“It’s so funny,” Alex continues, “there’s actually a party tonight.”
I look at him and I feel naked already. Like my clothes have been ripped off and every shameful flaw is on display. My heart drops a little. I glare down at the nonalcoholic water I’m holding in my hand and have been dutifully drinking like some asshole. I feel a flash of rage. Who am I kidding? Everyone knows who I am, even strangers I’ve just met.
I’m the girl you take to a sex club.
“All right, you little shit,” I say, harder than before. “I’ll take that drink now. Because I’m not drinking water if I’m going to a fucking orgy.”
Before we reach the club in the Meatpacking District where the dubiously named One Leg Up party is being held, Alex grabs my hand and whispers: “I’m your boyfriend now.”
I laugh, but it also secretly delights me. Of course, I know what he’s doing. He’s just trying to ensure we appear to be a real couple and will be let inside. Versus the reality of what happened, which is that he is a single horny guy who wants in to the party, so he plucked a chick off the street whose self-worth is so in the gutter she’s literally up for going to a last-minute sex orgy—like, within two hours of meeting.
Outside the mysterious China One club, Alex gives the password (“I’m naughty”) and whips out two hundred-dollar bills for entry. One for him. One for me.
We head down the stairs to the lounge below, elliptical Moroccan music encircling us, and he takes my hand again, guiding us to the bar to get drinks, then to a maroon velvet banquette on the side. The two of us sidle up next to a buxom British chick who is pouring out of a tight red dress and snuggling up next to some dashing Peter O’Toole–looking motherfucker.
The Absolut I’m downing is starting to take effect. I’m feeling loose, brash, and free.
“We should play a get-to-know-you game!” I say to this ridiculously attractive couple. “Like truth or dare or something.”
“Ooh yes, okay, me first,” the man pipes up. “How about, I dare you . . . Mandy, is it? I dare you to go down on Sylvie here. Sylvie just loves girls.”
“No problem,” I say, smiling and empty. As I walk over to Sylvie, a small crowd begins to form, which includes the resident coke dealer—whose job is to obviously know where the action is before anyone else.
No one wanted to buy any coke.
“Oh, that’s okay,” the dealer says to me, “I just want the visual so . . . I’m going to give you a bump to do off that girl’s big-ass titties so I can have that burned in my brain, okay?”
I do the line greedily, then dutifully lift the bottom of Sylvie’s dress and slowly lick her clit, all the while perking my ass up in order to best pornify the whole encounter for Alex and all our new friends.
“Oooh, my turn!” Sylvie cries out. “Mandy, I want you to go down on Alex!”
The energy changes a little, and Alex looks annoyed.
“Sure,” he says, clipped and less confident than I’ve seen him all night.
I soon see why. Alex is adorable, but this is his best—his biggest—attribute.
There are times like this in life when you are really forced to woman up to be who the man you are with needs you to be. And I am not going to let Alex down.
“Oh yeah,” I say, summoning every acting lesson I’ve ever had. “Mmm, give it to me.”
I get on my knees, count to a hundred Mississippi, and do the best object work of my life.
Yeah—my first attempt at sobriety is not going well at all.
EVEN WORSE THAN blowing my eight days of sobriety is the unbearable guilt I feel at having totally blown eight days of sobriety. I hate more than anything the feeling that I’ve done something wrong. It’s a debilitating kind of perfectionism I’ve had since childhood where I’m so afraid to have done something wrong that I stubbornly stick to whatever wrong choice I’ve made—all so I can avoid the shame of having to admit I screwed up in the first place. So instead of returning to the rooms of AA, I stick to my guns that I did the right thing in going back to partying. Besides, you never know, Alex the sex-club boy might . . . actually . . . be interested in me?
I am so dumb. But, truly, from the moment Alex grabbed my hand and said, “I’m your boyfriend now” and talked about going on a “sexual heart of darkness” journey with me, I thought there might be a real connection. That he would call. That he would want to hang out again. That the drinking and the partying and all of it was worth it—the right thing to do. It had to add up to something . . . right?
But the sun still rises in the east, the sky is blue, and of course he doesn’t call.
That doesn’t mean I can’t talk about the experience, though, to get the whole thing out of my system. Which leads me to a conversation with a man who is a friend of friends. When I spill to him the details of that crazy night, he tells me that he, too, has been to sex clubs. He seems to accept my weirdness, and I like that. He gives me weed and booze and coke, and I like that even more. It’s an escape. That’s all I’m seeking. Just one more escape. Just for a little while.
But the higher we get together, the darker our encounter becomes. He slaps me, insults me, and jerks my hair in a way that feels like my neck is snapping. It doesn’t feel like playful S&M. It feels sinister.
When I finally sober up to realize I need to get the fuck out of his apartment, I rush to get dressed in
