How Long You Should Wait to Have Sex: a Novel

by Sorgen, Monique

  “Well there’s an idea!” I agree, relieved at the out.

  “Samantha!” Lacey nudges, not hiding the fact that this idea repulses her and she blames me—as well she should, since it is my fault. That said, I really like this new development, and I genuinely believe that Marty would be good for her.

  “You always complain that the assholes you date turn out not to be nice guys. So maybe it would be good for you to date someone who’s not an asshole in the first place?”

  “I’m really loving your friend, Lacey,” Marty conspires with me.

  And that’s when my phone rings. It’s John. He misses me. Yay!

  I tell Lacey and Marty who’s calling, as I pick up, and immediately start blushing.

  “Good, cancel on him,” Lacey demands, as soon as she hears that it’s John. I walk away to get some privacy.

  “Hey!” I say into the phone, a little too eagerly.

  “Hey, babe,” John says, calling me babe. Ahh! “I’m gonna have to cancel on Saturday.” What? No! Why? He doesn’t offer a reason, and I don’t know if I should pry, but my main priority is rescheduling, so I focus on that.

  “Well… um… yeah, Saturday wasn’t really good for me either. Did you wanna try for Friday or Sunday?” He doesn’t answer right away. “Or else next week would be fine?”

  There is a silence that goes on just long enough to get me thinking about the worst. And then the worst comes.

  “I don’t think we should. I mean, you’re a great girl. You’re gorgeous and smart and funny, but…” But nothing! What more could you possibly want? That’s everything!

  “And you have such interesting insight into stuff,” he goes on, as my eyes start to well up with tears.

  “Hold on, I’ve gotta go somewhere I can hear you.” I can hear him fine, but I don’t want to break down in this quiet store, so I run outside to the noisy street and face away from the traffic for privacy. “Okay, what?” Oh, God! He can probably hear my voice cracking already.

  “I feel bad. You’re everything I want, and I’m probably passing up a great opportunity but—“

  “What did I do? How can I fix this?” I beg, stupidly.

  “No, it’s not you. I just don’t feel ready to get into anything serious yet.”

  I can’t believe this is happening. Is it because we had sex? What I want to say is, “You stupid idiot! Don’t you see that we’re perfect for each other? Don’t you want to be happy?” What I say instead is nothing.

  “Samantha? Are you there?”

  And what makes him think that I want something serious?! I never said that. At least not in this more recent version of events. I mean, I talked about how I imagined marriage would be, but that doesn’t mean I imagined it with him! At least not that he knows of. I just liked how much fun we were having.

  “What makes you think I’m serious?” I bargain, already trying on the third stage of grief.

  “Because you are… And I thought I was ready. But I don’t know—it’s so soon, with my wife and—I… I figure it’s better to do this now, before more time goes by and we get more attached, and it gets even harder for us. I’m sorry… I really, really like you. Can we be friends?”

  Can we be friends? Are you kidding me right now? How old are you—high school? Do people even say that anymore? I’m not answering that.

  “Sam?” he asks, wondering if I’m still there, or alive, or coherent.

  What’s the point of this conversation anymore? All it can possibly lead to now is him being subjected to the sound of my crying. I hang up the phone without signing off. Passive aggressive, I know, but “Can we be friends?” Shut up, John!

  I stand dumbstruck on the busy street processing what just happened. I clear away my tears to go rejoin the others, but as I try to go inside, the tears start up again, and I have to hide outside again. This happens several more times, until I start to worry that Lacey doesn’t know where I am, and I go inside despite my appearance.

  When I rejoin her, she can’t get to the exit fast enough.

  She lays into me, “You know what, Sam? I don’t care what John said. You’re uninvited for Saturday. I told Marty he could take me.”

  This causes me to spontaneously erupt into tears again.

  “Well, I didn’t think you’d be that broken up over it. You didn’t even wanna go!” Lacey goes on, as we make our way back onto the street.

  “He broke up with me… He said I’m everything he wants, and then he broke up with me. Why would he pass up everything he wants?”

  Lacey sweetly puts her arm around me, and calmly explains, “You just can’t try to understand men. They’re totally illogical.”

  “I just hope it wasn’t because of the little white lies about drinking—or being hungry, when I’d just eaten… Or what if it was the closet? He thinks I’m dirty, and have no self-respect… Of course he does—because I had sex with him!”

  “Is that what he said it was?”

  “No. He said he’s just not ready. But don’t you see? If I hadn’t had sex with him, he would’ve never assumed I was getting serious. He could’ve gotten to know me better. As a friend. A really close friend, who he relies on to do all the stuff we were doing together—except the sex. And over time, when he became ready, he would’ve realized that he can’t live without me. Don’t you think?”

  Lacey looks at me like I’m a little bit whacky. Compassion has never been her strong suit, but she does have her own style of applying it.

  She hands me Marty’s book and says, “Here, you need this book more than I do right now.”

  “Oh, God,” I bawl, filled with regret and self-loathing, “I just wish I hadn’t had sex with him!”

  Chapter 17

  Lacey was right about the book. I did need it. I get home, ignore the mess that still litters the floor from my failed closet hideaway plan, as well as the mess still left on the table and in the kitchen from the meal I prepared for John, and I go to my room, get into bed, and read Marty’s book almost cover to cover. It cheers me right up.

  Marty expresses himself in an extremely comical way. His book belongs as much in the humor section as it does in the self-help or sexual guide sections of a bookstore. It reads almost like a written standup comedy routine about the vagina and its adventures with its friends: penis, finger, and tongue, as they battle their enemies: the hormones, neurotransmitters, and the uninvited emotional reactions created by our God-given biological consistency.

  I also learn from it that the male body responds totally differently from mine to various sensations. What feels good to me, might not feel as good to a man, and vice-versa. Marty explains why men generally prefer fast and hard pumping during sex, while women generally prefer circular, still, and teasing motions, that focus on the clitoris. All this is simply due to the way our physical bodies are laid out. It’s about where parts land on the body, and where the nerve-endings are, which is what determines what feels good, what feels bad, and what feels like nothing at all.

  Within that I guess everybody is still different in subtle ways. I mean, some people like a tongue in their earwax, and some want the grime sucked out of their toes, and some people get turned on by various levels of pain. Even Marty points out some small differences between us, like that multi-orgasmic women tend not to enjoy receiving oral sex because it’s too much excitement for them to handle. I’m obviously not multi-orgasmic because I can’t imagine not liking that. And while I like now knowing that men and women have completely different needs from the get-go, it definitely makes me envious of gay people. At least when you’re in a same-sex situation, you’re dealing with the type of body that you’re already familiar with, and you have a much lesser chance of doing everything wrong.

  I’m on the verge of finishing Marty’s book when the doorbell rings. Curious. I’m not expecting anyone.

  I get out of bed and absentmindedly walk through my living room/dining room/kitchen to the door, where I’m surprised to find the high heels I wore last
night for my dinner with John, sitting neatly by the door, as if they were waiting there patiently for me to put them on.

  “Who is it?” I ask through the door.

  “It’s me.” Me who? “It’s John,” he clarifies.

  What?! I open the door, but only because I need to know who would pull such a sick prank on me in my time of despair.

  It is John. He stands there with that same old happy, stupid smile plastered across his face.

  He leans in to kiss me hello, and I back away, “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here for dinner. Did I get the wrong night?”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  He seems embarrassed and confused. He glances over my shoulder to the rest of the room, and points out, “Unless all this is for someone else?”

  I look over my shoulder, and the mess that I had previously ignored is gone! The pile of hidden mess from the closet isn’t there, and the table isn’t smattered in leftover dinner, but rather cleanly set for a romantic dinner for two, that has yet to be eaten. The house suddenly smells like Coq au Vin, as it did on the night of our last date. No way! This can’t be happening again! I cannot eat Coq au Vin again.

  “No, I… I guess it is for you,” I concede. “Come in.”

  I slip on my heels and go to the kitchen to check for food, as John looks around like it’s the first time he’s come here.

  “I like how clean you keep the place.”

  “You’d be surprised…” I say, knowing this joke is only for myself. “In fact, you may be later,” I add silently in my head.

  “So does that happen to you a lot?” he asks light-heartedly, “where you prepare a whole meal for someone and then forget they’re coming over?”

  “No. I’m just in this weird phase lately, where whenever a guy breaks up with me, I just wait a little, there’s a knock at the door, and poof!—it’s like it never happened at all.”

  “Oh, you went through a break up recently?” he says, a little too sympathetically.

  “Kind of.”

  “What happened?”

  “Hard to say. It was like everything was going perfectly, so we got intimate, and then he freaked out and said he wasn’t ready.”

  He looks at me shocked, as if he can’t believe anybody would ever do that to me, but since I know that he did, I get sarcastic with him.

  “I'm sorry, I'm not a virgin. I'm 30.”

  “I know. I’m just surprised you’re opening up to me about all this.” It’s not a big secret, it was you!

  But his next question is the pièce de résistance, “Are you sure you’re ready to get involved with someone new?”

  “HA! Now that is funny!” I can’t help but exclaim. I mean, come on pot, are you really gonna stand there straight faced and call the kettle black? Sure, maybe I’m being a little rude, but I guess I don’t care at the moment, because I’m feeling kind of angry about how things went down last time.

  “What I want to know, John, is are you ready?”

  “Honestly, I wasn’t… but then I met this great girl. She’s funny and charming and smart and beautiful. And I’d be a fool to pass her up. So yeah, I’m ready.”

  I know he’s just trying to be romantic, but instead, it’s making me mad. And what’s especially weird is that it’s becoming strangely clear to me that he thinks he is being totally sincere. He’s the only one in the room who has no idea that he’s completely full of shit. I can even tell that he’s a little disappointed that I’m not more swept off my feet by his show of vulnerability. But honestly, what is his deal?

  Lacey was right, you can’t try to understand men, they’re completely illogical. Let’s just get this dinner over with.

  “Great! I’m ready, you’re ready. Even the food’s ready. Let’s eat.” We sit down.

  “It smells great. It even smells French.”

  “It is. Dig in.” I’m done pretending we have anything in common. French isn’t my favorite. I don’t have a favorite. It depends on what I’m craving each day. Sometimes I want pasta, sometimes I crave a big salad, and sometimes I want a burrito. Who has a favorite kind of food anyway?

  “Mmmm. I certainly wouldn’t mind eating like this all the time!” he repeats verbatim from the last time. And what’s that supposed to mean? Last time I took it to mean that he wanted to be around me all the time. But that didn’t turn out to be true. So does he just mean that he wants to eat French food all the time because it’s his favorite kind of food, and Coq au Vin—which I assure you is not something you’d wanna eat all the time—simply falls into that “French” category? Whatever.

  “Whatever, what?” he asks.

  Did I say that out loud?

  “Oh. Nothing,” I say embarrassed. Then I decide to explain, “I just didn’t know what you meant by that, since I know you probably don’t mean it to express that it’s because you’d like to be around me ‘all the time’.” That sounded really insecure. But I’m just being honest. I already know.

  “I wouldn’t be here, if I didn’t like you, Sam. Is everything okay with you tonight?”

  You know, he’s right. He’s here, and I probably shouldn’t make this night any more difficult than it has to be. We had so much fun last time, and I’m moping around and ruining that. I should just relax, and try to have fun until he leaves.

  I decide to explain what I can, “I’m sorry… It’s been a really long, exhausting day. I’ve covered pretty much every high and low in the emotional spectrum since waking up this morning, so I’m just spent… But you’re right, I should just relax, and enjoy having you here. Regardless of how passing our time together may be.”

  John softens, like he’s just been sprinkled with enlightenment, “I like your attitude. So few people are willing to just go with the flow, and realize that we don’t know what the future is gonna be.”

  “It turns out, not knowing is exactly what makes these kinds of moments pleasurable.” I say this mostly to amuse myself.

  “I’ll drink to that!” He grabs the bottle of wine, and then remembers, “Wait, I thought you didn’t drink?”

  Should I tell him that I lied, like I did last time? Ah, it’s not worth it to get into it, since this is probably the last time we’ll hang out. And I’m not feeling festive enough to start drinking today, anyway.

  “I don’t… anymore. It’s for you.”

  “I’m not drinking alone again. Soon you’ll start thinking I’m an alkie.”

  “Well I am relieved to know that you actually care about what I think!” He laughs graciously at my sarcasm, softening my anger, to a point where I become almost flirtatious, “If you keep that up, I might even let you kiss me hello.”

  “Are you playing hard to get tonight? Is that what this is?” he teases.

  “This is only the tip of the iceberg, my friend.” Because what he doesn’t know, is that if he does call me again after this date, and I do decide to grace him with my presence, he has lost his sexual privileges for a good, long time. Probably all the way until he tells me, “I love you”—at the earliest.

  “We’ll see about that!” he threatens, rising to my challenge. Literally. He gets up and crosses to my side of the table to grab me, at which point I get up too, and run away. Before I know it, he’s chasing me around the table, and we’re screaming and laughing hysterically.

  I’m embarrassed to even have toyed with the idea that he might call me again after this night, or that I’d accept the invitation again, but some people are like addictions to you. You can’t resist them, and you can’t stop throwing yourself into their destructive path. I hate to admit to myself that John may be one of those people for me. I just want everything I saw in him, despite his past warnings that I shouldn’t. I don’t feel proud of this, but I also forgive myself, because at least in my case, John is completely unaware of the ways in which he has crushed my heart in the past. This poor guy thinks our whole relationship is untainted and pure, as he innocently chases me around this table.
In some ways, I feel sorry for him. He doesn’t get to know why he’s going to be punished if he is so naïve as to pursue me again.

  Ugh! I shouldn’t even be thinking about the prospect of him pursuing me. He’s not going to. He’s proven that already. Why do I still want him to so badly?

  He catches me, playfully grabs me with the forcefulness of a true man, before planting a deep kiss on me. I’m not sure I could ever hold out with this guy.

  ~

  Later that night when we get to the part where Les Nubians comes on, and we dance, I remember not to grab the closet doorknob on the way to falling on the floor. We land a little harder, and it hurts a little more, but without the awkwardness of the mess falling out of the closet, the moment maintains its natural sexiness.

  John stares seductively into my eyes and says, “I think we need dancing lessons,” as he goes in for his kiss.

  He stops again, to look into my eyes as if it could really mean something. Despite the fact that I know it doesn’t, I’m enjoying the physical sensations, and the chemicals that Marty discussed in his book, which are actively being released into my body and brain as neurotransmitters of pleasure. This knowledge helps me ignore the question pounding in my mind on repeat, “What is wrong with this guy?”

  Some of what is wrong with John is broken down clearly in hormonal terms in Marty’s book, and it’s just that guys’ hormones operate differently than ours. But Marty also explains that sometimes guys can get attached, when they’re into someone. So how could John be so into me and still walk away so easily? I’ll have to ask Marty when I see him at his book signing tomorrow.

  As per before, our kissing grows passionate, and John tries to take off my clothes. This time I nip it in the bud.

  “Wait. I’m not ready to do this.”

  “That’s okay,” he says, just as convincingly as last time, “we don’t have to make love.”

  The difference is that this time, I’m not convinced. I get up off of him and say, “Okay. That’s a good idea. Let’s not.”

  “Okay,” he says looking up at me from the floor. This time it’s his turn to let regret set in. I know how awful regret feels, so I don’t let him marinate in it alone.