The Club

by Lauren Rowe

  I’m rock hard. God, I love that moment. I lick my lips again.

  “When she thrusts herself into me and begins to open herself, I become ravenous, myopic, relentless. I lick her and kiss her and suck her with increased fervor, and maybe even nibble and gnaw at her, too, depending on what her body’s telling me to do, and she continues rapidly opening and unlocking, spreading and unfurling, untethering and breaking down. It’s fucking incredible.

  “She’s a beautiful, blooming flower. The trick, of course, is to catch her the exact moment before her petals fall off, and not a second before or after, because what I’m aiming for—the holy grail, if you will—is to plunge myself into her at the very instant when doing so will push her over the edge. It’s tricky. Too early, and she might not come at all. Too late, and she’ll go off without me.”

  I unbutton my fly and my cock springs out. I want to jerk myself off right now, but I want to get these thoughts onto my computer screen even more.

  “She’s on the verge—so fucking close—and I’m out of my mind, a shark in a frenzy. Finally, she reflexively shudders in my mouth—a feeling so delicious, I often dream about it—and I know her body’s teetering right on the very edge, hanging by a thread, aching to give in, but her mind is keeping her from what she wants, usually thanks to daddy issues or a raging good girl complex or low self esteem (take your pick, it’s always something). Whatever it is, her mind is getting in the way of her body surrendering utterly and completely to the intense pleasure she yearns to experience.

  “But I won’t be denied. She claws at me, gulps for air, her pleasure mounting and morphing into an agony she increasingly cannot contain. She whimpers, groans, writhes—and I’m so fucking turned on, too, I can barely contain myself. ‘Fuck me now, please, please,’ she often says, or some variation thereof, but I won’t do it, even though I’m losing my fucking mind, because I know she’s not maxed out just yet.”

  I breathe deeply.

  “Finally, like a key turning in a lock, something inside her clicks. She opens. Her mind detaches from her body. She becomes untethered. She surrenders.”

  I let out a shaky breath.

  “That’s when I plunge into her like a knife in warm butter and fuck her with almost religious zeal—sometimes pulling her on top of me to do it, sometimes turning her around, sometimes slamming into her the good old fashioned way—by then, any which way is equally effective—and the moment I enter her, her body releases completely, reflexively shuddering and constricting and undulating all around my cock, over and over again. Sure, she’s come before, of course. But never like this. No, never like this. It’s pure ecstasy in the way the ancient Greeks defined that word: the culmination of human possibility. For both of us.”

  I let out a long, controlled exhale and shift in my seat. Holy shit, I’ve really gotten myself worked up. I breathe in and out deeply several times. I’m trembling. I take a moment to compose myself.

  “I should be clear about something, in the interest of full disclosure. What I’ve described here is the ideal. The aspiration. Sometimes the timing works out exactly this way, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, especially when I’m still learning a woman, or if she’s particularly hard-to-read for some reason, she might come like a freight train before I manage to get inside her. And if that happens, it’s nothing to complain about, believe me—fucking a beautiful woman immediately after she comes is also a delicious privilege, no doubt about it. But the pinnacle, the peak, the perfection to which I aspire—the holy grail—is and always will be bringing a woman right to the edge of ecstasy and pushing her over it from the inside out.”

  I shift in my seat again, but my erection is too intense to ignore. I have to stop typing. How could anyone fill out this application without having to jerk off? I grip my shaft and pump up and down until a staggering wave of pleasure wells up inside of me and finally releases in fitful spurts. I go into the bathroom and pull off my jeans. I hop into the shower and let the steaming hot water rain over me, relaxing me, cleansing me.

  Getting women into my bed isn’t my problem. The problem occurs right after a woman has had the best sex of her life, when her body has finally functioned at full-tilt capacity for the first time. That’s when a woman invariably confuses discovering the full extent of her sexual power with the ridiculous notion that she’s found her soul mate. Thanks to a lifetime of brainwashing by Disney and Lifetime and Hallmark, she naively believes glimpsing God during an epic fuck somehow translates into some kind of happily ever after with her Prince Charming. No matter what I’ve said beforehand, no matter how clearly I’ve presented myself and the limits of what I’m willing to give, she’s suddenly convinced she’s found The One. “He just doesn’t know it yet,” she tells herself.

  And that’s when I hurt her, whoever she is—whether she’s a librarian or tax accountant or personal trainer or pediatrician or makeup artist or singer or bioengineer or therapist or paralegal. Whether she’s funny or sweet or shy. Whether she’s serious or sexy or smart. Whether she’s a tree hugger or a Sunday school teacher. I hurt her, whoever she is. Because I’m too fucked up to be The One. Not for her, not for anybody. She can’t change that fact. No one can. I can’t even change that fact—and believe me, I’ve tried.

  Damn. How am I going to accurately convey all this information in my application? I get out of the shower, throw a towel around my waist, and get right back to my laptop. I stare at my computer screen for a brief moment, trying to find the right words to succinctly express my thoughts.

  “No matter how honest I am right from the start about how little I’m willing to give outside the four walls of my bedroom, women always seem to get hurt by me, nonetheless,” I type. “Either they don’t believe me when I tell them what I really want, or they think they can change me. And they can’t.”

  I sigh.

  “I’m not out to hurt anyone.” And it’s the truth. “All I want to do is give a woman pleasure like nothing she’s experienced before—which leads to my own ultimate pleasure. After I taste her and fuck her and teach her what true satisfaction feels like, I might want to lie in bed and talk and laugh with her, too—because, believe it or not, I enjoy talking and laughing quite a bit, as long as everyone understands it’s not going to lead to a heart-shaped box of chocolates and a weekend shopping trip to IKEA. Maybe I’ll want to get into a hot shower with her and lather her up, running my soapy hands over her entire, beautiful body. Maybe I’ll want to dry her off with a soft, white towel and then fuck her again, maybe the second time so intensely, so deeply, so expertly, we’ll come together, both of us gasping for air and shuddering simultaneously as our bodies discover the culmination of human possibility together.

  “After all’s said and done, I’ll surely want to tell her how beautiful she is and how much I’ve enjoyed our time together. I’ll want to kiss her goodbye, gently and gratefully, thanking her for our glorious time together. And then, almost certainly, I’ll never want to see her again.”

  My hands hover over the keyboard for a brief moment.

  “And I don’t want to feel like an asshole for any of it.” I sigh. “Because I’m sick and fucking tired of feeling like a complete asshole.”

  I pause again.

  “You’ve asked me to state my preferences, but clearly what I’ve described here transcends preference. I need smart, sexy women who honestly want what I do—no lies—and who, most importantly, can clearly and rationally distinguish physical rapture from some kind of romantic fairytale.”

  I stare at my computer screen, a sense of hopelessness threatening to descend on me. Am I kidding myself here? Do women like this even exist?

  I type again. “If I could find even one woman, just one, whose ‘sexual preferences’ are uncannily and genuinely compatible with mine, I’d be ... ” What would I be? Elated. That’s what I was about to write. Elated.

  Jesus. I quickly delete that entire last sentence. It’s a non sequitur, for Chrissakes. I mean, shit, I’m e
ither a sexual sniper with a rampant God complex or I’m fucking Nicholas Sparks. I can’t be both. I have no idea what bizarre place in my brain that last ridiculous sentence came from. I guess that’s what happens when a guy like me tries to articulate his deepest, darkest needs without a filter—the thoughts come out in a jumbled, desperate, douche-y mess, inexplicably intertwined with all the fucked up shit I’ve tried unsuccessfully to fix with years of useless therapy.

  What the hell is this mysterious “intake agent” going to think of all my incoherent rambling? I cock my head to the side, an epiphany slamming me upside the head. An “intake agent” is going to read my application—yes, of course—and that intake agent’s going to be a woman. Of course. And not the eighty-year-old pre-op-transgender-lesbian variety, either. They can’t let assholes like me, or, worse, crazy fucks with violent fantasies or bondage fetishes or some other latent form of psychopathy into The Club without first passing a woman’s gut check. Right? Right.

  I grin broadly and place my fingers back on my keyboard.

  “And now a message directly to you, My Beautiful Intake Agent.” I lick my lips again. “Have you enjoyed reading my brutally honest thoughts—my deep, dark secrets? I’ve enjoyed writing about them. I’ve never expressed these truths to anyone else—never even thought about them quite like this. It’s been enlightening to arrange the bare truth so clearly on the page and confess it to you—and therefore confess it to myself, too. In fact, telling you the brutal truth turned me on so much, I had to take a break midway through writing this to jack off.”

  I smile again. I’m such a bastard.

  “So, tell me, My Beautiful Intake Agent, are you surprised at how wet your panties are right now, considering the fact that you’ve been brainwashed your whole life by Lifetime and Hallmark to think you want flowers and candy and a candlelit dinner followed by silent missionary sex, a chaste kiss goodnight, and a trip to IKEA the following morning to shop for a mutually agreeable couch? And yet, despite a lifetime of conditioning about what you’re supposed to want, here you are, anyway, aren’t you, My Beautiful Intake Agent, imagining my warm, wet tongue swirling around and around your sweet button, wishing I were there to lick and kiss and suck you ‘til you were jolting and jerking like you’d gripped an electric fence? You’re a unique puzzle, My Beautiful Intake Agent, yes you are—a rare treasure locked down by a padlock. But guess what? My words have already begun to unlock you, as surely as if I were there to turn the key myself.

  “So what are you going to do about the dark urges clanging around deep inside you right now, My Beautiful Intake Agent? Are you going to ignore them, or are you going to let them rise up and eventually untether your body from your mind? Perhaps you should use this opportunity, as I have just done, to touch yourself and think honestly about your deepest desires, to think about what actually turns you on, as opposed to what’s supposed to. Touch yourself, My Beautiful Intake Agent, and go to the deepest, darkest places inside you, the places you never allow yourself to go—and embrace the brutal truth about your wants and needs. Your whole life, you’ve been taught to chase all the Valentine’s Day bullshit, haven’t you? But that’s not really what you want. Tell the truth—to me and to yourself. You’d ditch all the Valentine’s Day bullshit in a heartbeat to howl like a rabid monkey for the first time in your life, wouldn’t you?”

  I’m smiling from ear to ear, imagining some frazzled, middle-aged woman sitting in a cubicle in Dallas or Des Moines or Mumbai, reading my words with wide eyes and a throbbing clit.

  “I know what you’re thinking: Cocky bastard! Asshole! A legend in his own mind! All true exclamations, my dear. But guess what? Cocky bastard or not, if I were there to lick you, nice and slow, right on your sweet button, the way you deserve to be licked, the way you’ve only ever dreamed of being licked, the way no man has ever done for you before, I guarantee it’d take me less than four minutes to deliver you unto pure ecstasy that would make you surrender to me, totally and completely.” I smile to myself.

  “Yes, My Beautiful Intake Agent, if I were there to teach you what your body’s divinely designed to do, you’d be forced to admit an immutable truth, whether you wanted to or not: In addition to me being one cocky-bastard-asshole-son-of-a-bitch motherfucker, I’m also the man of your dreams.”

  Chapter 2

  Sarah

  I’m stunned. Like, mouth hanging open, eyes bugging out of my head, I’ve turned into a strand of wet spaghetti stunned. I can’t believe this is the first application I’ve been assigned to review and process all by myself after three months of supervised intake training.

  What an asshole. What a flaming, unparalleled, self-absorbed, self-righteous, egomaniacal, self-important asshole. I don’t know whether to laugh or scream or cry or throw up. Talk about emotionally stunted. Pathetic. Delusional. Narcissistic. And maybe even a little bit scary. He wants to lick my “sweet button” ‘til I howl like a monkey? It’d take him less than four minutes to “deliver me unto pure ecstasy that would make me surrender to him, totally and completely?” What the hell? Who talks like that? Who thinks like that? Freak.

  Oh, and the best part of all, he’d make me come harder than I ever have in my entire life? Ha! That one made me laugh, considering the situation. I’m sure he’d be shocked, and oh so titillated, to find out that making me come at all would de facto qualify as making me come harder than ever before. Yeah, I’m sure that little nugget would make his head explode into a million tiny pieces.

  Maybe the woman who faked it with him wasn’t the devil incarnate, after all—maybe she just knew she wasn’t capable of having an orgasm, no matter what he did. Did he ever think of that? Maybe she pulled the chord on her parachute when it became clear things were going to end the way they always did for her—with a big, fat nothing. Sure, he says he made her climax the second time around, but can he be sure? Maybe she faked it again. Maybe she just wasn’t wired to have an orgasm. Maybe she was wired like me.

  Jerk.

  But if he’s such a jerk then why am I squirming in my chair right now, trying to relieve the pounding ache between my legs? Dang it, despite my brain’s firm desire to be disgusted by what he wrote, his words, and especially his message to me personally, lit my body up like a Roman candle. Wow, just sitting here, staring at my laptop in my little student apartment, I want to reach down past the waistband of my pajama bottoms and touch myself—and I never have that urge, ever.

  I need to get a grip.

  But when I close my eyes to clear my thoughts, all I can think about is his warm, wet, flickering tongue on my skin—between my legs—right where I’m pulsing mercilessly right now. I feel my face flushing crimson.

  What the heck has gotten into me? I’m not some kind of sex-addicted nympho. I mean, I’m no virgin, either. I lost my virginity during my freshman year of college to a guy I thought was hot (who then promptly turned into a cling-on), and in the five and a half years since then, I’ve had two long-term-ish boyfriends (both of whom were cute and sweet, even though things eventually got too boring to continue), one fairly forgettable one-night-stand (thanks to my best friend, Kat, who lured my guy over by flirting with his friend), and, to top it all off, a second one-night-stand six months ago I can barely remember (thanks to a fourth cosmo that pushed me well past Fun-and-Confident-Sarah and right into Hot-Mess-What-Were-You-Thinking-Sarah—something I swore to myself I’d never let happen again).

  So, yes, even if I’m not a sex fiend, per se, I’ve definitely had my share of sex, including oral, by the way—both giving and receiving—so it’s not as though I’m some kind of squeaky clean fairytale princess who blushes at the sight of a penis. I’m certainly not gonna swoon and pass out just because some jerk refers to my clit as my “sweet button,” for the love of Pete. And, anyway, even if I’d had any hang-ups about words that begin with the letter “c” before I started this bizarre “intake agent” job three months ago, they’re long gone now.

  But I digress. Big deal if m
y body’s not wired to have an orgasm. I’m not alone in this predicament, or, situation, rather—it’s not a predicament. I’ve done my research. Seventy-five percent of women never reach orgasm through intercourse alone and a full ten to fifteen percent of women like me never reach climax at all, ever, under any circumstance, no matter the tongue or toys or position or emotions involved.

  So, okay, I’ll never suffer a horrible backache after having a mind-blowing orgasm like Kat “complains” about. Big deal. It certainly doesn’t mean I can’t experience sexual pleasure at all, because believe me, I do. I thoroughly enjoy the physical sensation of sex, especially when there’s an emotional connection with the guy (or, occasionally, when alcohol creates the illusion of an emotional connection with the guy).

  The more I think about it, I can totally relate to what this Jonas Faraday guy is saying because, much like him, I get most turned on when I’m pushing my partner over the edge hard and fast—particularly when he’s trying desperately to hang on. Getting a guy off, especially when he’s like “no, wait, not yet, I wanna hang on,” makes me feel powerful, like I’ve got a superpower. So, yeah, I totally get it.

  But understanding the guy certainly doesn’t explain why I’m so frickin’ turned on by him. I mean, seriously, why the heck do I feel like touching myself right now? I never want to touch myself. What’s the point? I’ve tried in the past, and all it does is make me feel defective in the end.

  And it’s the same regarding a guy going down on me. Getting licked to death by some well-intentioned guy with a frenetic tongue might be pleasant at first, sure, but it can only do so much for me when I know I’m not going to come. The whole exercise inevitably begins to feel kind of pointless—and, honestly, kind of embarrassing and anxiety-producing, too. And if he keeps going and going with no success, the whole situation becomes soul-crushing, actually—especially if it’s obvious he’s frustrated or, worse, disappointed.