Eve

I got home from work and I wanted a cold beer and a few minutes of quiet. The beer was easy enough to manage but with two roommates in a one bedroom apartment the quiet wasn’t too likely. We’d let Sean move in a few weeks earlier and he was quite the social butterfly. I liked all the activity around our place at first, but right now dealing with the airhead girls he liked to bring around was not what I felt like doing.

There were two of them in the living room and I didn’t see the need to introduce myself or even to say hello. I plopped down and drank my beer, trying to pretend that I had my living room to myself.

“That’s Keith.” Sean nodded my way.

The girl’s said hi, I raised my bottle and kept drinking. I couldn’t help listen to their conversation. The tall skinny blonde girl was talking about art. ‘Oh, this should be good.’ I thought to myself.

She made a comment about poverty being beneficial to an artists output and she suggested that an artist work might suffer when they found success.

“How can you say something so fucking stupid.” I muttered, entering the conversation.

“Excuse me?” with one word she made it clear that she was not afraid of a fight.

“That’s stupid. A person expresses what they have to express. I’m sorry if you can’t get past your own biased point of view as a failure to appreciate what an artist expresses after he finds success.”

It was on. She countered, citing examples of painters and musicians who did great work before being discovered. I suggested that were lots of people who only had one great work in them who aren’t ever discovered. We went back and forth. This is not what Sean had in mind when he invited two good looking girls over.

Sean’s brother, Robert came by about thirty minutes into the great debate and invited Sean to coffee. Sean did everything he could to pry the blonde whose name was Bryna, away from our argument, but it was too late. We were hooked. Finally he gave in and invited me to come along too.

Robert was craftier than Sean at derailing Bryna and I, he simply turned everything I said into innuendo and flirted with me endlessly. “Warhol! Warhol drew shoe ads when he was desperate. As his success grew he had more to express than just ‘Help me, I need money.’” I was practically shouting.

“Oh honey, I’m desperate, and I can guarantee you success. Let me be your muse baby.”

“Shut up Robert. What about Matisse?” Eventually we did settle into normal conversation. The other girl, Eve was also tall, with thick, wiry red hair that she wore in well coiffed mess on top of her head. She was pretty and overtly flirting with me. I’d resisted the idea that assholes did better with girls, but I’d certainly started off as a jerk with these two, and now I seemed to be doing alright.

Sean’s plans for the afternoon probably didn’t involve me being an anti-social dick and getting all the attention. He was quick to finish his coffee and move on with his day, ending our little party.

The next day Eve was back at the house. She was wearing a close fitting white t-shirt, with a "Car Hope In Bondage" graphic, a see through white bell skirt, and underneath, white frilly rumba shorts. She was adorable. Sean was a promoter for a club and she had come by to see if I was going. I had burnt out pretty quickly on the club scene and planned on spending the evening at home reading. I expected some more flirting, but when Eve suggested that she would skip the dancing and hang out with me, I was caught a bit off guard. When she stradled me and started kissing me I was blown away.

And that was that. Eve was with me whenever I wasn't at work. A day or two later we sat together in her car, parked outside my apartment, talking.

"I'm not happy with the life I'm settling into. I don't believe in a god or an afterlife so I've got to do as much with this life as I can."

"So what do you want to do?" She asked cautiously, thinking she was being dumped.

"I don't know. I want to be a hobo or a monk but I can't choose which, so I end up in the middle, doing neither. I want to go out and experience everything I can experience or I want to find a quiet place to study and learn everything I can learn." I worried that I sounded neurotic or full of shit but I was sharing with her as fully and sincerely as I knew how. She kissed me and we went in the house to make out.

A night or two later I had a house full of friends after going to see some local bands play. Sleeping teenagers were piled throughout my living room. Eve and I went to the room in the back. The room wasn't my room. It belonged to which ever roommate needed it. I spent many nights sleeping in the hallway. Now, it was me who had a real live girl spending the night and the bedroom was all mine.

I had sex.

With all the build up it was over suprisingly fast and things didn't feel any different. I lay next to Eve afterwards, pondering what it meant and how it should feel.

"Is it okay with you if I go for a walk?" I asked .

"Sure, just be here with me when I wake up."

I went to the living room and kicked Ryan awake. Sean heard Ryan and I heading out and told us to bring a knife with us. We sat two blocks away, stabbing a tree and talking, not saying much, just talking. I did manage to tell him that I lost my virginity, in between our analyzing the quirks of our society.

Ryan and I walked back, and I crawled back into bed, as I'd promised. I left my clothes on, including my boots and trench coat as I lay on top of the covers stiff as a board. In the morning we had sex again and it lasted a little longer. The first time wasn't some magical experience. It was the beginning of lots of wonderful exciting exploration.

Later the day after I was at Ryan's dad's house watching Ryan's band rehearse, a band we started together. Gretchen was there and we ended up making out in the closet. A few hours after I'd lost my virginity, or what I had considered my official virginity, I was in a closet getting head from my ex-girlfriend. The plot thickens. Ryan and her had started dating and had just broken up a few days prior. I was being an asshole, to Gretchen who didn't know about Eve and to Ryan who did. I had no idea why I did it.

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