Free A Year Straight by Elena Azzoni

my bum.
    â€œThat’s the wrong hole!” I warned, bolting upright.
    â€œI know,” he said playfully, attempting to glide right in with his Magnum. I jumped off the bed. I wasn’t necessarily opposed to the idea in general, but I was opposed to it with the real estate guy with the Nordic sweater whose last name I didn’t yet know.
    â€œI have to go,” I said, and I got up to gather my clothes.
    â€œWe can just sleep,” he said, turning on the light. That’s actually pretty sweet, I thought, as I was pulling on my socks. Then I glanced at the night table. The bottle he’d brought
in from the bathroom indeed started with the letter L —for Lubriderm. Hand. Lotion. I glowered at him, astonished.
    â€œCan you please call me a cab?” I asked. He dialed a car service and accompanied me to the lobby of his building.
    We sat down on the curb outside.
    â€œThis isn’t how I’d imagined this turning out,” he said, wrapping his arms around his knees. “I was hoping to be eating breakfast together in the morning.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “This just isn’t really who I am. I don’t usually go home with someone I just met. I don’t even know you. God, I don’t even know myself these days.”
    â€œYeah,” he replied. “To think of my younger sister going home with some guy she just met makes me shudder. You really shouldn’t do that, you know. It’s not safe.” As my cab pulled up to the curb, he mumbled the sweet send off, “Good luck with that guy!” I got in, rolled down the window, and rode home with the wind in my face.
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    â€œI THINK HE might be gay,” I told Megan the following day over brunch. “His house was spotless, and he had really nice kitchen appliances,” I said, feeling convincing. I leaned in closer to her. “And he wanted to have anal sex,” I whispered. “On the first date, if you can even call it that.”
    â€œOr he’s just a dumb rich guy with a maid,” Megan replied. “How nice was his appliance?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
    â€œHe used Magnum condoms, so I guess it was big.”

    â€œYou guess it was big, Elena?”
    â€œListen, when you’ve been with women for years, using any size your little heart desires, you get a bit spoiled, if you know what I mean.”
    â€œWow, that’s right. Maybe I should try women,” Megan said.
    â€œWant another reason to reconsider? Right in the middle of having sex, he got up, left the room, and returned with a bottle of Lub-ri-derm. Which he then tried to use as lube.”
    â€œElena, he is definitely not gay!” Megan laughed so hard that she nearly choked on her crepe. “Gay men know to use lube. You go, Miss Lez! You went and found yourself a frat boy.”
    I walked home from the café feeling defeated. I was more confused than ever, yet everything was starting to make sense. My limited yet highly bizarre experiences with men helped explain why so many great women were still single in the city, and why so many others ended up with dimwits. Take Megan, for example. There you had a gorgeous, smart, successful woman who seemed to know everything there was to know about men, yet she wasted her time pining over a guy who didn’t deserve her.
    Their story was so cliché it was painful. I’d been Megan’s ear for over two years and the scenario had barely changed. She and Jared were both successful employees in their respective positions at work, each highly sought after, in both the professional and personal sense. Megan was gorgeous inside and out,
and I didn’t just notice as Miss Lez. Funny and kind, at five eight (six feet in heels), her hair slicked back in a ponytail, and a mock turtleneck dress accentuating her curves, she turned everyone’s eye when she walked by. She had her pick of the office staff of 150. And she