He let go of her wrist and gave her a peck on the cheek. “I am a handy man, if not a reliable one.” He headed out the door, then peeked back in. “Have fun on your date tonight.”
Luna vowed to think of her upcoming date with Perry, and not Trip.
She walked into the Ruby Tuesday’s bar, and Perry waved.
He was pretty cute in person, and his picture had been an accurate representation of him. She should’ve been pleased, but she felt kind of ambivalent about the situation. They said hello and hugged in that awkward, first-date way.
“What would you like to drink?” Perry asked.
“Sangria would be nice,” she said.
“Then sangria it is!”
Perry ordered a pitcher of sangria and a chicken wing platter for them both.
Luna opened her purse but Perry said, “Put your money away. It’s no good here tonight.”
The sangria helped. Luna loosened up and enjoyed herself. She and Perry were nibbling and drinking and laughing together.
Here are some of the things she learned about Perry:
STATS ON PERRY
Name: Perry Sorensen
Ethnic Background: Norwegian
Marital Status: Divorced. He’d almost died in a car accident a year and a half earlier. During the months he’d lain in a hospital bed, his wife had left him.
Children: None.
Body: Fit, but short. Luna was slightly taller than him.
Hair: Blond.
Occupation: Accountant.
Favorite Physical Activities: Brisk walking, occasional bowling.
Other likes: Watching football, baseball, basketball & pretty much any other sport you could observe.
Dislikes: Disagreement, diversity, extremes.
Religion: Lutheran.
Favorite Writers: Ayn Rand, Stephen Crane.
Favorite Dessert: Cheesecake.
Favorite expression: “What would life be like without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?”
Luna felt that life with arithmetic was a scene of horrors. She’d been so disappointed that the play Proof was about math, and not the suspense thriller she’d imagined. Sitting in that audience, she’d wanted to murder someone.
Still, she figured she could deal with Perry’s devotion to numbers.
She was devoted to words.
They could even each other out.
After dinner, they sat in Perry’s grey Nissan Ultima.
He kissed her.
He did this sensational thing with his tongue, rubbing it in the rim of her upper lip. It must’ve been one of her erogenous zones, because it did the job immediately.
Perry was thrilled by her enthusiastic response, especially after so long a dry spell. He wanted to do more with her.
Luna knew she should wait to have sex with Perry. But he was so sweet, and it had been so long for him. Maybe this was meant to be. Maybe she was meant to find a replacement for Trip in bed quickly, and just be done with him. But right now she needed to pick up her kids from Sunny’s.
They agreed to continue on Sunday, when the kids would be with Nick.
Before she went to bed, Luna texted Trip: “I don’t need you on Sun-day. My date went well.”
He’d know what that meant.
Trip wrote back, “Don’t you want me to at least fix the plastic?”
“No thanks.”
“Suit yourself. But I doubt your new guy will be any use to you.”
Did Trip mean in bed, or for fixing things?
She didn’t write back to ask him.
FIFTY
Luna sat in her kitchen with Perry eating Chinese food, toying with a shrimp and wondering how the hell she could get out of this without having sex with him.
The first sign that he was a boob had come when they ordered the food. “Let’s get something to share!” he’d suggested, beaming. Luna stared, scarcely believing his words. Out of the whole diverse Chinese menu, why on earth did they have to eat the same thing? Was it supposed to demonstrate compatibility?
“I like bean curd and broccoli in garlic sauce with no corn starch or msg,” she told him.
“How about General Tso’s Chicken?” he asked, as though she hadn’t spoken.
“Not so much,” she replied in a tone she hoped would be cold enough for him to take a hint.
“Pepper steak?” he piped. Apparently he’d forgotten that she didn’t eat red meat, or thought maybe she’d suddenly changed her diet.
She shook her head no, but she’d really felt like slumping on the table in despair.
Then she let him pick some shrimp thing, because it didn’t mean that much to her and the debate was giving her a headache.
Perry wanted them to have the same meal, down to the soup. But here they could not agree.
Luna’s sinuses were blocked up, and she looked forward to flushing them with hot and sour soup.
Perry was one of those guys who felt wonton soup was an integral part of a Chinese meal.
No way would Luna bite into any nasty wontons with their grey, mushy mystery meat. It looked like brain matter.
Perry was allergic to cloud ear fungus, one of the ingredients in hot and sour soup. Luna had never heard of cloud ear fungus, and wished she didn’t know it was in her soup, but this nasty information wasn’t enough to dissuade her from the thing guaranteed to unclog her head.
They agreed to disagree, reaching a soup detente—though Perry sighed deeply when Luna gave that part of the order to the Chinese restaurant.
Waiting for the delivery, they’d reached an awkward pause. He’s run out of things to say! she realized. Mental head slap! Clearly she’d been fooled by “first date syndrome,” during which anyone could come off intriguing just due to the sheer newness of them.
Then there was the sangria she’d been slugging…
Now, Perry started talking about his job again—just like he’d done at Ruby Tuesday’s. It was like his pre-recorded tape had run out, and then rewound to begin again.
How could she have found accounting interesting?
She hated anything to do with numbers—they made her head spin.
She hated cold logic, which left no room for emotion and no room to breathe.
Most of all, she hated being held accountable.
In her determination to not need Trip—and in a sangria haze—Luna had somehow forgotten all this.
And now she had to listen to everything again!
As they sipped their different soups and ate the same main dish with white rice (she hadn’t wanted to stir up any more controversy lobbying for brown) he launched into sports talk, which was apparently all he thought about when he wasn’t thinking about work.
Why had that not appalled her the first time?
She wanted to jump ship, but didn’t see how.
Damn!
The poor guy hadn’t had sex in so long. No matter how annoying he was, Luna didn’t have it in her to renege.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she suggested. If she couldn’t get out of it, she could at least get it wrapped up.
They scraped back their chairs.
Luna tried to head for the stairs but Perry grabbed her hand. Tell me he wants to hold hands climbing the stairs. I might barf, she thought.
Perry pulled her close. “We need to talk,” he said.
Uh-oh. “About?”
Hugging her tight to him he asked, “Have you heard of Crohn’s Disease?”
“Um… I’ve heard the name…”
“It affects the intestines.”
“Okay…” She didn’t know what was coming, but it couldn’t be good.
“I have a pouch,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I have a… bag,” he said. “I didn’t know how to tell you, I got it while I was married, and so I’ve never had to come out and tell someone…”
Luna was not thrilled by the colostomy bag revelation, but she also felt sorry for Perry. A nearly fatal car accident and a colostomy bag!
It seemed doubly unfair. She thought briefly about telling him it was bad form to spring it on someone suddenly like that, but decided not to. It wasn’t like she had any alternative advice on breaking the news. That was a question for Dear Abby if she’d ever heard one.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she told him.
Upstairs on the bed, Luna discovered that when it came to kissing, Perry was a one-trick pony.
He did that tongue thing on the upper gum of her mouth over and over.
It got old quick.
Plus, she was thinking about that pouch collecting his waste. She’d heard about colostomy bags. They’d sounded repulsive, but somehow she’d thought they were removable.
She’d thought wrong.
Luna made the mistake of leaving the light on, which she realized too late when she unbuckled Perry’s belt and took off his pants.
For the love of God, why didn’t they color the pouch, or at least make it opaque?
She felt a real possibility that she might vomit.
She looked away, but the bag was impossible to ignore. For one thing, it was huge, covering most of his stomach like a giant hot water bottle, except it wasn’t filled with hot water.
For another, it made squishing sounds every time he moved.
She tried thinking of it like a wine sack—the kind she’d used to sneak booze into rock concerts as a teen, even though it made the alcohol taste like formaldehyde.
But this was no wine sack. No matter how much she wanted to believe, she simply could not get her brain to go along with it. Her brain wasn’t stupid, even if her heart was. Her brain yelled “run!” but her stupid heart was way too polite, and unfortunately it called the shots.
And then there was the matter of his penis.
If you could call it that.
It appeared to be a nub.
Jesus H. Christ, she’d had no idea they came that small. What was the point?
On the plus side, a blowjob would be effortless.
If she could ignore the squishy colostomy bag just above.
He asked what her favorite position was and, truthfully in this case, she said, “It doesn’t matter.”
The only thing that would matter here was if he donned a strap-on.
He climbed on top of her and asked if he was in.
She didn’t know.
She felt nothing, not the slightest pressure or movement or object inside her.
Fortunately, Luna could experience orgasm through touch, and so she closed her eyes and let her mind go to that place.
Unfortunately, Perry then thought he’d had something to do with her pleasure.
By the time Trip chimed in, she and Perry were done—Praise the Lord!—and lying in bed. She’d known Trip would text her—having been cancelled he had to barge in anyway—and she’d never been so grateful for the distraction that dinging tone provided.
Her cell phone was downstairs. In the dead silence that followed the so-called sex, she heard Ozzy shrieking. She practically leapt up to read it.
While Perry lay upstairs oblivious (she didn’t know what he was thinking and she didn’t care—she’d sacrificed enough), Luna and Trip texted back and forth.
He: How’s ur date?
She: You were right.
He: About?
She: It wasn’t good.
He: Wat wasn’t?
She: Sex.
He: U HAD SEX?
She had, she replied. But it sucked.
Trip was stunned that she’d gone through with sex with someone else, but happy that it hadn’t been good. He wanted details, to be assured that he really was a better lover. She related her experience briefly, omitting the part about the pouch because that was just too disgusting to admit.
You really needed to be attached to someone to accept a colostomy bag.
She told him about the gum-rimming thing and the nub and the general dullness that Perry was.
He offered to come over and do the job right.
Luna accepted. Although she’d been able to get off, there was no substitute for a good, hard fuck.
Perry left a short time later, saying he didn’t want to go but he had to get up early, and, damn it all, she knew he was sincere.
She closed the door behind him and breathed a sigh of relief. That was quite a lot to deal with, said Jiminy.
“Talk about an understatement,” said Luna. “You sure you didn’t know about that pouch beforehand?”
I swear. I’m a guide, not a prophet.
“That would be funny if I wasn’t so traumatized.” She shuddered. “I can’t believe I went through that.”
There was a reason. Remember what you realized after you threw Nick out? There are no mistakes.
“Well, this sure felt like an accident.” Luna went into the bathroom and brushed her hair. “Thank God I have Trip for the repairs.”
Do you really think God has anything to do with that?
“I can’t get into a theological inner discussion right now. Trip will be here any minute.”
Are you sure you want to do this?
“Have actual sex?” She laughed. “Yeah, that’s the one thing in all this I’m absolutely sure about. As Sunny would say, ‘Christ in hiking gear on a Blue Ridge Mountain!’”
The doorbell rang.
She opened it, and Trip sauntered in. “Got anything to eat? I’m starved.”
She fed him left over Chinese food. “Delicious!” he said. “But why’d you get white rice? You always get brown.”
Of all that’s happened, he mentions rice? She didn’t feel like explaining, and it was none of his business. “They were out of brown,” she said. He was scraping the last few grains onto his fork, making a grating sound. “Can we go upstairs now?”
“Sure we can, honeybunny.” He dropped his fork to the plate and stood. “Let’s go.”
In bed, Luna found that her having had sex with another man prior to Trip made him circumvent all the pre-sex massaging. He was ready to go—eager to reclaim her and prove his superiority to Perry.
“Wow,” Luna said when they finished. “That was superb.”
“At least I can be your relief pitcher,” Trip said. “If nothing else.”
When Luna told Sunny all this the next day, Sunny said, “Good for you! You took lemons and made lemonade!”
“I’m surprised you have anything nice to say about this, considering how you feel about Trip.”
“Desperate times deserve desperate measures,” said Sunny. “At least that man’s good for something.”
Luna was forced to make the break-up call. Perry had gotten attached, and the only way to be free from his grip was to yank him off.
“I’m not ready for a relationship,” she told him on the phone. It was sort of true – she wasn’t ready for a relationship like the kind he was offering.
And she never would be.
He was stunned. “I thought everything was so awesome,” he said.
“It was,” she lied. “It’s me, not you.”
“Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”
A personality transplant, a penis-enhancement operation, and lose the gross pouch, she thought. “No,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“I am.”
“Then have a nice life, I guess,” he said.
“You, too,” she told him. She ended the call, breathed and felt relieved. But she also wondered if she could ever secure a successful relationship.
She worried not about the sex—she was bound to find good sex out there if she persisted—but the boring factor.
She liked “bad boys.”
They were exciting.
But they were also bastards.
It was like a scene from the last James Bond movie she’d seen. James was in bed with a married woman. She’d asked him, “Why can’t the good guys be like you?”
He answered very suavely, “Because then they would be bad.”
Could a good guy be bad enough to
keep her interested?
Luna shared these thoughts with Sunny at the diner the following day. She’d driven to Sunny’s job to take her out to lunch.
Sunny responded, “This is all very disturbing.”
“Speaking of disturbing, how’s your imaginary relationship going?”
“As well as you can imagine.”
“Seems like a dead-end situation.”
“Yeah, but a dead end can be comforting. At least you always know where you are.”
“Hmmm…”
“So what’s your game plan?”
“I want to slow the sex down and just date,” Luna said.
“If you think you can.”
“You don’t?”
“Let’s put it this way, Luna. You’ll never be a nun.”
Luna shrugged. It was true. That was one habit she didn’t want. “Yeah, but I need to get to know someone before I sleep with them.”
“Sounds reasonable. What about Trip?”
“For now, he stays. I found the key to conjuring his ‘A’ game in bed.”
“What’s that?”
“Competition.”
“That’s an alpha male for you.”
FIFTY-ONE
Luna was serious about not starting her next relationship with sex. She’d never done this, but she’d heard that it worked. Dr. Gold had once told her, “The problem with having sex right away is that once you add that into the equation, everything else goes out the window.”
Above all, she didn’t want another Perry moment.
She met lots of guys on CraigsList, but weeded most of them out. Trip actually helped in the effort, coaching her on what to look for. “Make sure he’s divorced or widowed. If he’s never been married, that’s a red flag.”
Luna wished she’d known that before she’d gone out with Trip.
“He should be generous and willing to give you time most of all.”
Ha! She thought. “So basically he should be everything you’re not.”
“Everything I was,” he said. “I told you, I can change. You just won’t give me the chance.”
“That’s right,” she said. “Been there, done that.”
Luna Rising Page 32
