Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy Read Online Free PDF Page B

them. It seemed like a perfectly valid invitation to us, even if they were drunken strangers. They offered to buy us a beer, and we gave them our fake names, ones we’d agreed upon earlier. By combining our respective middle names with our moms’ maiden names, Cheryl became Lynn Collingwood and I was now Ms. Jasmin van Brunswick. My fake name sounded even faker than my real name . We giggled and told them that we worked as chemistry and biology lab technicians. It was sort of true; Cheryl and I had after-school jobs setting up the labs for experiments and exams. We were paid $3.25 an hour, which was pretty much why we were staying at the Green Mountain Kennel. They claimed to be air force pilots. It was consistent with how they looked; they were both physically fit, with bulging biceps and tight, short haircuts. Cheryl—I mean Lynn—whispered to me, “You know what that means—they’re clean!” Top Gun! That Cheryl-Lynn was always thinking! They didn’t seem to have any interest in investigating whether or not we fit our story. Lynn and Jasmin, a couple of eighteen-year-old lab technicians, was good enough for them.
    The brunette was cuter, but the strawberry blond, although goofier, kept the conversation rolling. After two rounds of drinks, they shifted gears and invited us back to their hotel for “last call.” We didn’t even know what that meant. Their hotel, it turned out, was conveniently located across the street from ours, although it ranked about forty stars higher. The room was nice, but it was clear that they’d been up to some serious partying in it. The room was littered with beer cans,take-out food containers, and towels. I shoved aside a small mountain of crumpled white towels to sit down while the goofy one mixed up something called a Purple Jesus, a classy drink made from grape juice and pure grain alcohol. No cocktail should ever be purple.
    Before I could finish mine—and I was trying—Cheryl was already making out with Maverick on the balcony. Goose grabbed my arm and pulled me over to the other side of the room. I caught Cheryl’s half-opened eye and mouthed, “Expand your horizons?” She nodded slowly and gave me the thumbs-up. Goose tugged at my bra strap and dragged me into the bathroom.
    After some sloppy kissing, the ritual of clothing removal began. He ripped off his T-shirt as if to say, “Here’s what we’re doing—look, I’ll go first!” I hated taking off my shirt, only because it meant explaining the whole scar on the stomach thing. I hadn’t yet prepared the thirty-second elevator pitch version of it, so instead I went back to kissing him. He stopped me a couple of minutes later and asked, “Can I take off your shirt?” (Canadians—we’re so polite!) For the first time that night, I felt waves of panic. I knew where we were headed. I was about to lose my virginity. I replied “yes,” but I didn’t recognize the voice that said it. He started working fast, furiously kissing me on the neck and tugging on zippers. It took a while, as there were a lot of them, plus snaps and grommets—it was the fashion of the time. Next I was hoisted onto the bathroom counter, in between the sink and the travel shampoos. There was no mention of the scar; it was like he didn’t see it. Cool. He was about to remove my underwear (I’d graduated from Jockey-for-Her to Elita) when I stopped the action and did theone thing that still makes me proud: I asked him to put on a condom. He, of course, didn’t have one handy. Being the sophisticated, mature woman I was pretending to be, I fished the one I’d gotten from sex education class out of my purse, and much to his chagrin, handed it to him. That was it. We were officially about to “do it.”
    To say it was disappointing is an understatement. Losing my virginity was about as exciting as going around. Even though I was losing it to an older guy in an unconventional setting, the act itself fit my older sister’s prediction: two