by Craig Birk
Interlude Fourteen
Alex (29)
The dance-floor at Jimmy Love’s in downtown San Diego was packed. Alex was surprised to find himself on it for two reasons. First, he really didn’t like dancing. He only did it if he felt it would significantly increase his chances of hooking up. Second, it was almost midnight on a Friday night and, much to his surprise, he was completely sober.
Freddy Moyer, a college friend, had flown in that night from Phoenix. Freddy’s flight was scheduled to arrive in San Diego at 9:00 p.m. The plan was that Alex would pick him up at the airport. Both would already be dressed and ready to go out. Alex would park his car downtown (he drove a black Cadillac Escalade at that time) and they would take a cab home so they could both drink freely. The plan went off track immediately. Due to thunder storms in Phoenix, Freddy’s flight did not arrive until 10:45 p.m. The pair rushed downtown and made it into Jimmy Love’s by 11:15 p.m., early enough to salvage the night.
Almost immediately after paying fifteen dollars each for cover charge and entering the bar, Freddy spotted a girl he used to date in college. Three minutes later, he took her downstairs to catch up and Alex found himself alone at the bar.
“Fucking perfect,” he mumbled to no one in particular.
Now half an hour before midnight, Alex decided it wasn’t worth having to pay for a cab and the overnight parking fee just to drink alone for two hours until the bar closed. Thus, this looked destined to become his first sober Friday in as long as he could remember. Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a beer, so he ordered an Amstel Light.
The beer arrived and he grabbed it with his right hand while scooping up his change (a ten and five ones) with his left hand. He separated one dollar off of the pile with his left thumb and let it fall to the bar. As he shoved the rest of the money indiscriminately into the left pocket of his Seven for Mankind jeans, he felt someone rub up behind him and try to elbow their way up to the bar to his right. This caused annoyance until he spun around and saw the offending party.
If Amber Jones was a bit aggressive in trying to get to the bar, it was only because she was not used to getting any resistance from males for anything she did. With long light brown hair, big brown eyes and red lips, she could pass for a young version of Cindy Crawford if she wished – minus the signature mole of course.
“Excuse you,” Alex said to her in a half-rude, half-flirtatious manner.
It had the desired effect.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Amber replied and smiled while batting her eyelashes. While barely twenty-one, Amber knew how to spot an opportunity for a free drink.
“Well, just this one time I will forgive you,” Alex said, then added, “and not only do I forgive you, if you apologize for being so clumsy, I’ll let you buy me a drink. What are you having?”
Predictably, she wanted a cosmopolitan. Predictably, she assumed correctly that Alex would actually be the one paying. Alex gave her order to the same bartender who gave him the Amstel Light. Instead of using the money crumpled into his pocket, he set his beer down on the bar and pulled out his wallet. When the beverage was prepared, he exchanged a crisp green hundred dollar bill for one shiny red cosmopolitan. This time he left a two dollar tip out of the ninety-two he got back. He shoved the other ninety dollars into his pocket. He handed Amber her drink, carefully holding the glass by its stem, and took a step back to get a better look at her body. It was nice. She had a slim stomach and even better tits than he first expected. They were nicely displayed in a black half-shirt from Bebe covered by a thin white jacket (also from Bebe). The jacket ended just above a pair of tight, light-blue Guess jeans that curved around her hips perfectly. Alex noted that she dressed well, at least for her age. This meant she came from a family with some money, so he would be better served trying to impress her with charm than wealth. Also, it meant she would respond better to subtle insults than flattery.
Within five minutes, Alex realized he had developed a crush. Despite her looks, Amber was surprisingly smart and interesting. If it turned out she could cook and liked to clean, Alex thought jokingly to himself that he may have to revisit his views on marriage. He had already overruled as frivolous his previous idea that she was “too young for him.” Two minutes later, however, she uttered the two words proving she was not perfect.
“Let’s dance,” she demanded with the same level of confidence Alex projected on his side of the conversation.
“Ah, of course,” Alex thought to himself.
Alex wrapped his hand around the side of her stomach: “Dance? Maybe, but with who?”
Amber laughed: “Me, silly guy.”
Alex: “Well, in that case, okay. But next time you should wear something sexy.”
Amber was confused at his comment but she grabbed his hand and moved closer to him.
Alex had never fully fathomed the point of dancing. Basically you moved your body around in unnatural jerky motions, accomplishing nothing. Not only that, you couldn’t keep score, or win, or have a conversation, or drink as much while you were doing it.
His aversion to dancing began around sophomore year in high school at the winter Sadies dance (Wizard of Oz theme) which Leah Brandt took him to. Leah was a junior, a cheerleader, hot and popular. Alex had hoped to make out during the dance and maybe even ask her to “go out.” However, she ended up dancing with her girlfriends the whole time while Alex, dressed as a scarecrow, lamely shuffled his feet on the side of the gym with a few of his buddies who faced a similar predicament. As high school moved into college, dancing gained a whole new importance, perhaps even more important than sports. Now, people danced at nearly every party. While the ready availability of alcohol made this bearable, it remained far from optimal. Alex’s brain extrapolated this troublesome trend to assume that as life advanced, dancing would become the central focus of being. This turned out to be sort of true, especially in his early twenties at clubs and during his mid-twenties when it felt like there was a wedding nearly every few weeks. Luckily, by his late twenties the trend began to reverse.
In any case, Alex never came to understood people’s desire to dance. Still, he was a highly adaptable creature and learned to make lemons into lemonade. As it turned out, if you could get a girl to dance with you, it became much easier to get her to go to bed with you. Meaningful physical contact is one of the primary barriers to sex, and dancing allowed for significant contact. Therefore, dancing was a useful tool and Alex came to embrace it. He also learned that if you wanted to attract a girl in a club, dancing with other male friends in as obnoxious a way as possible was usually quite successful. His “Monkey Dance,” which consisted solely of bending over to put one fist on the ground while shaking his ass around and making “ooh-ooh-ahh-ahh” monkey noises was particularly successful. On tamer nights, he stuck to some decent robot moves that always got laughs.
Alex did not plan to do the monkey dance or the robot for Amber, but led her by the hand to the center of the dance floor, elbowing his way through the crowd. He always felt if you are going to dance, you should take the girl to the middle of the floor no matter how crowded it was. When they arrived, Naughty Girl by Beyonce was playing. Alex wrapped his arm around Amber’s waist and held the small of her back with an open hand while moving the rest of his body appropriately. After a moment he backed off to see if she would reinitiate contact. Five seconds later she danced her way over to him and pressed her body into his, halfway wrapping her legs around one of his.
He knew he had Amber hooked, but he couldn’t resist toying with her a bit more. He leaned into her right ear and reinitiated conversation.
Alex: “How long did you spend getting ready tonight?”
Amber: “I don’t know. Half an hour maybe. Why?”
Alex: “You have lint between your toes.”
Amber: “What?”
Alex: “Your toes. There is lint stuck between your toes. Or it could be something else, but it looks like lint. You really should keep them cleaner.”
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br /> Amber stopped dancing and looked down at her feet for about five seconds. Not finding any problems, she looked up to see Alex suppressing a smile. She put her arms around his head and jumped into him, kissing him deeply. She tasted very good.
One Britney Spears, one Prince, and one Nine Inch Nails song later, Alex heard the beginnings of one of the few songs he genuinely did like to dance to. Some of the best guitar chords ever combined poured out of the club’s sound system. “Dun-na-na-Na . . . Dun-na-na-Na . . . Dun-na-na-nun-na-na-nun-na-na-nun-na-na . . .”
“Oh, what is this crap?” Amber wanted to know, looking a bit confused.
Alex was shocked. “You don’t know what this is?” he asked loudly enough to be heard over the music. He quickly answered his own question. “It’s Guns N’ Roses. Welcome to the Jungle. This is one of the greatest songs of all time.”
Amber rolled her eyes before responding. “Duh . . . I know that . . . I have parents too, you know.”
It took Alex a moment to realize what she meant and that she was serious. He had enough of a sense of humor to laugh about it, but he suddenly felt too old to be on the dance floor. “Let’s get out of here,” he suggested.
Ninety minutes, a thirty-five dollar cab ride, four Amstel Lights, and two of Alex’s best attempts at making a cosmopolitan later, Alex was lifting Amber’s black Bebe shirt over her head and moving down to suck on her breasts. With Freddy passed out on the living room couch and the bedroom door closed and locked, Alex climbed on top of Amber who was now fully naked. A moment later he rolled off her and ran to the closet to grab a condom. He tore it open while walking back to the bed and began applying it immediately. Speed was of the essence at this point. A lost erection was most likely not an impossible obstacle to overcome, but after six beers he did not care to risk it. He pounced back on top of Amber. The condom covered the head of his cock but did not seem to want to acquire any more real estate. He pushed more forcefully but the effort was counter-productive. Alex had tried to roll it inside out.
“Son of a . . . God, I hate these things,” he muttered more to himself than her. He ripped off the now useless piece of latex and flung it aimlessly across the room with a plan to go back to the closet for another one, his cock already starting to deflate.
Apparently, Amber felt a similar aversion to condoms. “Don’t worry, just put it in me. I want to feel you in me,” she moaned while reaching down and softly stroking Alex’s balls with her fingernails. “Come on, fill me up,” she added for good measure.
Alex was sold. Her words reversed any softening trend the condom mishap created, and he slid into her easily. She was tight, but very wet, and Alex felt pure bliss in a way he could never describe. His dick felt like it was at the center of the universe. Even better, for the first few moments it felt like it was the whole universe and that a second big bang might originate from his trusty little meat-puppet right there in his bedroom. As the intensity subsided, he opened his eyes to look down at Amber’s perfectly proportioned body and tight skin. He wrapped one arm around her neck and reached down with the other one and wedged his hand between the bed and her ass, his open palm feeling her flesh. He decided twenty-one definitely was not too young. He looked at her face. Amber’s eyes were closed, but she reached around him to grab his ass and pull him deeper inside of her. She moaned softly with pleasure, clearly in another place.
Minutes later, they rolled over so Amber was on top. Without him coming out of her, she got into a squatting position and began to bounce up and down on him. The feeling was incredible and Alex felt his balls start to tighten. Not knowing if Amber used any kind of birth control, he told her that he was going to come soon. She sat up and scooted back between his legs.
Years of watching porn had Alex nearly convinced that it was nature’s intended course of events for sex to end with the man ejaculating onto the woman’s open-mouthed face. Still, he found this to be somewhat demeaning. Alex considered himself to be a gentleman and, therefore, preferred to come on a girl’s tits – unless of course he actually disliked the girl. He began focusing on Amber’s chest, but she had other ideas. She popped onto her knees and began sucking on him vigorously. Four seconds later, Alex came into her mouth while she continued sucking him and rubbing his balls. It was one of the most riveting orgasms he could remember in a long time. She swallowed as much as possible and then crawled up his chest and wrapped her arms around him, thankfully showing no interest in kissing. Two minutes of cuddling and a three-minute shower later, Alex closed his eyes and fell asleep a very happy man.
The glow began to fade about two days later. While taking a piss before getting ready for work on Monday, he felt a slightly uncomfortable feeling in his dick. Though it was unusual, he did not think much of it. However, the sensation grew worse over the next few days until Alex knew he couldn’t ignore it.
By Friday, the situation demanded action. Since he did not have a regular doctor, and had in fact not even been to a doctor in more than seven years, on Friday afternoon Alex called the local Save-On pharmacy and asked for a recommendation for one. They gave him the number of a Dr. Katz, and he made an appointment for early Saturday morning.
Dr. Katz’s office was downtown, in the heart the Gaslamp district and ironically only a few blocks from Jimmy Love’s. Alex was surprised to find the doctor meet him in the lobby personally. There was no secretary. Dr. Katz was a bit on the short side, about forty years old, and had his hair shaved close to his head, though it was obvious he wouldn’t have had much hair on top either way. He was charismatic and Alex felt comfortable with him immediately. On the walls were pictures of the doctor with all sorts of celebrities. Alec Baldwin, Yasmine Bleeth, Joe Montana, Roberto Alomar, Pamela Anderson and Junior Seau were among the few Alex recognized immediately.
They walked into a back office where the doctor directed him to sit on a table covered in butcher paper. He got right to the point.
“So who’d you fuck?” he asked.
Alex couldn’t help but smile despite the fact that he found the whole situation anything but comedic.
Alex: “No one important. Especially now.”
Dr. Katz: “So can you describe the symptoms?”
Alex: “Basically it just feels uncomfortable every time I piss. Sort of like there is a little more that needs to come out, but it won’t.”
Dr. Katz: “I see. So is it actually painful or just annoying?”
Alex: “More annoying I guess. It doesn’t really hurt, but it doesn’t feel right either.”
Dr. Katz: “Any discharge?”
Alex: “Nope.”
Dr. Katz: “I take it you were not real safe with this girl. Do you have any reason to believe she had any special risk factors?”
Alex: “No, I was stupid. I don’t know, I mean she didn’t seem like the type to sleep around, but then again, she seemed to know what she was doing.”
Dr. Katz: “When was it?”
Alex: “A week ago.”
Dr. Katz: “Believe it or not, Sport, a girl who is quick to jump into bed with you may very well do the same with other people. Anyway, let’s take a look, but my guess is you may want to withhold judgment for a bit.”
The doctor put on a pair of gloves as Alex pulled down his shorts and boxers, promising himself he would be smarter in the future, something along the “never again” routine which had taken place in his mind many times before. Dr. Katz lifted up Alex’s penis, took a five-second look, dropped it and then asked Alex to turn around and lean over the table. As he did so, he turned around and applied a small amount of lubrication to the index finger of his right hand.
Alex was immediately confused and concerned. It seemed his celebrity doctor may have had a second agenda. “Whoa Doc, the problem is definitely on this side,” he said firmly while pointing emphatically at his crotch. Dr. Katz agreed but told him that most likely what he had was not an STD but a simple infection in the prostate. The only way to tell for sure was to check it ou
t. Alex had never heard of this and was very skeptical, but he was not in a position to argue. He turned around, bent over the table, closed his eyes and tried to think about work. Instead, all he could think was that he was not going to sleep with random chicks anymore.
In conversation with friends, Alex had learned that a lot of guys enjoyed having a girl stick a finger up their ass, but he had never understood this and had rejected it the few times someone had tried. As such, he really had no idea what to expect and feared the worst, but it turned out the docs finger entered him quite easily and didn’t cause any significant discomfort. He was trying to relax when he felt a sudden and massively sharp pain in the head of his penis. For about three seconds it felt like a medium-sized iguana was trying to claw its way out his urethra. It came as such a surprise that he actually screamed and looked down to see if his dick was still in one piece. Just as quickly, the doctor withdrew his finger and the pain completely subsided.
He quickly turned around and fought back an instinct to take a swing at the doc, instead grabbing his penis with both hands and bending over slightly. Dr. Katz chose this moment to deliver the first good news of the day. “My guess is you don’t have any kind of STD, but just a normal infection. Still, just to be sure, we will take a quick sample and have it sent to the lab.”
This made Alex feel better, but only for a second. Before he knew what was going on, the doc had a q-tip in one hand and was grabbing Alex’s dick with the other. “Just need to get this in there for a second,” he said, still calm as ever. For the second time in less than five minutes Alex had part of his body penetrated for the first time. This go-around was no less unpleasant. It seemed the iguana wanted back in and was being quite violent about it. Alex groaned though clenched teeth. The q-tip came out just as quickly as the doc’s finger, but this time the pain took longer to subside.
Alex was very happy to pull his pants up, though he was still partially immobilized from the pain. After regaining his composure, he asked the doctor what the next step was. Dr. Katz reiterated that he felt most likely this was a naturally occurring infection but that he could call in for the results of the test in three days. Until then, he advised not to hold anything against the girl in question. He also wrote a prescription for an antibiotic and told Alex to make sure to finish all of the pills even if the symptoms went away first.
Alex was gathering his things to leave, but the doc had a few other words of advice. “In addition to taking the antibiotics, it would be a good idea to try and drink a fair amount of cranberry juice and also to make sure you have an orgasm at least every two days to keep things flowing in there. Think you can handle that, Sport?” he asked with a wink that Alex found partially charismatic and partially creepy.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can figure that one out,” Alex replied.
Dr. Katz told Alex he didn’t take insurance for weekend visits and this was fine because Alex didn’t know how to use his insurance anyway. Alex gave the doctor six hundred dollar bills and was informed that this would cover the lab fees as well.
“Great, take it easy then,” Dr. Katz said and started heading out the door.
Just as they were about to exit the office together, a thought entered Alex’s mind. “Hey Doc,” he started, “if I did have some type of STD instead of what you think it is, would you have prescribed the same drug?”
Dr. Katz thought for a second and replied that, yes, it would have been the same remedy.
Alex was confused. “If that is the case, couldn’t we have skipped the whole jelly finger and q-tip routine and just prescribed the pills?” he asked.
Dr. Katz pondered the question for a minute, tilting his head slightly to the right and narrowing his eyes. “Yeah, I guess we could have,” he replied. After a short pause he added one more word – “Interesting.” Then he gave Alex a quick military salute before spinning around and walking briskly away, leaving Alex standing alone in the morning sun.
