You Can Keep A Good Girl Down Part I

All I wanted was the sex. That’s it. That was all. All my life from every source from my grandmother to NPR I’ve heard that all men want is sex. So when I agreed to go to his apartment to watch movies, I thought it was pretty much a done deal. True, I was only twenty-one and very inexperienced at the time. I hadn’t had sex since the one time when I was in high school, and I didn’t want to go through my entire college career without any sex at all. On the bus to his apartment, I kept wondering why I was doing this. It was wrong, just to go over to have sex with someone, someone that essentially I knew almost nothing about. On the other hand, it was the best offer I’d had in a long time. I had met him in a bar a few days before. Because I was with my gay friend Four Eyes, I didn’t have more than twenty minutes or so to chat with him, but when Four Eyes began yanking me towards the door of the Tenth Street Lounge, he insisted on getting my phone number. He was an older guy, not too old, not Humbert Humbert old, but older than a college student should have considered, but he looked like a younger handsomer version of Willem Dafoe so I gave him the right number. He called a few nights later and asked what I was up to, when I said I had no plans he asked if I might want to come over to watch movies. He had vodka and cranberry and could make us cocktails. It would be a relaxing evening. Of course an older, and the assumption is more experienced, man is supposed to take control of the situation and so my mind was filled with fantasies of him seducing an innocent and inexperienced girl and teaching me what my gay male friends never could. I hadn’t had anything even vaguely resembling a date since I had come to NYU mainly because I was constantly surrounded by beautiful gay men. When I got to his house he made cocktails while I perused his movie selection. I picked Tootsie, a film I was very familiar with so if we never got to see the end I wouldn’t be disappointed. I sat on one side of the couch, he sat on the other. I waited for him to make his move, but he watched the film, riveted, apparently, by the performances. After the movie, he made another drink and asked me a few questions. Somehow the topic of my medical history, specifically that I had had cancer, came up. “What was it called?” He asked me. “A neuroblastoma.” I tried to explain to him what it was. How the damage worked. Finally I just had to tell the whole story. “So by the third day I was paralyzed.” “Are you making this up?” Now I have been asked some amazingly stupid questions in my life, but none quite this ludicrous. I mean, seriously. What the hell would be the point? That’s a lot of research and self mutilation and for what? “No, I have the scars and the medical records if you really want to check.” “And what was this called again?” “A neuroblastoma.” When I got to the end of my story he asked, “Isn’t there anything that can be done?” “No, not really. Not in terms of improving the situation.” “But I would think that medical science….” “I’ve been seen by specialists across the country. The best. My mother runs a hospital. If something could be done, I would know about it.” “It just seems…” “Trust me.” I turned the conversation to other things and all the while I was waiting for a hand on the knee, a kiss, a hint, a tour of the bedroom, something resembling anything vaguely like a pass. Finally he said, “You know it’s late. You can stay here with me, I don’t mind. I’m sure you don’t want to travel alone so late at night.” Jackpot, I thought.