Sorry, I mouthed silently, cringing and wincing.
But she just looked amused and gave me a look like, See? What’d I tell you?
She’d been right.
Which scared me even more about some of the other things she’d said.
To his credit, Derek realized in the next few hours that he’d been a complete douchebag.
First he apologized to me.
“I don’t think I’m the one you should be apologizing to,” I said.
So he sucked it up and tracked them both down separately, and apologized in my presence for being a complete fucking asshole about the whole thing.
Ryan was nicer than any human being ought to be. “Nothing to apologize for, man.”
Riley, however… was Riley.
“SO… you’re saying Ryan actually does write all the tunes, then, Word Boy?”
There was no apology forthcoming for the fight that happened after that.
100
There were some sexual memories that stood out, too.
Not all of them were good.
Like the fight we had about oral sex. Specifically blowjobs.
Fellatio is not my favorite act in the sexual pantheon. I don’t think I’m very good at it, and I always feel like I have a loaded gun in my mouth, ready to shoot a bunch of bad-tasting gunk at my tonsils.
Blech. I have the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.
But I’ve done it for boyfriends in the past. Not often, but I figure if they went down on me, I should reciprocate.
Derek went down on me several times. The first time he was great – that time he ‘relaxed’ me. But he only did it a couple times after that. As time wore on, it became obvious that his enthusiasm lay elsewhere.
But I still had the whole guilt thing about him going down on me and I hadn’t returned the favor yet. So there was this running dialogue in my head: Should I go down on him? He did it for me. Should I? Is he expecting it?
He was, it turned out.
He kind of forced the issue. We were naked and getting ready to go at it. He was lying on the bed on his back, I was above him like I was getting ready to do ‘Woman On Top,’ and he just grabbed my hair and started pushing my head down towards his crotch.
“No,” I said before I realized it.
He kept pushing, ignoring me.
“NO,” I said, and jerked my head away.
He stared down at me in shock. “Why not?!”
Okay… beyond my obvious discomfort with blowjobs, there was another factor specific to Derek:
I was afraid of catching something.
Yes, I know he said he was tested regularly.
Didn’t matter. I still was afraid of catching something.
And in retrospect, on a subconscious level, I think I was afraid he might be lying to me. Especially after Killian’s little ‘scorpion and the frog’ story.
I was eventually able to shut off the thought of all the women he’d been with, at least so I could be there emotionally during sex. But I absolutely could not ignore his past when it came to my own health.
It was why, even though I was on birth control, I’d insisted we use a condom every time, from start to finish. (Well, except for that whole ‘stoned in Joshua Tree episode.’)
Even a month into the relationship, I’d never told him I was on birth control, because I knew that he would just nag and nag and nag about the condoms, and I didn’t want to get into that. Partly because I was afraid I would give in.
So I kept it on the down-low. I even had to slip away from the band in one city and get a refill on my NuvaRing prescription without anybody knowing.
So when he asked me “Why not,” there was a ton of stuff going through my head.
I didn’t answer for a second.
“Why not?” he asked, a bit more petulantly – which turned me off even more.
“I’m… when was the last time you were tested?” I asked.
He stared at me. “It’s a blowjob.”
“Yeah, I know. When was the last time you were tested?”
He started to get angry. “I didn’t ask you to get tested.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t been with God knows how many guys.”
As soon as I’d said it, I was afraid – because if he’d said something like that to me, in the tone of voice I’d said it in, I would have punched him in the balls. Or stormed out of the room. Or punched him in the balls and then stormed out of the room.
But his expression actually softened. “Okay, okay. I guess… like… a month ago?”
At the time, ‘a month ago’ was a couple of weeks before I’d shown up.
“So… did you have sex with anybody between the time you got tested and our first time together?”
His face set, like he was realizing the way the conversation was going to go. “…yes.”
Although I wasn’t happy to know I was still potentially in danger from conventional sex, I was also relieved: I had an ‘out’ as far as the blowjob thing.
“That’s why I don’t want to do it.”
“Nothing’s wrong – I haven’t been – ”
“I’m not comfortable with it.”
He paused, and seemed to think. “…what about with a condom?”
Okay, about the only thing less fun for me than a blowjob would be a blowjob with a condom.
In theory, anyway. I’d never tried it before. But the one thing I liked about oral was skin on skin – as long as the guy had showered and tasted clean. There were other problems, but that was the one thing I liked.
And now, we were going to throw that out, too.
But I felt like I’d backed myself into a corner. If I said, ‘And I don’t like giving blowjobs,’ then that would become the issue… and I knew we would have a fight about it, which I just didn’t the energy for at the moment. And he had already gone down on me three times without ever asking for anything in return (until now)…
“…okay,” I agreed. Reluctantly.
So I did it.
And it was terrible.
I can understand women who don’t have a problem with the taste actually really enjoying giving blowjobs. It could be an incredible turn-on knowing you’re giving that much pleasure to somebody you love. And if you’re really good at it, I bet there’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that you’ve got the guy completely at your mercy… that he would do just about anything for you if you just give him what he wants.
But I can’t imagine anybody enjoying giving a blowjob with a condom on.
Maybe if it was a mint-flavored condom. Or a chocolate-flavored one… or something.
But this was an ordinary latex condom.
At least it didn’t have lube on it; that probably would have been worse. God knows it was bad enough as it was.
The taste… UGH. The taste was even worse than doing it without one.
It sucked all the moisture out of my mouth completely. I felt like I’d put some especially nasty-tasting baby powder on my tongue. At least it wasn’t gritty. Thank heaven for small favors.
And the feel was like covering a banana in plastic and then putting it in your mouth. Not sexy.
After a couple of minutes of me doing a terrible job, Derek pretty much realized my enthusiasm lay somewhere else completely, so we went back to regular sex.
The whole blowjob thing had been such a turn-off, though, that it took me forever to get into sex. I eventually did come, but it took a lot longer than usual, and it wasn’t as good as it usually was.
What disappointed me was he didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t as into the sex. He just kind of kept going at it, never stopping to ask, ‘What’s wrong?’ or ‘Can I do something for you?’
On the plus side, he never asked me for a blowjob again.
101
So, amidst all the hot and heavy memories, there were at least a couple that stood out because they were unpleasant.
But there was one that was freakin’ awesome. And really, really unusual. And didn’t involve psychedelic mushrooms.
We were in Salt Lake City at the time. I remember that because ‘the Mormons’ figured prominently in the conversation.
The day after the performance, Derek and I decided to strike out and go see the Great Salt Lake. After a day of band practice, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. We left the hotel around 7 o’clock in the evening and drove the Mercedes convertible he’d bought in Irvine.
The Mercedes had become the bane of Miles’s existence, because it was one more thing to be taken care of. Crew members had to be assigned to drive it behind the tour bus as we moved from city to city, and then park it somewhere safe overnight. You never heard the crew members complain – hey, they got to drive a ‘69 Mercedes – but Miles was always super-pissed.
“Thank you so fuckin’ much for makin’ me the babysitter for your impulse fuckin’ decisions,” Miles barked one afternoon. “Not that you don’t make my life fuckin’ hard enough already.”
“What do I pay you 15 percent for?” Derek taunted him. “You certainly don’t do anything else to earn it.”
Which turned into another memorable confrontation.
But today I was thankful, because we were tooling around with the top down, the hot sun warming our skin and the wind whipping through our hair. In case you’re wondering, the sun doesn’t set in Salt Lake City in the summertime until around 9:00. Whether it’s a quirk of the altitude or where the city lies in the time zone, it was still plenty bright and plenty warm at 8 o’clock at night.