Random Acts of Hope

by Julia Kent

  I took a big gulp of coffee and then yawned.

  “Caffeine not cutting it?”

  “I barely got three hours of sleep and it’s”—I looked at the computer clock—“8:42 p.m. We still have reports to write and all this social media bullshit.” While university policy said that social media accounts were private for the students, and residence life could not impose policies on anything a student admitted to doing online, we also had the right to review social media—anything public—for the sake of making sure the dorm community was a safe and inclusive one.

  #RAOCROX had exploded as a hashtag and Maggie and I were learning quite a bit. I now knew which freshman had banged Liam, that an additional four sophomores had given him blow jobs on the stairwells, and two of them had slept with him at prior concerts in the Boston area.

  I knew the seven bangings and four blow jobs weren’t true, but those concerts… A giant red ball of anger grew in my stomach. I tried to douse it with coffee. Didn’t help.

  “The man has the refractory period of a porn star,” Maggie marveled.

  And the body to go with it, I thought. Not that I’d been able to enjoy it. Between a thousand questions racing through my mind, the shock of being against his body after five years away, and the pure unfamiliarity of being touched by any man—sexually or just affectionately—the entire night had been a very perplexing experience.

  And a horny one. A very, very horny one.

  She pretended to count on her fingers, reaching ten and turning to her exposed pinky toe for number eleven. “Eleven sex acts involving ejaculation in one evening. We should hire him to come give community service talks on healthy sex attitudes. He’s quite sex positive.” She waggled her eyebrows in a leering way.

  “The man limped out of here with a hard-on and blue balls bigger than Rachel’s rack.”

  “Oooo, meow. Someone’s catty.”

  She was right. “I don’t know how to feel,” I admitted. “How am I supposed to feel? I run into the ex-boyfriend who dumped me when I was pregnant with our baby. He’s stripping at a party where I’m the sex toy hostess. Then he orders a raunchy plastic fuck tunnel, asks me to deliver it, and when I do he kisses me!”

  Maggie just stared, listening.

  “I slap him and run away, and he tracks me down. He comes to my apartment to talk, refuses to talk, and instead we cuddle in bed and fall asleep. When I order him to sneak out my window a crowd of groupies surround him, and a boa constrictor ends up face-fucking his sex toy doll.”

  Maggie was beet red from trying to stay composed.

  “So, Maggie, where’s the manual on how to feel about all that?”

  “I think you have to write it as you go along.”

  “I think Liam McCarthy operates through life without a manual. I can’t create a color-coded spreadsheet that is detailed enough to manage him.”

  “If only emotions were as neatly charted as dorm room condition reports.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice.”

  We both sighed and drank deeply from our respective coffees.

  “Not really,” we said in unison.

  Maggie hit the refresh button on my computer. “Thirteen new tweets for #RAOCROX. Oh, look! An eighth sex partner has come forward.”

  “I thought Liam was at eleven.”

  “I’m counting the blow jobs separately.”

  “Doesn’t everyone.”

  I closed the laptop slowly and put my mug of coffee on the desk. Without meaning to, I sank my head down into my hands, fingers sliding into my unwashed hair, the nails meeting resistance. Had I even combed my hair today? The hours flew by in a blur. Security services. Animal control. Making sure Liam was okay. Watching him leave. Dealing with the uproar over his presence. And the snake.

  “Oh, here’s a good one on Facebook: Liam McCarthy from #RAOCROX was here to film a new music video—their first!—in my dorm today. He even brought a sex toy doll and a six-foot boa constrictor. FUN FUN FUN love being a student here!”

  “Who was that?”

  “Joey Lennon.”

  “His mother would be so proud. Is he a creative writing major?”

  “Political science.”

  “Ah. Makes more sense. The guy has a solid future in a politician’s communications office. Spin, spin, spin.”

  “Maybe Liam really was here to film a video.”

  “Maggie,” I growled.

  “What? It’s possible! Maybe he’s Superman and can please eleven—twelve—women in one night, wrestle a snake, and fuck a blowup doll, too, all without breaking a sweat.”

  “And strip like something out of Magic Mike. And sing and play guitar.”

  “Marry a man like that while you can.”

  Something in my chest gave when she said that. Instant contrition covered her features.

  “I’m so sorry. That was uncalled for.”

  “It’s okay. We were just joking around.”

  “No, it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t, and I should know better. It’s like when people make rape jokes around me. I know they don’t mean it, but…” Maggie’s face tightened.

  “Rape jokes?”

  “You know, like commenting that a pedophile will get a taste of his own medicine in jail. Or that being raped will ‘cure’ an arrogant person. That kind of thing. It’s not that people mean anything specific against me. Or against rape victims. But it still stings.”

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to keep apologizing.”

  “I do if you’re hurt.” She gave me an insistent look.

  “Not hurt. Just…confused.”

  “If you don’t want to talk about it, I can go.”

  “No!” I’d spent the day busy and overwhelmed, but being alone somehow seemed worse right now.

  She sat slowly. “Then tell me what’s going on.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on! I woke up to the first man in five years in my bed, and it’s the same one from five years ago.”

  “Déjà vu.” She chuckled. “He’s here, though. Right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something’s changed in these five years if he’s here. By choice. He’s come back on some level because he’s seeking something from you. What is it?”

  “He didn’t really say anything. But we both seem to want something.”

  “It’s time to talk.”

  “It is so hard, though. Like once the words come out I won’t be able to stop talking. And some of the words inside me are not pleasant.”

  “I’d imagine it’s the same for him.”

  If she’d slapped me I couldn’t have been more shocked. “Him? Why would he be angry with me? He’s not the one who got left.”

  “But he left for a reason. Even if Liam never told you that reason, there is one.” Compassion filled her face. A bit of confusion, too, as her eyebrows drew inward.

  “I wish I knew why!”

  “Then ask.”

  “What if I ask and it’s a horrible reason?”

  “What’s the worst possible reason?”

  That made me pause. “Because he’s a cold, cruel, selfish bastard.”

  “How would that change anything? To know that for certain?”

  “It would…it would…” I lost my breath in that one question. How would it? How would it change one damn thing from the past five years? Wasn’t he already a cold, cruel, selfish, fucking horrible human being for what he did to me?

  And what did it mean about me to be so hung up on him that I still missed him, even after what he did to me?

  It made me feel warped. Damaged somehow, like someone who didn’t know who to trust, so she blindly wanted all the wrong people.

  For all the wrong reasons.

  It was why I chose celibacy. Because if I didn’t, I’d have fucked everything and anything that would have me, just so I could bury Liam’s rejection as deeply as possible.

  All or nothing. Black or white. Good or evil. Accepting that there might be a middle ground in
the face of being rejected so firmly, so quickly, and with such force was impossible. How could there be a middle ground when someone like Liam could choose to treat me so poorly?

  What did it say about me?

  For five years I’d fought that feeling. That fear. Vacillating between self-loathing and Liam-hating. Never finding an answer.

  And now Maggie was asking more answerless questions.

  “You don’t have to answer me,” she said, then sat up quickly. I knew that move. Yanking her phone out of her pocket, she read a text.

  “Brawl in the men’s bathrooms on the third floor. Probably fighting over a woman.”

  “Go.”

  “You okay?”

  “No. But I will be.”

  “You really will.”

  “You say that to everyone.”

  “But I mean it with you.”

  Chapter Ten

  Liam

  What do you do when you finally have a quasi-breakthrough with your ex, but the big conversation you know is building and needs to happen is waiting like a giant zit, not quite ready to pop but aching as it ripens?

  Horrible analogy. Never mind. Gross. Now I’m thinking about pizza face.

  This analytical crap wasn’t cutting it. I wanted to talk to Charlotte, to clear the air, to let her know I forgave her and that we could move on. She ripped my heart out all those years ago and stomped it into ground hamburger, and while I felt like a douche and an idiot combined for not being able to let her go and forget about her, for not being able to move on, at this point I realized something more powerful than worrying about all that.

  Love isn’t rational.

  I’d been so deeply in love with her all those years ago that the torment created by her betrayal was so big. Like a tornado inside a blizzard. A force of nature so destructive and ruinous that when she told me she was pregnant, and I knew—knew!—it couldn’t be mine, her very existence was like learning my own mother had become the bride of Satan.

  Such an unthinkable act that the only way to react was to shut her out. Pretend she didn’t exist. Pretend that her pregnancy was...hers. Some other guy’s, and not my issue. I’d wondered, of course, and when I’d seen her here and there around town (from afar), when friends whispered rumors that she’d aborted or miscarried...I just took it in. Didn’t know what to do with the information.

  Still didn’t.

  I closed off and wall up the part of me that loved her because even recognizing it was there was a source of constant pain that meant I couldn’t feel.

  Couldn’t be.

  Couldn’t live.

  And now…now…well, right now, this very minute, all these thoughts raced through me as I shook my cock in the face of a woman who looked disturbingly like my physics professor in college. “You Can Leave Your Hat On” was the song of choice, and she looked like she wanted to put a rubber hat on me and ride me like a pogo stick.

  That $10 bill she slipped in over my hip flexor muscle didn’t hurt any. I nuzzled up to her and gave her a loud, juicy kiss on the cheek.

  “Liam, honey, you are just as fine now as you were five years ago,” she said.

  “Dr. Trammel?” I made the kind of sound that comes from deep in your abs, the sound of incredulity that only giving a lap dance to the woman who gave you a C can produce.

  “Glad to see you’re healthy and well and putting your fine undergraduate degree to good use.” She winked at me, then frowned. “You did graduate?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The alumni office was awesome in helping me land this great job using my major.”

  She paused, shot me a look of confusion, then brayed with laughter. Soft, manicured hands—not hers—slid up and down my back as the song ended. A new one with a faster beat, one that Sam and I had a routine for, started up.

  “Take care, Dr. T.”

  “You too.” Her eyes, though, were on Sam the Cop as he handcuffed the bride to his ankle and we began to dance to the theme to the television show Cops.

  We were bad boys, all right.

  Thinking about Charlotte and shaking my goods were two wholly incompatible things, so I gave myself over to the sweet mercy of earning my living one bill, one stroke, one wink at a time.

  At least this party didn’t include my mom. And, thankfully, no sex toy party, though the bride kept pulling out her new Sybian and talking about how she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with it. I’d seen one at the Eden island resort when we’d played there and knew exactly what a woman could do with it.

  Give her enough booze and someone would find a way to get her on there.

  But not me.

  Sam glanced at me, conveying more than you’d think possible in a single look. Mostly, he was saying he was done. The stripping took its toll after a few months. Like working at an ice cream store: at first, it’s fun and sweet and you think you’ll never get tired of it.

  Then after a while, the thought of it makes you gag.

  The women, though, were nice and just wanted to have a little fun. Who could blame them? I wondered if Charlotte did sex toy parties for the same reason I stripped: easy money, privacy, and fun.

  There I went again. Thinking about Charlotte.

  I wondered if she was thinking about me.

  Charlotte

  “I just love this pearl necklace!” the hostess’s grandmother exclaimed, sliding a string of blue anal beads over her head, donning them at her throat. “What a lovely jewelry party.” Jolie, the hostess, looked at her grandmother with a grimace but said nothing.

  “But what kind of baseball bat is this?” Jolie’s mother, Anna, asked. She was holding a seventeen-inch black dildo with a suction cup on the end.

  Jolie’s expression turned from sheepishness to horror. A creeping dread filled me, and I pulled her into the kitchen. My regional manager at the sex toy company had warned me this might happen at least once in my career, and it looked like tonight was the night.

  “Your mom and grandma have no idea this is a sex toy party, do they?” I asked with as much compassion as I could muster. In truth, if the people coming to the party didn’t know I’d be flashing Fleshlights and vibrating cock rings and anal beads like they were kitchen supplies and candles, we were in for a shameful, long evening.

  I wouldn’t feel ashamed. But it looked like Jolie was about to melt into the floor and die from embarrassment.

  “They weren’t supposed to be here, but my stupid sister-in-law Lisa told them about my ‘jewelry party’ and now Mom’s here.” We watched in horror as her grandmother rubbed the beads against her teeth and asked her mother whether this was a real pearl necklace.

  “Pearl necklace,” Jolie giggled, then got serious.

  “Jolie, I…it’s a raunchy, sex-positive party. I can’t do my presentation any other way. And your mom thinks a black dildo the size of my calf is a baseball bat.”

  “Grandma looks like she’s about to turn that Fleshlight into an oven mitt,” Jolie sighed.

  “I think you need to have a frank talk with your mom and grandma.”

  She turned bright red, brown eyes shaped like almonds and wild spiral-curled hair the same color framing her conflicted face. “I don’t know what to do.”

  I patted her shoulder sympathetically. Note to self: text regional manager immediately.

  “It’s better to give them some warning than to have them watch the sex wedge pillow demonstration DVD and freak out.”

  “Demonstration videos?” she peeped.

  “Remember how we talked about that? You saw them at your friend’s party.” I kept the huge sigh in as much as possible, but a little bit leaked out.

  Her mom called out across the room, “Jolie? Is this some kind of baby toy party, too? I keep seeing these little teething rings, except they vibrate.” Her mom held up a bright red jelly ring with a bullet vibrator attached. She turned it on and laughed as it buzzed against her finger.

  I gave Jolie a look that I hoped conveyed the gravitas here.

&
nbsp; She sighed. “Mom, that’s not a—well, can you and grandma come in the kitchen?”

  While Jolie explained everything to her mother and grandmother, I finished setting up my display. No vibrator races on the kitchen floor tonight, though we would play Sex Bingo and Guess the Dildo Length. Free watermelon-flavored warming gels and tickler condoms for all in the goodie bags, and maybe I’d make $150 tonight and make the trip out here into the far edge of western Massachusetts worth it.

  “…and so he was one sweet piece of ass,” I overheard a voice in the dining room whisper to someone else. “And it was that guy from the video at the university. The rock star with the snake.”

  My ears burned red. Other parts of me turned a pale shade of green, too.

  “I heard he fucks anything with two sets of lips,” the other voice said. I barely knew Jolie, much less any of the party guests. These were complete strangers talking about Liam. My Liam.

  “Heard? When we were in college that hot boy made the rounds like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “You went to school with him?”

  “Liam McCarthy was a sex legend in the freshman dorm. He tapped so many women they gave him the nickname ‘The Kegger.’”

  My heart began to burn, too.

  “And now he’s a stripper?”

  “Hey, gotta pay student loans no matter what.” A chorus of murmurs in assent made it seem okay.

  “I don’t think he had any. He comes from a pretty solid family. His dad owns a car dealership.”

  The two shared a snippy laugh. “He’s the perfect guy for that. Smooth and slick, ready to convince you he’s the real thing, and then the second you commit he’s on to the next target.”

  Ouch.

  “Yeah, and I’ll bet he knows every nook and cranny of a back seat.”

  Snickers abounded as my stomach flipped.

  “Stripper, huh? Which company?”

  “Don’t know. But wouldn’t it be fun to get a group of us together and see if he’s still tapping anything?”

  More laughter.

  Jolie’s mom came up to me, her face red with a mixture of outrage and embarrassment. “My mother put her mouth on those, those, those…”

  “Anal beads.” I’d learned long ago that stating the facts was the best approach in the face of an overly emotional person at a sexapalooza.