I spluttered into my glass, half choking. “Violet. Please. Save me from death by embarrassment. At least for tonight.”
“Well if you answer my question, I’ll stop over-sharing.”
“No, I’m not banging them—certainly not both at once.”
“Urgh,” Violet said. “I might have known. Tell me you’ve fucked someone since your divorce. Please. Tell me your vibrator isn’t the only thing to have given you an orgasm in the last two years.”
Violet may be teasing, but the way she said it, I felt slightly ashamed that I’d still not managed to take that step of first-time sex after divorce. My sister was so . . . liberal with her relationships with men; I knew she’d find it difficult to understand why I’d not slept with any of the guys I’d dated. I didn’t even understand it myself. But none of them had seemed quite what I was looking for. They hadn’t been special. I’d dated plenty of men since Marcus, gotten myself back out there. I just hadn’t taken that final step.
I’d even dated guys exclusively. Well one guy. For about a week until it became clear that there was no way I was going to be able to avoid sleeping with him, so I ended things.
Violet grabbed my hand. “I know I’ve said this all along, but what you need is a one-night stand. You’re overthinking the sex thing. It’s just sex. Like brushing your teeth or exercising. It’s a fact of life.”
“It’s difficult.” I understood and I agreed with Violet—sex wasn’t such a huge deal. But sex after marriage was terrifying. Perhaps because I’d finally be accepting that my marriage was over and also because sex was a precursor to a relationship—a threshold that I had to step over. If I kept on this side, then I was safe. And when things ended, no one could say the relationship was a failure if it didn’t exist in the first place. I didn’t want to go through life leaving a trail of disappointment and broken relationships behind me.
“It’s really not. And frankly, if you’re really nervous you can just lie there while he does all the work. It won’t be as good but if that’s all you can manage, with your banging body and beautiful face, you don’t need to do anything to get a guy off.”
“Are we really having this conversation?” I wasn’t nervous. I missed sex. I just didn’t want a relationship that was doomed to failure.
Violet reached out and patted my hand. “We’re going to keep having this conversation until you get over this issue you have around your first time, first love thing. Your life isn’t a Coke commercial. No one’s life is a Coke commercial. And Marcus has gone and he’s not coming back. Anyway, you know he’s fucking Cindy Cremantes now.”
I’d heard that particular rumor last time I was at my brother’s house in Connecticut. Cindy was still working at the pharmacy in Westchester as she had since school. I wasn’t sure why she was so much more exciting than I was.
“I don’t think my life is a Coke commercial.”
“I beg to differ. I understand that Marcus is the only guy you ever slept with, but despite this décor, we’re not actually in the fifties.” She circled her finger in the air. “You’re not a housewife. You don’t have to pretend you don’t like sex. That’s not what life is like in the modern world.”
“I like sex plenty. I’m not frigid.”
Violet sighed. “Marcus didn’t leave you because you’re boring in bed. You don’t have to be afraid.”
“Yeah, I know.” Marcus wasn’t boring in the bedroom, and I enjoyed sex with him. But I would have been open to something . . . new, more. I didn’t want to throw our car keys into a bowl at the next country club dinner or anything but maybe he could have fucked me on the kitchen floor or talked a little dirty to me once in a while. Once, when we were newlyweds, I’d interrupted his shower and dropped to my knees all ready to give him a blow job when he awkwardly told me he didn’t have time because he was running late for work. “I’m just not ready for a relationship.”
“Sex isn’t a relationship. You’re waiting to see if these guys you’re dating are Mr. Right until you fuck them?” she asked, drawing her brows together as if it was the most ludicrous thing she’d ever heard.
I shrugged. “More that I’m avoiding a relationship by not having sex.”
She nodded. “Okay. Got it. But you’re missing out—having sex with someone doesn’t mean you’re having a relationship with them. Not always. What you need is sex with a stranger.”
I’d never picked up a guy before—barely even flirted with someone who wasn’t my husband. Marcus and I had been dating since high school. “So how would this one-night stand thing go? If, in theory, I was prepared to do something like that.”
Violet swallowed her sip of vodka before breaking into a huge grin. “Pick a guy.” She nodded toward a man sitting at the bar, swirling his drink and staring at the bottom of his glass like he had a lot on his mind. “He’s hot. No wedding ring. Get it done.”
Get it done? It wasn’t highlights or a run around the park.
“Don’t be stupid. I can’t just pick up a guy.” From what I could see the man at the bar was attractive—a strong jaw, a nicely cut suit you could tell was handmade. But he could still live at home with his mom or have a fetish for peeing on women . . . or men. I was prepared to push at my boundaries, but there were limits.
“You keep telling me you want to be more adventurous. Now, I think you’ve got no worries on that score—you’ve just let dipshit Marcus get in your head. But in theory, if you did want to have a one-night stand, he would be perfect.” She lifted her chin toward the hot guy at the bar.
“Just find someone to fuck. Someone you’ll never see again and then when you find someone you really like, you can have a relationship and the sex.”
“I liked Andrew. And Peter, for that matter.”
“Maybe you did. But not enough. Maybe it’s all the pressure. With a stranger, there’s no expectation—apart from that you’re both gonna get laid.”
Maybe that was it. Maybe I just didn’t need to think about it—about anything.
“You’re doing that thing,” Violet said, frowning at me.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you tap your index finger. It’s annoying.”
“You’re annoying.”
She just shrugged as if the idea didn’t bother her at all. Violet was always so sure of herself and everything around her. It was almost as if she were wearing super-strength glasses with a prescription straight out of science fiction—she saw things differently, more clearly than I did. Usually, she was right.
“In theory—because there’s no way I’m ever going to do it—if I wanted to pick up the guy at the bar, what would I do?”
“In theory?” Violet asked.
I nodded while taking the two tiny black straws sticking out of my cocktail into my mouth.
“You wouldn’t have to do much. Just find a reason to go to the bar.”