FICTION

The Virgin Drink: A Polyamorous Romance (Chapter 4)

“I got no sleep last night, but it was glorious.”

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CW: discussion of sex/sexuality, explicit words used for genitals, indirect references to misgendering

Rose was sitting with three cups of coffee and two apartment keys on the coffee-table in front of her.

She hadn’t taken off her sunglasses yet.

She moved my cup closer to me. I grabbed it and took a long drink. It was warm and bitter, exactly the way I like it.

“Jay’s sleeping away their indignation. They’re the only dude I know who can manage to get FOMO while at the event they feel they’re missing out on.”

Jay was supposed to be her hot date last night. I smirked and sat down across from her, certain that her story from yesterday would be much sexier than mine, as usual.

I didn’t want to tell her our story just yet, so I was happy to let her talk first. I needed more coffee to help put our night together into words anyway.

“Guess how many people I had sex with last night. I’m very pleased with myself.”

“I truly thought I would be the reason we were getting HPV shots and PREP prescriptions, but you’ve long since outpaced me. I’m so proud of how you’ve grown.” It was the only response I could think to give, as it’s never wise to actually guess the number of sexual encounters Rose has had in a given evening.

“Thank you, but last night wasn’t risky. Everyone used condoms.”

She gave me one of her looks, so I changed the subject. “For the record, I don’t believe for a minute that Jay’s indignant about the number of people you had sex with. Why are they really upset? Did they catch feels?”

“No, but you’re right. The three of us had some issues with gender.”

“Where?”

“At a couple places,” she grimaced, “it kept coming up.”

“Ohh, no. What happened?”

“Well, first we tried to go to what was supposed to be a queer friendly Swinger party. They said you could bring multiple women, as long as there was a maximum of one man in each coupling or triad. We stumped them. We were all happy to get naked, but unwilling to answer penis questions before even entering the house. Apparently that wasn’t good enough.” She put her head in her hands.

“They didn’t deserve to know how many penises y’all were packing. I hope you left immediately.”

“I had some words to say first.”

“You always have words to say about penis numbers.”

“I feel seen. Thank you, honey.”

“Did Jay get to enjoy your words, at least? They are always epic.”

“They appreciated my d*** diatribe.”

“That’s good. Where did you go after that?”

“We went to the first of several Adult Bookstores. We started out on 50th Street.”

“Ohh, honey.” I laughed, guessing what was to come. This was going to be bad. I knew that place from another life.

“So you know about the gendered pricing structures then?”

“Yep. I’m guessing you got more penis questions.”

“They tried to charge us each based on our driver’s licenses. Then, they realized…well, they said that none of us were real men, so we couldn’t go in at all. It was interesting that she wasn’t even consistent about how she defined a real man. We apparently needed a cis male chaperone or a big brother or a knight in shining armor or something. A******.”

“Ugh. What did you do?”

“I just asked her to unpack that. She said it was for my protection. Apparently I was the only one who needed protection, so I asked her to unpack that, too.”

I smiled. “I wish I could have been there for this.”

“Then, I asked her how it was that she could work alone in that place as a woman, yet couldn’t let another woman enter without a cis man for safety. We took our driver’s licenses and walked out while she mulled that over.”

“They didn’t deserve your money.”

“No they didn’t. The next place was better though. It was later at night by then, so there were more people ready to do stuff anyway.”

“So…I see there are two of our apartment keys on the table. Did you make a copy for — ”

“Right. I wanted to talk to you about that. After we dropped Estel off at their apartment , we went over to that 24 hour — ”

My phone vibrated, interrupting Rose.

I glanced down at it, trying to decide whether to silence it completely for this conversation. My boss’ name had popped up. On a Sunday morning? What the h***?

Karen Bradshaw: Check your email. I need you to submit a Telework Request form ASAP. Follow the instructions very carefully. A contact tracer will reach out to you soon.

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