The Most Hideously Awkward Weekend of My Life So Far (A Boy Story)

            The following details the most horrific and scarring weekend of my entire life.  The cause of this trauma?  A boy I will simply call “The Tongue”.
 

It all started harmless enough.  I met this boy online (I know, save your lectures). He was a fellow English major and creative writer.  We lived a few hours apart, so when we got together, we met at big festively sorts of things where we would have an excuse to just wander around for hours sampling wine and weird food.  Both dates were utterly sexless, and by that I mean there was no kissing, hand holding, or burning glances.  I even paid for myself wherever we went.  It was like being out with your brother or cousin.  Mostly we just talked about writing and traveling and other sorts of polite chit chat.  He was funny, smart and we had interests in common, but as I told my mom afterward, we could be friends but I didn’t want to “do him”. 

So knowing how much he liked to mock humanity at large, and realizing that none of my other friends would indulge me, I decided (with my mother’s urging) to invite The Tongue with us to the Renaissance Fair.  I pictured a long day of hilarity, sniggering, and stealth photography.  These events are what I imagine to be the one time of the year that all the nerds emerge from their basements and try to absorb their annual levels of Vitamin D.  The women all apparently absorb sunlight through their cleavage because I have never seen so many endless yards of exposed bosom (with a fair smattering of nipple slips).  It is as terrifying as it is absolutely entertaining.  There are men wearing steel codpieces in odd shapes, overweight bellydancers, sword swallowers, women dressed as fairies who haven’t been fairies for at least 300 lbs., slutty wenches, people wandering around with meade and giant turkey legs, jousting knights, and so on.  It really is amazingly fun, even if I reveal my nerd tendencies in confessing as much.

SO!  Since The Tongue lived equally far from me as the Renaissance Fair, I let him decide if he wanted to just meet us at the festival or come up the night before to my house and ride with my family.  I have since been informed that such an invitation was an open invitation to sex.  Go figure.  I thought I was providing a friendly alternative to riding alone, but it seems I was actually offering my body on a silver platter.  I do not understand straight men. 

The night before the festival, The Tongue arriveed and my mother set about feeding and fussing over him.  He brought me wine, plastic flowers, and a chocolate bar which was pretty sweet, but it still did not make me think he was being anything more than friendly (because I am an idiot).  Since he had arrived kind of late and we were all leaving early in the morning, the family went to bed en mass.  My room was near the guest room, and as I was heading to bed, I poked my head in to make sure he had everything he needed.  Just being good hostess-y, you know?  All very polite and platonic.  After chatting for a minute or so, he shocked me by lunging forward in the middle of a sentence and grabbing me by the shoulders. I had a brief vision of this big wet tongue lolling and undulating out at me before he put his mouth on my mouth.  I just sort of stood there, shocked and stunned and super uncomfortable.  Also his nasty hippie beard was really stabby.  When I got my brain back, I started giggling because it was all so impossibly awkward.  He pulled back and I said something like, “Sorry, I guess I never kissed anyone with a beard before”.  Then his voice went all husky and he said “Ohhhh, so you like that?  Yeahhh.” and started rubbing his jaw over my cheek in what I assume he thought was a sexy gesture, but really just made me want to run from the room.  I was trying to think of a polite way to leave without hurting his feelings when he made a sort of icky moaning sound and shoved me on the bed and jumped on me.  The kissing got absolutely no better.  He kept running his hands everywhere like he was frantically checking me for an injury.  It felt like a terrible joke and I was doing my best trying not to gag or giggle while trying to protect my teeth from his teeth.

After a minute or two of this, he stood up and whipped off his shirt which was bad for two reasons. One, he should never be shirtless- he has the body of a nine year old, and second- the hell? I don't go from zero to naked. OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod…. It seemed to take forever to extricate myself with him all the while making old people soup noises and poking me in the eye and asking me where I like "it" best. Nowhere, mister. He jumped up off me and I thought he had finally taken my total lack of response as a hint that he should stop.  On the contrary!  He just whipped off his pants in a triumphant “Tah Dah!” gesture to reveal ancient and voluminous boxers.  It was at that point that I found my backbone and said, "Yeah, I don't think this is going to go as far as you are hoping it will". I stood up and mumbled something about needing sleep so we weren’t tired the next day and ran away, shutting and locking my door. 

About 2 minutes later, he knocked on my door and I answered reluctantly.  He was still mostly naked, so I only let the door open a tiny crack.  He said, "I haven’t been with a girl in a while, so would you mind maybe ranking my performance just now? Like on a scale of 1-10 where 10 is the best you’ve had ever and 1 is the worst?" Okay seriously?? OMG!!!!!!! You are so in negative points just for this. I kept my face under control and made some excuse like "Actually, girls don’t really rank these things" (LIE) and then I practically had to shut the door in his face.  I got zero sleep that night, just dreading the next day and knowing I would have to spend the ENTIRE day with him.

Fortunately, in the light of day he seemed to have turned off his Lustful Octopus Mode.  I did my very best to avoid being alone with him, but my damned family is so very considerate and obliging that they kept shooing us off so we could be “alone”.  He kept his hands to himself, but unexpectedly kept saying things that were so pretentious, I just wanted to hit him in the face with a brick.  Like his 20 minute lecture on how wonderful it would be to live in the middle of the woods without electricity or corporate America.  Or his endless recitations of things he’s heard on NPR.  It sucked all the joy out of trying to make fun of jesters and pirates, but there really weren’t any moments that were too awful.  Until the drive home that is, when my family all loudly insisted that he should stay that night too, rather than driving home.  Since I had not had a chance to de-brief my mother on the previous night’s incident, she had no idea why I would not want this.  All I could do was sit in silence while my soul died inside me.

It had been a very long day, and everyone went to bed, with my mother dragging me into a corner for a moment to tell me with shining eyes that The Tongue was her absolute favorite of all my previous dates.  Wonderful.  I sort of waved goodnight at him and made a dash for my room, but I neglected to lock the door.  He just strolled right on in without knocking.  Fortunately, I happened to be on my computer at that moment checking messages and with some soothing music playing.  He started to reach for me, then heard the song and recognized it.  Seizing the opportunity, we talked about music and shared stupid Youtube videos until he was too exhausted to want to do anything else.  When I finally pushed him out around 4a.m. he reached out his tentacles again, but tripped on my rug and staggered.  I made a joke about him being so very sleepy and literally shoved him out the door. 

The next day the family all had to run some sort of errand and with winks and nudges, left the two of us alone until The Tongue had to leave to be in time for work.  I went to my mother with pleading in my eyes and mouthed “Don’t leave me alone!” but she just looked confused and amused, as if I were making a joke she didn’t quite get but wanted to be supportive anyway.  The Tongue, in an effort to woo my family, declared that his years of working at a restaurant would help him make me the most amazing breakfast ever, and he took to the kitchen to make me an omelet.  I stopped watching his preparations after he measured literally ¼ cup of oil into the frying pan.  My omelet looked as though it was covered in plastic laminate.  Tasted much that way too.  Fortunately, the cooking of my nasty-ass breakfast took up a great deal of time and when at last we were done, it left only a few minutes before he would have to leave for work.  I nearly had to shove him in his truck, while he kept gazing into my eyes and declaring that he wanted to call work and quit so he could stay with me in the mountains, basking in nature’s and my (*eye roll*) beauty forever.

         No thanks, creeper.  Off you go.