As Seen On Tv

I hope he’s not thinking of touching me before he cleans his hands. “I want to wash up,” I say.

He follows me into the bathroom. “Yes, my little sex-pot.”

I pick up the half-dissolved bar of deodorant soap he uses for his hands, body, face and hair, which is wedged to the side of the bathtub. “We’re taking a trip to the pharmacy tomorrow to buy some supplies.” Like a non-corrosive facial soap. And shampoo and conditioner. I used to bring my own whenever I came to visit, but moving here entitles me to invest. As Steve lifts my hair and kisses the back of my neck, I notice that the soap scum around the sink has fermented into miniature statuettes. “We’re also going to invest in some sponges,” I add. “Do you have Comet?”

He bites my shoulder. “Let’s go into the bedroom and I’ll show you my comet.”

Tingles spread from my neck, to my stomach, down my legs. Mmm. “Bedtime already? And it’s not even eight o’clock.”

I follow him into the bedroom and onto the bed. His faded gray sheets, which I assume were once black, are crumpled in a ball with a long tail draping the floor. You’d think he’d make his bed for me, wouldn’t you? How long could it possibly take to straighten the sheets and throw on the comforter? Half a minute? I’m not talking hospital corners here. I don’t like immaculate, but I like tidy. He moves what I’m assuming are yesterday’s jeans, straddles my thighs, then pulls off his sweatshirt and T-shirt. I love touching his chest. The hairs feel soft and ticklish like blades of grass.

I push him down on the bed and undo his pants. I trace my way down his body with baby kisses. At his waist I add a little tongue for effect.

“Mmm,” he groans.

The woman across the street is loading her dishwasher. “I’m just closing the blinds,” I say. “Do you want to listen to music?” I press Play on the CD player. James Brown “I Got You” comes on.

“Let’s sixty-nine,” he says, pushing his pants off and onto the floor.

The thing is, I hate sixty-nine-ing. It’s not something I’d ever admit to Steve. What guy wants to hear that the girl who is about to move in with him hates a sexual position? That’s like a man telling a woman he never wants to get married. It’s not the oral sex part I don’t like. It’s the two-in-one action that bothers me. First, I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing. I’ve always prided myself on giving good head and I absolutely cannot concentrate on two things at once. Television and conversation, driving and cell phones, salad and pasta. I like my salad first, my pasta second. Why have them both on the plate at the same time? You end up with tomato sauce on your lettuce and noodles in your Thousand Island. It’s a mess. So I end up focusing on what he’s doing until he’s limp in my mouth or I concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing, unable to compute what’s going on down there. It’s a waste, I tell you. A complete waste.

“I’m in the mood to do you,” I say. Is it possible for a woman to be in the mood for a blow job? Except, of course, for porn stars who crave them anytime, anywhere, pool, library or den.

Steve has the Hot ’n Sexy Channel, and I’ve become a porn connoisseur. A porn critic, actually. For instance, the shrieking woman is something else I find absurd. Why does the woman sound like her partner is yanking out her nails, while the man can’t even get out a simple grunt? I guess the lone male viewer prefers his action stars silent. This way he can pretend that the Brazilian-waxed blonde’s “Oh God!” and “Oh baby!” or my personal porn favorite, “Fuck me, big cock man, fuck me!” refers to him.

Since no guy in the history of mankind has ever turned down a blow job, Steve lies back.

“Your turn,” he says a song later, just in time, too, because my lips are starting to numb. He turns me over on my back and kisses his way down my body. Mmm.

Two songs later I’m moaning and wet and he looks at me. “Tell me what you want,” he says.

Steve always wants me to tell him what I want. I want him to stop asking.

“Sex?” I ask.

He thrusts himself inside me, sending waves of heat through my body. I squeeze his shoulders.

He pulls out of me and tries to make me orgasm with his hand. The song changes. The song changes again. His fingers must have lost feeling by now. “Does it feel good?” he asks.

“Yes, almost there,” I say. Why aren’t I orgasming? I hate when I can’t orgasm. I’m not sure what the problem is. He’s doing all the right moves. I’m certainly aroused—there’s a wet patch under me to prove it. But it’s as if I’m in a hurry and waiting for the subway—obviously when you have somewhere important to go, it’s not going to come. There’s some sort of jam at the last station, sorry, take the bus.

The look of concentration on Steve’s face is intense. Is this how he looked when he wrote his college exams? Maybe if I distract myself with thoughts of him studying, I can trick myself into forgetting that I want to orgasm and then I’ll orgasm. As soon as you climb upstairs to hail a cab, the subway speeds underground into your station.

Steve’s penis droops to the left.

“I’m coming!” I lie. I’ll come tomorrow.

The first time a guy put his hand down my pants, I came the instant his finger touched my clitoris. Since I thought this was abnormal, as no one had ever mentioned it in Seventeen, I didn’t shriek out one “Oh God” or “Oh baby” or even one “Fuck me, big cock man, fuck me!” and he kept at it until I was sore, and the whole time I was worried that the girl on the camp bunk bed above me could feel the frame shaking.

Unfortunately that party trick only worked once, my being able to come with just one touch. Now I have about a forty-percent success rate, which isn’t a bad rate. As long as it’s not your oncologist who’s doing the quoting.

“I love you,” he says and slides back inside me.

“How much do you love me?” I ask him later, tracing the letters I L-O-V-E Y-O-U on his back. He doesn’t know what I’m spelling, because I’m using the cryptic Palm Pilot alphabet, Graffiti. I even draw the underscore it makes you use to create a space between words. Sometimes I give the letters extra swirls at the end to confuse him in case he’s catching on. Not that he’s ever used a Palm Pilot. L-O-V-E M-E, I write next.

“Who said I love you?” he asks.

“Fuck you.”

“Again? Can’t we eat first?” He pushes his groin into my thigh.

“You’re not going to change your mind, right?”

“I can change my mind?”

I slap him on the back. “Once I move here, it’s over. You’re going to have to love me forever.”

He bites my earlobe. “Forever?”

“I’m serious, Steve.”

“You’re always serious.”

“It’s a serious thing. I’m about to quit my job and move to a strange city to be with you.”

“You think NewYork is strange?” He pulls himself up. Our skins make a slurping sound as we separate. “Let me tell you about strange. Did I tell you that someone asked me for a French fry yesterday? I was in Washington Square Park minding my own business, eating some fries, reading my book—” he points to The Tommyknockers, the Stephen King novel lying on his floor “—when some guy comes up to me and asks if he can have one.”

“We were being serious here, Steve.”

“He was being serious.”

I picture him waltzing me down a hospital corridor an hour after I have a miscarriage, offering fries to the orderlies. At least he’d make me laugh. “So what did you do?”

“I gave him a fry. And some ketchup.” He moves to the edge of the bed and tugs his boxers back on. “I’m going to make my chicken stir-fry, okay?”

I love his chicken stir-fry. He tosses random ingredients in the wok and it somehow ends up tasting gourmet. “What should I do?”

“You come tell me about your day.” He takes my clothes from my hands. “But you have to stay naked.”

“All weekend?”

“Buck naked.”

“Should I go to my interviews naked?”

“Definitely. Isn’t it a man who’s interviewing you?”

“One man, one woman. At nine and four. I’m not sure if they’d get the joke.”