“Suzanne is and has always been great in bed,” he added. “And there’s a connection there that I wish I could tell you wasn’t. She was my pet. But more than that, I was in love with her at one point. But she’s not capable of loving someone in return. At least I don’t think so. I suppose I’m as close as she’s gotten to it. She’s very self-centered, very big on appearances, and she always hated being a pet. As soon as she had the opportunity to be an owner, she left me. With barely a goodbye.”
“Sounds like lots of good reasons to be FUCKING her,” I said.
“I have a problem,” he admitted.
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “I’m a sex addict who tried to kill herself, remember?”
“I found myself attracted to you for obvious reasons,” he said. “You’re an angel. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. That I’ve EVER seen. But you’re beautiful on the inside too. You care so much. Remember the conversation we had in the hospital about how you wish you’d spent more time helping others and that you’d love to go see the kids with cerebral palsy I worked with? That’s the kind of stuff that touches my heart.”
“I hear you,” I said, fighting back tears. “I d
on’t understand why you would need any other woman. That’s why it hurts me. Don’t you understand? How did you feel when Suzanne chose to leave you? That’s how I feel now. I feel left behind, unworthy, not good enough to be your only one.”
“It’s therapy for me,” he blurted out. “I’m fucked up. I’ve been fucked up since I was a kid. Nothing I can say right now will make sense to you but the short version of the story is I grew up in some fucked up situations. My dad was never in the picture. When my mom died, I was sent to live with my aunt. She was like most of the people in E. Mayberry. She had her sexual hang-ups. One of them seemed to be fucking her ten year old nephew. It’s sick, I know. But I was ten and she was beautiful and even though I knew it was wrong, I liked it and she enjoyed it. Eventually I was taken from her and thrown into an orphanage. I was twelve by then and for two years straight I’d explored things no kid my age should have explored. Sex wasn’t taboo to me. It was an experience, a way of life, and I loved it.”
I was stunned. Here I’d grown up in a loving family and had my own sexual addictions, mostly from endless flirtation from older boys in the neighborhood. Nothing odd or dysfunctional.
“I guess being so young and having the attention of an older woman fucked up my wiring or something. I was a hornball at a young age. At the orphanage, I’d do things with older girls. Older meaning thirteen, fourteen, all the way up to sixteen. Twice I ended up in a foster home. Once with three other foster kids. The real daughter of my foster mom was eighteen and had moved out on her own. She’d come over for Sunday dinner all the time and we hit it off. I started spending my after-school hours at the apartment she shared with two college roommates. By then I was sixteen so I was well aware of what I was doing. She was the one who introduced me to multiple partners. She brought a roommate in one time and told her friend she could make me do anything, that I liked her that much. She was right. I was smitten. She told me to masturbate in front of them, so I did, and before long we were engaged in a threesome. She brought other girls around sometimes, all interested in seeing the street rat her mom had picked up.”
My story seemed so childish compared to his and suddenly I felt guilty for being so judgmental.
“How did you end up a doctor?” I asked. “Seems like you’ve done well for yourself.”
“Well,” he said with that chuckle of his. “I got that girl pregnant, the eighteen year old daughter. Even then life seemed so important to me. Her mom found out and got rid of me. I couldn’t go back to an orphanage so I moved in with one of the college girls I’d met through my…
“Baby mama,” I joked.
I know. Not really a laughing matter.
“Not really,” he said. “My baby mama, Desiree was her name, had an abortion. I found out about it through my new girlfriend. Girlfriend is kind of a bad word for it. She was one of Desiree’s horny college friends. She had a dorm room all to herself and I had no place to stay so I hung around there and kept her…satisfied.”
I’d had a life where sex was something I simply enjoyed and couldn’t get enough of. He’d had a life where he’d used it to survive. Fucking his aunt because he was told to and fucking college girls so he’d have a place to stay.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Aren’t college girls able to have sex all the time? I mean come on. There are horny dudes on every campus using date rape drugs and stuff. I can’t imagine it’s hard to get laid.”
“She was a virgin,” Bastian said. “She didn’t even have sex with me. I did a lot of other things for her, just about everything else you can imagine, but she was a virgin. Probably the most sexually active virgin on the planet, but she wasn’t having sex that’s for sure. We were more like really good friends with extraordinary benefits.”
“I see.”
“You don’t,” he said.
“Enlighten me,” I replied.
“Seeing her go through school filled me with a drive to do the same. She was studying medicine so I read her books. Thanks to the online world I was able to fulfill my sexual addiction and make lots of money on the side. Older women love young men.”
Especially ones who look like you.
“So you became a gigolo?” I said with a loud hoot.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“That sounds like such an old fashioned word,” he said, “but, yes. I did. I sold my body to pay my way through med school. My girlfriend dropped out and eventually went on to be a waitress at a strip bar, still a virgin. We kept in touch. I went on to become the amazing doctor I am today, left that gigolo stuff behind, but I couldn’t cure my sexual cravings. I’d had such an outlandish childhood that having a normal relationship didn’t do it for me. I could care about a woman and feel something for her on an intimate level, but sexually, I needed variety.”
I actually understood where he was coming from. As much as I thought I wanted to be in a relationship with one man, it had never worked. As an adult actress, I found that variety he was talking about and then came home to my boyfriend. That worked for me. So why was I so angry at Bastian for doing the same thing? Maybe I could learn to appreciate what we had going for us.
“I began going to swinger clubs and going home with couples, you know the kind where the man likes to see his wife with another man. Those and female couples, lesbians who occasionally missed having a cock in the relationship. No strings attached. It was through one of these encounters that a man told me about this neighborhood. I’d just finished fucking his wife when he thanked me and complimented me on my staying power.”
I laughed out loud and Bastian did too.