View or add comments on this story
"Five hundred times?" Alan gasped, incredulously. "Impossible."
"Well if you work it out logically," I reasoned, "a couple of times a week for, say, four of your fifteen or so sexually active years - as an average, you understand - that's several hundred times. Well, anyway, I'm definitely planning on doing it more than six times."
"OK," Alan said, pensively, "maybe six is a bit low. How about maybe... thirty."
"Look, you're bound to do it at least, er... seventy times a year for a few of your sexually active years. That's bound to get into the hundreds."
"Seventy times a year..." Alan's eyes looked glazed. "I can't imagine that."
"I know people that have done it more than thirty times," I said, almost angrily.
"How do you know that?" challenged Alan.
"Well, it's obvious, isn't it?" I said, floundering. "Like, for example, my cousin was talking about sex when we went on holiday with them ages ago. She's done it more than six times, and she's only twenty years old!"
"How did you get him to tell you that?" queried Alan.
"Her, not him. Haven't you ever heard girls talk about sex? They're extremely graphical, and they never lie."
"Oh. Yeah. That is true." Alan admitted. "Karen often strikes up shocking conversations with mum at the dinner table. But seventy times a year!"
"Well, it may not be an average," I conceded, "but it must be normal at least."
The conversation paused as we approached the petrol station. Alan and I walked off the pavement and across the grass towards the shop. We both had our hands in our pockets. He was wearing an old, holed tracksuit and a stained blue shirt. I wore jeans and a leather jacket sporting the logo of my favourite television programme. And a pig.
"Are you going in there with that pig?" asked Alan.
"Yeah, never mind. This guy's seen weirder things. Like the time Erika, our au-pair Sara and I all painted our faces white and went to this shop in the dark. The poor guy thought he was being robbed! You can still see white stuff on the branches we ran into in the dark. Incidentally," I continued, "whatever possessed you to padlock a stuffed toy to my jeans and hide the key, Alan?"
"Momentary insanity," he replied without hesitation. He grinned and said he'd show me where the key was when we got back.
We strolled into the shop and stood in front of the shelves of sweets and drinks. Alan picked out a few morsels, and asked me if I wanted anything.
"Not really," I answered.
"Then why did you bother coming?" he asked, quizzically.
"For the walk."
"Fine," he grunted, walking over to the counter. I took a chocolate off the shelves anyway, and joined him by the till. The shopkeeper glanced at my pig, dangling from one of my belt-holds. He smiled unsurely. I smiled back with a tilt of the head and casually ambled outside through the electronic slide doors.
Alan assumed his position at my side. "Let's go back by the fields."
"OK, turn off here then. Hey, look at the white branch!"
"Cool." He laughed. We turned off the pathway, down some steps, over a bridge and onto a field. "Charlie? Do you know where this path goes to?"
"I think so." I said, trying to keep my posture straight. "We'll soon find out."
We walked through the fields, over fences, under bridges. The countryside was beautiful, the sky white, the temperature tepid. Alan asked to rest for a while, so we hunted down an appropriate tree in a spot that was not too muddy, and sat down. I pulled the pig from under my rear and tried to make it stand upright on a root beside me.
A young couple with a big shaggy dog walked past along the river which was struggling at our feet. I held out my thumb and index finger, stretched apart, then pointed at the man. Alan giggled. He remembered the television comedy programme we had watched the previous night. The gesture referred to the length of a certain part of a man's anatomy. The same length as the distance from his forefinger to his outstretched thumb. The man across the river had particularly spindly hands.
"You mean the dog?" Alan grinned.
"Yeah, I'm jealous." I laughed. I pulled out my chocolate bar and began to munch.
Alan took a can of drink out of his pocket, prepared to open it, paused and said; "You know, I didn't actually realize that women were as worried about their... assets... as we are of ours."
"Women are as conscious of their chest as we are of our groin."
"That's not true."
"Well, women get over it."
"Karen is always worrying about her breasts," Alan revealed, changing his mind, "she gets really annoyed when mum and I call her 'flat-chest'."
I smirked. "Erika says she doesn't mind that she has no tits, because they'll grow. The fact that all the generations before her had equally flat chests doesn't seem to deter her."
"Ha. You know, girls don't mind talking about stuff like that. Men do. We're always embarrassed. Insecure."
"Girls are very different from men, though." I said. Alan put on a patronizing expression. "Not just physically, you fool, I mean - you'd never hear a man say 'hey toots, I'm just off to the bog for a whizz, wanna join me?' We use the bathroom for purely biological reasons, not as a social gathering place."
Alan made an obscene joke about women talking gossip while squeezing on the loo. I laughed at the image it threw up in my head.
"We should be jealous, really," I went on, "girls are so much more open, so much more emotionally secure. They'll support each other. They know what it feels like to be rejected or insecure, so unlike men, they help each other stay away from that. Like Europeans. They know hugs are comforting so they hand them out at every opportunity."
"I wish I was a girl." Alan said.
We both quoted from the comedy programme we'd seen last night, in perfect synchronisation; "Did I say that out loud?"
We burst out laughing. "That's the third time we've done that this weekend," laughed Alan, "you'd think we planned it!"
"Maybe we're developing a psychic link," I said, not too seriously. Alan agreed sincerely.
"Anyway," I continued, "you don't want to be a girl really. They might have more fun, but they pay for it."
"Childbirth?"
"Not just that. I mean, we think we get hormones bad - women really suffer. And it's because they know exactly what each other is feeling that they can make you feel like such poo if they don't like you. In contrast to their usual amiability, they can be really spiteful. At least men are mean all the time, so you don't notice the difference. But girls can be really mean. Have you ever seen girls fight?"
"Yeah," winced Alan, "it's all nails and teeth and hair."
"Not just physically, but verbally. I'd hate to be on the receiving end. I'd prefer a punch. Well, almost."
We got up and started walking in the general direction of my house, hoping we'd eventually reach it. The pig bounced against my hip with every step.
"Six times?" I remembered, incredulously. "You're already a sixth of the way there!"
Alan hit me playfully. "That doesn't count."
"Ha ha... if you keep going at this rate, you'll have used up your six before you're twenty! I'm fine - I've got five hundred to get through!"
"Wow. Five hundred times. That's... say, three seconds a time... one thousand five hundred seconds of orgasm."
"That's, er, two... five... three... about half an hour of cumulative ecstasy in a lifetime." I calculated. "Cool. I can't wait."
"Or about eighty minutes if you're female." Alan pointed out. "They get about ten seconds a shot..."
"OK," I said, wide-eyed, "be jealous."
"Can you imagine having all that in one go?"
"You wouldn't survive it. What a way to go though, eh? An eighty minute orgasm."
"Thirty minutes," interjected Alan, "you're male."
"Last time I checked, yeah. It's not even thirty minutes for you, though. You get... six times three... eighteen minutes."
"Seconds, you idiot." Alan corrected. "Unless I get three minute orgasms... hey, I'm not complaining!"
"Actually, you've already used some of that up."
"No I haven't!" He denied. "Anyway, what about you and that sixteen year old a couple of years ago?"
"She was eighteen." I confessed.
"What? That's even worse! You were only fourteen!"
"She's, um, twenty now. At least I'm still a virgin, Alan." Alan hit me again.
"That doesn't count! I was way too young to know what I was doing! We didn't - feel anything." Alan cocked his head. "Well, that's all lies. But I was naive then."
"We're still naive." I said. "Is it possible to be not naive just because you admit that you are?" I said rhetorically. "Oh, of course not. 'The Sound of Music' would be shorter. Pity."
Alan didn't get the reference, but laughed anyway. We turned a corner. The house was in view now. We walked towards it, silently for a while. I could tell Alan was phrasing a question in his mind.
"Charlie?"
"Yup."
"Why won't you tell me about this girl you... encountered?"
"I told you everything we did."
"Yeah, but who is she? I told you my secret."
"I knew it anyway." I thought for a moment. "Honesty is very important, you know. If you're honest, you'll be really popular. Maybe not rich, but you'll make lots of friends. I try to be a really honest person. As honest as possible. But I'm still too insecure to be that honest."
"Tell me," he insisted as we walked through the door.
We walked up the stairs to my room. Alan picked up a little tin that was resting on the banister and, without hesitation, cracked it open and handed me the key inside. I pocketed it silently.
"No." I replied. "You might meet her some day."
Alan put on one of his CD's and slouched in a big chair. I hung up my jacket, took a screwdriver off the piano and started to unscrew the back of my calculator.
"I'll never meet her." Alan said.
"I can't risk it."
"Give me a clue."
I grabbed a big sheet of paper from a pile of scribblings in the corner to catch the screws as they fell out of the calculator.
"You might meet her." I repeated. "That's your clue."
Alan considered this, scratching his head subconsciously. I prised the back off. It gave with a snap.
"Oops."
The electric guitar music subsided. A man started singing about god.
"Do you like the album?" queried Alan.
I unscrewed the chipboard inside the calculator, careful not to drop the buttons everywhere as they became loose.
"It's alright." I ventured.
I lifted the complex electronics away from the shell of the calculator and lifted the little protective rubber sheet.
"Everything's just 'alright' to you isn't it?" Alan said protectively.
I reversed the little polarization screen and turned all the numbers upside-down.
"We have different tastes in music, Alan," I said, rebuilding the calculator. "It's better than R.E.M."
"Nothing's better than R.E.M." Alan snapped.
I fiddled with the last screw, securing the back of the calculator in its rightful place.
"They're not perfect," I challenged, "their music is very variable. They've got a couple of excellent songs and the rest are, well..."
I got up and showed Alan the calculator; "Look, white on black. And the numbers are upside-down."
"Cool," he said, resignedly.
"Confusing, isn't it?" I said, and I sat down at the piano.
"I'm only here for another three hours," Alan groaned.
I played 'The Entertainer'. I couldn't think of many other tunes off the top of my head with the screeching music in the background. Alan scratched himself; "My ribs still hurt from that fitness thing on Friday."
"You're not fit enough," I said, pulling the key out of my pocket and freeing the pig.
"What are the muscles that hold your ribs together? These ones?" Alan indicated.
"Intercostal muscles," I said, putting the pig back on my desk, among the hordes of junk and stuffed animals. I picked out an old broken watch that I'd won for David at a fair. I walked over to the sheet of paper on the floor where the screwdriver was laying.
"That's what hurts. Intercostals," moaned Alan, "and you need them to breathe."
I prised the back off the watch. Minuscule little nuts spilled out with a very terminal cracking sound.
"Don't breathe then," I concluded.
I admired the intricate little cogs. I hacked the face away from its casing to get at the tiny hands. I was impressed at the precision.
"Let's do something," said Alan.
"Alright. How about a board game?" I suggested, hastily replacing the back of the watch, trapping all the little bits inside. I put it on my wrist, despite the fact that it would never tell the time again. It felt odd wearing a watch again.
"Let's go downstairs and choose one." I said. "Erika wanted to play Twister." Alan grinned. He liked my sister. Twister with Erika was a Good Idea as far as he was concerned.
"What's the time?" Alan said. I laughed and showed him the watch. Instead of delicate little hands indicating elegantly set numbers on a small clock face, there was just a random arrangement of tiny cogs, rods, nuts and connectors - including one or two that appeared to be magnetic. Alan looked impressed. He was more mechanically-minded than me.
"There's irony in that." I began. "A stopped watch is infinitely accurate twice a day, whereas a working watch is always slightly inaccurate. It always keep slightly ahead or behind the actual time. James should wear a stopped watch. He'd never have to check it then. It'd save him a fortune in phone bills."
Alan laughed. James, an old friend of mine, had a reputation for keeping his hugely complex watch precise to a ridiculous degree. He often complained that the Talking Clock only went down to seconds. His nickname was Greenwich.
"Brother alert," warned Alan. David came clambering up the stairs, holding two juggling balls. "I wish I could juggle." Alan said.
"You keep saying that." I complained. "You're all words. I told you I'd show you how." We walked into the television room and sat down.
"Erika!" I shouted. "Put Garfield down, he's my cat."
"I'm his mummy," she said, holding him up by the legs, to his obvious consternation.
"You're only doing that to annoy me." I retorted. "I told you girls can be mean, Alan."
"Especially teenagers, huh?" Alan grinned, moving across to Erika's side. "They're such odd creatures."
View or add comments on this story
Back to top
Back to list of stories
Home
