Authors: Zack Love
Evan Cheson was actually a charming and good-looking man. He had a full head of thick, black hair; blue eyes; an athletic, six-foot-one build; smooth, dark eyebrows; and facial features suggestive of his French-Italian ancestry. And for most of his adult life, he had been a confident and successful man, from school, to work, to women.
But several major failures in rapid-fire succession can inhibit good judgment, and thereby invite more failure. For Evan, losing a job and a girlfriend, each via email, one day after the next, was too much to avoid the absurd downward spiral that would ensue. He even avoided checking emails for a while, but that didn’t help.
On Thursday night, after a few months of fruitless rebound attempts and embarrassing faux pas with women, there was something perverse in Evan – maybe even carelessly self-destructive – that wanted to know just how laughably low he could go.
So he put on a new pair of dark slacks and a collared, button-down, sky blue shirt just snug enough to suggest his occasional gym routine. His clean look – with a dab of cologne, a gargle of mouthwash, and freshly polished leather shoes – was calculated to minimize the entrance hassle into Manhattan’s clubs. But had Evan fathomed just how hard he would end up crashing that night, he would have surely stayed home in his T-shirt and boxers.
Chapter 2
Evan Runs Full Speed into the Wall Ahead
It began in a bar. The Bowery Bar. It was the end of summer – an auspicious time for an unattached twenty-nine-year-old male in Manhattan. Scattered sparingly about the spring, summer, and fall, there are about fifty days of perfect weather in New York City: zero humidity, clear skies, and seventy-five to eighty degrees fanned by a light, cool breeze. During such days, smiles sprout more readily, clothes pronounce rather than protect, and the sweet scent of promise wafts everywhere in the air.
The last day of August 2000 was one of those perfect fifty days. And it was a Thursday, which meant that most of the Manhattanites leaving the next day for a weekend in the Hamptons were still in the city, and that meant more female prospects for Evan. Indeed, that Thursday felt so promising that Evan thought he might finally reverse a dry spell that somehow felt longer than his postpubescent years. But Evan’s new insecurity, which resulted almost entirely from his recent bout of bad luck, made him somewhat desperate to prove himself any way he could. And as his desperation led to ever greater and more frequent fumbles, he began to question the quality of his goods, as even the most steadfast traveling salesman does after enough slammed doors. He lost his touch, hesitated with his humor, and forgot some of the tactics that had served him so well in the past.
So when Evan spotted a woman across the bar who easily qualified as a “9+ hottie” in his book, he broke one of the most important rules of the pick-up: never wait more than a minute to make a move. A longer delay after initial eye contact suggests a lack of interest or – even worse – a lack of confidence. It also converts the interaction from the flowingly spontaneous to the self-consciously calculated. Evan’s five-minute delay before approaching a woman who absolutely attracted him was, in this case, attributable only to his three-month string of prior botches. To exacerbate matters, when he finally gathered the gumption to approach her, he allowed some form of autopilot to take over, in the hope that luck alone might produce some good results.
She was wearing body-tight, silk white shorts, and a pink wife-beater undershirt with no bra. Her perky, full breasts looked to Evan like two deliciously firm, cherry-topped cantaloupes, daring him to look anywhere else. The woman oozed sex and her name was Tina, although Evan would never actually come to learn this basic fact about her. He would instead remember her only as “the soft porn babe I massively underestimated.”
As Evan arrived next to her at the bar, he realized that the only thing about her that he had observed was that this sultry, petite blonde in his crosshairs had the figure of an exotic dancer or a soft porn actress. Evan’s autopilot skills were reliable enough to avoid a disastrous opener like, “Say, did anyone ever tell you that you could be a great exotic dancer?” But they were sufficiently lacking in foresight and imagination to realize that asking Tina what she does for a living might be just as bad, if she was, in fact, an exotic dancer. So when Tina turned and noticed that Evan had squeezed into the small space at the bar next to her, all Evan could say when she looked at him was “So…What do you do?”
Tina, who had noticed Evan hesitate for several minutes before walking up to her, just shook her head with a mockingly disappointed look on her face. “Couldn’t you do any better than that?” she replied.
As Evan’s continuing bad luck would have it, Tina had already been approached by four conversationally unimaginative men during the last two hours. All four had started with a similar question, and they were each clearly interested in Tina only as a sexual object. So by the time Evan came by, Tina was more than ready to dish it out.
“Well I realize it’s not a great opening line,” Evan began excusing himself, “but you’ve gotta start somewhere, right? So why not with what you do?”
“Because that’s probably the worst question you can ask a woman you don’t know.”
“Why?”
“It’s about as original and sincere as a flight attendant greeting.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“Guys ask me that question all the time. You think any of them actually cares what the answer is?” Tina perked up her chest a little, as if to emphasize what they really care about.
“But I do care.”
“I’m sure you do,” she replied. “Which is why I’m sure you stopped to consider the possibility that I might not like what I do, or might not want to discuss it with a stranger.”
Evan realized that he had to get off autopilot fast, because the young beauty in front of him was far sharper than he had estimated. He feared that he would soon be adding her to the list of females who had abruptly walked away from him in the middle of his attempt to “make a new friend,” as he liked to think of his bungles.
“So,” he began, “should I have started by asking you what you don’t do?”
“Maybe.” Tina released a slight, reluctant smile at the question. “At least it would have been more original.”
“All right,” Evan started anew. “So tell me. What do you not do?”
“I don’t tell guys I don’t know what I do.”
“OK. What else do you not do?”
“I don’t play basketball.”
“How funny! I also don’t play basketball,” he said, forgetting his love of the game.
“I don’t approve of how the city government handles New York’s solid waste problem.”
“Couldn’t agree with you more about solid waste,” Evan replied, despite his complete indifference to the issue.
“And I don’t particularly like your outfit.”
“Really?” Evan smiled with some embarrassment. “It’s actually refreshing to hear a woman say what she really thinks, at my personal expense…”
“At least you don’t have to wonder what I really think.”
“I actually spent four hours in the store, consulting with every female in the area, before I bought it.”
“That just goes to show you that your shopping time isn’t helping the quality of your shopping decisions.”
“I hate shopping.”
“It shows.”
“Say, can we restart this conversation at some point where I was doing better?”
“There is no such point,” she responded with a playful half-smile. “You were always doing this bad.”
“So I should probably quit while I’m ahead?”
“Probably,” Tina replied, mysteriously. “But I’ll let you crash and burn for a little longer by telling you what I do for a living.”
“Thank you…I guess.” By now, Evan was at once intrigued, intimidated, and otherwise totally at a loss with respect to how he should proceed with this woman.
“I actually don’t know why I’m going to share this information with you...” Tina paused for a moment, to give the value of her confession the respect and seriousness that it deserved. “Because I ordinarily don’t tell this to strangers, but for some reason I trust you.” Tina suddenly seemed vulnerable and exposed to Evan, who now felt awkwardly unworthy of whatever it was that she was about to disclose about her job.
“You know, we really don’t have to talk about what you do,” Evan said, trying to match Tina’s tone. “I mean, people start there because it can tell you a lot about someone’s choices in life, and what their day to day life is like, but sometimes it can be very misleading. I mean, look at me. I’m a computer programmer.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’m another survivor of a dot-bomb,” Evan explained, putting the best spin he could on things. “My company went bankrupt two months ago, and I’ve been freelancing as a software development consultant. But that has nothing to do with my real passion, which is writing.”
“What do you write?”
“I’ve been working on a novel for the last five years. And I’ve written a bunch of screenplays as well.”
“You write screenplays?” Tina’s interest rose for a moment. “Have you written anything that was made yet?”
The only thing Evan hated more than that follow up question was the answer that he had to give to it. “No. Not yet…Why do you ask?”
“I work in film too,” she replied.
Given Tina’s original reluctance to discuss what she does, Evan concluded at this point that she was either 1) a disgruntled actress who was stuck at the bottom of the totem pole, grunting away on some low-budget film production with the hope that her travail would someday pay off in the form of a film job that would be less embarrassingly exploitative than her current one; or 2) a soft porn actress who bore her flesh in those late-night cable TV films that had too little sex to qualify as true porn and too little story or character to qualify as true cinema. Either way, he thought it best to change the subject.
“You know, I don’t even know your name yet,” he tried.
“Well if I tell you what I do, then I certainly won’t tell you my name, so you’ll have to choose: my name or my job.”
Now he was almost positive that she was a soft porn actress, and knew that a discussion about her job should be avoided at all costs. “Your name. I don’t need to know what you do. But I do need to know your name.”
“That’s too bad, because I’ve already prepared myself to tell you what I do, and now I’m feeling the need to share it with you.”
“Because I write screenplays?” he said, trying to feign ignorance and still hoping to change the subject.
“No. Because I trust you for some strange reason. There’s something honest and reassuring about you.”
“There is?”
“Yeah…Like you mean well – even if your delivery needs work…So here’s what I do.” Tina looked away for an awkward moment.
Evan felt even more uncomfortable now. He knew that this conversation had grown too serious too fast and there was no recovering from it now. There was only a graceful exit strategy to be devised as quickly as possible.
“I’m an actress…” Tina started. She made eye contact with Evan for a moment, and then looked to the side a little. “I work mainly in skin flicks…I mean, I work in skin flicks right now…Nothing really hard core…There’s no actual intercourse involved and it pays really well…”
Tina tried a forced smile at Evan, and Evan looked at her acceptingly.
“I ran away from home when I was sixteen, and I needed something to pay the bills and then get myself through college…Then, I guess I just kept doing it…But I want to get involved in other films – you know, normal films – one day soon, I hope…”
Evan sighed at the end of her confession, and – still clueless about how to respond but painfully aware of the need to say something – he reverted once again to autopilot. “I think that’s really cool that you can admit to that. I mean, it makes you real. Someone who knows her issues and has dealt with them.”
“I guess,” Tina replied distantly, with a self-reflective gaze that suggested she might not have even heard what Evan just said. Evan hoped this was the case because he had no idea what issues he had just referred to in his compliment.
“And I think it’s really cool that you’re so comfortable with your body and with your sexuality…I mean, not everyone can look natural on camera…And a lot of people are very inhibited about their bodies and their sexuality.”
“Are you?” she asked, suddenly focused on this question.
“Well I could never…” He tried to think of a polite way to describe what Tina does, but preferred to stay away from that topic. “I mean, I’m very comfortable with my sexuality, but…Well, I don’t know…Women tell me that I’m definitely comfortable with my body sexually. And I’ve never really felt uncomfortable in bed, so I guess – ”
“Women tell you that?” she asked, somewhat intrigued. “So have you been with a lot of women?” There was a genuine curiosity in her question that gave Evan some hope.
“Actually, I’ve been with my fair share, for my age.”
“And you’re what – twenty-seven years old?”
“Thanks. But I’m twenty-nine.”
“So what’s the body count?”
“The body count?”
“You know: how many women have you slept with in your twenty-nine years?”
Evan wasn’t sure whether to overstate the number to look sexually impressive to a soft porn star, or whether to understate the number to look less promiscuous and more like the responsible, clean cut, solid-boyfriend type. Since he still hadn’t quite figured out what Tina was looking for or who she really was, he decided just to tell the truth.
“I’ve been with about sixty-seven women.”
“What do you mean ‘about sixty-seven?’ You say ‘about sixty’ or ‘about seventy.’ But not ‘about sixty-seven.’ You’re obviously keeping track.” Tina looked amused at another opportunity to toy with Evan.
“All right. You got me,” Evan conceded. “I’ve been with precisely sixty-seven women.”
“Unless, of course, you said ‘about’ because the total depends on how you define ‘being with a woman.’ For example, if you just got a blowjob and nothing else then maybe you don’t count that.”
“OK. To be more precise, I’ve had sexual intercourse with sixty-seven women.”