Ending the drought

June 27, 2003 (continued)
10:05pm

I have not had sex for a good two months, and the constant horniness is annoying.

Sure, I jerk off twice a day, and you might think one orgasm is just as good as another. But when a girl gets me off, it means she thought enough of me to strip naked in front of me, to kiss me deeply and hug me with her legs; it means she gave a shit about me, even if just for an hour, and it was important to her to satisfy me. No matter what anyone tells you, that is a powerful feeling--certainly more powerful than rubbing your cock until your hand blisters.

I laugh when guys talk about how they "can't go without it", as if they can get laid whenever they want to. Unless your name is George Clooney, you go through cycles where you can't miss, and others where you couldn't get laid in a whorehouse. No matter what some men say, all of us must endure our share of lonely nights with our dicks standing at attention. Luckily for me, my latest drought might just be over soon.

I knock on the glass door to the pool. Michelle stops and smiles up at me, two wet towels in her hand.

"You're late!" she smiles, opening the door for me.

"I got lost," I say, winking.

"You did? Ohhh, you're kidding me again! I never know when to believe you!"

She walks to the edge of the pool and peels off her Team USA shirt, revealing a tiny bikini top.

I didn't expect her to be so curvy. She struck me as the lean, athletic type when I saw her earlier, but now that she has stood up and turned around, I can see that I was deliciously wrong.

"You comin' in?" she says, and I barely hear her over the pulse pounding in my ears. I'm trying not to stare at her succulent ass, but doing a bad job.

"Yeah!" I reply, finally.

The pool area is completely dark --"So no one sees us," Michelle says--except for the underwater lights, which cast a warm glow around us as we swim.

"So how old are you? And where are you from?" she asks, and it dawns on me that I just met this girl today.

Her boyfriend graduated in May, and asked her to move back to Minnesota with him. She broke up with him instead.

"I'm only 19," she reasoned. "I mean, he was my college boyfriend. It wasn't like I was going to marry him or something." Her voice does not waver, but her eyes plead for me to agree.

If the guy was lame enough to ask some 19-year-old chick to move across the country with him, then I'm sure he cried like a bitch when she said no. He made her feel guilty, though they both knew it was the right choice. This is good news for me: It's a lot easier seducing a girl who is too young to be jaded.

"You did the right thing. You need to live your life. You both do! What was he, 22?"

She wants to know if I have a girlfriend, and if I've ever been engaged or married. I tell her about how Angie agreed to marry me, then unceremoniously ceased all communication, without so much as a "Fuck off and die". I love telling that story. It never hurts to look like an innocent victim.

It's 10:30. She's been working all night, and now she's swimming. Pretty soon, fatigue will set in and all she'll want to do is sleep. Time to make something happen.

You can't be too aggressive with a young girl. I swim to the steps and sit on the second one, looking over at her. "C'mere," I smile.

She sits next to me and leans her head on my shoulder. "I've never had a one-night stand before," she says, matter-of-factly.

My heart gallops. If there was any doubt that she wanted to fuck, it's gone now. And I haven't even kissed her yet.

Now that I'm taking a girl to my hotel room, the last thing I want is to run into my brother in the hallway. He and I would start talking, she'd suddenly feel dirty as hell, and next thing you know, she'd be high-tailing it down the stairs.

Chris's room is right next to mine. Luckily, I'm at the end of a hallway, so if we take the right stairway, we'll have no chance to run into Chris--unless something crazy happens, like him deciding to walk downstairs at the same time we're walking up.

We're halfway up the stairs when the door opens, and immediately I recognize the tattered shorts and huarache sandals.

Yep, Chris.

I open my mouth to say something, then realize that Michelle doesn't know Chris from Adam. If I keep silent, I might just get away with murder here! That is, if Chris knows enough to do the same...

He looks at Michelle, then back at me, then at her again. Our eyes meet briefly and then he is past us, covering his mouth with his hand.

We reach the room. "I want you to use a condom," she says, before the door is even closed all the way. Luckily, I have one in my laptop case, for just such emergencies.

You might think that not getting any for a long time would give me quick-squirt syndrome, but it's just the opposite. It takes me a while to get going, like a car that has not been driven all winter. A blowjob would be awesome, but I doubt this timid little college girl is going to go for that. I start to put on the condom.

"Don't you want me to suck your cock?" she says, with an innocent smile.

She wraps her lips around my stiff rod, and a shudder passes through me like electricity. She shields her teeth expertly, so that all I feel is the inside of her mouth as her head bobs up and down with agonizing slowness. Definitely not the first time she's had a dick in her mouth.

She reaches behind her back and her bikini top falls away, her naked tits tumbling out and rubbing against my grateful midsection. Her head sinks deeper, and deeper still, until I feel the back of her throat and she gags.

"You almost made me puke," she grins.

It's no problem. I've had all I can stand. If I'm not inside her pussy in the next 10 seconds, I'm going to explode.

"Do you want me to--"

"I want you to open your legs for me so I can fuck your tight little pussy."

She slips her bikini bottom down her tanned thighs and sits on the bed, gingerly spreading her knees apart. I watch myself enter her, listen to the wet sounds of our sex, smell our mingling sweat.

I bend over and lick her stiff nipple, and she grabs me behind the neck, mashing my face against her tit. I pull my head back and watch my hips rise and fall against hers, faster and faster, until I feel the wave rise within me. My cock is full, heavy, ready to burst with the full force of my lust. I ache to cum; I cannot possibly hold back any more.

I pull out of her and strip off the condom in one motion. Cum erupts out of me in spurts, onto her stomach, between her tits, into the hollow place at the base of her neck.

I linger over her for a long moment as we catch our breath. Yes, this entire episode was borne of pure lust, but unexpectedly, I enjoyed her company. Somehow I feel like... talking to her.

"That was nice," I say.

Head for in the mountains

Friday, June 27, 2003

I've come to hate long drives. These days, most everything on my to-do list involves typing on a computer or holding a meeting, and I can't do either of them effectively in a car. I'd like to say that a long stretch of highway is a perfect place to relax, but I can't calm down at all; I just sit idly, waiting impatiently for the miles to go by, and watching the guy in the Four Runner next to me pick his nose.

My father's aunt Carol dutifully calls us on the first Tuesday of every month--first my father, then my brothers and I, in descending order by our ages. It's good being in the middle; when I'm tired of hearing about what was on sale at the supermarket that day, I can remind her that she has another call to make.

Once or twice a year, when my father can no longer shoulder the guilt she's heaped on him for not visiting, he somehow browbeats my brothers and me into a trip to the mountains. Telling ourselves that it will be different this time, that it will actually be fun, we load our car and pound due north until our ears pop from the altitude, where civilization stops and the road cuts a clean path through an endless sea of trees.

This is a great place to be for a skier. And if it's winter. Unfortunately, I'm not, and it isn't. If this area was going to be developed into a thriving city, it already would have been. But it hasn't, so until the next ice age, the "center of town" will be nothing but moose-themed gift shops and rustic bed-and-breakfasts.

I insisted on taking my own car this time, and dad told me I was nuts. But work is going well for me, and I have a lot to do this weekend. I really can't spare the time, so, at the first sign of lameness, I am gone--and, lame or not, this is the last time I'm coming up here.

The Twin Mountain Lodge
Coos County, New Hampshire
7:30pm

Dad tried to convince us to stay in one room, but we didn't. What, are we twelve?

I cross the parking lot toward the health club, with a cool breeze in my face. The western sky glows pink and orange, and I can't help but stare at it. I stop where I am and breathe deeply. Maybe this trip will suck less than I anticipated.

I mumble a hello to the girl behind the counter as I sign in, then turn back to look at her again.

Clearly, she bought her "Team USA" t-shirt before she became a woman. Now, it's a prop from a sexy calendar shoot, faded and stretched tight across her ripening bustline.

Wow! You guys sure take this Twin Mountain theme seriously, don't you?

I turn away and stifle a chuckle. "What?" she says, sheepishly. "Did I... say... something dumb?"

Obviously, the common sense train left the station without her on board. The girl has not said one word to me, so how could she have said something dumb? Not that I'm complaining...

"No, of course not. I was just... thinking of a joke." That's usually enough to make it go away when someone sees me laughing.

"Oh, what was it!" she chirps, sitting up straighter in her chair.

For a moment I'm lost in her flawlessly white teeth and huge blue eyes. Damp brown hair hangs lazily, covering part of her face. She's relaxed and sexy, the way your girlfriend looks after coming out of the shower. I have a hotel room here; I wonder if I could convince her to-

"Did you forget it?"

"Huh? Oh, the joke? Well, it's just kinda dirty, that's all."

"Tell me!"

This is a good sign. She's either a complete slut or not offended easily. At the very least, she'll be fun to talk to.

I tell her a joke. She chuckles loudly as soon as I utter the word "dick", though I haven't even reached the punchline yet.

"My God," she says, rolling her eyes. "This one time, I was at a party at my girlfriend's house, and I passed out in her room. And when I woke up, she was giving some guy a blowjob three feet away from me."

Okay, that totally was not a joke. And you know what? I want to get you naked anyway!

"And they asked you to join them, right?" I ask, spitting out the first thing that comes to mind.

Her face goes blank. "Were you there?" she says, and she seems honestly confused.

"What? No, I was just... kidding..."

"Ohh," she says slowly, obviously still processing.

Michelle is on semester break from college, working at the health club for summer cash. A steady stream of swimmers walk past us as we talk, dotting our conversation with thank yous and have a good nights. One man asks what time the pool closes.

"9:45," she answers.

"You're gonna let me come by at 10 though, right?" I ask.

"Umm, yeah, that sounds cool."

...To be continued...

Bad for Baseball

I hope the stands are empty when Barry Bonds hits his 756th home run.

But if fans do show up, I hope that, when the ball lands among them in the bleachers, they avoid it like radioactive waste.

Of course, Barry's got his supporters, and they are more denial-ridden than a church basement full of alcoholics who can quit whenever they want. Their love of Bonds, or the team he plays for, blinds them to his desire to excel at any cost--to his health, to the kids who watch him, or to the game itself.

Bonds's defenders have heard the responses to the allegations, many from Bonds himself, and they repeat them dutifully. But they are either ignorant of the facts, or they hope that we are.

"Steroids don't improve hand-eye coordination," they tell us, "and steroids don't make you see the ball better or swing the bat faster." No, and robbing a bank doesn't improve your credit rating, either. But it does provide a pile of tax-free cash that any self-respecting criminal would drool over. Steroids provide major benefits for those stupid enough to use them; to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

We can learn a lot from men like Lou Ferrigno and Lyle Alzado, who have spoken openly about their steroid use. Steroid users are so driven to win that they are willing to to break the law and the rules of their sport--and to pay with their long-term health--for an extra few pounds on a bench press, or 1/10th of a second in a footrace, or, yes, for another 30 feet on a fly ball.

They also speak of personality changes. Their confidence seems to grow along with their muscle mass, providing a mental edge to match the physical one. We've all seen that guy at the gym, the one whose biceps popped seemingly overnight, who suddenly had no problem hitting on the chick behind the counter, even though her six-foot-four, 265-pound husband owned the place.

Steroids aren't magic. They won't turn Peter Gammons into Pete Rose. What they will do is turn a long fly out into an easy home run. That little nudge was all it took: Suddenly, players who previously only had warning track power were approaching, or besting, the single-season home run totals of guys named Ruth and Maris.

Don't believe me? Think all these home run hitters were on the level? In that case, I guess it's just a coincidence that the Luis Gonzalezes and Sammy Sosas of the world were putting balls on the moon by the bucketload--until baseball outlawed steroids. Now, they're all mortal again, and they want me to believe that the spike in production was just random chance. I don't buy it.

Like any great outrage, there is more than one party at fault. The egotistical, hyper-competitive players could not have gotten away with this had it not been for teammates and managers who loved the stratospheric offense too much to object in any way.

The owners aren't blind either. They read the papers just like you do, they saw the bloated stats, and they drew the same conclusion that any half-witted twelve-year-old could have. And then they did nothing.

Voltaire said, "Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do." In the interest of fairness, and the health of its players, major league baseball leadership should have pushed hard for a comprehensive, all-encompassing steroid ban as soon as the problem became embarrassingly obvious. Sure, the MLB players' association, by many accounts the strongest union in American history, would have made that a difficult, if not impossible task. But the owners should have fought for it. They didn't.

I am asking for something unrealistic, you are saying. No sport would ever do such a thing. But you're wrong.

Funny, isn't it, how we never see NFL kickers booting 73-yard field goals or 90-yard punts. We don't see running backs vaulting into the end zone from the 7-yard line. We hardly ever hear NFL steroid allegations at all. That's because the game has cracked down on illegal drug use, and created a meaningful test program with harsh penalties. Todd Sauerbrun, a punter for the Denver Broncos, was suspended for four games - four - for taking a diet pill which was sold over-the-counter. We regularly hear of similar suspensions, for marijuana and other drugs, by the NFL, long suspensions which cut deeply into a player's paycheck. When's the last time a baseball player was suspended for a drug violation?

And the NFL is not alone. Immediately after competing, Olympic athletes are led to a room where an official watches them urinate into a cup, so they can be drug tested. Medals and world-records are routinely stripped from offenders. Think Bonds is in any similar danger?

I don't care that I am experiencing "baseball history". This is not a heartwarming story. This is the story of an already-great player, for whom mere greatness was no longer enough. I hate what Barry Bonds has done to baseball, and what baseball, in turn, has done to us.