Monkey Business. Sarah Mlynowski

I did get it, which is what I don’t get.)

      Russ and Nick, the guys I met yesterday, decided to go out for wings before the party, but I declined. I wanted to get a head start checking out the ladies. Who there weren’t too many of. After a dozen rounds of hand shaking and “Hi, I’m Jamie Grossman, I’m from Florida, I used to work in hospital management, and you?” I switched it up to keep the night lively. I was Jeremy from Iowa, former accountant. And then Bill from Dallas, former gun retailer. I even added a modest twang for effect. My mother had been wrong. The college drama course I’d taken was good for something.

      The party was a total sausage fest. In the common room, the three couches shaped like a horseshoe around the big-screen TV were swamped with men. For the occasion, welcome signs and sagging balloons in the school’s royal-blue had been taped to the freshly painted white walls, which probably destroyed the paint job, but who cares?

      After my fiftieth introduction, a few bowls of pretzels and four plastic glasses of lukewarm Coke, I was bored. Most people were piss drunk, which only heightened their pompousness. Making conversation was like talking to a parrot on Prozac. The people I met couldn’t have cared less about what I had to say. They only wanted to talk about themselves. Which was probably a good thing. I don’t want them to know too much about me anyway. They may start getting suspicious about what the hell I’m doing here.

      I don’t drink. Alcohol makes me depressed and stupid. I prefer my screwups to be done on my own merit. Like failing my first semester of college because I was too in love with Mia Brottman to go to class, or getting fired from my first postdropout sales job because I told my boss he was a dickhead. (He was a dickhead.)

      Anyway, the party was lame. And I was exhausted—I only slept about four hours last night after driving for twenty-four hours from Miami and then partying all night. I was deliberating escaping to my room to relax and watch a DVD. I have three hundred in my room. I am a major movie buff who has wasted many a day enjoying theme specific marathons, such as a Clint-Eastwood-athon, Three-Stoogesathon, etc. (Which might have contributed to my failing my first semester that year.) But as I swallowed the last drop of flat Coke in my cup, in walked a movie star.

      A pint of cold beer to a group of men who’d been chomping on salted pretzels all night, she was wearing a purple silk wraparound top that exposed a liberal expanse of glistening cleavage. Brown curls framed her creamy face, swirling onto her shoulders. I wanted to run my hands over her voluptuous behind.

      I had to talk to her. I was in lust. I maneuvered my way so that I was standing near her, and then, when she looked sufficiently bored with the computer nerd beside her—“D-d-do you know that integrated wire-l-l-less LAN de-de-devices…”—I jumped in with a joke.

      A few drinks (flat Coke for me, beer for her) and several jokes later, my hand was firmly on her arm. And then I asked her to get some air.

      Love that. Air. A euphemism for let’s get it on.

      When I told her I was joining Hillel, the Jewish campus organization, and she said she was thinking of checking it out, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

      Gorgeous, in business school and Jewish. My mother would be so farklempt.

      Then we were sitting next to each other, almost touching, in the courtyard behind the dorm. She was chewing a piece of gum and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sexy way her lips weaved with each bite. I felt like I was in my own porno movie.

      Me: Is that the real color of your eyes, or are they contacts?

      Her: Real. Do you like them?

      She blew out a bubble and then sucked it back into her mouth. I wanted to be the piece of gum moving in and around her lips. I wanted to be that bubble. And when she turned away from me to stretch her legs onto the bench beside her, polishless toes pointed, feet arched—holy foot fetish, I had to have this woman. I couldn’t stop myself from lightly kissing the back of her neck. When she tilted her head toward me, smiling with her juicy, bite-able mouth, I leaned forward and kissed her, savoring the mix of beer and cherry gum in her mouth.

      She grabbed my hand and led me up the stairs to her room. She lit a musky scented candle and turned off the lights. I pulled her shirt over her head, then unfastened her black lace pushup bra and let it drop to the floor. A set of gorgeous breasts stared up at me, their nipples like headlights in the dark.

      “Good evening,” I said to them.

      She unbuttoned my shirt, and then nibbled, bit and kissed my neck, shoulders, chest, nipples, stomach…and then she unfastened my belt, unzipped me and pushed me onto the bed.

      I ran my fingers through her hair.

      She sat up and licked her lips.

      I was as hard as a mezuzah. Which she hadn’t put up on her door, I noticed. I decided that maybe now was not the time to discuss her religious values. Especially since if she wanted to have sex we’d have to do it soon. The cork on my little man was about to pop. “Do you have a condom?” I asked. Or begged, to be more precise.

      “Yeah, one sec.” She leaped off me, her fantastic breasts jiggling, opened her desk drawer and pulled out a Trojan. Wow, we’d just moved into the dorm—she must have unpacked them right off the bat. My kind of woman.

      She leaned beside me and licked her hand, and used it to play with me while she opened the condom wrapper with her other hand and her teeth.

      She had to stop. Don’t stop. Stop. Her hand felt so hot. Don’t stop.

      Oy.

      I came.

      She surveyed the damage. “It’s okay. Not a big deal.”

      What a sweetheart.

      So tired. Needed to rest my eyes for just a moment. Took a nap. When I opened my eyes, she was gone. And I was still exhausted. I found her in the bathroom, said good-night and headed to my room.

      And now, here I am, inexplicably wide-awake, pounding my hand against the bathroom wall. I love B-school. Who knew? I want to scream out to the world how much I love this place. But I don’t want to tell anyone why. I’m not the type who boasts. I can hold my tongue, just not my cum. Ha-ha.

      Maybe I should U-turn to Kimmy’s room for another go. Nah. I don’t want to overwhelm her, or, God forbid, appear too eager (I already scored too high in the eager department). I can wait until tomorrow. We have all year to shtup. Tonight was just a warm-up.

      But I’m too hyper to sleep. Should I watch a movie? Or read? I have a drawer full of movie scripts in my room. I’ve been buying and reading scripts of famous movies since I was ten and I wanted to be an actor.

      Nah. I’m suddenly too hyper to sleep.

      Maybe Nick and Russ are back. Instead of making a sharp left to my room, I hang a right toward the southeast side of the dorm, hoping they’re still up.

      Still up? Under the circumstances, I should probably rephrase that.

      12:32 a.m.

      russ floats and forgets

      I’m contemplating taking off to call Sharon so she doesn’t go ape-shit, when someone knocks on Nick’s door. “Who is it?” Nick asks, eyeing the glass tube of hash on his desk.

      “Jamie,” a deep, low-pitched voice responds.

      Nick inhales from his joint and then exhales out the open window. “Come in.”

      “Good evening, gentlemen.” Jamie pushes open the door and nods at Nick on the computer chair, and then at me. I’ve made myself comfortable, sprawled across the wooden floor. Oh, man, I’m way too relaxed. My arms, legs and ass are numb. I try to raise my hand in a wave, but find that my body won’t cooperate. Instead my fingers feel like they’re floating on the floor.

      “Russ?” he says to me. “Are you conscious?”