One Night Stand.

I attended a house party hosted by my friend’s friend; her name was Alexa.

Alexa and I hit if off almost immediately. In fact, less than five minutes after shaking hands with her, she took me into her bedroom to show me her proud but admittedly minimal dildo collection.

One drink later, she was lamenting her disappointment the previous morning where she woke up a lover (one of many?) with a blowjob only to find him rather ungrateful and turned off by the notion. She said he wasn’t “too happy” about it, whatever that meant. Curious. Perhaps she just wasn’t too apt in the oral department?

Around 12:30 the party cleared out to continue drinking at a local sports bar. My pals Johnny, Budd, and I followed suit.

At the bar, Alexa and I played a game of air hockey because what respectable bar these days doesn’t have an in-house arcade. The game was short and I emerged victorious. Alexa sauntered over to my side of the table and crossed me to enter an adjacent photo-booth. She sat inside of it, looked up toward me and softly asked, “Should we do it?” I noticed a sign pinned on the outside of the booth and responded, “it’s out of order.”

We shared a quiet laugh and she slowly stood and leaned (stumbled) toward me, I held my position and our bodies lightly touched, our faces came together and I raised my hand to caress her abdomen. She leaned closer and we shared a slow and impromptu kiss.

Sharing a first kiss while pressed against a broken down photo booth in the middle of an arcade on a Friday night. I mean come on, that’s a ’90’s kid’s wet dream.

We kissed and caressed one another for a few more seconds before Alexa stopped and mumbled something along the lines of, “This is a secret, no one can know,” as if we weren’t just making out in the middle of a bar surrounded by thirty of her party guests and close friends.

Apparently the ungrateful gentlemen from her earlier story was more like her boyfriend, or as she referred to him, “somebody I am hooking up with.” She said they weren’t dating, but “it’s serious.”

Yeah, sure, it’s none of my business anyway. I didn’t really want to make a big deal about it. So with the alleged boyfriend in mind, I backed off and kept the kiss in my pocket as Alexa and I meandered about the bar, going our separate ways.

Thirty minutes later I was sitting on a leather couch in between my friends Budd and Johnny. To my left, Budd was playing the game with some cutie who I think earlier told me she was a lesbian. To my right, Johnny was slack-jawed and swaying back and forth. He was struggling to keep his eyes open--the tell-tale sign of a man who had exceeded his limit.

Alexa resurfaced and challenged me to a rematch. Longing for some more excitement, I quickly accepted her invitation and we excused ourselves from the boys.

We walked back into the arcade. As I walked over to the coin machine to exchange my cash for arcade tokens, I checked my wallet to find that I only had a ten dollar bill in my possession. I contemplated. That’s an awful lot of tokens, but, who knew, maybe we’d play a few games and make a little tournament out of it. In my mind, I declared, “fuck it,” and broke the ten dollar bill anyway.

I returned to the table and the game began. It didn’t take long for me to score twice on her.

Abruptly, a hyperventilating Budd approached the table and through labored breaths he uttered, “We…have to leave…Johnny just got thrown out.” Goddamnit.

With nine dollars worth of arcade tokens shoved in the pockets of my skinny jeans, the three of us hurried outside to find an aloof Johnny wandering up and down the sidewalk completely oblivious to the events that just transpired.

According to Budd, the sole eyewitness of the event, Johnny had been falling asleep on the leather couch when a bouncer approached and told Johnny to either wake up or go home. At this point the belligerent drunk felt compelled to throw his empty glass toward the bouncer where it thankfully missed, but instead hit the wall behind him and shattered into a million pieces.

With prejudice, Johnny was immediately escorted outside to the gutter which was exactly where we currently found ourselves.

While waiting for a taxi, Alexa and I sat close to one another and continued our earlier flirtation. She asked if she could come back to my place. I said, “That’s cool.” She said she liked me because I was “interesting,” whatever that meant.

She then asked if it was cool if we slept together but she did not want to have sex with me. Okay, I enjoyed her company enough and could respect her decision, I guess. not to mention I tend to sleep much more peacefully when I have a partner by my side, so I was content with having a cuddle buddy for the night.

“That’s cool,” I said.

The taxi arrived. Budd and I hoisted Johnny into the backseat. Budd lived only a few blocks away from the bar, so we said our goodbyes. As a trio, Johnny, Alexa, and I taxied back to my apartment. Immediately upon arrival Johnny passed out on my couch.

Alexa and I relocated to my bedroom. Our flirtation naturally evolved into more kissing, which evolved into more caressing, which itself evolved into groping, which culminated in dry-humping.

It was there we plateaued. There we treaded water for about twenty minutes before we decided we were both tired and wanted to sleep.

I stripped down to my boxer-briefs. Alexa decided to keep on the entirety of her outfit, which to me resembled a modern and form fitting mu-mu, but I would later learn this type of outfit to be called a Romper. In either case, She looked damn good in it, but I just couldn’t imagine what possessed her to wear it while she slept.

We fell asleep in each other’s arms and awoke peacefully in the early morning. Upon waking, Alexa and I momentarily continued our teenage rollicking.

Eventually we (I) got dressed and together we went into the living room to find Johnny awake and sprawled on the couch reading Raymond Carver while the morning sun cascaded through the arched living room window.

Johnny and I decided to walk to a nearby cafe to get a quick breakfast.

Alexa said she was going to hang back and order a taxi in a few minutes to take her home, but I told her the coffee shop was less than five minutes away and convinced her to hang out until we returned.

Johnny and I took our walk. We ordered black coffees and everything bagels with cream cheese. Less than ten minutes later we returned to my place

The second we walked through the door we realized something was amiss. Alex was nowhere to be found. She had left with no text, phone call, or even a little note left behind. She simply disappeared without so much as a goodbye. I didn’t even get her phone number.

Now, I’ve had one-night stands in the past, and usually a clean-cut departure is ideal, but never before had I experienced such a blue-ball inducing one-night cuddle stand.

I suppose they can’t all be home runs.