This pastiche of Sex And the City is from decades ago…thus the iBook. Still as true today as it ever was. Contains mature content!
Okay, so the four of us were sitting at our favorite café, and at least one of us was itching.
Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here. You have to know who you’re dealing with first. There’s Sam, the slutty one (well, we’re all slutty, but…), Charlie, the strong silent virgin (ha!) type, Mark, who claims he’s in construction work (and has the outfits to prove it), and me, Carey, freelance writer, shoe and boot aficionado, and the type of man to get in a different wacky and difficult dating adventure each week.
“So what I want to know,” Sam said, taking a drag on his cigarette and looking around at us accusingly, “is which woofer gave me crabs?”
Mark scratched his head, then drew his hand away when he saw we were watching. “That could be anybody in the city, with your track record. Did you try figuring out when you last had sex and work backwards from there?”
Sam just laughed. “Oh dear, drawing a map of my sex partners would be like doing a Spirograph. No, crabs are an occupational hazard – a cost of doing business, as it were. I’d just like to know, so I can slug him.”
Charlie took a sip of his drink and shivered in a weirdly masculine way. “It’s gross. It makes me want to stop having sex – the whole idea of having little things crawling all over your body.”
“Yes, just like having sex with twinks,” Sam declared, then turned to me. “How about you, Carey? Any visitors to report?”
And that’s when I scratched my crotch uncontrollably, spilling my Diet Coke. Charlie looked aghast, Mark stifled a giggle, and Sam’s eyes drew narrower. “You’ve got Miniature Livestock!” Sam said. “Haven’t you?”
I pulled my chair closer to the table and scratched until the burning went away…for now. “But I haven’t slept with you in ages,” I feebly protested.
“But you slept with Steve, and Steve and Jeff slept with Bruce, and Bruce’s fuckbuddy’s ex went to that UnderBear orgy I was at the other night”, Sam said. “It’s like you pulled the trigger yourself!”
That night, I applied Kwell topically (“Be sure to launder all clothing, sex toys, and harnesses. Inform all sexual partners and your mother.”) Afterwards, basking in the medicinal glow, I smoked a cigarette and sat down to my bear-standard iBook. Something’s terribly wrong with it – it only shows one line in large letters, but I’m not paid by the word. Staring out the window at the falling snow, I typed the line I knew I had to write – “CAN BEARS EVER CONQUER THE DREADED PEDICULOSIS?”
The phone rang. It was my man-of-the-week, Steve. “Can you get together for coffee?” he asked, trying to sound sultry and non-desperate. “Say in about five minutes?”
I scratched myself absently. Now here was a dilemma. The Kwell instructions said I could have sex as soon as I doused myself (all right, so I extrapolated – they didn’t say NOT to go out and fuck everything that moved once the application was complete). I contemplated replacing the line I just wrote, but that would mean an entire work’s worth down the drain. And, I was lazy. “Can you give me a day or so?”
“A day? But I’m horny now!”
Once I got rid of Steve, I knew I had to call Sam. Sam’s the only one in the city with the brains and sex drive to make sense out of all of this. I could tell he’d been smoking weed; his voice was even deeper than usual. “Dear, get out there and fuck Steve’s brains out,” Sam drawled once he heard my predicament.
“But what if I infest him? Is there some statute of limitations on STDs?”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t scratch. You’ve done the best you can, now do them the best you can.” I heard muffled laughter and chains in the background. “Now, if you don’t mind,” Sam said, “there’s a football team here I don’t want to keep waiting.”
The next call was from an old fuckbuddy I hadn’t seen in months, and the one after that from my ex, Mr. Hairy. When I got a phone call from a high school friend who’d always been ‘curious’ until now but had never made the full-blown move to sucking dick, I knew I was doomed.
I hit the Outgoing Message Record button on my answering machine and cleared my throat. “Hi, you’ve reached Carey Bearshaw. If you’ve got a message for me or one of my new 10,563 little friends, leave it at the tone.” Then I grabbed the R&C spray, tossed on my leather jacket, and headed for the door.
I turned back at the last minute and deleted the line I’d typed in the iBook ($500 from my magazine assignment down the drain!). In its place, I typed “WHY ARE CRABS A BEAR MAGNET?”, stuffed the spray in my pocket, and disappeared into the night.