I stared at her profile like she had two heads. Or her hand in a vagina. Why is it that I’m just now finding out my best friend went through a lesbian phase? Every time I look at her now I'm going to picture vagina-hand. A little hand that looks like a who-ha chasing me around the house and watching me while I sleep. Va**na hand is always watching. Va**na hand sees you.

Liz looked beyond my shoulder and then leaned in closer. "Two tangos staring at us at your six."

I rolled my eyes again and sighed at the attempt Liz was making to be covert.

"Five bucks says free drinks will be ours if we play our cards right,” she said conspiratorially.

"Liz, we're surrounded by kegs of beer and we were handed a plastic cup when we walked in. I'm pretty sure that equals free booze," I told her, holding up my red Solo cup in front of her as a reminder.

"Oh shut it. You're ruining the moment. If we were at a bar right now, they'd totally be buying us drinks."

"If we were legal."

"Details," she scoffed with a wave of her ominous va**na hand.

She fluffed up her hair, and then pulled the front of her shirt down lower so she showed enough cl**vage to blind a man.

"Liz, if you sneeze there's going to be a nip slip. Put those things away before you poke an eye out."

"They're coming over!" she squealed, batting my hands away as I tried to pull her shirt back up to cover the twins.

“Jesus, is there a homing beacon on those things?” I muttered. I shook my head in amazement at the power that was her boobs. "Your tits are like Bounty. The quicker dick picker upper," I muttered as I finally turned around to get a look at who was coming over. I’m pretty sure to an outsider I looked like Elmer Fudd when he saw Bugs Bunny dressed up like a girl and his eyes popped out of his head and his heart stretched out the front of his shirt. If the music weren’t so loud you would be able to hear “ARRROOOOOOGA!”

“Hello there ladies.”

Liz not so subtly elbowed me when the one that looked like a linebacker spoke. I briefly raised my eyebrows at the shirt he wore that strained against the muscles of his chest and read “I’m not a gynecologist but I’ll take a look.” My attention immediately focused on the guy standing next to him with his hands in his pockets. The long-sleeved t-shirt he wore with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows hugged his body nicely and I could see the subtle outline of muscles in his chest and arms. They were nothing compared to Hooked on Steroids standing next to him, but they were perfect to me. I wanted him to turn around so I could see how great his ass looked in the well-worn jeans he had on. Unlike a lot of the college guys around here who were going through some sort of weird Justin Bieber-hair phase, this guy kept his light brown hair cut short, with just enough length on top for some messy spikes. He wasn’t too tall, wasn’t too short, he was just right. And just… beautiful. I wanted to punch my own face for calling a guy beautiful but it was true. He was so pretty I wanted to frame him and put him on my nightstand in a totally non-creepy, non-Hannibal Lector skin-suit-wearing kind of way. He looked bored and like he’d rather be anywhere but at this party. Before I could introduce myself and tell him he was my soul mate, someone bumped into me roughly from behind and I stumbled forward, smacking gracefully into his chest and spilling my beer all over the floor at our feet.

Holy hell he smelled good. Like boy and cinnamon and a tiny hint of cologne that made me want to rub my nose in his shirt and take a deep breath. Okay, so that might have thrown me back into creepy territory. I didn’t want him to start calling me the shirt sniffer. That’s a nickname that just doesn’t go away. Like va**na hand.

His hands flew out of his pockets and grabbed onto my arms to steady me while I was busy trying not to motorboat his tee shirt and flee the scene in mortification. I heard the sound of cackling laughter behind me and turned to see that one of the Heathers was responsible for my graceful entrance into this guy’s life. It turns out slamming into someone is hilarious and her equally offensive twin joined in on the finger pointing and laughing.

What is this, a bad teen movie from the nineties? Did they expect me to cry and go running out of the room while dramatic music played over my exit?

"Jesus, what's your damage Heather?" a masculine voice said irritably.

Their laughter immediately stopped and they looked behind me in confusion. I whipped my head around and stared at the guy in awe, noticing that I still had my hands pressed against his chest and that I could feel the heat from his skin through his thin t-shirt.

"Did you just quote 'Heathers'?" I whispered. “That is my favorite movie ever.”

He looked down at me and smiled, the piercing blue of his eyes boring a hole right through me.

"I had a huge crush on Winona Ryder before the whole shoplifting thing," he said with a shrug, his hands still wrapped around my upper arms.

"My name isn't Heather," a whiny voice protested behind me.

"Wow, Winona Ryder," I stated with a nod of my head.

Jesus, I had absolutely no game. Being in close proximity to a guy this hot turned my brain to mush. I just wanted to hear him speak again. His voice made me want to take my pants off.

"I kind of have a thing for quirky, intelligent, dark-haired chicks," he said with a smile.

"Why did he call me Heather? He knows my name is Niki," came the shrill voice from behind me again.

I'm a quirky, intelligent, dark haired chick! Me, me, me, pick me! And who the hell keeps whining and ruining my perfect moment? I will cut a bitch.

"Um, hellloooo!"

The man of my dreams broke eye contact with me to look over my shoulder. "Niki, your voice is making my ears bleed and killing my buzz."

I heard her huff and storm off. At least I think that's what she did. I was still staring at this guy and wondering how soon was too soon to drag him into a spare bedroom. He looked back at me and removed one of his hands from my arms to brush my bangs out of my eyes with his fingers. The simplicity of the action and the ease in which he performed it made it feel as though he’d done it a thousand times before. I wanted to slyly give Liz a big cheesy grin and a thumb’s up but she was busy talking to this guy’s friend a few feet away.

“You want to go refill your drink, maybe play a game of beer pong or something?”

I want to reach in my pants, pull out my virginity, wrap it up and put a bow on it. Or maybe stick it in a gift bag from Target and give it to him like a present with a nice card that says “Thank you for being you! Just a little virginity to show you my gratitude!”

“Sure,” I replied with a shrug, totally playing it cool. It’s probably best to play a little hard to get. You don’t want to look too eager.

***

"Oh God, don't stop," I panted as he kissed a trail down my neck and fumbled clumsily with the button of my jeans. After five rounds of beer pong and hours of talking, laughing and standing so close to him that it soon became impossible to refrain from touching him, I forgot the meaning of "hard to get". With a boldness I could only achieve through copious amounts of alcohol, I wrapped a hand behind his neck after losing the last round, pulled him to me, and kissed him with everything I had in me in front of all the people still left at the party that hadn't yet passed out in a pile of their own vomit. I grabbed his hand and dragged him down the hallway and shoved him into the first room we came to. I hoped Liz would have been close by to give me some sort of encouragement or last minute pointers about what I was about to do, but she disappeared after I announced to the room that she would be giving free PAP tests at the end of the night with her lesbian approved hand.

As soon as we got into the dark room we attacked each other. Sloppy, drunken kisses, hands groping all over the place, slamming into random furniture as we stumbled and laughed our way to the bed. I tripped over something on the floor that may or may not have been a person and fell backwards, luckily onto the bed, dragging the guy right along with me. He landed roughly on top of me and it felt like the wind was knocked out of me.

"Shit, sssorry. You'kay?" He slurred as he pushed himself up on his arms, taking some of his weight off of me.

"Yep, good," I wheezed. "Now take your clothes off."

I was so buzzed I almost laughed when he dragged himself off me and took his pants and boxer briefs off. The moonlight shining through the bedroom window provided just enough illumination for me to see what he was doing even though the alcohol coursing through my veins made him look like he was on a tilt-a-whirl. He pushed everything down to his ankles without bending his knees, then stood up and shuffled back to the bed. Thankfully, the miniscule part of my brain that hadn't yet been taken over by beer and tequila shots reminded me it was never a good idea to laugh at a man when he took his pants off. It was just so funny though! I've seen plenty of penises before, just not in living color and two feet from my body. That thing stuck straight out and was pointing right at me. I swear, in my head I could hear the penis talking.

"Aaarrrggg, ahoy me matey, thars a great grand va**na over yonder."

Penises talk like pirates when I'm drunk. Probably because Liz calls them one-eyed snakes. And pirates wear patches and only have one eye and...holy shit, Captain Hookpenis was coming closer.

I should probably focus.

He crawled on top of me and kissed me, his scallywag bumping into my leg. This time I did laugh, pulling my mouth away from his and giggling until I snorted. I was drunk as shit, thinking about walking the plank and there was a penis smacking against my thigh in a strange bedroom that may or may not have a dead person on the floor. How can you not chortle like a schoolgirl at that shit? He was oblivious to my convulsions of laughter as he moved his head to the side and kissed my neck. And Jeeeeeeesus if that didn't sober me up long enough to realize how good it felt.

"Ohhhhh yesssssssss," I moaned out loud, surprising myself that I’d actually vocalized the words that were sloshing around in my fuzzy, beer-addled brain.

His lips moved up to the spot right behind my ear and when his tongue slid lightly against the skin there, it shot a tingle right between my legs that surprised me. My hands moved up to clutch onto his hair and hold his head in place. I didn’t really think anything about this night was going to feel good. It was all about getting this crap out of the way, enjoying myself was a small perk I didn’t expect. After a few minutes of fumbling with my jeans, he finally got them unbuttoned and yanked them down my legs, taking my underwear with them. His hands slid up the sides of my body, taking my shirt with them until it was pulled over my head and tossed in the general direction of my jeans. The liquid courage reignited long enough for me to take off my bra and fling it to the side, the sound of the material smacking into the wall making me realize I was now lying on a bed completely na**d with a guy kneeling between my legs, staring down at all I had to offer.

Oh my God. This is really happening. I’m na**d in front of a guy. Am I really going to do this?

"Jesus, you're so f**king beautiful."

Yes, the answer is yes! If he keeps talking to me like that he can stick it in my ear.

He let his eyes roam over my body and then quickly yanked his shirt off and threw it across the room. My hands automatically reached up to his chest so I could touch him as he sunk back down on top of me. His chest was hard and his skin was smooth. I touched every inch of him I could reach. I wrapped my hands around the back of his neck and pulled him down to me and kissed him. He tasted like tequila and sunshine. Despite our inebriated states, I was enjoying his kisses. Now that we were na**d and in bed, they weren’t so frantic. They were actually soft and sweet and made me sigh a little into his mouth. He pulled one of my legs up and wrapped it around his hip and I could feel the head of his penis right at my opening.

Oh shit, this is it. This is really happening. And why am I talking to myself when I have my tongue in someone's mouth and he's getting ready to stick his penis in me?

Oh my God …

Even though I was drunk as a skunk at the time, I still remembered what happened after that. Less than two seconds later he was inside me and I was waving good-bye to my virginity. I wanted it to last forever. I saw stars, came three times that night and it was the most beautiful experience of my life.

Yeah right. Are you kidding me? Have you lost your virginity lately? It hurts like a mother effer and it's awkward and messy. Anyone that tells you she had anything even close to resembling an orgasm during the actual event itself is a lying sack of shit. The only stars I saw were the ones behind my eyelids as I squeezed them shut and waited for it to be over.

But let's be honest here, this is exactly how I expected it to be. It's not his fault it wasn't anything to write home about. He was as sweet and gentle as he could possibly be with me considering the amount of alcohol we consumed during the night. We were both drunk as hell and I lost my virginity to a guy whose name I didn't know because I didn’t want any distractions and I didn’t have time for a relationship. With the state of my virginity out of the way, I could focus more on school and my career and Liz would stop treating every party we went to like a meat market. It went exactly according to my plan. That is, until my period was a week late and I realized I ate an entire loaf of bread and seven sticks of string cheese while I sat at the kitchen table looking at the calendar and wishing I'd paid more attention to math in kindergarten because there was no f**king way I counted right.

3. Have You Seen This Sperm Donor?

Sometimes I blame my lack of desire to have children on my mother. She wasn’t a bad mother; she just didn’t really know what she was doing. She realized early on that living in a small town out in the country wasn’t for her and that sitting around day after day watching television with my dad and dealing with a sassy pre-teen wasn’t all that she wanted out of life. She wanted to travel, go to art shows, concerts and movies, she wanted to be free to come and go as she pleased and not have to answer to anyone. My mom told me once that she never stopped loving my dad. She just wanted more than he could give her. They divorced and she moved out when I was twelve to get a condo in the city about thirty miles away. I never felt like she abandoned me or anything, I still saw her all the time and talked to her on the phone every day. And it’s not like she didn’t ask me to go with her when she moved out. She did, but I think it was only because she felt like it was expected. Everyone knew I’d choose to stay with my father. I was and always would be a daddy’s girl. As much as I loved my mother, I felt like I had more in common with my dad and it just seemed natural that I should stay with him.