Summer and the City (The Carrie Diaries 2)

I grimace. “Actually, I haven’t.”

“Really?” She’s surprised. Then pragmatic. “Well, it doesn’t make a bit of difference. You’re not missing anything. In fact, if you haven’t done it, I would recommend not doing it. Ever.” She pauses. “And the worst thing about it? Once you do it, you have to keep doing it. Because the guy expects you to.”

“Why’d you do it in the first place?” I ask, lighting another cigarette.

“Pressure. I had the same boyfriend all through high school. Although, I have to admit, I was curious.”

“And?”

“Everything but ‘it’ is fine,” she says matter-of-factly. “‘It’ itself is boring as hell. That’s what no one tells you. How boring it is. And it hurts.”

“I have a friend who did it for the first time and loved it. She said she had an actual orgasm.”

“From intercourse?” Miranda yelps. “She’s lying. Everyone knows women cannot have an orgasm from intercourse only.”

“Then why does everyone do it?”

“Because they have to,” she practically screams. “And then you just lie there, waiting for it to be over. The only good thing about it is that it only lasts a minute or two.”

“Maybe you have to do it a lot to like it.”

“Nope. I’ve done it at least twenty times, and each time it was as bad as the first.” She crosses her arms. “You’ll see. And it doesn’t matter who you do it with. I did it with another guy six months ago to make sure it wasn’t me, and it was just as lousy.”

“What about with an older guy?” I ask, thinking about Bernard. “A guy with experience—”

“How old?”

“Thirty?”

“That’s even worse,” she declares. “His thing could be all wrinkly. There’s nothing more disgusting than a wrinkly thing.”

“Have you ever seen one?” I ask.

“Nope. And I hope I never have to.”

“Well,” I say, laughing. “What if I do it and I like it? Then what?”

Miranda snickers, as if this is not a possibility. She jabs her finger at Samantha’s photograph. “I bet even she thinks it’s boring. She looks like she likes it, but I promise you, she’s pretending. Just like every other goddamn woman on the planet.”

Part Two

Bite the Big Apple

Chapter Ten

Bernard!

“He called me,” I sing to myself like a little bird, skipping down Forty-fifth Street into the Theater District. Apparently, he did call my old apartment and Peggy told him I no longer lived there and she didn’t know where I was. And then Peggy had the gall to ask Bernard if she could audition for his new play. Bernard coldly suggested she call his casting director, and suddenly, Peggy’s memory as to my whereabouts mysteriously returned. “She’s staying with a friend of hers. Cindy? Samantha?”

Just as I’d given up hope of him calling me on his own, Bernard, bless his soul, managed to put two and two together and rang me first.

“Can you meet me at the theater around lunchtime tomorrow?” he asked.

Bernard sure has some odd ideas about what constitutes a date. But he is a wunderkind, so perhaps he lives outside the rules.

The Theater District is so exciting, even during the day. There are the flashing lights of Broadway, the cute little restaurants, and the seedy theaters promising “LIVE GIRLS,” which makes me scratch my head. Would anyone want dead ones?

And then on to Shubert Alley. It’s only a narrow street, but I can’t help imagining what it would be like to have my own play performed in this theater. If that happened, it would mean everything in my life was perfect.