FRIENDLY LUST

I'M FIGURING MY GAL PAL FEELS THE VIBE

The power of hard liquor as panacea panty remover is mythic, but I've lapped laconic from platonic tonic too often. And tonight I fly high on the wings of unadulterated lust aged in the barrel full of quirks that is every episode with my gal pal Daggs. The proverbial "bite to eat," usually more brew than chew, jumps off scotch from the hop this eve. In the rafters a certain sage groans, "I've seen this one before. And I don't like how it ends." Can't argue with that.

Daggs is my friend, a beatified tempest, and we co-star in intermittently recurring two-bit parts in this very subtle theatre of ambiguous intent.

But tonight the moon is right and we're rapturous, traipsing in the rain, laughing riotously in between singing each other's praises, and also indiscriminately jousting just for the contact buzz.

Time is nigh, or so it seems.

Only problem is, even just thinking you're about to bag the hottie friend of choice is a sure-fire boning jinx – akin to washing your dick in the sink instead taking a proper shower before a supposedly stat-padding date.

But urgency beckons: "Tonight's the night," as in that carnal knowledge – so coveted, so richly deserved and in which I would bask eternally grateful – is about to be judiciously dispensed after much deliberation on her part.

We're at my place, soaking wet – from rain, that is – and an offer of a duds tweak is Daggs's cue to stab: "Thanks, but I don't want to scare you with my skeletal endowments."

I could use that kind of fright right about now.

And besides, I know for a living fact that a murder-hot rack on the bodice of a goddess lurks beneath all those damnable layers of aggressively nondescript camouflage deployed exlusively to keep the boys at bay.

But I don't take that self-deprecating bait just yet. I chuck my baggy-best gear at her and busy myself cranking ambient heat, rolling, and tending tunes.

I find her, ace chick to the end, in the kitchen mixing, dancing and, more importantly, missing me. She's clad in just the oversized shirt, and I repress the urge to play Captain Thigh-shiner on her seldom-bared legs.

We just hang, belly-rubbing close, deep in postulates about nothing. Let there be rock but no direct talk of the things we could do in the dark.

There's no getting around that "something" irresistible in her eyes tonight. But it's not a long ride down to reality.

"What are you looking at?" she wants to know.

Man or mouse, dude? She must be thinking what I'm thinking.

Must have her at once, and I'm willing to risk any embarrassment in that endeavour. Gulp.

I float, for the record, that if she's ever had any inclination about us getting busy – I'm good to go.

"You're insane," Daggs responds.

I'm free-falling. That emasculating, "you're never gonna get it – but I love you to pieces" tyrannical type of kindness rears its conciliatory head.

Icarus tastes the earth, again. A predictable outcome, some would argue.

But my only regret about the ill-timed overture is having to digest the dreaded "I don't want to lose our friendship" catechism. Especially since Daggs is squeezing back tears of uncharted origins, asking, "So you have to be like that, too?"

The causing of it all is my willingness to leverage "what we already got" for the less certain sake of "a dick thing." And I'm apparently a very bad man for not being able to suppress my craven want to stick it in.

My steadfast position is that our "friendship" can withstand the test of natural curiosity.

She's astounded that my "typical" male-pattern hound took so long to emerge. Fine point, but they used to call that manners. Beaten down, I immediately give up the ghost. So now she wants to know why I don't want to know more about why she doesn't want to forge ahead on the dead-end path.

Function of self-preservation or not, I'm kind of binary that way: either it's on or it's off, and the reasons why are better left to those working the switch or scratching itch.

And now more pressing logistics than getting freaky are at hand. Daggs is making for the road, and I'm telling her to crash. We're at classic loggerheads, but there's some relief in her insistence that the sudden flight instinct has nothing to do with a fear of being unceremoniously poked in her sleep.

"I know you'd never hurt me," she coos while tracing a delicate path across my face with one hand.

I escort her to a cab at a wholly unholy hour.

She kisses me hard on the mouth.

In the scant time it takes to crawl back into my hole, there's already a phone message waiting: "Thanks for letting me off the hook.... But it's just... well... hope you're not mad...."

Only with the slow-burning heat, my friend.

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NOW | DEC 18 - 24, 2003 | VOL. 23 NO. 16