttoned the second button, “Would you be mine, could you be mine.” At this point, he is singing so softly into my ear that at times his voice cracks and becomes an inaudible whisper.  He unbuttoned the last button, “Wont you please, won’t you please.  Please won’t you be my neighbor?”
            I don’t know if it was the fact that I was being pressed against marble pillar that probably cost more than my student load debt, or the fact that this weird 26 year old just sang the Mr. Rogers theme song in my ear and was sucking on my neck like a lollypop, either way, my guard was not just down, it had been demolished.  “What,” I thought to myself as my spine shivered at his mouth finding an untouched and dry portion of my neck, “could be wrong with this guy because something is not adding up.”  And then, as if it were divine intervention, I saw the lines of cocaine on his granet table top.  My guard was up again.  It’s weird how quickly someone can tear down your guard, the only thing that protects your morality and self worth, but what’s even more fascinating is how fast a person can piece it back together at the fist sign of danger.
     He saw me looking at the coke, “it’s just sugar for coffee” he said.  Given the fact that I lived for 9 months in a cocaine den with a transexual porn star, I knew it was coke, but convinced myself that maybe it was sugar.  I mean, lots of people dice their sugar into five perfectly symmetrical lines using credit cards to scoop it into their coffee cup right?  “What do you do? How do you afford all of this?” I asked.  I don’t know why I asked that question, it just felt appropriate.  “I’m well kept, lets just say that,” he responded, giving me a look that commanded I not ask another question.  “Oh so you’re mooching of your parents?  You have a sugar daddy?  You sell drugs and your body?”  Still nothing.   He would not tell me what he did for a living, which when coupled with the cocaine on the counter supplied ample indications that, maybe, I should count my losses and run .  But then I caught a glimpse of his bathroom and further, his stone wall shower, and I decided that I was over reacting, that a little mystery is fun, and that I should just suck it up both literally and mentally.
             I tend to do that a lot.  Have a colossal red flag punching me in the face, I think this is called intuition, and act like I can’t feel the wind blowing my hair back with each wave of it’s leviathan fabric.  Even as a child I ignored my keen sense of intuition and constantly found myself in trouble that could have been avoided had I listened to that voice saying things like, “Ryan, maybe you shouldn’t stick that fork in the electrical outlet,” or “perhaps you should wait five minutes before shoving that steaming hot casserole into your mouth.”
            Take the time I almost died in my grandma’s pool for example; I must have been 10 or 11 years old, and it was November.  She had covered her pool with a black plastic tarp that sagged down two feet and rested on top of the water.  I remember taking into account the fact that the only thing keeping this flimsy plastic tarp from getting sucked into the pool was long rubber sacks of water laid on the edges around the pool.  Still, I thought it could support my weight, not only did I think it could support my weight but I thought the thin layer of ice could too.  I threw an acorn on the ice and it didn’t break through, so, against that voice that was screaming at me not to step on the ice, I did it anyway.  There wasn’t even that moment where you’re standing on the ice, tapping it with your toe to see if it’s safe, I just fell right through.  I was under a sheet of ice, getting wrapped up in cheep pool tarp plastic and thinking, “I’m going to die if I don’t’ get out of here.”  I knew that if I kept moving it would make it worse so I sat still in the water until I floated up to the surface, I then slowly pulled myself towards the wall of the pool and carefully got out.  I fixed the tarp and told my grandma I only fell in a little bit, because I didn’t want her to worry.
         Jet gave me a silk robe to wear to bed.  It took him about as much time as it took me to put it on that it did for him to rip it off of me.  He kept trying to have sex, but I resisted.  He was growing angry with me because I wouldn’t let him enter me, he even got up and went into the bathroom a few times to keep from yelling at me.  My intuition was screaming for me to leave, but I was there and I needed him to calm down.  I was scared, uncomfortable and lost.  I gave him a blow job and somewhere between blowing a stranger in a silk robe at a top floor penthouse, and talking myself into staying the night, I began to realize some things about myself. For one, I realized the influence marble floors have on my pride and morality. Almost equally profound to the last realization, I became frighteningly aware of how scared I am, a fear that was revealed to me when I was drowning in his sheets thinking, “I’m going to die if I don’t get out of here.”