On those occasions where we run together we might start out at a casual gate, but by the end we're sprinting so hard that it takes about ten minutes before we can speak without sounding like we're going to hack up a lung. Friends have been known to invite us both to dinner and ask us each to pick up a bottle of wine, and then casually mention that the other is picking one up as well; they know we'll both bring something both amazing and overly expensive, each vying to be told ours was the best. I once lost my shirt (both figuratively and literally) to Sherry in a ridiculous poker hand because I refused to fold first.
We’ve had some very loud discussions about the rules of darts in bars.
We first met two years ago, when her roommate Cheryl invited me to a party at their apartment. I'd gone because I had a bit of a crush on Cheryl and had been hoping to get her alone for five minutes, charm her with my dazzling array of unfunny jokes, and get her to say yes to dinner after one too many glasses on wine. So I brought a lot of wine with me, and presented the bottles to Cheryl in the kitchen. At her request I began to open a few for the guests.
"What the fuck is that?"
I turned and saw a half dozen or so people at the kitchen table, playing poker. I was a little taken back with the woman who had asked the question. She was right about Cheryl's age, late twenties, and her thick auburn hair seemed to exist for no other reason than to accentuate her emerald green eyes and her perfectly tanned and unblemished skin - and quite a lot of skin there was. It was the middle of both January a cocktail party, and yet she was wearing khaki shorts and a wife-beater that was clearly a size or two too small. Her "outfit" left no question as to what that body would like naked, and what that body would look like naked was perfect. I was instantly smitten.
"I said what the fuck is that?" she motioned with her hand to the bottles I'd placed on the counter.
"Um... Wine?" I tried, unsure of her meaning.
"Yeah, well let me know when you're ready to start drinking like a man," she drawled, lifting a half-full bottle of Basil Hayden. She did it with a grin, and looking back it was the grin that got me: playful, sexy, full of illicit promises - that grin was the downfall of angels. I left the wine and my hopes for Cheryl behind, pulled up a chair and a shot glass, and began to drink in the Basil Hayden and her citrus-musky scent. It was only 6:30 at night, and she smelled like the promise of sex. I got hard just talking to her. Half an hour later we were in the stairwell, her shorts at her ankles and her hands braced against the wall. My hands clutched at her hips as I pushed deep inside of her. Her attempts to be somewhat quiet made her moans sound like growls, exciting me and making me thrust that much harder. When she came it felt like a wave hitting me. I pulled her back to my chest, and found I too was exploding. I bit her shoulder to keep from yelling out, and I can still taste the saltiness of her skin at that moment. We stood there for a minute or two, her leaning back against my chest and me still hard and inside of her. When she finally spoke it was with a breathless, almost far away voice.
"Where do you live?" she whimpered. I told her. "Wait here. I'm grabbing my purse, and then we're going to your place and we're going to do this again a few more times. Don't leave."
Like I was really going anywhere without her.
As we began to see each other over the next few months, three things became clear: We were better as friends than as a couple, the sex was athletic and inspiring, and - as I said before - whenever we competed, we competed to the death.
And you need to know that to know this:
_______________________
"Have you ever been a selfish lover?"
We were sitting at a downtown bar drinking Manhattans. It was a Tuesday evening and each of us had worked late, agreeing to meet for a drink in that bar nether-time that occurs between Happy Hour and the after-dinner crowd. She was sipping her drink and looking out into space; the fingernails of her other hand were under the table, leisurely tracing the outline of my cock.
"Sure," I answered. "I think everyone's a selfish lover to some degree."
"No," she shook her head, but her eyes were still somewhere far away. "I mean, totally 100% selfish. Have you ever been that?"
"I've cum before my partner, yes."
She finally turned and looked me in the eyes, all business. Her hand came back to the top of the table, I noticed sadly.
"Even then you're not really selfish, you're still working to pleasure the other person. What would it be like to just sit and be pleasured with no concern at all for the other person? Would it be amazing, or would it be dull?"
I smiled. "I think what you're describing is a blow job. And yes, I've had those too."
"Not the way I'm thinking, you haven't. Or at least I don't think you have. Admit it, when you get a blow job, part of you is thinking about what you can do once its over to repay the blow jobber, right?"
" "Blow jobber?' "
"You know what I mean."
I thought about it. She was right. Sex is always both the yin and the yang, even in the privacy of our own heads.
"I think we should do an experiment, where we try being a selfish lover just to see what it's like." She was talking faster now, her mind clearly on a track it was not going to leave anytime soon. "You wanna do that?"
I shrugged. "Sure, but who gets to be the selfish one?"
"Both of us. One will be the selfish one tonight, the other will get to be selfish next time."
I shook my head. "No, because then it's not really that selfish if we both get to do it. It's just a trade over time."
She thought about this for a minute before concluding, "You're right. Only one of us can ever get the selfish experience, and then they'll have to tell the other what it's like." She slapped her palm against the table, her mind made up. "That's what we're doing. Oral sex, one gives, the other cums, and we say goodnight."
"I thought we agreed neither of us had time to play tonight?"
"We won't need time," she grinned. "Pants down, hard hat on, go to work for a bit, and we're done."
I cocked my head. "So let me get this straight. You want us to finish our drinks just early enough so that one of us can sit slug-like while the other gets us off. You're thinking of all the things we might do in the next half hour, the best option is for one of us to sit and be the Jabba the Hutt of sex."
"Please?" And then she flashed that grin, and it was over. It didn't really sound like great sex, but it did sound better than no sex and so I nodded.
The question, of course, was who got the plum job and who was sent to work in the mines. We play-argued for a bit, and the she yelped a little too loudly, “Let’s bet!” A few of the people sitting near us glanced over. "Loser has to pleasure the other orally and get nothing in return - in fact, they have to agree to go without sex at all for a week after." Many, many more people turned and looked.
Of course, we never figured out a bet that we were willing to make. Like I say, we're just too damn competitive. Sex is sex, but neither of us wanted to lose. Eventually we decided to table it for another time. As we finished our drinks her hand disappeared again under the table. There were more than fingernails this time, and the movement was more purposeful. Nearing the inevitable, I whispered, "Careful, or I'll really cum."
She looked me in the eye and said, "Good. I want to watch you try to keep a straight face when you cum." And then came the grin, and of course the grin finished me. As I tried to put my overcoat on in a way that would hide my bulge and the newly wet spot on the front of my slacks I said, "Wait - wasn't that selfish?"
She shook her head as she pulled her own coat on.