This will be a sex story that, I’m hoping, due to the way circumstances played out during the encounter, does not come off as disrespectful to women. I’ve been hesitant to write this because of the book “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell,” which is actually disrespectful to women. My worst fear confirmed would be an awaiting high-five from some dickhead who’s read this and aligned the story with his own shit-view of women and their place in the world.

Maneuvering through 15 years of restaurant tour-of-duties disciplined me in the ways of being a man in the basest definition of the word.  I learned the combination of patience and fast-paced efficiency while orders came shitting out of the printer. There’s a queer rite-of-passage once a man begins to stretch incidence of drowning alcohol into multiple days/nights where he builds a tolerance and is somehow held in high regard by his peers. Possibly tainted with stupidity, when under duress, or in the face of, at the outset, seemingly near-impossible tasks, an internal burn comes on and I will myself through what looks absurdly unmanageable. And besides the obvious handy skillset acquired: cooking, I also attained a faculty for gettin’ my fuck on. Though this story is about the latter, the formers helped guide me to the preposterous destination this story ends at.

My first full-fledged, decent paying kitchen job forced me to overcome my shy demeanor and, because the meek, without developing into a bit of an alpha, will not inherit a bit of rank or worth and transform into a vocal leader; I became an outspoken conductor of the kitchen I work at. Prior to working and becoming comfortable in a kitchen, I was a feeble zero; never showing up on any girl’s visual or conceived radar. The towers hadn’t fell yet, and at 22, I’d only had one girlfriend. Virgins at 18, respectively, we decided to ‘try’ sex. Trying amounted to her tiny frame, and even tinier vagina becoming overwhelmed with the biological process, unable to deal with the pain caused by my dumb young male hormones, and overly eager, undersexed boner — we had what I guess you can call sorta-sex about five times in the remaining year-and-a-half we were together. Several years later, we’d wind up having actual sex after she’d courted approximately 241 lovers, and I’d gotten a miserable, partial hand job from a girl I met at a party, and made out intensely with for two hours only to later find out she had sucked the dicks of two guys an hour or so before our lips met.

So, unsure about my place with them as a 22-year old, I didn’t actively flirt, or pursue women. But, surrounded by young, bubbly, libido-rattling spring-in-their step waitresses, I couldn’t help gawking like an pervy oaf at all of them.  Turns out, a few of them were ogling me, resulting in one waitress boldly informing me she had the hots for me. We started hanging out after work, on off days, began making out at every chance without much concern for place or surrounding. Frustratingly for her, I hadn’t, after much mutual want, and even with the green light given, no sex had taken place. Until, parked in the lot of a 24-hour diner, she said, “Fuck this,” grabbed at my loins, and stradle-raped me; navigating my erection the way a seasoned fighter pilot might handle the yoke of their craft during air-to-air combat. Just so happens, my ghost-like participation in the event was well-received. After that night, we had sex all the time. I learned control, and due to fantasizing about and adoring women from afar for a decade plus resulted in my being and becoming a very romantic dude. Despite the outpouring of affection from the jump, the relationship unfortunately suffered setbacks of infidelity on her part. Thus, the disintegration; but, not before she’d blabbed to her friends about what I was like in the bedroom. I should disclaim that I am in no way, shape, or form a giant-ego-ed fuck monster. But, again, because of, up to that point, a life devoid of sex, I savored actual intercourse like a railyard hobo might enjoy brand-name chilli, or fucking.

After the break-up, to help mend the crush of feeling defeat, I began to heavily self-medicate. Taken to heading to nearby bars to drink every night after work, I eased my way into familiarity with the other waitresses I worked with. The bars closing up for the night didn’t mean the night’s end. Passed out on a co-workers couch hours after the bar closed, I was woken by the weight of a body laying across me, a forceful hand on my crotch, and hot breath hovering, then lips closing in on my own. Adjusting to what was taking place, I first scrambled to identify the person on top of me. It was Sara — a cute, newer server. Ratcheting myself to an upright position, I asked her how drunk she was. She wasn’t so drunk to be blindly throwing herself on me. So we started talking a bit, then making out. At one point, while tracing her tongue around my ear, she whispered, “I get so wet watching you at work.”

Weird.

I guess.

Maybe that’s the coolest fucking thing ever uttered with a throat-y sense of horny urgency into a man’s ear by a woman(?), and I’m just a goddamn wimp for not acknowledging that with some sort of machismo carried by championship arm wrestlers or crooked cops. I’m a fucking weenie with women initially, and then a switch is flipped and I turn into a young-ish James Spader: domineering and in control. Instead of having sex that night, we just talked and kissed. The ground we communicated on was sour — we had very little in common. Instead, to break the lack of verbal compatibility, we locked lips. Our tepid camaraderie carried over to the next day at work, and the week to follow. Emotionally, on my part, and I believe hers, there was no respite between our initial encounter and those to follow. We just became animal-like at the first moment we squared off in the hallway at a co-workers house party. Even though the volume on a human beings inclination to murder simply based on primitive cognition and surroundings has been turned WAY the fuck down — there is still an internal loaded response our synapses pick up on. Rooted in the same cortex that shelves the instinct to kill in order to survive are the alarms that register attraction; flooding our bodies with fuzzy little warm surges suggesting a person in our sight-line puzzle-pieces together with us ideally. Swirling in her helix was a lusty impulse for procreation activated by the actions of my fundamental cooking ability. Fast-forwarded 20,000 years, preying on animals to kill in the name of avoiding starvation becomes pawing at, then shaping raw meat into a patty in the kitchen of low-level corporate restaurant. Exuding this unseen neanderthal aura, an appeal for me appreciated. It’s also possible, while working, watching her maneuver through server/customer traffic and deftly handling a 14-top, hefting the brimming trays of plated food onto her shoulder released in me a gravitation towards her that, many, many layers peeled back, revealed her maternally capable of the bearing and care of my offspring. It’s also possible that is complete horseshit and I am too high on coffee. 

So, when communicating verbally, Sara and I were Nick Cates and Reggie Hammond in Act I of 48 Hrs. Despite that, we still found enough fertile ground to fuck on. Getting too descriptive about the moment-to-moment details of bumping uglies would certainly subtract from, rather than capture, what her and I experienced. The sex was beyond anything I had before. She could, and did, say the same. You’d think we’d begin a near daily routine of getting together for sexual congress, but it was over two months before we met up again. And then another couple of months spaced apart. Then a year; then, she had boyfriend; a relationship lasting two years.

Two years that wreaked havoc on my mental stability. Dealt some personal blows I couldn’t seem to overcome without grave and mammoth indulgence of drugs and alcohol, I couldn’t help but get sober. Around month six of being dry, I received a simple “Hey” text from Sara. The unfortunate part, for me, of getting healthy was losing viable social links to sex. Remaining indoors on Saturday nights stripped me of becoming drunk and chummy with a waitress and stumbling into sex. So, at this point, I was a growing rubber band ball of sexual frustration. Sara broke up with her boyfriend the week prior and, after a couple texts, we agreed to get a hotel room. As a treat to myself, and because I’m a goddamn romantic swashbuckler, I laid plastic on a room with a jacuzzi. Getting to the part where I actually saw use of this dumb, horny purchase would take some disgustingly clumsy and embarrassing finesse. The preordained spot to meet up at was the mall parking lot across from the hotel. I arrived early just to assess the surroundings and talk myself down from the ledge because of slightly fried nerves due to this being the first time having sex sober since the last season of Seinfeld. At the agreed upon time, a sputtering Kia Sephia wheeled into the parking spot next to me. Her car’s backseat was filthy. Like she housed an actual pig there. I remained inside my vehicle as her door opened. The lingerie she opted for consisted of Mountain Dew pajama pants, slippers, and a St. Jude’s House t-shirt. Also, she had, in the years since seeing each other, gained some weight. Now, I adore larger women, but this was a slovenly amount of large, setting off my own instinctual FLEE! alarms topped by her asylum patient wardrobe. I still decided to follow through. Nervously exchanged “hellos” precipitated my decision to move in for a kiss. That felt good. Good enough to advance to the room. Sliding my card into the door to open it, she entered flicking the light switch, flooding the dark room with light. Bringing up the rear, bravery not one of my strong attributes, I quickly snapped the light switch down. This just needed to happen without any great fanfare. We went in for more making out. Moving the way of its natural pace, kissing led to groping, disrobing, bare-bodied groping, stimulation, penetration. Not being the shape of the person I remembered, the actual sex was rough-going. Around five minutes in, I moved off the bed and stood up, readying myself as she positioned herself on all fours. Placing myself inside and maintaining the natural motion a person has when having sex created a billowing effect of air between our two bodies caused by flesh hitting flesh.  Within this pocket of air, a spicy aroma reminding me of entering a circus sideshow tent, wafted to my nostrils. As if my erection were a vigilante superhero needing to escape through diversion, our hero being encircled by a villainous poo cloud, throws a metaphorical smoke pellet to the ground. Instantaneously vanishing into the flaccid back-alleys of Gotham.

Shaken, I backed away. Shamefully, I think she knew. She knew she should have showered, or paid a little more attention to the particulars I would be paying mind to. I stammered, ” I-I-I-can’t… do it,” while, with no hesitation on her part, she scrambled, clawing the ground in hopes of snagging her couch potato apparel. It wasn’t so much of a “good-bye” as a hurried “hurrrnphhhfffft” in brushing past me, and out the door.

Here I was, naked, confused, and alone inside a hotel room with a jacuzzi. Adding to that sudden list of things I was feeling: I was also hungry. Looking at the jacuzzi, thinking back to the last time I was inside of one: NEVER; I made a judgement call to make the best of a bad situation. An (unhealthy, but still better than relapse) device I employ to keep sober in times of stress-induced mental duress comes in the form of eating insane amounts of shit food. This same method is used in a manner of celebration for personal victories (pulling myself up from rock bottom to land a decent job with great health insurance). Here, I found myself at an intersecting point of the two practices of escape. On the one hand, I felt horrible having essentially made a woman, in one of her most vulnerable states, unintentionally feel worthless. On the other, I avoided literally getting shit on. It was a limp conquest. To put the pieces back together, I wrenched the jacuzzi’s water knobs into the ON position, tossed my clothes back on, sprinted out of the room, jumped in my car and launched into the drive-thru of the Taco Bell located across the street. Returning to the room with the fast food equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah, I checked the water temperature, set the togo bag on the fiberglass edge of the hot tub,lost my clothes, grabbed the television remote, hit power, and slid into the tub.

My back against one of the surging jets, facing the the TV, I greedily gullet-ed a Chalupa like a fevered and determined participant in The World’s Greatest Blowjob contest. It was beautiful penance. Without care of focus, or normal movie critic snobbery, in a near catatonic state, I watched “Rounders” on HBO and peeled back wrapper after wrapper of generic, Corporate Americanized Spanish cuisine as John Malcovich set United States-Russian relations back to the height of Cold War paranoia with his portrayal of the back room proprietor of an illegal poker operation.

In the placated wake of this incident, water splashed and gurgled around me as many bits of shredded lettuce floated, cascading around me like leafy ships of a battle-lost armada. 

Redemption.