Jana finished off a shot of something orange-red. “How do you know so much?”
By the time we arrived at my flat, Jana had a face confused with, and by, alcohol and bemused titillation. Her eyes drooped under the weight of a colossal amount of liquor, as if they alone carried the burden of being drunk, her sobriety attacked on several fronts by a wide variety of distilleries, wineries, and breweries. My own eyes had trekked a similar forest of intoxication. It had been a very long night for both of us, and this would become one of the longest nights of my life, although not the longest, as its effects would last well beyond our hangovers-at least for me, as I found her psychologically impenetrable for the most part, which effectively disqualifies me from speaking for her.
Why can't we ever recognize these types of experiences while they're happening (or better yet, before), instead of the far more familiar predicament of significantly after? For all of the victory speeches spewed by the West for our attainment of freedom, there are scarce few choices I ever remember making; I remember, however, many things that happened to me. Plzen happened to me, though that city never lost its grip on. Munich happened to me and was still happening, and then Jana happened to me, made worse by my cramped flat that was so far west that it barely counted as even being in Munich. Maybe the part of town I was unfortunate enough to live in was called Pasing for a reason.
Events are always either amplified or attenuated by the location, and this was clearly amplified by the catastrophe beginning in Schwabing, a rather austere and in some ways beautiful district, and then gently deteriorated after a long S-Bahn journey through graffiti-caked buildings and the drunk pensioners at Pasingbahnhoff, then downgraded even further to my flat-which qualified as a downgrade from just about anywhere.
Munich, despite the problems I plan on pointing out in pedantic detail, is an extraordinarily beautiful city, with its grand monuments and gorgeous parks. It's an incredibly green city, compared to other large cities in Western Europe, and even so in Germany, which seems to pride itself on greenery. It is all especially pleasing at night, when I thrived on wandering the streets-even though I most often wandered to Murphy's. I had been to a fairly large percentage of pubs and biergartens in the city, but Murphy's was the one that I went to more than the rest put together. Consequently, I can't seem to forget what happened there, or I why I can never go back.
In my flat, off in the corner, on my one table, was an orange juice bottle that I had been using as an ashtray, which, as if to punctuate my lot in life, had not been emptied in weeks. The yarn-colored carpet (its closest cousin being taupe) with cigarette burns, stolen coasters and the bin overflowing with spent packs, and the only area lacking in chaos was a stack of books, alphabetized and sorted in subsections that changed periodically according to my mood, and the wardrobe that inexplicably took up half of the incredibly small room all created an atmosphere that reflected me with precision.
I liked to think that my attitude towards women separated me from most other pig blokes out there, and this was a code I had to develop on my own (with much unintended assistance from my father), as God neglected to supply me with a forwarding address after leaving the church altogether, if in fact ever residing there in the first place. If my intended entre doesn't really want me, then I don't do a bloody thing, more often than not at least.
Taking a girl that wants to shag you just because she's pissed is like beating up a little kid-there's no victory in it, even if the little wanker deserves it. There are times, though, that any victory will do-not that I'm very proud of those moments, but all us have a few under the belt, if we've got the bollocks to admit it. And I doubt it, but there you go. Find that discussion of ethics in Sunday school.
Even if Jana was as drunk and pent up as me-if that was possible (it had been a long time for me; I was almost certain that her chastity had not been as lengthy), tastefully naked and illuminated by the lights from a nearby mall spraying capitalistic light even as high as my window-which took up the entire wall-on the sixth floor (I had never bothered to get curtains, despite my visible propensity for sleeping during daylight hours whenever possible), and looking up at me very expectantly from under me on my very own bed with little helpless doe eyes; her obeisant posture, especially due to its nakedness and curves, left my moral muscles enormously strained.
Not that I always followed my rules, of course (who does in this-or any-millennium?), but the intention was almost always there. I didn't want my honor or peace of mind, or anybody else's for that matter, nicked on account of my seemingly uncontrollable libido.
I didn't have much tangible honor left those days (and I am still hesitant to assess it too deeply in the present), as widespread nobility seemed to have died during my parents' formative years, with the ethics of the past long dead and slowly decaying. I knew that I would be a crusty old fuck with a pipe someday, but I hoped that I would be a different flavor than previous and current crusties.
My own standards were and are encrusted deep in my soul in an unknown location. I could never see why any woman wanted to bed me to begin with, so I needed some approach to let me sleep with a clean conscience at night, not that I got much sleep ever but I liked to enjoy it when I got it. My love life over the years had provided several gratifying sexual transactions, but when shagless it wasn't always the sex I missed the most. Having someone sleeping next to me was what I missed more than anything, despite snores and morning breath and everyone's hair in a fucking state.
Jana began to snore in a distinctively drunk fashion. I could easily guess that, while Jana would be sleeping with me that night (passing out, actually, but that almost counts as the same thing for short term purposes), she would not be a permanent fixture in my bed. Besides, and almost as importantly, I had discovered early in my attempts at seducing her that our friends had a large patch of convergence. I enjoyed a reputation as a thoughtful lover, mainly because that in the rare instances where I wasn't as thoughtful (primarily due to excesses of alcohol, but also due to the fact that I hadn't been anybody's lover in a long time) my partner had been unknown to all that knew me. Jana's connection with my friends all but put me on stage; whatever the outcome of this evening, everybody would know about it in far greater detail than I would remember it.
This might have even been the reason for the events that followed, but reality is rarely that clarified. Truth, as the Russians are fond of saying, is to be found at the bottom of the glass. I wish they would have told me which glass.
Any man that tells you he knows why women sleep with him is a lying cunt, you can quote me by title, chapter, page number, and page position. We don't have a fucking clue. In reality, we guess every time. Men, as if this is a major revelation, are the aboriginal architects of revisionism; if we ask twenty-one women to bed only to be turned down by the first twenty, we will only recall the twenty-first that said yes. It's as if we knew all along that she was the one that would agree to our advances, if you were to listen to our recollection of events, which is why I don't listen to men very often.
Women, although unpredictable in the present, are often much more reliable historians-unless they are remembering what I did. Unfortunately, men are the most widespread storytellers, painting a phallic manipulation on history and giving it a decidedly penile perspective. Maybe this is why men exhibit such a propensity for military invasion; it is the only political and military method of penetration available, and the men that tell the tales are just as equally only interested in when and where penetration occurred.
Jana kept staring at me, clearly waiting for me to proceed with something. I put on the most earnest and somber aura I could summon-all of which fooled me into thinking I was making a choice and warding off fate.
I made the mistake of making an unplanned-though necessary-verbal attack with a blunt object. “I can think of nothing worse than waking up with you tomorrow morning with the hangover I know you'll have and then have you wonder why the hell you slept with me, that's why. I am bugger all pissed, but I know I have distinct memories of wanting to fuck you well before my fifth beer.”
She buried her head under my ear and exhaled heavily. “Oh, shut your gob, you bloody fool.”
I know my words didn't sound terribly romantic, or even mildly stimulating, but I had my rules to stick by-even if they got a bit blurry when I drank too much. And here, I most assuredly drank far too much. With my dwindling moments of sobriety, I was in desperate need of rules for my life outside of sex. Unfortunately, this dwindling condition all too accurately describes most of my adult life. We all have our vices, and I accept this one to bear with decrepit honor, despite the consequences I still pay. The grave deserves a wrecked cadaver; at least, this is what I told myself when I lit a fag or downed a pint, and beliefs like this are inherently self-fulfilling. Self-fulfilling prophecies are the most maddening of all; they become a cliff that carries an irrevocable finale once the first and only step has been taken.
She stared at me with glassy eyes for a few moments, sighed, and nodded positively-which I (very) drunkenly took as a vague Yes, I am sure to my question-then kissed me, and I just went daft. I hadn't kissed a woman in ten months-a very long ten months-and hunger makes the best curry, I always say. Her accent, a seductive South African simmer with all the warmest spices, had been making me dizzy with thoughts of earnest penetration for six hours by then. Her kiss, however, was fucking pants, the kind of ineptitude that cannot simply be mitigated due to the result of alcohol-not even as much has we had killed that night. Her tongue was rigid and immobile, and seemed largely interested only in gratifying itself.
However, try going ten months without eating, and see if you gripe about the overcooked pasta on your plate. Fuck no, you'll ask for a straw and seconds.
I tossed her around and kissed her all over, and then found that her kiss drove me to put my mouth anywhere except her mouth, and then I caught the signal that it was time for sex-and don't ask for an explanation of this signal, as it is as elusive as the signal that guys give off just before they throw the first punch; it is simply time to respond with something.
But just as I was beginning to savor the impending meal, my eight (I think) beers-just a bit beyond my usual scoping limit, but I hadn't exactly planned on scoping that night, either-decided that even the slightest hint of tumescence was not going to be on tonight's menu for either of us. I had become the overcooked pasta, and there would be no seconds, or even firsts, for either of us.
She rolled on top, sat up, and made it all even worse, if you can imagine that-and you are welcome to, but I'd rather you didn't. “I like what I see there, and I want this inside me, now.”
Great, spot on fucking bugger great. Beer, pressure, and then more pressure; if my penis could have retreated into my abdomen and chatted it up with my spleen it would have done so. I could tell right then I wouldn't get hard for a week at best, if ever, the way I felt. I had been stiff as Priapus for six hours straight, but now?
She was wet and swollen with something approximating arousal, but all I could do was observe. She took her left hand and plunged her fingers deep within her, (yes, I can remember which hand, even now) and then caressed my face with the same hand. It was like living out a masturbatorial fantasy, except this was real, countable, graphable, and visible.
I couldn't get it up, not to save the Queen or country. Had it been pointed in the proper direction, it would have looked up at me with a wrinkled and flaccid eye and pretended not to know who I was, but all it did was simply give the same limp gaze to my feet.
