Whiskey Drenched Bodies

My lips graciously dipped into whiskey drenched abs and hip bones.

MentalDessert
Aug 26, 2017 · 10 min read

My foot shakes erratically as I sit inside my car outside a bowling alley. I don’t know why I love to play against men as much as I do with bowling. Yet, there is an easy answer to this, I love winning. I enjoy dominating men in a hobby that I’ve been doing for most of my lifetime.

A text pops up from NY and I can’t help smiling. He’s my savior if this blind date situation goes awry, and I know I can trust him to be there. NY is also the only person who knows what I’m up to tonight.

He asks me if I’ve met the guy yet and I admit that I’m just taking my time before I go inside. I’m not going to do that awkward shit dance of being there first and waiting for the other person to show up. I sent a message through the system we’re on that I’ve arrived and I chew at my bottom lip. My teeth tear into the skin near my nails as I indulge in this anxiety induced habit.

I see the text that he’s here and at the entrance. I’ve decided to nickname him KW after one of his favorite artists.

My Pandora turns off and I unplug my phone from the charger. My key slides into the trunk lock and it makes a distinct popping noise. There’s a purple bag with a fourteen pound ball and I slide it onto my left shoulder.

I approach the sidewalk and I see a guy waving at me. He’s cute, about an inch or two under me, with long wavy black hair. I’d say that he’s darkly handsome. One of my favorite things about him when I saw his picture was his piercing brown eyes.

There’s this picture where he leans into the camera and his eyes are incredible. A smile adorns his face, just a slight pull of his full lips. He has a scruffy beard that isn’t too out of control. It adds to the richness of his face and offsets his darkly brown depths.

We have had endless conversations since the first time we started talking. There’s discussions about family, school, but we mainly started with languages. I stated how much I loved them, and he has four languages under his belt. I have one that I’m trying to be fluent in, Spanish, plus French and Italian.

When he and I hug each other there’s a warmth to it. He squeezes me gently, considerately like he isn’t sure about the pressure. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and squeeze them gently. The warmth gives way to an inherent awkwardness since this is our first time meeting. He smells delicious, a light, manly and earthy scent.

We step inside the building together and within five minutes of meeting him I can already sense a hundred different things. He’s a gentlemen, kind, and since he was raised with mainly sisters he knows not to be a douche to women.

He’s nervous as well, but not as much as I am. I’m guessing because he’s done more of this than me. Which is depending on a different medium to meet people.

“Wow, this place is fancy as all fuck. Not like my homegrown bowling alleys back in the day,” I say.

“Right? I totally agree, it is incredibly nice.”

We ask for a lane and he hands the man his credit card. I’m tempted to give mine over but he beats me to the punch. I hate owing anyone anything so I make a mental note that I need to get the tab for pool for us.

There’s a bit of flirtation under the surface, barely there or felt unless if you’re astute to it like I’ve become. My wrist guard gets snapped into place and I slide my fingers into the tiny holes of my ball. He picks it up before I use it and gives me a surprised look.

“That’s your ball? Damn, that’s heavy!”

“I told you, fourteen pounds is the way I go with things. Be prepared to be beaten.”

“If you say so,” he replies with a laugh.

I always put myself as first to bowl. It’s an inherent thing I’ve been doing for years. My first ball thrown is a strike and he looks at me incredulously. The expression clearly says ‘for fuck serious? You have got to be kidding me.’

We go through three games, I’m one of those who gradually warms up. There’s parts of his throwing technique I could critique to get the ball to its destination better.

I keep my voice subdued with helpful hints. If someone tries to coach me I get highly defensive and annoyed. He gets some spares and I holler encouragement for getting them into the pocket right.

Our hands hit each other forcefully in high fives. I’m conscious of the soft insides of his palms, there aren’t any callouses anywhere. He’s always been a computer worker without any manual labor.

I’m the opposite, I would tear apart twine for hay bales and rode horses for most of my life. I had such strong animals that they would rip the insides of my hands. This one thousand pound animal would fight me trying to restrain them. The insides of my hands were torn until they were raw more times than I can count. Yet, my skin never shows the injuries it’s suffered through.

We keep our focus on the game. He gets visibly frustrated and I tell him to breathe and not throw angry. He listens to my advice and visibly exhales deeply. The next time he throws he picks up his spare and he concedes it was good advice.

I cap us off with three games, even though he’s willing to do more. I feel like someone losing at something says a lot about their character. Do they blame something else? Or do they accept that they just aren’t playing to the best of their ability? I’m the type I’ll throw my head back and howl at the sky in conceding to my loss.

“Damnit, I couldn’t get you,” he admits.

He rubs his longer hair. It fluffs up his hair and I find it to be an adorable gesture.

“I warned you, I play to destroy. Let’s see what you can do to me in pool.”

We grin at each other and I throw my shoes into my bag. He and I return to the front desk and I bring out my wallet. I bring out my credit card and set it on the counter. His fingers flop the wallet open and he inspects it. My lips pull into a smile and I hit him playfully on the shoulder.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing riffling through my wallet? I could have condoms in there.”

“You know its bad to have them in your wallet? You know why, right?”

I stroke my chin with a thoughtful expression. My lips purse as I try to think up the correct answer to his question.

“Do they like erode with the material?”

“Totally, so it’s not a safe place to have them in.”

He says knowingly. My insides roll with laughter at the ridiculousness of our discussion. He chuckles with me and I shove my wallet back into my small purse.

“Like what is the point of an eroded condom? You might as well bare back the fuck outta shit.”

I say this and it’s always a thing that my inner thoughts become my outer. The guy at the counter laughs and hands us over the balls. KW grabs them from his offered hands and we trek over to the table.

There’s a clear difference in my body language in this versus bowling. I’m aware of my shoulders collapsing in. I nervously shift my weight and he stacks the balls together.

“So, do I need to explain the rules of the game?” He asks.

I just grin widely in response. My shoulders rise and fall as I spin the stick in my hands.

“I’m not calling pockets because I’m not that good. But I can always hit shit if a ball is involved.”

He sets the white ball pointing towards the stacked balls. His first hit misses the target of breaking them up and I can’t help laughing.

“My odds already feel better.”

He gives me a bashful grin like you totally didn’t see that. His second attempt hits the right mark. The clash resounds and they go flying in different directions. He nails off stripe ball after striped while my solids stay on the table.

“Hmmm, this may not take an hour for me to finish up against you.”

“Don’t challenge me, that’s never a safe bet.”

I get my first ball in a pocket and I whoop and holler. My fist strikes up into the air and I do a little dance. I know all the words to the songs playing and dance occasionally. He watches me as my hips sway from side to side provocatively.

“How do you know all the words to these songs? I don’t even know any of them.”

“I don’t own a radio. So that’s the weirdest part, I’m like rain man for lyrics.”

“Rain man?” He asks me.

His head tilts and his wavy, long hair tosses to the side. I have an image of my fingers running through them. Something tells me he likes his hair being touched. And not just that, he loves having it pulled. I’ve noticed how he runs his fingers through it and I realize this tell.

I’m reminded of the Unicorn and how he discerned I loved my neck being kissed and my hair pulled. He studied me merely putting my hair behind my ear constantly and found out my ears were just as sensitive.

My thoughts turn back to why he doesn’t get the reference, though I’ve never fully watched the movie myself.

“You know, that guy with the incredible memory? I have a photogenic and photographic memory myself.”

“I grew up in another country so that may be why I haven’t heard of it.”

“Alright, that makes sense then. Well, he can remember the dates to everything, what people were doing, and I’m the same way.”

KW nods his head and I hit another ball within the pocket. There’s only one left for me to tackle, the eight ball. I hit the white ball within the pocket and let out a wild, uncontrolled expletives fly from my mouth. I just lost my first match and I stomp my feet in annoyance.

He laughs at my antics and seems to enjoy my foul mouth. I know that I have an even more hard edged nature than most. We rack up another set and I hesitate to break it. There’s this young, boyish grin on his face that looks like he’s in his early twenties instead of mid.

The balls are successfully broken and I thrust my fist into the air. I move all around the table and randomly straddle it if a shot is too far away. There are some trick shots that I do not do on purpose. My favorite is where it rides the rail and then slides back onto the table.

“I’ve seen people doing pool for years and they can’t do the kind of shots you’re doing. That shit is impressive.”

He says in an appreciative tone. I give him a sly, shy smile and shrug my shoulders.

“I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing.”

There’s instances where my face gets so serious studying different angles of a shot. He teases me about how my face changes from outright laughter to something akin to a scheming scowl. We play with each other in a way that feels we know each other for a longer set of time than just this day.

Our second match he scratches the Q ball and ends up losing like I just did with our first game. We agree to one more, since I don’t believe tying is ever okay with someone. He and I have our game faces on, yet we still playfully tease each other.

“I’m so glad you’re normal, seriously,” I admit.

“Hmmm, I’m not sure if this is a compliment or not…” his voice trails off.

“The first guy I talked to said he had the biggest cock ever. And I was gonna break his little heart by messaging him probably not but I just decided to not even respond.”

“I can’t believe what women deal with.”

“How’s your interactions with the women? Are they like come on over here and eat me out tonight?”

He throws back his head with a roar of laughter. We pause with our game and I suppress a giggle at his reaction. There’s these looks he gives me where he clearly is saying something like you are quite unusual. And, this is actually a wonderful thing.

“No, I say hey how are you? And they are like fine. Then it just dies.”

“The guys say let’s fuck. I’m like probably not my virtual panties didn’t drop because you want to know where I live and what I do for sex.”

I guffaw and talk with my hands turning in circles. He chortles at my comment and we end up playing in circles chasing the last few balls. My last ball flies into the pocket at an amazing speed and I face the 8 ball.

It nearly falls into the pocket for a game finishing scratch. I finally sink it into the hole and erupt into a victorious roar of excitement. He concedes to my winning and we high five each other. He holds onto my hand a little longer than usual and I grin at him.

“Want to go someplace for a drink? There’s this place I keep meaning to go to but I haven’t had the chance to yet.”

“I haven’t drank in three months,” I admit. My hand rubs the back of my neck with a bashful expression.

“Oh, man, are you in AA? Because we can do something else,” he says.

“Nah, got a little crazy with body shots. And it was such a fucking fun night. But, afterwards I was like… need to not get that crazy for awhile.”

I remember that night distinctly. The way my lips dipped into a man’s belly button to retrieve a whiskey shot. Then, I did the same with another and how I licked the liquid off of the side of their hip bone.

We stare at each other in an obvious stalemate. My mind goes over the taste of an old fashioned, the distinct hit of strong alcohol to my system. The combination of orange, bitters, hitting the back of my throat. How it feels like liquid fire trailing down my throat to warm my insides.

I find myself nodding my head as I bite my lip.

“Okay, one drink. Let’s go, I’ll meet you up at the bar you mentioned.”


If you enjoyed this please click that handy dandy 👉👏 as much as you damn well please. As always thank you for reading! ❤️

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MentalDessert

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I'm unapologetically me with a hard edged view of life. I love to travel and have crazy amounts of fun spaced between quiet moments.

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