Seattle Girl

by Lucy Kevin

  Like I said, the whole thing was really gratifying. I never realized that being a girl could be so powerful.

  Of course, Lola was still around, every afternoon, to make my life hell. I couldn’t figure her out. How could anyone be so nice on the air and so awful off of it?

  Diane and Seth had started to listen to the station out of sheer curiosity and they had formed their own opinions of the situation. Diane thought Lola was secretly lusting after Steve and once she saw my hot bod she was afraid of the competition. Seth thought she was an in-the-closet lesbian and she was being bitchy as a defense mechanism, so that she wouldn’t starting licking me.

  I wasn’t sure if either theory was quite right, but there was definitely something strange going on. And I wasn’t going to stop poking around until I found out what it was.

  *

  By the time I had closed out my last customers at the bar on Friday night, I was exhausted. Even with all the excitement and potential romance in the air, all I wanted to do was go home to wash the smell of burgers and beer from my hair. Unfortunately, all I had time for was a little clean-up in the bathroom of the casino. I had packed a sort spaghetti strap dress with high-heeled sandals into my duffel bag, which I now changed into. Once I finished brushing my hair and putting on a little mascara and lipstick, I walked out onto the casino floor to the pay phone and dialed Steve’s number.

  He picked up on the second ring. “Hello. Steve here.”

  Suddenly I felt self-conscious. What if he didn’t want to see me anymore?

  Finally I spoke up. “Hi Steve. It’s Georgia. I’m, uh, finished up at the bar now.” I paused and waited for him to take it from there.

  If he canceled on me at the last minute I was not going to be bummed. I was going to be calm and mature about it. I might pee in his coffee on Monday morning, but other than that I was going to take rejection really well.

  “Just the girl I’ve been waiting to hear from. Are you ready to get down?”

  I laughed, relieved, even as I was wondering if he knew that the phrase “get down” had gone out with the leather fringe vest.

  “Of course I am. I was just getting changed after work.”

  “Nothing too hard to get off, I hope.”

  I wasn’t sure how he had managed it again, but while lines like that should have sounded smarmy, they just didn’t coming from him. It was no wonder that he was so good on the radio, I thought. He could say just about anything and it sounded great.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” I looked approvingly at my little red dress. “Do you want to meet in front of the casino in fifteen minutes?”

  “Sounds great, baby. I can’t wait.”

  By the time I walked around to the entrance of the casino, he was already outside waiting for me. He looked a little bit nervous. It was really endearing. I guess I wasn’t the only one who was a little nervous.

  I walked over to Steve and he reached an arm out to me as I got closer. I put my left hand into his right hand and thought again what fabulous hands he had. They really were erotic. They were big and rough and it looked like he did manual labor with them. He obviously put his hands to good use when he wasn’t on the air. I wanted to ask him what he did with them, but it suddenly seemed like much too intimate a question to ask some guy you worked with when you were standing out in front of a casino together.

  He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek as he said hello and then moved us inside the revolving doors. Inside the casino it smelled like smoke and sweat. When I first started working at the Casino I found it funny that so many people would travel such a long way just to lose their hard-earned money. But as I saw people leave night after night, broke and haggard, I stopped thinking it was so funny. I knew that I would never be able to gamble after working in a casino. Too much sadness was attached to it.

  As we walked past the slot machines, one of them came up a winner. The red buzzer sounded, and the player screamed and jumped for joy. But all I could see were the jealous faces of the people at the other slot machines, all wondering, “Why not me?”

  My dad would tell them, “Life’s not fair.” And my mom would lecture them about the evils of gambling. Her older brother was a professional gambler in Hong Kong. Eventually he fell into such debt that after borrowing as much money as he could from his relatives he hid himself away in the mountains for nearly a decade. Last she heard he was dead.

  We reached the ticket line for the dance club and Steve turned to look at me. “Are you okay? You look kind of upset.”

  “Sorry,” I said as he paid for our tickets. The ticket guy stamped our wrists and I said, “Something about gamblers is just so not right, you know?”

  He pulled me out onto the dance floor. “It’s time to stop thinking, baby. Get ready to shake your booty!”

  I couldn’t help but wonder, for a moment, if he had just finished watching Saturday Night Fever. At least that would explain his incredibly outdated vocabulary.

  We danced like we were on fire. I had never had so much fun without Diane or Seth around. Periodically we would leave the dance floor so that Steve could do a couple of shots at the bar. I didn’t want to forget anything about our date, so I stopped at one.

  Steve, on the other hand, was downing them fast and furious. He didn’t get all wobbly or anything, so I figured he was just good at holding his liquor. Plus, there was a bonus to all of his drinking: Steve started doing his shots off me.

  He would put a lime between my teeth, sprinkle salt onto my neck, lick it off and then pull the shot, finishing up by sucking the juice from the lime slice in my mouth. I was totally into it and totally into him.

  All of the shots, the bright lights, and the gyrating bodies must have made me fearless because when they announced the dance contest a couple of hours later, I got in line to do my thing.

  Taking my place in the middle of the dance floor, I scoped out the judges. There were two men and one woman. Sure, the men would be easy to win over, but it occurred to me as the music started pounding, and the lights began to whirr in a crazy pattern over my head, all of the other girls had played up to the male judges. Maybe, just maybe, if I put on some lesbo moves, I might be able to walk off stage with the competition in my back pocket. Not to mention the fact that Steve would probably get really turned on by watching me bump and grind with a woman, and since I had big plans for the culmination of the evening, I wanted to get him as hot as I possibly could.

  As a Lady Gaga mash-up pumped through the room, I slithered across the dance floor, first paying a visit to each of the male judges, who were sitting in their folding chairs by the end rail with looks on their faces that said, Go ahead, impress us. Some of the other contestants had done little strip-teases, but I wasn’t going to resort to showing skin to win this one.

  After shaking my booty in the general vicinity of the men, I focused all of my attention on the female judge. Keeping eye contact with her, I made it perfectly clear to everyone in the dance club that I wanted to make love to her. More than that, I wanted to rip off her clothes and lick every single inch of her body. By the time I slowly came to be sitting on her lap, both of the male judges, and every man in the dance club was squirming to hide their erection.

  Gently whipping my long hair across the face and breasts of the female judge, who was a really good sport, to my infinite relief, the song finally ended and I got up and left the dance floor.

  Guess who won the contest that night? Me, thank you very much. I was a very proud girl. I had never done anything so blatantly naughty before. I felt my unwanted innocence dripping off me in sheets.

  I felt as if I was undergoing a transformation from the good Georgia Fulton to the bad Georgia Fulton.

  Who knew being bad could feel so good?

  As everyone came back onto the dance floor after the contest, Steve took me off to one of the couches in the corner of the club.

  “I’ve always wanted to have two women in my bed at the same time.”

  I for
cibly tamped down on the voice in my head that was saying, Two women? Why would he possibly think that I would think that was sexy?

  “You’ll have to be happy with just one tonight,” I said, in the most alluring way I possibly could, all the while hoping that I was making it perfectly clear that I was not going to partake in any threesomes with him, no matter how much he begged.

  He pulled me onto his lap and ran his thumb over my lips, saying, “You have such amazing lips.”

  He was driving me crazy with his thumb. I wanted to suck the whole thing into my mouth to see if it tasted as good as it looked. Right when I was about to, he kissed me so gently that I wasn’t sure it had happened at all. I wanted to straddle him and stick my tongue all the way down his throat like I had seen in a porn Diane and I rented once to see what they were like. At the time I thought the whole thing was really gross and perverted, but now I wanted to try out everything we saw with Steve.

  Except for the threesome part, of course.

  This time I planted my lips on his. I tasted him with my tongue, darting to one corner and then the next. His lips tasted like salt and lime and tequila. I couldn’t get enough of him.

  Pressed against each other, our lips just a breath apart, I looked up into his eyes. I was unable to resist the sensual pull he had over me. He pulled me into him and bent his head down, lowering his full, masculine lips down to mine.

  I felt his breath on my lips, and then the soft, alluring pressure of his warm skin against my mouth, already swollen in anticipation of his touch.

  The kiss was sweet and sexy and the most powerful sexual experience I had ever had in my life. I slid my tongue into his mouth, wanting to know his taste, wanting to devour him.

  He groaned as my tongue slipped into his mouth, and he deepened the kiss, pulling me even closer to him. We made out in the corner for what must have been an hour. If he had tried to take me right then and there I honestly don’t think I would have protested. Fortunately, he seemed to have enough wits about him to move us on to a more appropriate venue.

  “Why don’t we go to my place?”

  I nodded yes, got off of his lap and reached my hand down to help him stand up.

  “Give me just a minute, okay?” He fiddled with his pants to hide his erection.

  Suddenly standing there, watching him, seeing all of the strangers dancing and drinking all around us, I felt sort of embarrassed. Had we really been making out in public for the past hour? It felt funny, somehow.

  But as I thought more about it, I changed my mind. Here, tonight at Harrah’s, I had become an amazing new woman. This was no frat boy I had here. This was an almost famous DJ and I was going to go to his place to lose my virginity. I felt bigger and more important than when we walked into the room earlier that night.

  The girl me had walked in.

  The practically-a-woman me was walking out.

  *

  We left my car in the garage and as we drove the mile to his apartment, Steve kept rubbing his hand on my thigh. It was driving me crazy and I almost asked him to pull over so that I could attack him in the car. Somehow I kept a lid on it, and we pulled into his parking garage.

  He put the car into park, pulled out the keys and reached for me. After several more minutes of making out against the steering wheel, he whispered, “Let’s go upstairs, baby.”

  We got out of the car and he grabbed my hand, pulling me up the stairs to his apartment. As he fiddled with the key in the lock he leaned me against the door and pinned me there with his body, showering my neck and shoulders with erotic little kisses.

  The door opened behind me and, just like Fred and Ginger would have done it, we waltzed into his apartment without breaking our full body contact. He leaned in to capture my mouth in another sweet kiss that had me reeling.

  A part of me was still scared—after all, I was going to lose my virginity tonight and suddenly it felt like an even bigger step than I had thought it would be—but my body was screaming at me to go for it.

  Steve braided his fingers through my hair and I instinctively leaned closer. My tongue swept into his mouth and he growled deep in his throat.

  As one we slid to our knees on the plush carpet between the door and his living room. I let my hands travel up his arms, to his shoulders, and I reveled in the play of muscles in his back as I ran my fingers lightly over his shirt. I slipped my hands into his hair and it was so soft, softer than I had ever imagined it would be.

  “I want you so much, Georgia,” Steve whispered into my hair as he ran kisses along my cheekbone. He took my earlobe between his teeth and I shuddered, powerfully aware of a building heat between my legs.

  “I’ve never felt-” I began to say in a breathy, surprised voice, but before I could finish my sentence, Steve had recaptured my lips in a passionate kiss. Wrapping his hands around my butt, he pushed my hips against his.

  I felt the unmistakable pressure of his arousal burning into me. Why were there so many god damn layers of clothes between us? The thought of being skin to skin with Steve made my nipples pucker beneath the thin fabric of my dress.

  And then Steve’s right hand began to move up my ribcage, stopping directly below my breasts. I moaned, “Steve, touch me,” no longer coherent. All I knew was that I wanted, no, needed him to touch my breasts.

  His palm came up to cup me through my dress, branding me with his heat, and he bent his head down to kiss the skin that swelled above the top of my dress.

  As he started to remove his clothes I was acutely aware of the fact that I had never actually seen a naked man in person before. Oh crap. What was I doing in this apartment? I was practically naked in some guy’s bed that I hardly knew, for god’s sake.

  Much to my chagrin, in the moment I had to admit to myself that I was still Georgia Fulton, the girl. It was painfully clear that the woman was still a ways off in the distance.

  So in this fit of nerves I admitted the truth to him. “You’re going to be my first.”

  Steve looked like a deer caught in the headlights. It wasn’t his best look.

  “Excuse me?” he said, his tone downright glacial.

  I tried to smile, but my lips were trembling in the middle so I gave up. “Did I forget to mention that I’m a virgin?”

  I knew my attempt at humor was pretty lame, but I couldn’t think of anything else given the suddenly awkward situation.

  My declaration put an immediate damper on things. I’ve never seen anyone move quite as fast as Steve did. He practically threw himself off me and over to the other side of the room. I just lay on his bed, stunned, trying to process what had just happened.

  Let me tell you, I was totally insulted by his rejection and quickly reformulated my pee-in-his-coffee-on-Monday plan. With as much dignity as I could muster in the bedroom of a guy who was scurrying to get away from me as fast as he could, I got up out of the bed, slipped on my sandals and started to walk out the door.

  When I walked back into his living room, he gruffly said, “I’ll drive you to your car.”

  I wanted to ask him what his problem was. But before I could even start to ask him any questions he had hustled me into his car, sped down the road and we were in the casino parking lot. He barely slowed down enough for me to get out of the passenger seat and then almost crashed as he left the parking lot in a mad rush.

  I watched him speed off in a daze. Considering how well the night had gone up until a few minutes ago, I was pretty shocked at the turn things had taken.

  Oh well. So much for becoming a woman with Steve Jacobs tonight.

  My wild and crazy night of sex was a bust.

  *

  Diane was still up when I got home watching a Marilyn Monroe documentary on cable. “Tell me everything,” she said, clearly dying to hear all of the scrumptious details.

  “There’s not much to tell. We were having a really great time making out in his apartment when I told him that I was a virgin and he freaked out. Date over.”

  “What?�
� She stared at me in utter disbelief. “I thought it was every guy’s dream to do a virgin. This is totally weird. There’s got to be something else going on here. I mean, you’re a babe!” Diane sounded like she was trying to solve a perplexing mystery. I knew she was as thrown as I was. “Who wouldn’t want the honor of deflowering you? Oh no!”

  She picked up the hem of my dress and tried to look underneath, as if she had just figured out what the problem was. “You weren’t wearing huge, white utilitarian underwear, were you?”

  I batted her hands away. “You know I threw out all of that old underwear years ago,” I muttered.

  Needless to say, I wasn’t in the mood to talk about the evening with Diane. I just wanted to crawl under the covers and try to pretend the whole embarrassing bedroom scene with Steve had never happened. I mean, how many rejections can you possibly blame on the guy being gay?

  I had already used that excuse more than once, and frankly it was getting old.

  To make matters worse, as I headed for my bedroom, Diane said, “There’s a message for you on the machine.”

  My dad’s voice boomed through our apartment. “Hi honey, it’s your dad. Uh, I mean this is Georgia’s father. Hello Diane, how are you?”

  His phone messages always started the same. Then there was an awkward pause where he cleared his throat several times.

  “Georgia, honey, could you call your mother on Sunday?” He lowered his voice and added, “I think she’s still a little down about our (more throat clearing) discussion. About your internship,” he added, as if I need more clarification, when I still had a vivid memory of my mom storming out the room after making it plain and clear what an utter disappointment I was. “Maybe a trip to the mall with her would be nice?” he suggested in a hopeful voice. “Well, that’s it, honey. I hope everything is going well with your new job.”

  I hit the delete button and rubbed my hands over my face. I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to have to face my mother less than twenty-four hours after the night I’d just had. Without bothering to even brush my teeth, I crawled under the covers.