The Dating Bender Read online

  His shiny pecs throbbed in my direction as he moved them effortlessly. It made me flush and giggle.

  It turned out Long John was not NYFD, but he did play a firefighter on Days of Our Lives while sidelining as a construction worker. Fine by me.

  “Would you mind, just for fun, pretending you’re a fireman?” I purred in my sexiest voice.

  “Sure, babe, I’ll be whoever you want because I’m an actor,” he said. Bravado seemed to ooze out of his biceps.

  I melted into his gaze. My days with course-haired tech geeks and married men were behind me. Long John could be just the type of guy to break me into the NYC hookup scene. Light and loose! Candy would be proud.

  “Would I recognize anything else you’ve been in?” I asked.

  He leaned in toward me, potentially for a kiss, but stopped short as Janey appeared behind him.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, bitch?” she shrilled.

  “Hey, Janey, where have you been,” I said. “Thanks for joining the party.”

  “I saw him first. I’ve been eyeing him all night,” she said as she charged toward me.

  “What are you talking about? I haven’t seen you once since we got here. It’s not like you even know him. Where have you been this whole time, anyway?” I asked.

  “So what if I don’t know him? Now I’ll never get the chance since you stole him from me. I was working up the courage to talk to him after Vin left me in the bathroom earlier,” she said.

  “Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

  When I probed further, I learned that Janey had picked up, and then had sex with, a random guy in a Port-a-Pot latrine. Brilliantly slutty!

  “Are you serious? Not to nitpick, but you left me. I had to find someone to talk to. Lucky for me, John swept in and rescued me,” I said as I sent a subtle, sexy wink his way. “If anybody should be mad, it’s me.”

  “Yeah, right on, babe,” Long John added.

  God, he was hot. I couldn’t be sure if he was interested in me or looking for someone better, but who cared as long as I got to gawk at him for a few more moments. I waxed ecstatic over the potential size of the bulge in his britches.

  As I pondered, Janey turned on me as quickly as she had befriended me. Her arms flipped around like a seal as she screamed, “You man-stealing bitch! I should’ve known by the way you exited the subway you would go after all the guys. This, after everything I’ve done for you? Go to hell.”

  Yes, we agree that’s where she and you belong.

  She turned to Long John in a fury.

  “You dickless asshole. I gave you everything I had at the keg (apparently a boob flash) and you treat me like this?”

  Without as much as a breath, Long John grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder.

  “Let’s get out of here, babe, I don’t live too far away,” he said as he galloped out of the party with me over his shoulder, fireman style.

  I didn’t know if it was the sultry air, his manly maneuvers, or just my need to escape psycho girl, but I went with it. A mile into our mission he put me down in an alleyway of a desolate street in Brooklyn and planted a tongue-kiss that was so erotic it made me tingle.

  Long John continued to thrust his sculpted body into mine. I couldn’t be certain, but I may have had an orgasm right on the street corner because of that kiss. My mini-tee stuck to me, steeped in sweat—a blend of his and mine. Things like this didn’t typically happen to me. Of course they don’t because it’s trashy behavior, even from a two-timing adulterous divorcée! Or maybe they did and I’d just been missing out on this kind of action because I spent too much time feeling guilty about not praying enough for God’s forgiveness.

  The tanned, godly creature spoke, resuscitating me from the kiss. “Should we head back to my place, babe?”

  Babe wasn’t usually a term of endearment that worked for me, but because of the sexy way it rolled off his luscious long tongue, I let it slide.

  “Sure,” I squealed without a pause.

  I knew I’d regret this in the morning, but with Manhattan glowing in the background, I couldn’t think of anything better than being petted by a stallion. My decision solidified when I spotted his pee-wee stick throbbing right through his cargo shorts. Good God, it was the longest thing I’d ever seen.

  ***

  NYC fling number one—the hottest pick-up ever. Because tequila was involved, I wasn’t totally clear on what did and didn’t happen, but I suspected there was no penetration since my undies were still on.

  While my underwear was on, the same could not be said for his. A point that was confirmed when his alarm clocked blared “Highway to Hell” at 5 a.m., jolting him off the futon but failing to wake him from his slumber. The fall did expose his more than ample apparatus. I couldn’t help myself. I leered for way too long.

  I would have remembered having sex with that. Also, based on the size of his apparatus, it would have knocked something loose inside of me, and I saw no evidence of a rough ride, other than an empty bottle of tequila and some dirty tube socks.

  He sprung up.

  “Shit, babe. I’m late.”

  He pulled on some camo cutoffs and ended my fantasy. His apartment was littered with towers of scripts and wallpapered with posters of chicks in swimsuits.

  “I hate to cut out without banging you first but I got to get to the site.”

  “No worries, really.”

  He readied for work while I tried to make my bedhead relax down to a respectable level. He reappeared with a Pop-Tart and fed it to me. Even his fingers were sexy.

  When we finished eating, he pulled me into his arms and thrashed his tongue into mine as he pushed me out the door and to the curb. He stopped groping me only long enough to hail us a cab. Having him sitting shirtless next to me all but erased my hangover.

  He stared intensely. I sweated profusely.

  “Babe, you were bad. You were so bad you were actually good. Wow, the control you’ve got. I don’t got that. My cock is going to break off in this cab if we don’t have sex right now.”

  The driver glanced back nervously. I smiled politely and continued to perspire and rub my nose discreetly. Meanwhile, Long John slid his hand down my pants and not-so-gently massaged my private parts.

  “If we don’t fuck soon, I might explode. Are you gonna make me wait forever?” he said.

  Confirmed. We did not have sex. Thank God.

  Shit. What was wrong with me? I should have bedded this hunk when I had the chance. He broke my obsessive thinking by sweeping his long, luscious fingers through the neck hole of my t-shirt and pinching my nipples. The cabbie leered at us through his rearview mirror and turned up the radio. Nothing fazed these drivers.

  Long John continued to “pet” me all the way over the Brooklyn Bridge. You’ve ensured a one-way ticket to hell, dear.

  He fondled my buttocks as he twirled his tongue in my ear. I thought about letting his penis enter me as we rounded the corner of 14th Street and Broadway, but it felt too crowded for such behavior with the cab driver less than a foot away.

  “Hey, John, as much as I’m turned on right now, I just can’t. It seems unsanitary. I hope you know it’s not for a lack of wanting you, believe me.”

  He stared right through me. I looked down, trying to avoid his gaze and wished for his nuts to stop throbbing beneath his shorts. Or was that him playing with his own balls?

  “Babe, you’re killing me. You’re so hot. Wanna go camping next weekend?”

  I would’ve agreed to bear his children if he’d asked. He crashed his lips into mine until I answered him.

  “Sure, I love camping!”

  A total lie, but being stranded in the middle of the wilderness with a stud of his magnitude seemed worth a little roughing it. I got a quick flash-fantasy of him ravishing me on a bed of leaves. It would be okay to have sex with him in the woods with nobody watching, but not here.

  As we pulled up to the construction site, my modern-day white knight leaned in
, kissed me on the cheek, and slipped the cabbie a fifty as he commanded the driver to take me wherever I wanted to go. He winked at me and then he and his bulge swaggered away. Before I had the chance to digest the events of my “ride,” Long John turned around, pounded on the roof of the cab, and tongue-kissed me through the open window one last time before sprinting down the block. I remained breathless and the cab driver speechless for the remainder of the ride.

  If these were the kind of nights I could expect in Manhattan, my single life was sure to soar. When I got home, I peeked in the bathroom mirror to verify that it was me looking back. Had an alien pod absconded with my body? Near sexual liaisons with studs was not normally my thing.

  A tawdry version of myself stared back. As I examined my reflection more closely, I noticed I had a neck full of hickeys. They formed a pattern that resembled leopard print. Cheap hussy, harlot going to hell and back. I had twenty-six minutes to get myself covered up, dressed up, and to Times Square to start my new job as a production intern at Sure Shot, a position I had secured upon arrival via a job posting on Mandy.com. One brief interview over stale coffee and I was in. Apparently, they loved my start-up stories, and my experience from NetSocial enough to hire me.

  I wondered how well I’d fit in with the other twenty-somethings at the office, many of whom probably had real sex the night before. I was a disgrace to my age bracket. But, more importantly, I wondered, could I actually go camping merely to have sex with a wannabe soap star/fireman? For trampy singles everywhere, I sure as hell hoped so.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A couple of weeks into my gig at Sure Shot, which I liked to think placed me at the heart of New York’s entertainment scene, it became obvious that living in Manhattan was going to be much more expensive than I had planned. This observation was worsened by the fact that my paltry NetSocial severance had dwindled quickly. But I reassured myself that the decision to ditch technology in favor of a creative career would be so worth it. Like Oprah always said, you couldn’t put a price on discovering your bliss. So what if I had to take a non-paying gig that relegated me to doing meaningless tasks like logging film stock and ordering stamps for the office? If that was what I had to do to break into the movie biz, so be it.

  But then I received my landlord’s hate mail, reminding me that my second month’s rent was due. Or as she put it, “Pay up now or get out.” She furthered her point with six exclamation points. Clearly, she was out of touch; nobody uses exclamation points anymore. It was emoji all the way baby.

  Two hours, countless emails, and three homemade martinis later, I landed a phone interview. Oh, how I loved Craigslist, my go-to guide for all of life’s conundrums. The posting made it sound like a dream job, working part-time for a communications mogul named Molly from the Upper East Side. She traveled the globe coaching some of the most renowned on-air talents in the world. A martini-induced sound sleep would ensure I aced the interview tomorrow.

  After an easy-breezy meeting, Molly hired me part-time to work out of her home office. The way she explained it I would be doing light marketing.

  By day two on the job, I realized that “light marketing” meant instilling a heavy-duty overhaul on her day-to-day personal life. She was a bit of a head case, yes, but she paid well, so I’d vowed to stick it out. The flexible schedule also granted me enough time to still swing the internship.

  When I told my brother about the new job, he agreed to brief my parents on the career shift over the phone to avoid another full-scale meltdown. They still hadn’t forgiven me for skirting the annulment, so this new bit of intel would likely fuel their annoyance with me.

  Despite Jimmy’s smooth investment banker talk, the news apparently broke them, especially when he explained how I willingly left the traditional work world in favor of “nutball entertainment,” as my father had put it.

  My mother connected her own dots and assumed I turned to a life of porn on the streets that surrounded Times Square. She told Jimmy to remind me that porn and divorce were mortal sins and I still couldn’t come home until I got an annulment and went to confession. PS, she still loved me, but not until I paid penance for my past.

  After one week in Molly’s office, it became clear why she paid me such a hefty sum. She was impossible to work with. I suspected she was heavily medicated, but the drugs did little to quell her rampant mood swings—most of which she directed at me. Her office reminded me of home.

  One minute, we’d be having a perfectly normal discussion on work or dating. The next, she was throwing CDs and pencils at my head and screaming about how nobody could ever do anything right, blaming “the change” for her erratic behavior. After one of her manic episodes, she threw a keyboard at me for not saying “It’s a wonderful day” at the end of a phone call.

  Fridays were especially bad. I prayed that today would be different.

  “Sam, I’m heading to my shrink. You better not botch anything up while I am gone,” she said. “Sorry, honey, I didn’t mean that.”

  “Wow, she’s a little intense, don’t you think?” I whispered to her cleaning lady who stared at me with knowing eyes.

  While Molly was gone from the office, I tried to get as much work done as possible. I tidied up her pit of a home, my attempt at organizing Her Highness happy.

  A few hours later, she bounded into the living room of her ornate, tacky apartment. While she was tastefully dressed each day, her home was not.

  “Sammy, I’m back, my dear. How are you, sweetie?” she sang. She must’ve forgotten about this morning’s outburst. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was related to my mother, Queen of Denial. She entered the spare bedroom-cum-conference room of the apartment where I sat, carrying an obnoxious, overstuffed bouquet of calla lilies.

  “Here you go, my sweet! Oh, I love my girls. Do you know how lucky I am to have you?”

  The housekeeper and I knew exactly how lucky she was to have us. Nobody else was fool enough to put up with her lunacy. I reminded myself I needed the money.

  Thank God I finally caved and agreed to go camping with Long John. Whenever Crazy Molly rode me hard about my lack of attention to details, I thought about him riding me hard all night long in an assortment of positions throughout the wilderness. After a few tedious phone calls I realized he was dumber than I remembered, but so what? It was the biceps that mattered most in this instance.

  I just needed to make it through the day and I would be free from Molly the nutjob and ready to let loose in the forest. By midday, I wondered if I would ever get out of her lily-lined prison.

  When I could stand it no more, I said, “Molly, I’ve got an overnight date set for this weekend. Do you mind if I cut out now? I still have to pack and I have no idea what to bring.”

  “Something sexy, sweetheart. Skin is still in. And take the flowers. Some men still need an aphrodisiac to get the engine started.”

  I doubted that John needed anything to get in the mood, but I obliged anyway to avoid any possibility of her becoming upset.

  “Thanks, Molly, you’re the best.”

  “I know, dear. Enjoy.”

  Thank God I got out of work early because I never imagined how tricky it would be to pack sexy, camping-friendly underwear and attire. After an hour of attempts, I found myself surrounded by a tower of Victoria’s Secret teddies and thongs, cargo shorts, tanks, and a multitude of bug repellants. My cell jolted me out of the stress cycle.

  “Sam, would you be interested in working on a production crew on weekends for our documentary, Life in the Hamptons?” Marjorie, my other nutjob boss, asked.

  “We’ll be out there shooting for the rest of the summer. And there is pay involved in the form of free travel in and out of the city on the Jitney and a free place to crash.”

  I had nothing better to do, and it would move me one step closer to actualizing my dream of a creative career.

  “Sure, Marjorie, that sounds great, when do you need me?”

  “Immediately.”
/>   She hung up and sent me a terse text message with all the logistics. Since merely packing for my camping trip caused me to break out in hives, an honest excuse to cancel felt like a blessing from God. I called Long John.

  “Yo, babe, I was just masturbating thinking about you,” he said.

  How charming.

  “Wow, you don’t say. John, I really hate to do this, but I got called into work this weekend, so I’m not going to be able to make it.”

  “Babe, you are so good at playing with me. Yeah, I can’t go neither, huh, huh, huh.”

  “No, seriously, I really can’t go,” I said.

  “Babe, stop it. I just came all over my futon thinking about it. You can stop messing with me now, I’m finished. What time should I pick you up tomorrow?”

  How stupid could one hunk be?

  “John, listen to me. I’m not coming onto you or encouraging you to pleasure yourself. I can’t go camping. Do you understand?”

  “Damn, babe, I’m getting hard all over again. Imagine how hot we’ll be, boinking in the woods.”

  Even more charming. By the time we got through the tough-to-follow parts of the conversation, I was horny too. Beyond all his stupidity was a voice that oozed of sex.

  “Babe, get your ass over here right now and fuck me. You’re totally killing me, man.”

  As appealing as that sounded, I needed to be on the Jitney super early in the morning. He continued to moan on the phone, which made me even hornier. I broke down and had phone sex, which was not nearly as fulfilling as I’d hoped. Without having his buff body as a distraction or a physical gesture to stop him from talking, his dumber than dirt tendencies outweighed his hotness by phone. In reality, it felt like a torturous form of safe sex. My mother would have been proud.

  “John, that was amazing. But I really do have to get off the phone. Thanks, though. It was great. Maybe I’ll see you around the city sometime.”