Read Part I here.
But back on that night I’d visited Boston, Jerry was on good behavior. Or at least offering the appearance of it. He was loud and loaded early, but I could tell he was staying in check, maintaining a surface composure. And the reason for that came quickly – walked into the bar about an hour after I’d arrived.
Let’s call her Brynn to make it easy. Not because her name was Brynn. Just because the name seems to fit. She was pleasant, attractive and personable. All of it, however, was formal, involved but disconnected – Waspy most would say. I’d say downright icy. Nothing absurd, of course. Not like Winthorpe’s terminally constipated fiance in Trading Places, or Caroline Bingley in Pride and Prejudice, but carrying that same detached air – a collection of contrived smiles hiding judgmental frowns.
“I thought you two were broken up.” I whispered in Jerry’s ear.
“We are.” He hugged her hello and turned back to introduce me. “But we mess around a bit. You know. It’s easy.”
It’s easy. Of course I understood that. Everyone understands that. The hard part of fucking is the first – screwing somebody new. It’s always the biggest risk. Will the other person be good? Will this thing turn into a relationship? What if they’re terrible in bed and refuse to leave my place? Force me to take them to breakfast and regale with me tedious stories, the whole time compelled to remember, choking down eggs benedict, just how awful they were… how fast and mechanical or lazy and selfish they’d been? Do I want to assume this risk?
If you’re a man and you’re going to her place, the answer’s always yes. You can leave whenever you want, pull the cord and run when you’re done. But whatever sex you are, if you’re going back to your apartment, you have to assess the downsides. And let’s face it – that’s rarely a man’s issue. You always go to her place, and this leaves the woman to consider, “Do I really want to have this guy over? Seems attractive and funny right now… but I’m seriously fucking loaded. Will he fart all night in his sleep? Snore like a chainsaw, be hung like a Chihuahua or too damned drunk to fuck? Is he a possible closet pervert? The kind who’ll try to assfuck or fist me? Is this a potential Marv Albert?” The list goes on and on, which is why women rarely screw sober, at least the first time around.
And that’s also why exes keep screwing, long after the love part’s dead – long after they’ve reached the conclusion there’s as much dislike between them as there ever was affection, and no prayer in hell of a future where they’d grow old as a couple. It’s easy. People want a simple fuck, and the only way to get that for certain is to fuck what you’ve fucked before. Might not be great or even good, but if you’ve screwed someone they know how you like it. They’ll scratch that nagging itch.
You’ve just got to always remember – keep the interaction light. Don’t be a robot, of course, or act in a transactional fashion. Friendly and nothing else. There was once more than fucking between you, and too much or too little emotion can throw the whole thing off kilter – turn what should have been a simple “session” into an ugly dissection of the past, or a painfully awkward brunch you’d both rather run from than finish. It’s a tightrope walk in high wind, but as those of who’ve fucked exes know, in a dry spell the option’s a lifesaver. Always keep it open.

“So you’re one of Jerry’s fraternity brothers.” Brynn’s greeting wasn’t snide, but the words alone were loaded. Why not, ‘So, you went to college with Jerry’? Or ‘You’re Jerry’s college buddy?’ I wondered if perhaps she were artsy or a closeted counterculture freak, one of the tribes who take it as an article of faith that every male ever connected with the Greek system is a Reagan worshiping, alcoholic date rapist.
Then I considered her necklace, and her neckline, and the rest of what she was wearing. “Impeccable” seemed lacking. Nothing was out of place. No pilling on the cashmere sweater, not a split end in her longish bob. The pearls the chick was wearing were straight from a sorority composite – the ones with the girls in black turtlenecks, same ring of tight white beads around every sister’s neck.
I could see her picture plain as day. “Brynn Mayhew. Rush Chairman ’93. Class of 1995.” Christ… I’m talking to Mandy Pepperidge. I should have been asking barbed questions about her Greek experiences. And looking around the bar to see if Bret Marmalard or Neidermeyer was about to sucker punch me for making time with an Omega House groupie.
“You could say that. I mean, some people described it as a fraternity.”
“What else could I say?”
“What would you like to know?” It was obvious where she’d been heading. Everybody took the same tack – “So what was Jerry like in college?” The answer was short – “the same.” But in this case I welcomed her questions. I was single at the time, and in the background, talking to a friend of Jerry’s was an impossibly hot brunette who’d come in trailing Brynn. I’ve never had good opening lines. Never had a standard pithy quip, offer of a drink or compliment. I’m great with the second and third, but that warming-up takes some time, time in which a woman might think, “He’s cute, but on second thought, no.” That or “He’s stuck-up, aloof.” In a threesome or foursome, I’m golden. It’s easier to work a crowd. When it’s only you and the girl, you’re limited to using what she’s giving. In a group the material’s endless, comments from every angle on which to hang the next joke. And the structure’s so forgiving. Your flat stuff’s buried in the crossfire, where one on one it’s left hanging, fouling the air between you.
“Who did he date? How many?”
“That’s a long list.” Actually, it wasn’t. Jerry’d dated as many women as I did during college, which amounts to maybe five in total. That’s not to say he slept with five women in college. The numbers there are much higher. But dating in a school like ours? That just didn’t happen. There were random drunken hook-ups, which were eighty percent of campus sex, and then there were the serious couples, which filled out most of the remainder. Nobody “dated” anybody. But I didn’t tell her that. She was clearly still interested in Jerry, and as much as women claim they want a man of limited conquests, in reality, the only kind of man they want is a guy other women want to fuck. He can be uglier than a bag of assholes, an obnoxious self-centered prick or the dullest zero on the planet, but if for one reason or another, he’s fucked a fair number of women, and other women know that, they’ll want to fuck him. Don’t believe me? Consider the “Sorority Domino Effect.” Fuck one sister and you’ll fuck another. Fuck two and you’ll fuck three, three and you’ll fuck six. Fuck six and you’ll fuck the whole class. And it doesn’t stop in college. In any bar, in any club, on the floor of any business, a guy with a woman’s attention attracts other women’s attention. It isn’t because he’s hot. It isn’t because he’s funny, and it isn’t because he’s rich. It’s just because other women want him – an instinctual female urge to have what the competition covets. And it’s the reason womanizers do so well. The more they get, the more they get. All a man has to do is start the snowball rolling, every sucker in the chain thinking she’ll be exception – the one who wins the game, taking Mr. Perfect off the market.
With Brynn, however, I had to call it “dating.” As common as her incentives were, she’d been raised with a concern for appearances. Whatever Jerry’s history was, it needed a “proper” veneer.
“More than five?”
“Over a dozen.”
“A dozen?”
“But probably under twenty.” A bit of inflation there, but marketing isn’t lying. And I was selling a product. I had to reinforce Jerry’s brand, convince Brynn that of all the places she could or might have been, this was her best effort. She was with the hot brunette, and it wasn’t happenstance they’d come. Jerry’d told her where he’d be, and he’d told her he’d had a friend in town. It wasn’t a point blank set-up, but if the brunette was with her for the night, and Brynn was with Jerry for the night… Well, you can work the math from there.
“Wide margin of error.”
“Why not play it safe?”
“Because there’s nothing to lose?”
“Or gain.”
“What do you care?”
“I don’t know.” Truly, I don’t. Half this conversation is verbal table tennis, slapping little barbs back and forth. It looks smart, sounds smart, and sometimes it is. But a lot of it’s auto pilot stuff, focusing on the speed of reply rather than what’s being said. “It’s early.”
“Perceptive.”
“Even a blind cow finds an acorn every now and again.”
“I might want to take that back.”
“What?”
“How long have you two been drinking?”
“I’ve only had three, or… two.” Here, that is. There was the one in the train station. And the two at the airport… Flying stone sober’s madness. The issues with comfort aside, air travel’s a black swan endeavor. It’s a one in seventy million shot your plane will fall from the sky. But if that’s the card you draw, in those moments as the impact draws closer, as the g-force pins your eyelids to your forehead and the screaming and praying starts around you, do you really want to find yourself lucid? Processing with total clarity? The last thing I want to feel is a sloppy shrug of acceptance, the one that accrues from brown liquor.* Are we really hitting the ground? Shit. Talk about winning the reverse fucking lottery…
“Jerry’s ‘two’ is what? Five? Eight?”
I smiled right through Brynn’s comment as the brunette made her way toward us.
“This is my friend, Bernice.”
“Berr-nice… Hello.” Who does that to a child? It wasn’t “Eunice,” “Helga” or “Ethel,” but still – what an awful goddamn handle. And for a chick so ridiculously hot. She was thin, olive-skinned, 5’7 and her face… her face was simply unreal. Lime green eyes framed on sharp, smooth cheekbones, the angular kind that hint at a Native American background. The helmet was so utterly flawless I’d barely noticed the uniform. Then she grabbed a drink from the bar and I was able to glance her ass. High and bulletproof tight, holding a black skirt in the air the way a sixteen year old’s suspends those tartan folds in a Catholic school uniform.
“So you’re Jerry’s out of town friend?”
“I am.”
“From Philadelphia.”
“By accident.”
“Your car broke down and you never left?”
“Close.”
“I’ve never been there, but I’ve always wanted to see it.”
“Seriously?”
“Honestly?”
“Is there a reason to lie about that?”
“It’s not on the must-do list.”
“Wasn’t on mine, either.”
“But that’s what you always say.”
“What if I were from Bismarck?”
“I’d know you’d know I was lying, so I wouldn’t say that.”
“Baltimore?”
“These are the options. If it’s a big enough city, you say you want to go there. If you’ve been there, you say you enjoyed it. If it’s tiny or remote, the kind of place nobody would expect you’d been to or would ever want to go to, or an obviously awful place, you ask what it’s like.”
“Detroit. That’s a big city.”
“I didn’t say it was a foolproof approach.”
“So how do you know Jerry?”
“How do you miss Jerry?” In the background, Jerry was ordering a round for a bunch of what looked like interns, all in open-collared oxford shirts, two-button blazers and Cary Grant haircuts. “Load ‘em up! Put it on mine.” I could hear him bellowing to the bartender through a cigarette, backslapping a blazer to his left.
“Tassel loafers,” she pointed to one of the blazers. “A sin.”
“I have tassel loafers.”
“You might be able to pull it off.”
“You think so.”
“No. But that’s what you say.”
“Should I believe anything from you?”
“Tassels really are bad.”
“So what’s the deal with Jerry and Brynn? Just a primer, so I know where not to step.”
“The deal with Jerry and Brynn,” she leaned and spoke to my lapel, “is avoid talk of ‘Jerry and Brynn.’ Don’t touch it. Don’t get near it. Just let it do what it does.”
“What does it do?”
“Depends how drunk they are. Just don’t bring ‘them’ up.” I never forgive air quotes, but Bernice got a pass on that. Even her hands were hot, or at least the way they moved. A total absence of urgency, any hint of stress or concern, right down to the sweep of her fingers.
“I’m going to be with them all night. How does it not come up?”
“I’ll take care of you.”
You have no idea where I’m running with that comment in my head right now. Then again, maybe you do.
Part III will be up Thursday.
____________________________
* You want to face that end with an English upper lip. Total resignation, like the old man in “The Great Gig in the Sky“: “I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do… Why should I be frightened of dying? There’s no reason for it–you’ve gotta go sometime.”

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