Milkrun (21 page)

Have I ever given you permission to go to sleep before I come home? I needed to talk to you!! I saw Tim again last night and he still hasn't made the big move. It's been a month! Is there something wrong with him, or am I fat and ugly? Be honest.

P.S.

The kids at his school have gone farther than we have. What's wrong with this picture?

 

2:00 p.m.

From: “Sam Emerson”

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Help!

 

I think he's gay.

 

2:06 p.m.

From: “Jacquelyn Norris”

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re:Re: Help!

 

Why would he keep asking me out if he doesn't like women?

 

2:10 p.m.

From: “Sam Emerson”

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re:Re:Re: Help!

 

Gay.

 

2:18 p.m.

From: “Jacquelyn Norris”

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re:Re:Re:Re: Help!

 

He doesn't seem gay. It would be far too wasteful for womankind if he was gay. And he has all these causes. And he wears great clothes. Manlyclothes. Do you think he's just taking his time? Maybe he doesn't want to rush things.

 

2:20 p.m.

From: “Sam Emerson”

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re:Re:Re:Re:Re: Help!

 

Nope. Gay.

Week 5, Wednesday

1:30 p.m.

From: “Jacquelyn Norris”

To: [email protected]

Subject: I give up.

 

It's been five weeks and he still hasn't tried to sleep with me. I'm starting to think he's a virgin. A twenty-six-year-old male virgin. And here I thought he was a real hands-on kind of guy!

I know some (a few) female virgins, but male virgins? Do you think he's all moral and waiting for marriage, or just hasn't found anyone to do it with? I've heard about this “abstinence” trend.

A lot of the heroines in Cupid books are virgins. I don't think any of the heroes are, though. Wouldn't that be something a guy would mention? Virgin men should wear a painted sign around their necks. A big, scarlet V. It should be a law.

Does this mean we're never going to do it?

Thursday

11:10 p.m.

From: “Wendy Berger”

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: I give up

 

Maybe abstinence will make him propose faster. Have you met his parents yet?

Friday

9:22 a.m.

From: “Jacquelyn Norris”

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re:Re: I give up

 

No, I keep telling him that it makes more sense for him to come to my place than for me to go to his. Besides, we've only been dating for five weeks! We're not really at the meet-the-parents stage yet.

 

11:03 p.m.

From: “Wendy Berger”

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re:Re:Re: I give up

 

Let me get this straight. You haven't known him long enough to meet the people he lives with, yet you've known him long enough to share the most intimate experience two people can share—exchanging bodily fluids…and I don't mean kissing.

Week 6, Monday

11:00 a.m.

From: “Jacquelyn Norris”

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re:Re:Re:Re: I give up

 

So what are you suggesting, that I shouldn't have sex, or that I should meet his parents?

Helen just plopped a huge manuscript on my desk. I don't even know why she's giving this to me. Shauna's the one who usually circulates this stuff. This one doesn't have any of the proper forms—getting sloppy, are we, Helen? I'm not even finished with The Virgin Sighed with Pleasure, but she wants me to get started on this right away. It's called The Millionaire Takes a Bride. Now that's original.

Not that I'd mind meeting a millionaire. Or being a bride. But why aren't these books ever about normal, everyday guys? Like social workers?

 

11:10 a.m.

From: “Wendy Berger”

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re:Re:Re:Re:Re: I give up

 

On second thought, forget the parents. Go for the gusto. Your challenge will be an inspiration to all womankind! Go forth and conquer!

Friday

1:05 p.m.

From: “Jacquelyn Norris”

To: [email protected]; [email protected]; Nat.Moore@speedynet

Subject: HELP!!!

 

Calling all girls! It's been six weeks! It's going to be this weekend or never! Any suggestions?

 

2:00 p.m.

From: “Natalie Moore”

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: HELP!!!

 

Six weeks! Six weeks and you haven't slept with him? Why don't you just make the first move already? Just tell him you want to have sex. Or say, “I want you.” Even better, tell him, “I want you inside me.” That one's a killer. You always tell me never to underestimate the power of prepositions. So use one!

Orgasm tonight?

 

3:15 p.m.

From: “Jacquelyn Norris”

To: Nat.Moore@speedynet

Subject: Re:Re: HELP!!!

 

I doubt if I could say that without laughing. But you've given me an idea. First I'll read him an excerpt from The Millionaire Takes a Bride, the book I'm editing. Here's a good line: “His fingers slipped between her silky thighs to toy with the tiny pink plug that lay there waiting, the trigger to her passion, and a searing heat raced through her veins.” Then I'll manage to allude to the sentence (indirectly) while we're watching Law and Order. Logan will pull out his gun, and I'll wink and say, “Do you think he's toying with his gun?” Or maybe, “Do you think there'll be a bang?”

I can't come to Orgasm tonight. Tim and I have plans. Actually, I have plans for him. Tonight's the night. It's the weekend. It's Friday. Sam's staying at Philip's. I'm going to straighten my hair. I'm even making dinner.

Do you think macaroni and cheese is an aphrodisiac?

M
Y NIGHT STARTS OFF JUST LIKE PAGE
ninety-four of
The Millionaire Takes a Bride.
Except that the hero's not a millionaire and I'm not his bride.

After dinner they move into her bedroom. He devours her with kisses, his mouth pulled toward hers by an indefinable magnetic attraction. He unbuttons her pale azure blouse with agonizingly deliberate motions, never once abandoning her lips. Finally, he removes her blouse, exposing the creamy smoothness of her flesh (and her wonderful cleavage, thanks to Victoria's Secret). His hands caress her soft shoulders, her upper arms, the curvaceous swell of her belly (my euphemism for she hasn't been doing her morning sit-ups), and he dips beneath her bra. He unclasps it (it's a front enclosure; she's surprised he's worked that out so quickly), and her pale breasts spill onto his eager hands. He caresses her right breast first, and then the left (our hero is very methodical), and then flicks his tongue across her silky, erect nipples (again, right first, left next). Slowly, ever so slowly, he lowers his hands down to the small of her back, and with an urgency he can't deny, crushes her against his taut chest.

She sinks into him, resting her luscious mouth against his earlobe. Her hips involuntarily writhe against him, as she hungrily pulls him on top of her. Intense heat burns through her thighs, threatening to consume her body and soul. Her fingers clench his hair, his back, his shoulders.

With a groan (he's a noise-maker! Yay!), he rips her skirt and panties away. (What girl actually uses the term “panties”? Oh, and his jeans have already been removed—did I forget to mention this?) She reciprocates by pushing off his boxers. (Boxers? What kind of a hero wears boxers?) The moment has arrived.

An alarm rings in her head. “Do you have any…”

“No, I didn't think…”

“I did and I have.” She reaches into her side drawer and pulls out a condom. She opens the wrapper and slips it onto his ready, eager manhood.

Wrapping her legs around his waist, she slides him into her wetness, her heart a hammer in her chest. He lets out another groan, and then bingo—here's where any semblance to
The Millionaire Takes a Bride
comes to an abrupt end.

Comes
being the operative word here.

He explodes in orgasm.

Explodes in orgasm?

That's it? That's what I've been pining for? That's why I cooked him dinner? What business does a hero have coming after only one thrust? What happened to hours of passion? What happened to my multiple climaxes?

Do guys realize when they're bad in bed, or is it the phenomenon similar to ugly people not realizing they're ugly?

But wait, hold on a minute. (I wish
he
had held on a minute. Better yet, an hour.) What if he
was
a virgin? That would account for his, well, let's just call it overzealousness.

Should I be flattered?

But what if he knows he came too fast and was expecting me to say, “It's okay, dear. Don't worry about it, dear. It doesn't matter, dear.”

Yeah, right.

“I don't want to go home, babe,” he says in a muffled voice. He's still on top of me, his head resting above my shoulder.

“So stay.” I'd actually prefer to have the bed to spread out in, but whatever. At least we get to try it again. However, at the present moment I'm having difficulty breathing under his weight. I close my eyes. He should really get off me before the condom rolls into me and we have to rush to Emergency to get it surgically removed.

I nudge him gently. Good God, has he fallen asleep? “Tim?” No answer. “Tim?” I nudge him again. “Tim!” I shove him off my body. “I have to use the washroom.” The Fashion Magazine Fun Fact # 6 is to pee right after sex to avoid getting a bladder infection. Or maybe it's a yeast infection. Not that what Tim and I did can really count as sex.

I use the washroom, running the water so he doesn't hear. Is this ridiculous? As if guys don't know that girls pee. I make a pit stop in the kitchen to pour two glasses of water. We're not at the sharing-one-glass stage just yet.

Am I being too hard on him?

When I climb back into bed, I notice the time. It's 11:55. He's sitting up in bed, waiting. I notice there's a tent under the sheets.

Now that's more like it.

Then it hits me. I suddenly remember reading about the let's-get-the-first-time-over-with theory. The guy deliberately comes quickly, knowing that afterward, little Timmy will be able to stand at attention for hours.

At 11:59 he's asleep again.

So much for that theory.

Four minutes? What is four minutes? Four minutes is a commercial break. Four minutes is a music video. Four minutes should not be sex.

We're spooning now, his arm wrapped snugly around my waist. It's too hot in here. I'm never going to fall asleep. Oh, God, he's sleeping on my side of the bed.

Why is he sleeping here, anyway? Won't his mother be worried about him?

And what kind of guy doesn't carry condoms with him, just in case?

When we wake up the next morning, we have the standard how-many-people talk. It's probably the type of conversation you should have before doing the nasty, but whatever.

“Four,” I say, “including you.” If I can even count you, that is, which I still haven't decided.

“Who were they?”

Aren't we nosy? “My first time guy in college, one minor indiscretion my sophomore year, and Jer, my ex. What about you?” He'd better not tell me something lame like he's been waiting his whole life for someone as special as me.

“Um…more than four.” More than four? It must be five.

“Five?”

“More than five.”

This game is getting old fast. “I give up. How many?”

“Thirteen. Including you.”

Thirteen? Is it possible that he's slept with twelve other women and no one, not one single one of them, has ever told him that one thrust is not sufficient?

Maybe I'm just unlucky thirteen. Maybe he's had fantastic sex with the previous twelve. Or, maybe I'm so attractive that he couldn't control himself.

Yeah, I like that last explanation best.

 

“So what do I do?”

“Train him,” Natalie says.

“Leave a
Cosmo
opened on a sex page or something,” Sam says.

“But he doesn't realize he needs training! He wasn't even embarrassed! It's as if he's oblivious to every film, literary, musical and television reference to sex ever made. What does he think ‘All Night Long' is alluding to? Talking?”

“There are tricks to solving this kind of problem,” Sam says knowingly.

Can you trick someone into having good sex? “Like what, for instance?”

“Like the stop-start technique. Have sex for a few minutes, then stop and do other stuff. Then start again,” Sam explains.

“Do what other stuff?” I ask. “Order a pizza? Besides, it's not easy to stop when there's a condom involved. I mean, what happens to it during the shrinkage interim?”

“Maybe condoms are your problem,” Natalie offers.

“That makes no sense. Condoms should technically slow down the process, not speed it up,” I reason. “If we hadn't used a condom, the whole show would have been over in half a thrust.”

“Try two condoms,” Sam pitches in.

“No.” Natalie shakes her head. “Two condoms might make him come faster. He'll be so worried he won't feel a thing through all that plastic, that he'll overcompensate.”

“Try it again,” Sam advises. “It was probably first-time jitters.”

 

Nope.

 

You've got mail.

A message from
Send-a-smile
flashes across the screen. “Hi, babe!” the text says. Next to it is a large graphic of a pistachio, and more text that says, “I'm nuts about you!”

Twenty minutes later.
You've got mail
pops up on my screen again.

Another message from
Send-a-smile.
“A whole day without you is the pits.” A cherry pops up on the screen.

How symbolic. I'm starting to feel like a virgin again where Tim is concerned.

This problem requires in-depth analysis. I'm about to e-mail Sam, when I realize that immediate feedback is called for. Why doesn't someone develop a vocal e-mail system in which the sounds are transmitted instantaneously? It would work something like a chat room, only with voices, and fast. There would be a dial tone to indicate that the server is up and ready, and a system to record your voice if the recipient is not at the computer or is busy chatting to someone else.

I pick up the phone.

Sam is probably home by now, so I try her there. “Help! I tried every trick in the book. For example, in the middle of his first thrust I said, ‘Wait, don't come yet. It feels
so
good.' He said okay, he'd try, but then two shoves later it was all over, and he rolled over and went to sleep. How can I have a relationship with this guy? Let's say we end up having sex three times a week, and each time takes five minutes. I'll be spending only fifteen minutes a week having sex, while I spend 174 1/4 hours doing other stuff! This is a ridiculous proportion. How can I spend only 1/700 of the week having sex? What will I do the rest of the time?”

“Oh, hi, Jackie,” Sam says. “What's up?”

“Is it possible I don't like him anymore because he likes me? Is the challenge over? Am I that screwed up?” I'm nearly hysterical. “Maybe Bev is right. Maybe I need therapy. Do I only like men who don't want me? Am I going to spend the rest of my life chasing men who don't care about me, while ignoring the men who worship me? He wants me to meet his parents. I do not want to meet his parents. Why would I want to meet his parents? I can't marry a 1/700 guy.”

“No,” Sam replies, “you don't need therapy. You don't like him because he's terrible in bed. Life's too short for bad sex. Dump him. I have to go now.”

So much for in-depth examination.

“Jacquelyn?” Yuck. Helen.

“Yes?”

“Thanks for copyediting
The Millionaire Takes a Bride.
”

Thanks? Thanks? Since when does Helen thank me? “Oh. You're welcome. It
is
my job.”

“Right. It is.”

For some reason Helen seems flustered. Does she know I'm sleeping (kind of) with her other copy editor's brother? “So, um…what did you think?” she asks.

Think? When is thinking involved? “Think of the book?”

“Yes. Did you like it?”

“Yeah. Good plot.”

“Really? What else?”

Well, once she's asking…“Okay. I have a few editorial suggestions. First of all, you know when he first sees her? I think the author needs to add a few more sensory details. The scene is a little bland. I can't smell him. What does he smell like? Is he wearing cologne? Right now there's too much telling, not enough showing. And the wedding scene needs a bit of a point of view tune-up. It's a little jarring. The narrative jumps all over the place without finding a home. I know the author wants the reader to identify with both characters, but it's annoying. Just as I get into the hero's head, I'm yanked back to the heroine. I need to be able to get a bit more comfortable. And I especially don't care about the mother's point of view during the wedding. Letting her thoughts come through is a mistake. And the aunt? She has no purpose. All her lines can be said by the mother. Tell the author to exercise her finger with the delete button and get rid of her.”

She looks stunned. Well, she
did
ask. Apparently she didn't know I could talk. “I'll be sure to incorporate your opinions into my edit.”

“Oh, one more thing. Great sex scenes. This should not be in
True Love.
It's so
Love and Lust.
”

She smiles. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome.” That was fun.

You've got mail.

If this is another cheesy card from Tim I'm going to kill myself. No, I'm going to kill
him.
If he tells me how special I am one more time, I'm breaking up with him.

 

Hi, Jackie,

I'm home! I'm at my parents in New York. How's every thing? I had a fantastic trip. Can't wait to show you pictures. Give me a call or write back.

Jer

 

Omigod. Omigod. Omigod.