Hunger

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I had this boyfriend once who cooked for a living and he swore by putting blue cheese on hamburgers. I consider it when I go to order a burger but then I feel like no, no, that’s what a fat ass would do, and I hold off. It’s too decadent of a thing. I know those blue cheese calories aren’t going to put me over the edge, but, still.

Blake–my best friend–and I, we went to an orgy together last fall. At the time I was falling in love with the man I was having an unfettered sexual relationship with.   I’d recently read a memoir of sorts, relating a woman’s sexual experiences as a teenager in Italy. My lover knew I was obsessed with one scene in which the protagonist is blindfolded and then surrounded by four men who take turns tapping her on the head and then putting their cock in her mouth. She never sees the men. It was within that context which I received a text message from him reading: “Come suck our dicks in the dark.” I was turned on and excited but was at a party playing beer pong with Blake, so I told him I could go the next night– but only so long as Blake could come.

Initially, Blake felt apprehensive about participating in the orgy but Blake is also the friend that will do anything for me because we are a little bit in love with one another. Later, I would feel bad about dragging her to the orgy, and I would remember the morning of the motel, when I saw her with her arms crossed in her new fuchsia silk robe staring out the window with a blank look into the late October sky and saying she was going to go take a long shower. She said she felt dirty.

I didn’t feel dirty. I felt horny.

Blake and I got ready for the orgy in my bathroom together in the way that girl best friends get ready together. She straightened the parts of my hair for me that I could not reach and she did my eye make-up because (even though she says she is not)-she is better at doing eye make-up than I am. Our outfits mimicked each other with variations of black fishnet tights, form fitting black dresses and combat boots. We looked like perfect sluts. Like pre-teens allowed to go to the movies alone for the first time and discovering their sexuality. On our way out the door, we had to walk by my Dad where he was sitting at the table paying his bills. He asked us where we were going. “A Halloween party,” I said.

I did not feel my age. I felt ten.

We took Blake’s  minivan to the motel in White Plains. She drove and I sat shotgun. It was the time of the year when it was starting to get dark early and it makes your serotonin low.  We stopped at a gas station  for a bag of pretzel rods and cigarettes even though neither of us smokes. We were listening to Damien Marley. I was edgy and she was edgy and we barely spoke. Nerves. I kept thinking I lost the directions but I’d be sitting on them or they’d be in my other hand. The van was jam packed with handcuffs, blood paint, her guitar, my keyboard, glitter, and a piñata in the shape of a black cat filled with condoms and candy.

It was a two hour ride and about half-way through we stopped at McDonald’s to get coca-colas. Our plan was to drink the cokes half-way down and then fill the rest of the cup up with the scotch I’d brought along. After some sips of our beverages we relaxed a bit. But then the rain started in, the sun was completely down and again I lost the directions. I turned the music down:

“Sorry, dude, that Damien Marley is really stressing me out right now.”

“You don’t think I’m stressed out dude? It’s raining, I’m drunk, we’re lost, it’s getting dark and I’m driving you to a god damn orgy that I’m still on the fence about.”

Terrified she was going to turn the car around, I shut up and tried to radiate good energy. Eventually we made it, parked, and busted into the motel.

We also brought various outfits to wear in case we felt inspired to do some role play throughout the night-athletic shorts, (mine were orange, hers green) wife beaters on which we’d painted big ORGY 09’S, and soccer socks. Oh, and footie pajamas. Yes. Blake’s were green with dinosaurs and mine (borrowed from her) were purple with pink owls.

The best part of an orgy is sitting on your knees wearing borrowed owl-print footie pajamas  next to your best friend wearing green dinosaur print footie pajamas, alternating cocks to suck.

That sounds weird but if you were there, it was actually a really gentle and tender  thing. I sound sarcastic. I can assure you I am not. We brought a laptop to the orgy. We went to YouTube. Blake had the idea to listen to “Judy Blue Eyes” by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.. When the ‘do do do do doot do do do do do do’ part came, we all stopped.

Danced. Snapped. Sang. Clapped. Smiled. Switched cocks. Sucked. Came. Breathed.

Laughed.

Blake and I kissed a little.

Beautiful. It was possibly one of the best eight minutes and forty-one seconds of my life. The closest I have ever felt to living during the sixties.

I’ve always liked sucking cock; it is a safe place. I close my mind and open my mouth. There is no external monologue dribbling out Cock sucking  shuts me  up. Except, I will admit, I am a girl who talks and laughs through sex and blow jobs. I’ll stop to change the music. I’ll have to show you this part of a book. I’ll have to take my gum out and put it on a book. I’ll have to turn the music up. Then down. I’ll take my mouth off of your cock to say, “That was so funny ten minutes ago when my roommate was like blah blah blah and you were like blah blah.” I am waiting to meet a guy who  tells me to shut up. But it seems I only sleep with nice guys.

The other great  thing about having an orgy is the guilt-free blue cheese burger you can eat afterward. I mean, like, an enormous juicy bacon cheeseburger cooked medium well to well with the blue cheese dressing slavered over it. Onions and lettuce and tomatoes. Fries-you can have the fries-don’t substitute the fries for a side salad they will charge you an extra three dollars for even though it is primarily made up of iceberg lettuce.

That’s what I usually do.

But, the thing about an orgy is, you feel thin afterward. You can eat whatever the fuck you want. You should put the fries on your burger. Maybe swig a malted milkshake. I mean–I usually feel sort of thin after just sex. So you can imagine how skinny I feel after an orgy.

If I’m totally honest: my favorite part of the orgy was the part where one guy was fucking me from behind and the other guy’s cock was deep in my mouth.

Blake says that if she is totally honest: her favorite part of the orgy was when our plastic sword with fake blood in it exploded from stabbing the piñata and the fake blood got all over the motel rug.

And Blake says the best thing to eat after an orgy is a tuna melt with cheddar cheese on rye. Blake is a semi-vegetarian. She was a full vegetarian for quite a few years, until I dared her to eat some bacon with me at a diner once and she did it. I don’t know what the fuck you would eat after an orgy if you were a full vegetarian. Garden burger I guess. Stir-fry doesn’t have the same ring to it.

I am not a big eater. I like to eat, but I am a lazy eater. I am not skinny. I am average-137 pounds or something, not that I’m counting. I am lying. In the house where I work there is a digital scale. I weigh myself every day but mainly for amusement.

I am talking about the feeling of post-sex slenderness.

There are times I overexert myself sexually just so I can overeat the next day. I remember there were a few times in New York when I had so little money, and I would be having sex with my lover through the night-all the while  looking forward to the morning because I was planning on getting stoned and treating myself to some incredible egg and cheese and bacon sandwich and orange juice and coffee. Then I remember thinking it was really pathetic that I was thinking that during sex and how I must be really hungry.

Right now for example I am shoving food in my mouth-a bean and cheese frozen burrito and an Apricot Ale. It tastes good, I guess, but I don’t deserve the calories. I didn’t have an orgy tonight, today, or yesterday or last month. My life is progressing and not progressing. I’m not sore. I don’t have any bruises. It doesn’t hurt when I pee. No scratches.

Another fun part during an orgy is hearing one guy say:

“Watch her tits, watch them bounce. Those are youuuuunnnng tits.”

Then the other guy echoes: “Youuuuuunnnng tits”

“Youuuuuunnngg tits.”

They were fondling them and even thinking about it right now makes me want to masturbate.

I know a lot of the sentences verbatim from the orgy because I have it on tape. I tape-recorded the entire orgy. I honestly think it is my greatest work of art. When I took the airplane out here to the west coast the day after the orgy, I  listened to the tape with headphones and made myself come almost instantly under those navy blue blankets they give you on airplanes. The man next to me was snoring.

When Blake and I left the love fest in the morning we drove to a diner she knew off the Taconic. The Monroe Diner. We had the orgy burger and the orgy tuna melt. I tried to talk Blake into getting blue cheese on her tuna melt but she said that would be gross. We didn’t talk much-mostly looked out the window at the old men and their motorcycles. After our plates were cleared, Blake looked me dead on and told me she would “probably never do anything like this again.”

We left the diner and drove back to our neck of the woods. Not wanting to go home quite yet, Blake drove us  down to the railroad tracks on the Hudson River. Blake keeps a futon mattress in the back of her minivan and so we slept in the sun side by side for a few hours. Our arms were touching. I woke up drenched in sweat and miserable. The minivan was moving.

Blake wasn’t next to me anymore. She was driving. She saw I was awake and because she is my best friend she  immediately saw I was depressed and she told me not to get up, she told me to lay back down, and she said, “Just pretend you’re on a magic carpet.”

I pretended I was on a magic carpet And for a moment, everything felt better.

We drove to my house and stood in the kitchen. We stood there with a bag of Lay’s potato chips and dipped them in cottage cheese and talked about how weird it was that we had just had an orgy for lack of a better of word and how delicious potato chips are when dipped in cottage cheese. We  wondered if we should go out for dinner because I was craving French onion soup.

I was still hungry.