Chopsticks
A close friend of mine was having a party for her twenty-fifth birthday, which meant I had to be there. Even if she wasn’t one of my best mates, and I was invited, I still couldn’t have said no. It was a goddamn house party! Of course, I was going! It had a lot more freedom than being in a nightclub, where all one did was jump up and down. Nothing to do, there. As for bars, I wasn’t much of a drinker, and there were too many assholes getting into fist fights and thinking they were achieving something. Aside from being big pains in the ass, they weren’t doing anything that could considered close to an achievement. It was like alcohol brought out obsolete male impulses in men from one-hundred-thousand years ago.
The birthday party was mostly forgettable until a handsome young man sat next to me and asked me if I wanted to leave. He told me his name was Dan, though he didn’t really look like a Daniel to me. I didn’t care. The man was adorable, and it didn’t help that he had a baritone voice and an English accent. He asked me to take him home since he was also bored, but he was scared to drive, since they drove on the left in England. On the way to his hotel suite, he told me his full name was Dan Abnormal, which was appropriate. That couldn’t have been this was his real name, but he seemed too elusive for me to ask more questions. I told him my name was Liz Phair, and that, like Dan, I also made music, except I wasn’t in a band.
When we got to his hotel, he asked me if I liked to, ‘Do it backwards.’ I was fine with that, but why was he so adamant? Maybe he was bisexual, judging by what I had seen in interviews and with bandmates. I had only heard a few songs from Dan’s band, yet he knew my album, Exile in Guyville, like the back of his soft, smooth hands. Fuck me, that was embarrassing!
What I liked about doing it backwards with Dan was that not only were we getting it on, but we could watch TV, at the same time. I looked at the clock that stood on the bedside table, and the time read three-fifty-nine A.M. I heard Dan asked me if I liked playing jacks, which I assumed was relating to foreplay, but it was a bit too late for that. When we were done, I told Dan that I was once friends with Julia Roberts, back when we were twelve, and that we met at summer camp. I think Dan was too tired to care after that. He probably used up all his energy, and it was getting late, so he, straightaway, fell asleep. It was eerily quiet in the suite, aside from the TV at a low volume, so I drove back to my place. Dan didn’t need to know that I was a shy and introverted woman. I kept that a secret from him. I thought it would put him off sleeping with me.
