The Dating Bender Page 5

  Superstar and I were eating at the Blue Star, his favorite schmoozing spot, despite, or perhaps because of, the pun. Never wanting to bow to conventional norms, he demanded that we start our meal with dessert and work backward from there. We shared the Corleone ice cream ball draped in graham cracker dust and dark chocolate, oozing with honey. I didn’t even know why I went out to eat with him—oh right, he forced me to join him and blamed it on an urge to confer on work matters. We were still waiting to hear from the investors we’d worked so hard to supposedly “seduce.” His words, not mine.

  Between bites, I tried to hide behind my dinner menu so I wouldn’t have to stare at his coarse hair. However, over the tippy top of the flimsy blockade, I could see him smugly stroking his goatee. He appeared to be using my menu as a mirror to primp himself. Disgusting.

  Our waif of a waitress appeared just in time to break my gaze and allow Superstar to undress her with his eyes as he continued to massage his peach-fuzzed chin. I ordered the most un-sexy entrée I could spot, buffalo chicken pasta.

  As he placed his order, his phone rang. Eager for some news, I leaped across the table to answer it, but instead knocked my water all over the crotch of his ripped khakis.

  He swiped the phone up into his long, lean fingers. “Talk to me,” he said.

  I could only assume it was one of the investors, and he was showing them who he thought was in charge. As he talked he made sexy, googly-eyed faces at me. Then he forced his eyes to twinkle in my direction. Superstar was relentless. Thank God he finally hung up, so I could regain my position of ambivalence.

  “So, what’s the word? Are they in?” I asked.

  “How badly do you want to know, Sammy?”

  “Oh, for Christ sake, stop baiting me and tell what they said or I’ll kiss you. I mean, kill you.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He smirked. “They’re in. For five million.”

  As he spoke, he curled up his tongue and lapped his own lips. Before I had a chance to inhale, he leaned across the table, grabbed my wobbling hands, and tongue-kissed me until our waitress interrupted our lip lock.

  She delivered our entrees with a pissy, “Here you go.” Obviously, she wished it were her and not me necking with him. Half of me felt the same way.

  Horrified, with a throbbing chafed kissy face, I buttoned up my pink silk shirt all the way to the top.

  I, a still-married Samantha Serrano, had just allowed a Superstar to kiss me—and God help me, I liked it.

  Chapter Seven

  The problem with Superstar was he was one of those natural boy wonders. Whatever he lacked in good looks he made up for with technical acumen.

  This furthered Oprah’s point. You were never too old to be attracted to a new type, and apparently intellectual geeks were mine. Not that I planned to act on the urge again. Cosmo always said it was okay to look as long as you didn’t touch. Unless you were in an exclusive relationship, then you were allowed to touch, the more the better. But not me. No more touching.

  Technically, Superstar had touched me first, so he was mainly to blame. I couldn’t come up with a valid reason for why I had allowed him to kiss me, aside from the obvious: that this was what we Catholics did. We turned to self-destructive behaviors when pushed into a corner or, in my case, on a non-date with a horrible-haired dweeb. But I kept his urges at bay aside from the occasional kiss, and my hands remained off him when our lips locked.

  A deal with Apple closed just before the year ended and with the good news came the promise of a thriving future, solidified by a promotion for my “ace negotiations,” as Superstar dubbed my performance. I ascended from Customer Relations Manager to Director of Product Development, and the contacts I’d made were priceless in terms of securing a lucrative career. My sex life looked not nearly as promising, since it actually required my dearly beloved to sleep in the same bed with me, or for starters, be in the same state. This must be what it was like to be a man—constantly wanting sex, but unable to get it regularly.

  While scribbling a sex-potential matrix on my yellow tablet, I discovered that the odds were not in my favor—especially with my long-lost husband. I considered other options. With Superstar, there would be no geographical barriers to entry.

  As dusk settled in, Superstar sauntered into my office with the same force that snow poured down from the sky.

  “Sam, are we ever going to talk about what’s really going on between us?” he said as he cornered me in my own office.

  I fumbled and flipped over my sex/no sex checklist.

  “What would that be?” I shrugged.

  He ignored my lame attempt at diversion and kept coming at me, closing the door and blinds behind him.

  Sex in the workplace for women equaled career suicide. I needed to keep away from his sultry, pouting lips and sandpaper hair. Ick! The snow pelted the windows, splattering as the flakes met the glass. Glancing at the precipitation helped keep my libido in check. But he continued to stalk me like a hooker, so much so he landed in my lap, and then mounted me on my pink, puffy chair.

  I tried to protest, but he held his hand gently over mine, and flashed those damn twinkling eyes at me while his other hand unbuttoned my blouse. As I resisted, he broke me down with each kiss. I attempted to scratch my nose, but he blocked my move with his lips.

  Superstar worked me hard, ruthlessly hard. He tried to crack me like a nut, but I was unbreakable, which seemed to make him want me more.

  The fact that he was a good kisser was not helping my resistance campaign. What the hell was I doing? I should have been devoutly focused on my career and virtual marriage. But instead, I sat there and allowed someone other than my spouse to straddle me.

  “Sam, look at me. Really look at me. You’ve known all along this would happen. It’s okay to give in and trust me.”

  Trust, my ass! I was horrible at trusting.

  Okay, I take it back. He wasn’t a good kisser. He was a fantabulous one. His pulsating lips sent shivers up my spine, down my pelvis, through to my toes and back up again. He was one of those kissers, the kind that indicated he would be equally good if not better in bed.

  Superstar was the type of man my mother warned me about. I now understood why. She must have been preparing me for situations like these so I would just say no. Sex is not the answer! If she had uttered that once, she had said it a bazillion times, none of which seemed to have any effect on me in this moment.

  For an hour and counting Superstar and I did the dirty dance, balanced on the high wire, while I contemplated mixing a bit of pleasure with my work for the night. The snow pounded, the clock ticked, and nothing stirred except for us.

  And “stir” we did, three times in a row. And in case anyone was asking, it’s true what they say: Big hands and big brain means big…you know what.

  ***

  I couldn’t stop thinking about his engorged, throbbing penis waiting in the other room as I dove for the phone, screaming over my shoulder, “I’ll get it, SexStar!”

  “Hey, you, how are you? It’s me, Pooh,” Sheldon said.

  It’s me, Pooh! That was all this man had to say after all these months? Eight months of nonexistence, to be exact.

  It was just like him to appear after I’d finally moved on. No doubt God was sending me a message by transporting my MIA husband to me on the day immediately following the most insane intercourse of my life.

  “Sheldon, is that you?” was all I could muster.

  A train filled with Catholic guilt entered the station, on target to derail my life.

  “Babe, of course it’s me, who else would be calling from the border of New Mexico with a U-Haul filled with all of our stuff. Happy almost-birthday. I’m coming home, baby,” he said.

  I finally got the meaning of stunned speechless. There were so many things I wanted to scream at this man. So many questions I needed answered—so many Superstar sex stories I wanted to spit in his face. Instead, half-naked and silent with the phone stuck to my ear, I
crumpled to the floor, my gaze transfixed on Superstar, who lounged buck naked on my sofa in the other room.

  Sheldon prattled on while the New Mexican highway buzzed in the background. He kept repeating “happy almost birthday” as if I should present him with a dog biscuit for knowing I had aged a year without him.

  “Sam, did you hear me? I’m about five hours from Colorado. I wanted to surprise you but I wasn’t exactly sure where you live.”

  Gee, imagine that, you jackass! Maybe it was because you poofed out of my universe without a peep for months on end. He would have been in for a supersized surprise if he had dropped by unannounced last night.

  Sheldon had clearly missed the unraveling of our marriage. For me, it entailed waking up in a dry-heaving sweat a couple of months ago, when I experienced what they refer to in Cosmo as the “breakthrough moment.” In my case, the awakening led to a decision to stop fighting with my husband. There were only so many ways you could beg someone to visit you, and when they didn’t, what else was there left to do short of denying the remains of your married life?

  From that day forward, I tuned Sheldon out of my life. Especially last night, when I went out and had sexual relations with one man while technically being married to another. Deep down I knew Sheldon was only trying to provide for us, but he was supposed to love me enough to find a way to make our marriage work, despite everything else.

  “Sam, are you okay? Maybe we have a bad connection. I said I need your address. I’m coming home, baby!”

  Why did he keep calling me baby? I had never been, nor would I ever be his “baby,” though the idea of falling to the ground and crying my eyes out in the fetal position until somebody picked me up and burped me sounded appealing.

  This was my chance to tell him to beat it, that I’d moved on. And to drop the juicy nugget about the brilliant night of sex I had with a genius named Superstar, who had a huge penis that dwarfed his tenfold. I should have said anything to make him go back to where he came from.

  Instead, I stared out at the snow-capped mountains and waited for my beautiful new life to detonate.

  ***

  I rationalized that it wasn’t real adultery because Sheldon and I were figuratively divorced at the moment I made my final plea for him to come out to visit me. He’d denied my request, said he was in the middle of a huge work crunch, as always. In my mind, that move ended the marriage. He didn’t choose me. Maybe I’d never know if that was what drove me on top of Superstar’s throbbing penis, but I had a lifetime ahead to torture myself about the mortal sin I had committed.

  I should have told Sheldon to step away from the U-Haul and go back home to Florida or Atlanta or wherever the hell he had been living for the past year, but I couldn’t do it. Maybe it was a way to prove to my parents that I was right and they were wrong—that Sheldon and I would be together forever. Or maybe it was just guilt.

  I spent the morning dissecting my predicament while pretending like nothing was wrong as Superstar and I read the morning paper naked and swaddled in a fuzzy blanket. It worked until he got called into the office to deal with a security breach.

  I ran out into the snow still swathed in my Superstar-scented blanket to fetch the mail, hoping my latest issue of Glamour had arrived. It would provide a much-needed dose of relationship wisdom, or at least a few stress management tips.

  Instead, I was greeted with another one of my mother’s clippings. This one aptly titled: Adultery, the Other Red Meat. I swear to God this woman had psychic abilities. How she knew what I’d done, I’d never know. She should quit Catholicism and become a fortune teller.

  Every week she’d ask how Sheldon was doing, and I’d tell her fine, aside from never seeing him. Then she’d remind me that marriage was a forever deal. All of this, yet I still felt compelled to ring her.

  “Hi Mom. Sheldon just called from the road and he’s on his way to Colorado with all of our belongings. I’m not sure if I even want him back anymore. He’s never visited me once in the last year, and we have barely spoken in months,” I bawled into the phone.

  “Samantha, pull yourself together. You can’t go on living like this. Your father and I don’t approve. You’re gallivanting all over town with crazy Babs and drinking to excess, I’m sure. Your husband decided to take you back. There is nothing to think about. You do it. And if you won’t, don’t bother coming home for Easter this year,” she said.

  I hadn’t thought there was anybody I could hate more than Sheldon or myself until I spoke to her. Weren’t parents supposed to sense when their children were in need? Weren’t they supposed to forgo their own selfish desires in order to come to the aid of the child they gave birth to? Maybe Jackie was right all this time. That I had only married Sheldon to get out from under my parents. Whatever. My husband was supposed to love me no matter what—or at a minimum visit me, for Christ’s sake. I wrestled with a paper towel trying to cleanse my sweaty armpits.

  “I hope I’ve made our stance clear. P.S., I love you,” she said. “P.S.S., the Easter thing still stands.” She hung up.

  To torture myself, after Superstar left I put my adulterous black nightie back on. I stayed like that for two hours, unable to bring myself to shower or change. I could smell him on me. His scent made me feel guilty yet mildly aroused. Perhaps dwelling on the size of his wand of flesh would help me deflect the situation. Not even a penis is that powerful. Guilt is guilt.

  Why was it that, for Catholics, some of the most enjoyable pastimes in life would supposedly lead you straight to hell? No time to ponder that premise. My estranged husband was a mere state away, ready to wreck my universe. He would smell betrayal on me instantly due to his hack-job security training, so I’d better shower up. Adulterer!

  Squeaky clean on the outside but still sinful on the inside, I thought about calling Babs to tell her what was going on. As the queen of sin, she would know what to do. Walk toward the phone. Get dressed on the way. Rewash your private parts for God’s sake.

  Instead, I sat mesmerized by the gingerbread-house-of-a-town I lived in. I mustered the energy to move toward my tweeting pink bejeweled iPhone—another failed attempt at coloring myself happy. Sheldon must be getting close. Or maybe he was lost. He was always lost. Answer the god damn phone and confess your sin while you still have a shot at redemption. I dove for it hoping it would move me one step closer to snapping back to the reality of my married life.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, hot stuff. Are you still wearing that sexy black lace thing? I can’t stop thinking about you in it. My cock is about to explode. I’m on my way over,” Superstar said.

  Oh, Christ.

  Chapter Eight

  As much as I wanted to be the recipient of Superstar’s exploding cock, my rational side stepped in. A little late for that, don’t you think? I told him I had to run some errands because an unexpected friend was arriving in town later. We had phone sex, which was wildly fulfilling—unlike my failed attempts to seduce Sheldon from afar. That, and the sexting that followed left me dazed on my couch for many more minutes than I had any right to enjoy. Especially with my estranged husband threatening to arrive.

  I thought about cleaning up the house on Sheldon’s account, but thought better of the idea. As if I were the one who needed to clean up my act—he was the deserter, not me. Instead, I binge-watched the first four seasons of Girls. Within minutes, I felt much better about my own life.

  Then I took another shower. According to Self, you can never be too “clean” in this era of promiscuity. I knew they were speaking sexually, but whatever, a little cleanliness never killed anybody.

  Just as I was fully lathered with Philosophy Cherry Pinwheel body wash, some buffoon pounded on the door as if the mountains were on fire and we were in the middle of an evacuation zone. A quick peek out the window confirmed that it was worse—Sheldon had arrived.

  I scampered out of the shower and scurried about, on the hunt for a frumpy married-looking outfit. I landed on khakis and a bu
tton-down blouse. Soccer mom on the outside, still slutty on the inside. One glance in the full-length mirror almost made me hurl. Who was I kidding? It was time for Sheldon to get used to the “new” me. An independent, sexually charged, career-driven woman. Not the mousy blonde he left behind in favor of a security job.

  In a fitted powder-puff pink shimmering top and ass-shaping jeggings, I opened the door.

  The instant that Sheldon looked me up and down and stepped into my home, I went from fabulous to frigid. My body stiffened like one of the wooden toy soldiers my mother insisted on lugging out every Christmas.

  “How are you, baby? You look amazing,” he said.

  More like fuckable, according to Superstar.

  I kept trying to open my mouth to say something obscene or hurtful but nothing came out.

  “It feels like forever since we’ve seen each other, Sammy.”

  Maybe that’s because it has been, you jackass!

  When he stared at me so completely clueless, my composure went out the window, along with my dinner. Sheldon looked at me as if he expected me to clean up my own vomit. What were husbands for, anyway?

  “Did you even miss me at all, Sheldon?” I said as I scrubbed puke off my window screen.

  “I was so busy it sort of felt like I hardly noticed, but of course I missed you, baby.”

  “Who is this ‘baby’ person you keep yammering on about? I am not a baby anymore, Sheldon. I am in charge of an entire department at work, which you would know if you had ever bothered to call me.”

  My phone started chirping at turbo speeds with text message alerts. Sheldon looked at me blankly and flipped his head toward it as if granting me permission to check my own goddamn phone.