Page 18 of The B!tch is Bad

Patience brightened up at this morbid story. I had noticed she liked to talk about anyone other than herself. “But you have such smart, crafty cunning. Maybe your shitty childhood helped you hone that.”

I swelled with pride at her flattery. Encouraged, I put my hand on her hip. “Yes, my father was a day laborer loading ships in Oakland, so he spent nights at waterfront bars, dragging me along. I learned to steal pretzels and hardboiled eggs and got my first swear words from a parrot.”

Patience’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, my! I just worked the entire time, nothing hardscrabble like you. Did you ever go to school? You must have. You’re Italian, right?”

“Yes, both parents from Sicily. Then my father married again, but she ran off with everything including, believe it or not, our family radio and encyclopedia.”

“Wow, that’s pretty low.”

I shrugged. “So I determined to do well, and graduated from Stanford.” I said it like an afterthought. I never wanted anyone to think I was bragging.

Patience seemed so touched her eyes misted over. “Fuck. You should be admired for dragging yourself up so well.”

I pinched her chin. “As did you. You never told me where your father went.”

“He died at age thirty. Brain hemorrhage. Within a month we had to move into a room that stank like mothballs and sauerkraut.” Now a tear formed at her inner duct, a reflective drop in a pond. “Suddenly my sense of security was gone. My dad was my sun and moon and I was his tiny shooting star.”

I swelled with such empathy and lust I found myself babbling, “You have security now. I promise to provide you with comfort. With everything you need.”

For the first time her searching eyes looked hopeful, and I swept in for the kiss.

I tell you, I was like a coiled snake suddenly lunging. My thighs and torso rolled up her like a tidal wave, the wine report crunching between us as her breasts flattened under my onslaught. My prick was so full and stiff, a few drops spurted and I didn’t even care. I had my love in my arms, her thighs spreading to accept the thrust of my pelvis.

Grabbing the back of her neck, I snorted, bit her lip and slipped my tongue tip between her teeth. Not one logical thought sailed across my brainpan as I humped her pubic bone. The testosterone that shot up my spine told my hypothalamus that Patience was my responsive, willing sacrificial lamb. Her lush lips slithered under mine as she panted hot puffs against my cheek.

I found myself three feet away, hands at my sides, the biggest douchemonster on the face of the planet. My dick throbbed almost painfully, my hips still slung forward in the most idiotic manner, like a dazed caveman brained with a rock.

And Patience, my beloved Patience. Fuck me dry, after shoving me away she’d scurried to the shed door like a fearful mouse. Hand to her mouth, this time to wipe away my disgusting kiss. The tears in her eyes were of horror, not love.

“Creed,” she cried from behind her trembling hand. “Why’d you have to go and treat me like every other coozemonkey on the planet?”

And she vanished into the milling mob.

I somehow managed to lurch to the door. A few people grimaced at me with wrinkled noses, probably due to the sight of a guy with a giant hard-on chasing after a fleeing girl.

But Patience was gone. And I’d permanently blown it.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d handed in her resignation by the end of the party.

I’d fatally misread her signs, her cues. Already, hormones and brain enzymes threatened to fling me into the mouth of a volcano.

I’d only been rejected once. Once in high school, a girl had laughed at my attempts to kiss her. She’d walked away to her group of friends, guffawing and pointing at me. In turn, they all guffawed and pointed, too. Since then, I’d honed myself into such a suave, crafty swain, such a smooth operator, not one woman had turned me down—although some had perhaps later regretted having caved in. Especially when I moved onto the next quarry without so much as a please or thank you.

Mark Twain said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Twain was a brilliant linguist.

And I was nothing but a coozemonkey.