When I wake up the sun tells me it’s about 10:30. There is no Ash in the bed beside me. There is no sound in the apartment.
I put on a shirt and go into the hallway between me and Mike’s rooms. Mike’s door is open. Clarity, just Clarity, sleeps under cream-colored sheets. I can see by the lie of the blanket how Purity got out of her side of the bed gently, so as not to wake her sister.
Purity and Ashley would be at IO—Improv Olympic—chatting with their friends until the bar opened and the shows started.
I look at Clarity again. And of course the male tiger in me considers jumping on the bed and pouncing her, inducing either immediate sex or sheer terror and creepyhood on Clarity’s part. The risky parts of me and the cautious parts of me did battle in that moment, for if it worked, it would be amazing sex: crawl into bed with sleeping Clarity in the empty apartment and draw the sheet off her sleeping body, caress her—sounds creepy, doesn’t it?! Yeah. Except I’d had luck with the reverse tactic of falling asleep in a girl’s bed while she was at work and waiting for her to come home to find me there—but this was different. The chance of a bad surprise seemed much greater in this case and I fell back on the idea of standing in the doorway with my shirt off—just in my boxers—and waking her by saying her name. Then there might be a gentler suggestion on my part and possibly an invitation on hers. Sex seemed a natural continuation of our talk yesterday—but maybe that’s the male in me talking.
I kind of stood there, clearing my throat and making little floor-creaking noises, but Clarity didn’t wake. I even said her name, but she was out. I decided to leave the girl to her rest.
I poured myself a gin, neat, and went in my room with the bottle. There, I watched Æon Flux episodes on iTunes and remembered when I had first seen them—in a dorm room at Ohio University in 1996—when they had seemed like magic, like nothing I had ever seen before. They actually played them on MTV, in between music videos, and I dealt with the music videos but I waited like an addict for my fix: the next installment from Æon Flux.
I walked over to Mike’s room to watch Clarity sleep and the drunker I got the more likely it became that I would do something stupid like crawl into bed with her like a creep.
Eventually, though, Clarity walked in on me, sitting in my boxers watching vintage cartoons with a bottle of Bombay Original. She had a sheet wrapped around her and she came right up behind me and took the bottle in one hand and drank from it. I could feel the heat of her body and she was almost asking for me to make the next move but you see, I knew she had a boyfriend, and—perhaps surprisingly for a drug addict, alcoholic, and general loser—I have morals around that sort of thing. The bottom line is it didn’t feel right and she wasn’t pushing for it so I didn’t push for it.
“Is this your usual breakfast?”
“Uh..that’s part of it.”
“What’s the rest?”
“Superfoods. Blueberries. Açaí. Shit like that.”
“Well..can I have some blueberries?”
“You hungry?”
“Mmm hmm.”
She takes another sip of the gin.
“Get dressed then. I’m taking you to lunch.”
“Where at?”
“Do you like Italian?”
Clarity leans in and gives me a casual kiss on the cheek.
“Love it,” she whispers.
And she goes out of the room and I turn and I see that under the sheet is only her panties and I’m thinking This girl wants to fuck, right?
But that’s the thing about me—I’m not a fucking creep. Maybe I could have had more sex in my life if I was. But I’m not someone who just does stuff with anyone who shows the slightest sign they’re willing. I want it to be more than willing. I want it to be magical. And so, when I’ve had sex, it’s been magical, on the whole, because that’s what I hold out for. I want to look back and be amazed at my sexual history—not have some lukewarm feelings about it. I’ve had some of those lukewarm encounters and I wish I could erase them.
“I’m gonna take a shower,” Clarity says.
“Go ahead, there’s extra towels in the bathroom.”
I hear Clarity go into the bathroom. Pause for time while she looks around. Sound of the shower door sliding open. Pause while she looks at all the shower gel shit in our shower.
“It looks like a couple of girls live here.”
“Hey. Me and Mike love our shower gel, what can I say.”
“Yeah but Pink Mango? Berry Berry Boo?”
Clarity leans into my room.
“You sure you’re not a couple of fags?”
I take a swig of gin.
“No, honestly, I am never 100% sure of that, especially when Mike and I are together. The only problem is we both love pussy so much.”
I hear Clarity go into the bathroom and start the shower.
“There’s fucking loofahs in here!”
“Those are Mike’s!!”
But Clarity doesn’t believe a word.