My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands | Page 6

forgot my own, for fear of mouth germs. I liked his room-

mates better than him, so I would hang out with them during the day and then go up and have

sex with him at night. I'd turn up the music loud so we wouldn't be tempted to talk.

Our relationship finally ended when he took to waking me up in the wee hours of the

morning when he would go surfing. He thought it might be fun to have me come and watch.

“Fun for who?” I wanted to ask. I had never asked him to come to Happy Hour and watch me

drink. I gently explained to him that I would rather sit at home and staple my hand to a wall

than watch someone wearing a wet suit wipe out every thirty seconds. Besides, my ass didn't

look so good in a bikini after a summer of margaritas, and I thought it was time I found

someone farther inland.

I realized that summer that a one-night stand is called just that because it should only be

for one night.

My Horizontal Life

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

DUMB AND DUMBER

ONE SUMMER, MY girlfriend Ivory and I decided that after all our hard partying at com-

munity college, we deserved a vacation. My parents' summer home in Martha's Vineyard

would be empty until mid-July, so Ivory and I generously volunteered to look after things.

We had many rules that summer. After a long conversation about money and responsibil-

ity, we both agreed that a job would add too much pressure to our very hectic drinking sched-

ule. At one point during that summer, when we were really broke, we were left with no choice

but to join a cleaning service. It only took fifteen minutes of scrubbing the inside of a toilet for

me to realize that the only time I felt comfortable facedown in one was after a hard night of

margaritas. It was then that we resolved it should be men's responsibility to pay for our alco-

hol and whatever small amount of food was required.

Our other rules were that we were both required to lie in the sun with nothing higher than

an SPF 2 and for no fewer than three hours per day. I explained to Ivory that you could get

better color while actually in the ocean, but even with Cuban parents Ivory had never learned

to swim. I wasn't a good enough swimmer to teach her, so instead, I bought her a pair of yel-

low water wings.

Ivory and I had taken enough pot to the Vineyard to last us through the end of the month. I

fancied myself quite the pothead. We ended up getting so high on the drive up, however, that

we rolled each and every morsel of it into finely rolled joints, then proceeded to smoke our en-

tire supply the first night on the island. I had a similar experience with macaroni and cheese

once. I haven't had either since.

One of the more enjoyable rules we came up with that summer was to photograph our vic-

tims of sexual abuse. We took pictures with every guy we brought back to the house.

One night we were at a bar playing pool with two guys. Ivory and I were on the same team

and hadn't shot a single ball into a pocket when I picked one up and stuffed it in a side hole.

The guys took my lead, and it turned into a game of handball with all of us throwing balls in

every direction we saw a pocket. Unfortunately, I don't have the best hand-eye coordination,

and in an attempt to corner pocket one of the balls, I sent it reeling over the pool table straight

into the wall behind it, where it stayed. Shortly after, the bartender asked us to leave.

We took our cue and went back to my parents', got wrecked, then took our men to our re-

spective love lairs. As I was rolling around in the bed I was probably conceived in, I ripped off

my guy's T-shirt to discover a completely hairless chest. Since there were no burn scars, I

had to assume that this young man had done this to himself voluntarily. There was no hair

anywhere on his body. Not in his pants nor on his legs.

“Where's your hair?” I asked him.

“I shave,” he told me.

“On purpose?”

I was instantly nauseous and may have thrown up a little, which ended up working to my

advantage in orchestrating my escape.

“Are you okay?” he said.

I blushed and said that this had been my very first night of drinking. “I guess alcohol is not

really my thing,” I lied.

He said it was okay and maybe I'd feel better in the morning.

“Maybe,” I said, “but you won't be around to find out.”

Unfortunately, I had to break up Ivory's party in order for her to drive my guy home. She

wasn't thrilled, but it turns out her guy was