How to Spice Up a Date
Feeling badly about myself without any palpable reason, I sat with my scattered pile of books. A smattering of mostly-full cups of herbal tea dotted odd corners of the room.
I was reading too many books and none of them very attentively. My eyes slid across the rows of words but my mind was rustling about in the bushes, hunting for a snack. On the second page of The Sound and The Fury I imagined what I’d say about Faulkner in polite company.
Yes, that’ll be good. Oh, that’ll be really good.
I’d taken the day off for no important reason, and woke up from an afternoon nap to a handful of flirty texts from Eden. It had been a year, maybe more, but sex like that, you tuck away in a special neural closet and hope it lights up again someday.
During the nap I dreamed I’d invented the banandarin, an orange banana I could peel to reveal juicy citrus. It was delicious. Not phallic. It was about fruit and fruit only.
Still, Eden seemed eager to drop by that night and I tried to act not eager as I sent him my new address.
A meager pizza slice of light shone between the curtains. I evaluated its clarity. It illuminated a disturbing amount of dust.
They were purple IKEA curtains. Their geometry embarrassed me. They reminded me of an argument I hadn’t wanted to win.
My phone made a sound. I wanted it to be Eden saying something hot. It was my brother, a text of spare thoughts. For a moment, I hated him.
I stepped out on the balcony and savored the dirty guilty rat-shit taste of a Camel Light. Or are they called Camel Blues now?
I felt powerful.
The taste reminded me of the Italian fellow who approached Alex Sawyer and me as we smoked in our driveway on 47th Avenue years ago, asking if we’d give eyewitness testimony because isn’t this bitch crazy and I’m bleeding under my eye where she slapped me with not one but both stilettos.
Yeah, we saw her swinging at you with a shoe but you always assume the dude in that situation deserves violence and we’re not getting involved with court dates. Yes, you can come up stairs and clean your fucking face. We’re not animals. Arrivederci, man.
I watched the sun drop into the ocean.
Back inside my apartment the kettle screamed. I wondered how long it had been at a boil.
I brewed a hibiscus tea, drank four sips, put it in a corner. Clicking around some TV menus for a while, I settled on a nature show called Wild Alaska.
Fifty-eight minutes later, I got up and began to work diligently at the kitchen island. For it had been my aim to infuse a tequila and kill a bit of time. If I were honest with myself — and I was not, that day — the notion of sipping spicy tequila to heat things up a touch with Eden had crossed my mind.
And so I moved my knife through pasilla peppers, jalapenos, cilantro. There was deep satisfaction in slicing, chopping. I dropped them into a mason jar and poured the tequila over them.
Just then, a bit of an itch danced around my left nipple and without thinking I reached down to scratch it and my arm knocked the jar. The infusion splashed lightly and suddenly my right eye was in flames. My fucking nipple also.
I made haste toward the kitchen sink and filled a bowl with water, then dunked my face in it. Opened my eye. No justice. Only fire.
My nipple flushed with heat. I didn’t know where to stick what.
A smart thought came. Milk, not water. Milk!
Fishing around the fridge with one eye closed and leaking, I grabbed an alarmingly light carton of milk and filled a second bowl. I got my eye in there and breathed a sigh of relief.
Seconds later, tearing my shirt off frantically, my nipple met the bowl. Milk was everywhere, but I could breathe again. I relaxed for a moment.
Turns out, the arctic ground squirrel is only fertile for 12 hours per year. So when a male scouts a potential mate, after chasing away the competition, he doesn’t leave her side for 24 hours, just to be sure he’s papa bear.
I thought of Daphne, and her conviction that procreating is a scam. So what’s important about her monogamous relationship, besides her and Liam protecting each other’s fragile egos?
The doorbell, longer on the ding than the dong, pierced my unraveling thought.
Eden smiled a little as I opened the door, giving me an unhurried hug. He smelled good. Like comfort and laundry.
He asked why I was blinking like that. And breathing hard. And why my shirt was wet.
I laughed. Told him of my jalapeno disaster. The tequila infusion didn’t seem to intrigue him quite like I’d hoped.
We talked a little. What have I been up to, and that.
Took the day off actually. Just reading The Sound and The Fury.
Your first time? he asked.
I never re-read anything. Waste of time. Mind if I change my shirt real quick?
He laughed, nodded and looked down at the library card application on the counter.
Do you think the mustard stain will hurt your chances? he asked.
I gifted a guffaw and returned shortly. Shirt dry. Nipple angry.
Come sit down on the sofa with me, I suggested.
He followed slowly and sat too far away from me on the sectional. He gave me a meaningful glance and started talking and I could tell then that I had misjudged the evening’s agenda and at this unfortunate fact I fumed secretly.
He told me, hands clasped, I’m in a sex addiction program. I needed to meet with you. It’s one of the steps.
I listened for a while. He refused tea. I gave him a lukewarm hug and we parted ways.
I shut the door, fell onto the sofa, opened a John Irving novel to the middle, smelled the spine, and wondered how many milk jugs it would take to draw a hot milk bath.
