Serena supposed now was as good a time as any to tell Tabitha the truth. She reached into her duffel bag and from the very bottom pulled out a heavy leather-bound black book. Amazingly enough it had withstood the hands of time and fifteen years on it was flecked with only a scratch or two and tarnished shine.
“Oh my gosh, it’s the Hobbit book!”
“You remember,” Serena grinned. “It’s mine, or should I say Gollum’s.”
“Whom else would it belong to?” Tabitha rolled her eyes, “Now I really feel like I’ve taken a step back in time.”
Instantly they were both back in the eighth grade. A time when Serena was better known as Gollum, thanks her to scarily huge green eyes and the book still looked brand new. She walked the book to Tabitha’s elongated wooden dinner table and gingerly laid it onto the hand-woven silk tablecloth. The pages were bulging within, thanks to all the glued in mementos inside that were begging to be opened up.
“Have you got the key?” Tabitha asked.
“Of course I have the key.” Serena lifted a necklace out from under her shirt and held its trinket up to the light. The key looked as if it wouldn’t even open a dollhouse.
“Then hurry up and open it. I am dying to see what you have inside. Do you still have the top ten list of kissers I nominated in the tenth grade?”
“Probably, as you can see I haven’t torn anything out.”
“Then give it to me.” Tabitha went to grab the book as if it were a rugged Yellow Pages directory as opposed to the most precious thing in the world to her.
“Don’t you dare!” Serena cried, in swooping it in just a nick of time. It’d barely live to tell the tale after a minute in Tabitha’s vulture-like hands. “I want you to sit down over there,” she said, pointing to the ridiculous log bench situated beneath some leftover mistletoe, “I’m going to stay right here and guard my lot.”
“How come?” Tabitha asked, sulking like a baby. “I thought best friends got to share everything.”
Serena tried hard not to laugh. You had to give the girl credit for trying. Next she’d be thinking she was entitled to mischief with Markie and borrowing Serena’s underwear.
“Tabitha, Tabitha, Tabitha…now that I’m living here I think we have to draw the line somewhere. And I’m drawing it with this book; it is a no-go zone for you without my permission.”
“But….” Tabitha whined. “That’s not fair!”
The truth however was Tabitha had every right to be nosy. Inside the Black Book rest in peace all of Serena’s loves; everything from men to music to fashion and pop stars. In other words, it was a juicy piece of tattletale which documented Serena’s last four years of high school. All one had to do was decipher the codes.
Serena flipped over to page one hundred and eleven, the only number she could safely remember even in relapse. One, one, one, how hard could it be? Staring back at her was Dana Ashbrook of Twin Peaks. Those were the good old days, when the whole world was dying to know who killed Laura Palmer and Dana, playing Bobby Briggs, Laura’s deceitful boyfriend, was a potential candidate. Scribbled in the right hand corner was a curly message: I will still love you even if you are the murderer. Hmpf, highly intelligent stuff. An impostor would look at it and laugh before moving onto the next page, a picture of the studly Corey Haim before his drug-taking days, never thinking to pull the blue-tacked page up.
If he or she did lift it, they would’ve been in for a real treat. For therein, jotted in miniscule writing, were the names and other details of all her ex-sexual partners. My Good Time “Friends”, the file was called. She started it because right from the word go Serena had been a paranoid cookie. “What if I get pregnant?” had haunted her head. Her greatest fear was that she’d be shafted like some of Jerry Springer’s guests, who had babies growing in their tummy without knowing even the daddy’s surname. So you see, it was merely self-protection that motivated her to start up the list.
The only two requirements for the list were accuracy and thoroughness. Serena had simply needed to know whom exactly she was dealing with and where they could be reached if a moment of ‘urgency’ arose. This information was usually easy to come by – one dip into the guy’s back pocket almost always produced a shiny new driver’s license, and in the later years it was doubly verified by a business card. So really, tracking down her ex-lovers – even if some were like strangers - wouldn’t be as hard as either Tabitha or Markie had first thought.
“All the names I need are here,” Serena explained to Tabitha to take the edge off the exercise, “so you can put your clipboard and pen away. On second thoughts keep them; we might need it for later when we trash the names to bits.”
It was safe to say not all the boys were going to be ideal candidates for a renewed relationship. Like partner number one, Sean, who had sneakily stolen her virginity at fifteen. The cool captain of the lacrosse team had coaxed her into the act by saying: do it or else I’ll tell everyone you’re frigid. Ooh frigid, wasn’t that a big threat back then? Serena remembered hearing the word for the first time in the sixth grade, as in the phrase Frigid Test.
To pass this so-called Frigid Test all a girl needed to do was stand up and spread her arms and legs out wide like a starfish and allow a boy to take his finger and run it straight down the centre, from the top of her head down to…well, you know where. If she could stand there and not burst into a fit of giggles then she passed the test; any twitch or stifled protest meant you were out. Of course the thought of any boy going remotely near her private parts had Serena feeling absolutely horrified so it was safe to say Sean knew what he was talking about when he labeled Serena frigid.
“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not”, she had refuted stubbornly. Still Serena hated being hit with a label. She couldn’t and wouldn’t stand for it even if it meant sleeping with someone she only felt half-hearted in order to prove him wrong.
Besides it wasn’t like the other girls weren’t starting to do it too. At least Sean appeared to be gentle and kind and had about as much idea as Serena. Together she and Sean swallowed the awkwardness pill and everything else that went along with the territory to take a walk on the wild side behind the school canteen. The next day Sean made sure he ignored Serena that extra-special bit, after telling everybody who cared to listen the reason why. Because Serena sure as hell wasn’t frigid, she was a slut instead. Not to worry though; she didn’t need anyone feeling sorry for her. Thinking about the event didn’t have quite the same sting as before now that Serena knew her deflowerer was gay.
Serena’s lover history could be divided into three categories. The Teen Years, which included two partners, Sean being one of them, the College Era which involved six more boys and her more Mature Years, aged twenty to twenty three which implicated only another four. Looking at the breakdown, Serena was surprised she hadn’t squeezed in a dozen more lays. What was Markie complaining about? She had lost her virginity at fifteen and once the numbers were spread out that equaled to approximately one lover over the past fourteen years. Completely innocent!
But let’s not think about Markie right now. Serena was determined to stay strong, for her resolve not to flounder. This break was just a temporary situation, something they both needed to do before committing the rest of their lives to each other. Or at least something Markie needed to do, a voice reminded her. But she could respect that; she wasn’t a nagging class-A bitch. Serena was an open-minded woman of the world.
“Why don’t you read out the list you’ve got there?” said Tabitha, who was sprawled facedown against the log, head tilted to the side. She looked like a squirrel that had had a bad run in with a tree.
“Okay, I guess there’s no reason to delay.” Serena cleared her throat and set out to read the innocuous names one by one. In condensed list form, her notes looked like this:
1. Sean (at age 15)
2. Jesse (at age 16)
3. Tyson (at age 18)
4. Zachary (at age 18)
5. Duane (at age 18)
6.
Dominique (at age 19)
7. Fernando (at age 19)
8. Enrique (at age 19)
9. Ramiro (at age 20)
10. Brent (at age 21)
11. Jasper (at age 22)
12. Zane (at age 22)
13. Markie (at age 23)
Obviously Serena had developed a bit of an appetite for South American boys sometime during her college stay. Yep, she was a sucker for their gorgeous olive skin and impossibly long eyelashes which fluttered above liquid black eyes. She was definitely ahead of her time – Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias hadn’t made any appearances on the sexiest people list back then.
During the reading, Tabitha’s face went through all the expected expressions: shock, amusement, envy and disgust. Disgust was of course reserved for Fernando who had managed to sleep with both best friends within days. He was a definite ‘cross-straight-off-the-list, let’s pretend he never existed’ contender. Serena knew it was a requirement for true friends to go through that spit-sisters, kissing-the-same-man thing at least once in their lives (and survive it) but must it make one feel so utterly repulsive?
“So what do you think?” Serena asked, waiting for Tabitha’s ever growing look of bewilderment to fade. It didn’t.
“I think you’re in a hellhole.”
“How come?”
“I wouldn’t poke half that bunch with a stick. I mean I know they’re all good looking but where are the brains?”
Excuse me?
“Since when did you care about brains?” Tabitha’s idea of a good date was someone with a bulging wallet and a matching bulge in his pants.
“Maybe I don’t care but you do,” she sighed, exasperatedly, as if knowing Serena better than Serena knew herself. “Intelligence, wit, isn’t that what turns you on?”
“Not necessarily,” Serena smiled, “I am human, after all.” During the next three months, it wasn’t a husband she was looking for but a sexy bed partner. Hence her lax, revised criteria. For the first time in her life, Serena could forget about things like personality and focus on all the superficial stuff. She guessed it was a bit like what men did. Sure she might need to rack her memory a bit for research purposes; she couldn’t risk jumping into the sack again with someone totally horrible at doing the deed. She needed a candidate who was good to go all the way.
Okay so maybe Serena should have already known the good ones from the bad. But if truth were told, she didn’t have the faintest idea anymore. Her memories of those distant past experiences were hazy, jaded and badly decomposed. It was like trying to remember your first kiss: you could picture fragments of the visuals in your head but there were no physical sensations to go along with it, other than the instinctive one forming in the pit of your tummy. Butterflies flew about if it was a good memory, sinking dread when it was bad. Surprisingly when Serena thought about any of her twelve one-night-stands, only good feelings emerged.
Maybe it was because half the time she was drunk and horny. Maybe it was also because each lay resembled a different phase in her life. Like Sean, for example, he represented Serena’s childish infatuation with the Brat Pack while the later chocolate-colored Duane entered her life when she was heavily into human rights and environmentalism. No man was a mistake because each connected with another dot to create Serena as she was today.
“Okay so maybe congratulations are in order instead,” said Tabitha, “if you’re not after anything serious then go girl because you’ve got it made.”
“I know I do,” Serena replied. Don’t think she would’ve agreed to this break unless it strongly tilted her way. “But it’s going to be tough, picking just two out of the twelve.”
Who knew how many contenders would remain after all the factors were taken into consideration? Serena had to mull over:
1. Who was still single and/or available?
2. If they had moved, could they be tracked down? and
3. If so, as a minimum, were they still at least decent gorgeous human beings?
“If I were you I’d get started on this ASAP.”
Ah Tabitha, ever the dependable advice-monger.
“Oh I agree honey. Which is why I have to ask, what are you doing this weekend?”
Chapter 4
Upon returning home from work, Markie realized just how utterly bare the house felt without Serena. That was his first observation. The second was the silence. After almost five years of domesticated bliss, it didn’t feel normal to come home and not hear the washing machine, dishwasher and TV going at once. He made a mental note to look into getting a cleaner, maybe once or twice a week because now that Serena was gone, who else was going to do it? Not him, his specialty was in the kitchen and bedroom.
Bedroom, Christ, that’s right. He could bring anyone he wanted into it now; anyone, blonde, brunette, redhead, buxom or thin. In fact, if he felt like it he could go out tonight, get massively plastered and take home two girls if he wanted. Mmm actually a pair of hot lesbians didn’t sound like a bad idea. Markie put down his briefcase and leaned against the hall cabinet, reaching into his pants to knead his mass. Ordinarily at the first thought of a threesome his soldier jumped to attention but tonight it hung there like dead weight. What the…Concerned, Markie pulled at it double-speed and released a heavy moan when it finally extended to full length.
Good gosh, for a minute there he thought he’d lost his special touch. Once the deed was done, Markie picked up the pieces and scolded himself for nearly losing sight of the bigger goal.
“I can’t afford to feel guilty about Serena,” he told himself. “I need to just forget about her for the time being. I need to remind myself I’m doing the right thing.”
All Markie had to do was consider his sex drive to know that. For the record his libido was sitting at a time low, at geriatric levels in fact. If it weren’t for the Viagra God only knows where he’d be… Serena would have thrown him out ages ago. Not that she knew about his little addiction though. She was a highly sexed being, with energy to boot while he…he wasn’t sure how to explain it but their incompatible sexual history had finally taken a stranglehold on his libido.
There hadn’t been a problem at the beginning; Markie and Serena were known to go for it left, right and centre. They had done all the kinky deeds new couples performed– a bit of sneaking under restaurants tables, sex outdoors, in public toilets, at the back of movie theatres, in elevators even. On good days he was known to get it up numerous times whilst on bad days only once. Still it was an improvement from his last relationship with Minroe who insisted on scheduling the act in between facials and personal training appointments. The excitement of having somebody new to love and caress had released all of Markie’s inhibitions. As far as Serena knew he could’ve been Casanova in a previous lifetime and not a dork with a chastity belt strapped on.
As for Serena, well on the outside she looked like Marie Antoinette. Let them eat cake was her attitude. Passionate, beautiful and incredibly unjaded were three good adjectives to describe her. She had thought she could change the world back then. Hell the silly thing still thought she could. It was funny because Markie hadn’t thought he was one to judge yet when Serena confided how many lovers she’d had it had jolted him to the moon. Anyone else and he would’ve walked straight out the door; he was that kind of traditional boy. But it was Serena so he stayed.
It still didn’t stop the truth from biting him to the bone. One could pretend that stuff didn’t matter for the first few years but eventually it got to a person. Now, five years later, his ‘manhood’ was a useless piece of crap around Serena - without aid that is. Maybe it was the Intimidation. She’s seen another eleven of these, a voice would whisper in his ear and a minute later his thing would go limp. How do you know the others weren’t thicker, longer, bigger, better? Sure, Serena insisted he was by far the best but she also told his mom she loved her soufflé when really it made her dry-retch.
It had come to a point where eventually Markie decided this couldn’t go on. Sure
he loved his girlfriend, but that didn’t change the fact she’d been around the block a few times. In an ideal world, Serena would’ve been a virgin when they met. Yeah I know, unrealistic in this day and age but that didn’t stop a man from dreaming. Next time he would check in sooner with the girl, not three months later.
But there isn’t going to be next time, Markie cringed. Damn it, it was too late; he loved Serena. She was everything he ever wanted in a woman, apart from that one fatal flaw. And it wasn’t her fault he couldn’t deal with that crap, that he’d been ambushed into long-term relationships beforehand with two highbrow princesses. Had he been a real man Markie would’ve left the earlier girlfriends as soon as he’d realized they were wrong for him rather than endure it out of the goodness of his heart. No, it was definitely not Serena’s fault; it was his for being the perennial good guy all that time. But what could he do? He couldn’t turn back time; he simply had to pay the price.
This three-month trial would be like checking into rehab. As soon as he had finished dealing with all his issues, lifted his score to a respectable level and gotten his manhood back into working order, he’d be ready to return and not a minute sooner. God knows Markie hoped it wouldn’t change a thing between him and Serena but even if it did, it was a risk he had to take…
Markie thought seeing Rick would do him the world of good but he couldn’t have been further from the truth.
“You’ve arranged for me what?” exclaimed Markie.
This had to be some kind of joke. All day at work Rick had been Mr. Elusive talking about some big surprise he had planned. Markie had thought, maybe rather naively, that it was a drink fest, another big piss-up with the boys at the local pub. From there they could watch the football game he was dying to see, have a few smoke-accompanying beers and feel safe with the certainty that they were far, far away from the grasp of any nagging woman.
The Numbers Game Page 3
