the varied sexual conquests of Samuel Cunningham
[a series of fictionalized events]
Sam lifted his shirt’s crewneck collar above his nose and sneezed three times in rapid succession. He was so sick of having the f*cking sneezes. That was a part of the benzo withdrawal process that seemed to linger a bit. Miserable. He was sneezing in three to five sneeze bunches like all the time these days. There was no controlling it.
But, not even the sneezes could break the confidence in Sam’s stride as he walked down the sidewalk. He was going to see a girl. The first girl who had welcomed him into their home for over six months. Sam knew he had been undatable for the first month of his sobriety; he hadn’t shaved for three months and refused to cut his hair for six. But, he had been carrying his thirty-day chip around in his pocket for close to three weeks now. And he had shaved. So, he just couldn’t figure out why he had not yet been able to violate the fraternization policy at the treatment center he was currently at. It should not have been this hard.
He was about to have sixty damn days after all. And, if this was any preview of how the rest of his sobriety would go, he was beginning to think that his previous xanax and cocaine and alcohol and whatever-hallucinogen-the-guy-next to-him-was-passing-out lifestyle was beginning to look like a pretty good option again.
Sam owned crocs in almost every single color, 232 shirts, and 182 pairs of underwear at the time of the last counting. What else could a girl want, other than a future with an absolutely minimal amount of time spent doing laundry? They could each wear one of his shirts AND a pair of his underwear every day, and STILL not have to do laundry but once every three months. He couldn’t contemplate what more someone could want for their lives, or in a partner.
But Tessa loved his crocs, she said so on the way in. Win number one. Her three roommates were kinda bitchy, but they always are in situations like this. She invited him into her bedroom shortly thereafter. Win number two. Things were going suspiciously well for him here. Before he knew it, they were hooking up. In thirty short seconds, she was on top of him.
But, she was moaning ridiculously loud and it was beginning to unsettle him. Worse still, she was doing this thing where she was almost pretending they were already having sex, but they both still had their jeans on. Every time she bounced on top of him, he wondered if it was true that cartilage in the penis was capable of breaking. It was all he could focus on. So, he decided to put a stop to it.
He flipped positions with her so he was on top. It was getting hot and heavy now, and his penis was no longer in peril so he was actually allowing himself to lose himself in the action a bit. It was going so well, in fact, that he decided it was worth risking some kisses on her collarbone. If those went well, he was going to move them down to her cleavage. He had the game plan all mapped out in his head.
She was moaning loudly with her mouth open the first time he sneezed. She was peppered with a fine mist, alongside one or two small globs of mucous, on the entirety of her face. Her mouth opened even wider out of utter shock, and this is when the second sneeze occurred. This time, the thrust of the sneeze caused his head to travel towards her, and the sneeze was expelled almost entirely inside of her mouth. She began laughing uncontrollably, which is when the third sneeze occurred. This one left a fair amount of saliva in the region of her eyes. By sneeze four, she was crying, and by sneeze five, she had thrown him onto the ground and begun to scream at him to get the fuck out of her house. So he slid back into his crocs with the style of a man who had done it a thousand times before and didn’t stop to say goodbye as he ran right past her three bitchy roommates on his way out the door.
Tessa ended up apologizing to him, explaining that she had thought he had been sneezing in succession on purpose and invited him over three nights later. So Sam found himself strutting down the very same street in the very same pair of crocs only seventy-two hours later. He had methodically eyed all 232 t-shirts and settled on a plain white one with a small pocket embroidered with a pink whale. He hoped her roommates weren’t there this time, but of course, they were. Two of them pretended to sneeze on his way in. He wasn’t super stoked about it, but he knew better than to start a fight with three women at once, and plus — he was on the journey to something much more important. If last time had not been interrupted by a fit of sneezing, he was pretty sure he would have been on his way to pound town. So, tonight was the night, he was sure.
This time, as she led him into the room, she told him to turn out the lights. Lights out was a BIG win. Before he knew it, he was back on top of her again, but this time he was prepared. He had selected a pair of snap-off Adidas track pants, both because he knew it would be a smooth move to rip them off in front of her in a single go, but also so that he wouldn’t be dealing with any further penile trauma from his boner being viciously bent against his jeans.
From the top position, Sam was fully in control. He had just come up for air from her cleavage and was about to pop off his top to reveal the patchy, slightly-scrotal chest hair which sparsely populated his nipples and the center of his chest. But before he could do this, Tessa decided to make a go at a Hollywood-level maneuver and grasped his shirt to sexily, and quickly pull him down towards her into another kiss. Only she was a bit too forceful. Sam was not able to see her face in the dark, so was entirely unable to pump the brakes on the way down to avoid a collision. Their noses were the first point of contact in the crash, followed by their teeth. It was far from ideal, but things were definitely still recoverable. They paused for a second and went right on with making out.
Only something seemed a little bit off for the next thirty seconds. It felt like she had just introduced an amount of saliva that was tenfold what it had been prior to the crash. Further, her saliva was hitting his palate in an entirely new way; he realized that the increased saltiness was the main shift. He decided to take a break from the kissing and returned his mouth to her cleavage. Only, the same thing was present here. It felt, and tasted like her tits were sweating profusely. Tessa seemed to notice this as well, and vocally expressed that something was not right, so he should get up and turn on the lights.
Not able to see in the dark, he tried to get off of her but realized he needed to shift his right hand so that he would have stronger support to complete the dismount. His hand ended up planting on her chest, which he found was incredibly slippery when his hand slid out from under him, right off of her. As he had been planning on using this right-hand plant as a source of support, his arm lurched forward with gravity pulling his entire upper body’s weight down towards her. His elbow collided with full force into something hard. He tried to laugh it off, and asked her if she was alright — to which he received no reply. He ran over and groped around before ultimately finding the light switch, and flicking it on.
What the lights revealed was one of the most horrifying things Sam had ever seen. Tessa’s head was limply angled to the side, and her face, body, and the white sheets that surrounded her were covered in blood. Sam looked down at his shirt, only to find it was drenched in blood as well. So was his right hand. So was the wall surrounding the light switch, and the switch itself. He noticed a few drops of blood hit the cream-colored rug, right between his feet, and ran into her bathroom. In the bathroom mirror, he found Hannibal Lecter. His face was covered with blood. His teeth too. And he noticed his nose was the source, as a steady stream of blood continued to fall from it.
He darted quickly to the roll of toilet paper next to her toilet, and shoved two tampon-sized wads into both sides of his nostril, before doing a quick once-over on his face with another wad of TP.
Sam ran back into the room and began prodding at Tessa’s chest trying to wake her up. He tried lifting her arms and pulling her into a sitting position, but she was too heavy, and his still-bloody hand’s grip slipped, sending her falling immediately back towards the bed. He stood there, looking down at this murderous tableau, and the gravity of the situation began to sink in.
He was covered in blood, and so was she. She was also unconscious. The wall was even covered with his blood. There was no back door to the house, and her roommates were all sitting on the couches right next to the front door. He could go out the window, but she was on the second floor, and he didn’t think he could make the jump without breaking a leg. Plus, his DNA was quite literally covering every other square inch of her room. He was full-on panicking now. About to stroke out and hit the floor. So he began trying to slap her back into consciousness.
When Tessa awoke, she was greeted by Sam’s face, still stained with half-dried blood and with both nostrils stuffed with large wads of toilet paper. Her eyes widened, and she began to look to her left and right, taking in her surroundings. That’s when she began to scream. Needless to say, as a bloodstained Sam walked quickly past her roommates on his way out the front door, he realized this was the last time he would be doing so. Time would prove this realization true.
Two long weeks later, Sam got a surprising text from a friend — a girl from his treatment program had apparently acquired a hotel room and was hanging out there. Sam decided it was time to make a move, so after writing thirty-six different pick-up lines and then deleting them, he decided it was best to keep it simple. He texted her and asked her if she would potentially be interested in having sex. Why beat around the bush, there was no way this could go any worse than his last bloody encounter with a female had. To his surprise, she simply responded “yes,” and then sent him the address, and room number.
Sam was absolutely dumbfounded by this sudden stroke of luck but wasted no time on thinking, and instead quickly picked out a shirt before scanning his croc collection for a classily-paired color scheme. Thirty-eight minutes later, he was knocking on the door of her hotel room.
Rachel opened the door in a pair of cheerleading shorts and a tank top and motioned for Sam to come inside. He did. As he scanned the room, he began to think that “motel” was probably a better descriptor than “hotel” was. The bedspread was thin, and in that terrible winding-plants pattern that always reminded him of that epic acid trip that had ended in a visit to the psych ward. The bathroom sink had her makeup sloppily strewn around it, and the toilet was about three feet from the bed.
Rachel said something, but Sam didn’t catch it. He was focused on the TV now. She had been watching Cold Case, and it was still on very loudly. He heard her voice though, so turned back towards her, only to find her there, standing completely naked. For the second time in three weeks, Sam was utterly shocked. She motioned him towards the bed, and though he was having a slightly out-of-body experience, he found himself taking three strides towards her until they were maybe a foot apart.
She began unbuttoning his pants in an extremely business-like fashion. A little too business-like, for his taste. But he let her. In short time, Sam stood in front of her completely naked. They both were completely naked. And they hadn’t even kissed yet. Rachel began roughly yanking his unit around a little bit and tugged at his balls with her other hand. When there was no erectile response whatsoever, she grew slightly exasperated. Meanwhile, Sam was entirely focused on the gruesome details of a triple homicide that had been perpetrated on three minor children from Albuquerque, and what exactly had gone wrong in the investigation that had led to their murderer evading conviction. He was so engrossed in the details that he hardly even noticed Rachel’s hand fondling his nuts about like a couple of Chinese Mediation Balls.
But he suddenly realized that he had been staring into the TV for a while now, and pried his attention away from it, looking down at the naked girl sitting on the edge of the bed, and her more-than-frustrated face that was looking back up at him expectantly. He told her that they just needed to get on the bed, that’s what would get things going.
Rachel began performing a version of fellatio on him that could better be described as attempting to suck a slug out of its shell. This went on for Sam didn’t know how long because he was busy being quite concerned with the fact that the police had just let this shifty-looking security guard go without even questioning him about this thirteen-year-old’s murder in the slightest. He definitely looked like a pedophile to Sam, how could the cop not have seen that?
Sam didn’t even realize that there was no longer a mouth around his penis when his jeans came flying towards him — hitting him in the face, with his belt buckle slapping him solidly on the side of the head. Rachel was definitely very upset about something, but Sam couldn’t hear exactly what she was going on about as the details of the murder of three innocent children were still pouring out of the TV at a ridiculously high volume, and continued to fight for his attention. When he saw the blow drier fly past his head and hit the door behind him, he decided it was time to probably put his pants back on and make a break for the exit.
The door closed behind him, and he came back into his body. Shame began to sink in. He couldn’t believe that old reliable down south had finally failed him. He couldn’t believe he had just somehow fucked up such a sure thing.
But the sun was hitting him in the face, and its warmth felt good. So Sam walked into its’ light and down the stairs with the same fully confident, croc-squeaking strut that followed him wherever his feet took him.
