I wake up in a bed that’s not my own,

a stranger snoring softly ’neath the sheets;

my memories of last night now have flown,

        I wake up in a bed that’s not my own,

        and slowly stand up, naked and alone;

        exposed upon the bed is naught but feet.

                I wake up in a bed that’s not my own,

                a stranger snoring softly ’neath the sheets.

A stranger snoring softly ’neath the sheets,

mixed clothing wildly strewn about the floor.

The pulse within my brain a thumping beat;

        a stranger snoring softly ’neath the sheets.

        I ask myself “Who is that? Where’d we meet?

        How quiet can I shut the bathroom door?”

                A stranger snoring softly ’neath the sheets,

                mixed clothing wildly strewn about the floor.

Mixed clothing wildly strewn about the floor,

with wrinkles, stains, bad breath and crazy hair;

my abs are tender; hips a little sore.

        Mixed clothing wildly strewn about the floor,

        a quick escape is what I want, no more;

        I found my phone, the lost socks? I don’t care.

                Mixed clothing wildly strewn about the floor,

                with wrinkles, stains, bad breath and crazy hair.

With wrinkles, stains, bad breath and crazy hair

from waking in a bed that’s not my own.

I faintly recall shots and Truth-or-Dare.

        With wrinkles, stains, bad breath and crazy hair,

        in sunlight blinking, breathing morning air.

        The walk of shame no longer is unknown,

                with wrinkles, stains, bad breath and crazy hair

                from waking in a bed that’s not my own.

(c) 2017 - dustygrein

** a triolet in iambic pentameter

I met her while passing through the busy tourist ladened sidewalks of Waikiki. She, with ivory fair skin rubbed with far too much suntan lotion; adorned in a floppy over-sized sunhat and large Breakfast-At-Tiffany's sunglasses that covered her eyes like some sort of rhinestone encrusted insect; strappy stiletto heels; pink and white sundress; shopping bags in one hand-- gelato in the other.

As for me, I'm not much to look at: sun-kissed-punk-rock-warrior-poet, spouting a mangled mix of shaka-pidgin-and-Shakespeare, Tarzan-and-Tennyson, in a mishmash-ed glass menagerie of an English degree doodled on napkins. So when I opened my mouth, an out pouring of my carefully crafted encyclopedic wit and charming disposition culminated with:

"Hi."

And then more words followed, and somehow my stumbling bumbling buffoonery engaged her in conversation. We're standing there in the sun and the heat, talking about shopping and gelato and people are just walking past us, and it isn't until her bags are at her feet' and her dessert is melted to a puddle in her cup that I realize we've been blocking a major thoroughfare without a care for the world around us. She's not making any excuses to walk away, no artificial deadline or destination. No, she's genuinely interested in the words coming out of my mouth for some reason.

"I want to eat that." I point to her empty gelato cup. "Where did you get that?"

- - - - 

She was clever.  Instead of gelato we got beer, and over a pitcher at a tiki-tourist-bar I became all the more enamored. We spoke about politics and art, and hikes and beaches, we talked about eating animals, and the potential flavors endangered species. And the more we spoke the more, I smiled and the more she twirled her hair. One pitcher became two, and onward to a quaint little bistro by the ocean for food. As the sun was setting across the water, and the masts and sails like a thousand little toothpicks sticking out of the glowing sea. With an equal red glow on her cheeks she whispered:

“You might just be the best thing so far about Hawaii.” To which I replied,

“Volcanoes.” 

- - - -

We stumbled into her hotel room, my hands exploring the curves of her body, hot unadulterated passion radiating off our meshing flesh. She peeled my shirt off and flung it into a corner of the room. We tripped out-of shoes and heels; our faces and hands unable to separate or even look down for the briefest of moments. I flung her onto the bed, she fumbled at the skull-and-crossbones of my belt buckle.

My thumb and forefinger found the zipper to the back of her pink and white sundress dress. I gave the zipper a tug; The thin metal toggle sang as it rode down the small of her back, each unfettered tooth widening the maw of fabric, and bringing me one step closer to that beautiful moment where our genitals will high-five. I ran my fingernails playfully over her bare skin from her slender shoulders down to her well toned buttocks. I'm on top of her. Our faces-- inseparable.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" She asked me between hot mouthy kisses.

"Of course not." I replied, gasping for air. My hands working their way up the sides of her ribs, opening up the back of her dress ready to pull it off, her soft flesh dancing under my fingertips.

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

- - - -

Doctors call them "door knob questions". The patient goes in, has a routine checkup and says everything is fine. The moment the doctor is about to leave the examining room, with his hand (or her hand, because women can be doctors too) on the door knob the patient spits it out-- the real reason for their visit.

"I've got this growth on my testicle and I think it might be cancer... and I've been coughing up blood all morning..."

- - - -

She had deftly avoided the question all evening, and now right when we were at the cusp of coitus, standing at the doorstep of my ding-dong's-destiny, with her hands at my waist kissing me like she means it...

There's this awkward.

Halting.

Pause.

"...I have a boyfriend."

I laugh, because I think she's being cute. It sounded so good coming out of her mouth, it took a second to register in my brain.

"Wait, say that again?"

"He's back in New Zealand. We're on a break."

"Does he know that?" She shrugs.  

"I mean, I'm going to break up with him when I get home."

The room gets very cold and quiet. Something in the light changes: I pull my face away from hers, first by inches and then by miles. Something in me shifts. I no longer want to do this. I stand up.

- - - -

I gathered up my clothes. They were flung so casually all over her hotel room in a passionate whirlwind... and now I'm participating in the world's most depressing scavenger hunt, where the prize at the end for collecting it all is a night of self-loathing and solitary contemplation about my life's choices.

Even once I Caught em' All, my clothes instinctively fight me. It's like being a toddler again; all motor-skills flying out the window in my fevered panic to escape. My head wants to go through the arm hole, both feet in one pant leg. I don't even bother to try tying my laces; I just tuck them into the sides of my shoes. She's sitting there, scowling on her hotel room bed, her mouth slightly agape and her eyes narrowed into slits, just watching me stumble into my clothes. The back zipper of her dress is still splayed wide open, the material folded over her shoulders as if she were some life-sized-zip-up-costume just waiting for someone with character to step into her skin.

"Thank you for a wonderful night" I say to her as I exit her hotel room. I wish I had a hat. Like a bowler, fedora, or even a cowboy hat because at that exact moment I would've raised it an inch over my head and tipped it to her. I saunter off, my imaginary spurs jingling with each step.

Out in the long empty corridor, lined with perfectly cloned hotel doors end to end, I paused for a moment uncertain of what to do. "I'm doing the right thing." I said it aloud to myself in the empty hallway. And then again. "I'm doing the right thing." Louder. "I'm doing the right thing."

For some reason, I start running. Running... from a half - naked woman who wants me for purely carnal and superficial reasons, a goal I've spent most of my adult life running towards. Hotel California begins playing in my head as I barrel my way down the empty hallway and through the fire exit and down the stairwell making a mad dash in concentric circles as I descend further and further away from her hotel room to the ground floor. I imagine her giving one final piercing cackle before her room bursts into unholy purple and green flames. Because in Disney Movies, the bad guys always have purple and green flames.

I fling open the doors and spill out onto some discrete side exit flanked by concrete plant potters and shoulder high-hedges. I hear the door lock behind me with a resounding *thud*. It's in that moment I allow myself to slow the perpetual motion of my fleeing body. I turn around and try the handle. Yep, no turning back now. I tie my shoelaces and walk the rest of the way to my car.

I did the right thing.

God damn... I hate the right thing.  

I was nervous. Blushed cheeks, sweaty palms and warm ears, all of them became apparent when I saw him. I have been talking to him on the internet for 5 years now and it was the first time in all those years that we were meeting. After a nice dinner, and not much talking we went to my apartment. I took shower and put on my favourite body mist and was all very excited to feel the touch of the man I have been talking for so long and was almost in love with. I slipped into my shorts and joined him under the blanket in my bed. With laptop on his laps, he asked me that if I would like to listen to romantic slow songs. I said that yes, sure! He dimmed the lights of the room. The vibes and the ambience indicated the love all around. Bodies were warm, breaths were fast, hearts were pounding really hard and the kiss happened. Feeling the soft flesh of his lips and tongue over mine was surreal. He slid his hand down there and I realized that what a pool of juices I had made. The hot love-making followed and continued for the whole night. I expected a proposal to be his girl friend next morning after that perfect night and those personal and detailed chats of our lives for 5 years. Dawn arrived and we were both up but still in the bed and he pulled out his wallet and showed me the photo of his daughter. I was shocked to know that he has a daughter, but it did not lessened my love for him, until he said, "I love my daughter and MY WIFE very much. Would you like to be my sex buddy? I loved making love to you the last night, it was........" I walked away to the washroom before he could say anything more. Why did he never mentioned that he is married and has a family. I took shower washing away my mixed set of emotions.

Fucked up night it was! May be I had expected too much of an internet stranger. Such a naive I was!

Never fall in love over the internet.

I was generous enough to offer him a breakfast though! :p

In the mid to late 90's, before the internet became the thing you can't live without today, you had a land-line phone and an America Online (AOL) account or a Prodigy or a Compuserve account.  But I digress, anyway, on these internet providers that you used to have to dial into with your dial-up modem, you would log into AOL's chat rooms.  I have always been a fan of thick women, plump in the rump, whatever, it's just my taste in women. 

But back then, we didn't have a PAWG chat room or fat bottomed girls chat - you had BBW or SSSBBW.  So in these chat rooms, you'd join in a discussion, pick out someone who you thought you'd like to get to know more and then private message them.  You'd chat for a while, then you would exchange pictures. After that when you get a number, you'd call them and then when your ear hairs would curl, you'd engage in phone sex or what have you.

But on this particular day, I found an older woman to talk with, I wasn't aware of this additional attraction to women but I was.  If I look back on it now, yeah, it was part of my flavor palette.  And there was an incident when I was 21 that I may write about later... But I digress, so I called up this woman, and we agreed to meet the next day.  It was a hike for me, but hey, I was a nerd in my mid twenties, and wasn't experienced - I was going to get laid.

See here is where I wish the idea of cat fishing came up in my day.  Because when I met her, she was much older than she said...MUCH OLDER.  I won't go into details, nor will I go into the blow by blow, but...there was a goal in mind, and a goal was achieved.  

Afterwords, I was asked if I would come back...

"Sure...", I lied through my teeth.

I got into my car, and started my drive home.  I stopped at a McDonald's and grabbed something to eat, and on the ride home, I turned on the radio, and started crying.

"What did you just do???" I was thinking to myself.  Asking myself the same thing over and over later as I drove on.

Then I was mad at myself for crying, hey, its just the era I was raised in.  Guys just don't cry in bathrooms after sex.  Nor did this guy, I did it on the ride home.  My own "walk of shame" if you will.  But it was after that encounter, that I never told a woman something that wasn't true in the bedroom, ever again.  I don't know what it was, to me it was just something not right in lying to someone you are about to be intimate with.  It was also after this encounter that I never judged people on who they chose to sleep with because every now and then, we all need a little closeness.

Anonymity prohibits

His identity exhibits

Suffice it to say, booze played a part

In this affair, no end, all start

Whiskey dick, unfortunate name

As beer, in excess, does the same

Long hair, molten eyes, ignited fire

His hips thrust toward mine, desire

His large tool, an active member

Bent to the nail, flimsy hammer

So, it now seems his workshop closed

No sawdust would fly, he just dozed

Taking matters into own hands

Solitary construction plans

Once foundation solidly lay

Fingers erected each brick play 

Exhaling deep, joy, gratitude

I look to my Romeo dude

His hairy ass, his beer breath snore

Pick up my clothes, run to the door

One night stands- till next time- no more!!

I met Janine (not her real name) during the winter of 2010, before meeting my wife. She was my eighth, sixteenth, or hundredth online date. I wasn't keeping score. I told myself it wasn't desperation, but I hadn't been intimate with another woman for over two years.

We had drinks after work. She was a casual at Swarovski in the city, and I wasn't far up the terrace. Prior to our meet up, I had only been offered glimpses of Janine's hot, girl-next-door face. So, you could imagine my face when I discovered the rest of her. I'm not a model gentleman, not even when channeling James T. Kirk with a scantily-clad Orion girl. But, there was a lot to love! I said hello, at which point, my greatest ever challenge was realized—being put on trial as a human being.

We talked. I had no problem engaging in conversation or reciprocating flirts. I could tell she was enthralled because she touched my forearm.

What transpired next was plain wrong, and I knew right away. But, I was parched like a teetotaler at a pub during Oktoberfest. I rested my palm on her hand. My brain didn't care that Janine was not my type. I wasn't even aware that the dormant neurons in both hemispheres of my skull were buzzing. It felt good. Like a two-year itch on your lower back, that one annoying spot where neither arm could reach. Ever.

Damn. Her hands were so Goddamned soft!

There was a good chance my eyes were complicit in perpetrating the next shameful crime—no doubt taking direct orders from my other brain—but Janine was ravishing and delicious. I shifted to face her, eliminating any hints of disinterest. I scanned every inch of her ample body, and you know what? She ain't half bad on the eyes. Sure, the woman had curves, but I decided that curvy was better than being a sticky (I know you know what I mean).

So, what was impossible before was now possible, one of my brains was telling me that, I'm not sure which one. It wouldn't be the best sex, or it could be the worst, but I had no fucks left to give.

We had a few more drinks. By we, I meant me, and by a few, I meant half a dozen. I finally understood the reference "beer goggles".

I couldn't resolve the tightness in my pants any longer after that. We took the train home because neither of us had a car (another thing we had in common). We were in bed undressing each other an hour later.

Fuck. Sobriety was rearing its ugly head. I became more conscious of her body. No matter what I did—switching the lights off, closing my eyes, being rough—I couldn't get it up. So, I did the only thing I could: played the stress card.

I knew she knew. But Janine was a champion. If she was upset or embarrassed, it never showed. She didn't even ask to spoon. I slept little that night, and I guessed neither did she.

I called her a taxi the next morning, and we embraced each other before she embarked. That scene which devolved before the world to witness was textbook-classic awkward. Although I can't describe it, I still remember the look on her face as the taxi rolled down the road.

I never saw her again.

My Worst One Nighter

Followed me Down the Line of my Life.

When I First Fell Down That Well;

Old Was I Having Spent Most of Life In the Pen.

She Was a Present All Willow & Wine,

Fluid In Motion & What a Slick Grip.

a Real Home Coming In True Gangster Land Style

the Party Lasting Well Into Night.

me & Her Going At It Not Caring the Sight.

Stabbing & Stabbing With my Long Knife.

Dripping & Spent Then Into Her Mouth

a Grin Full of Sin & Back To the Mill.

Tired Was I After We Toweled & Dried.

Getting Into Bed I Thought This the Best It Ever Been.

It Was All So UnTrue As They Crept In my Room.

To Silence the Things Never Mouthed But I Knew.

Shoot Us They Did As I Used Her To Defend,

Bullets Cutting Through Her Turning Living Flesh To Dead.

Her Eyes Wide In Surprise As They Dripped Down my Thigh.

Night After Night That Is What I See

Endlessly Reminding That the Chunks Were a She.

An Ash Tray Was All I Could Find As I Used Her To Hide.

Kill Them I Did Again & Again

But Never Was I In Time.

#B27321

The year was around seventy-nine or eighty, I was a naive young thing in the military and had a date with some bad boy I had a crush on. We had been out to dinner and were now back at his place and I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. We get to necking and fooling around, just kissing and touching mostly, when for no apparent reason, gas came out of the "wrong" place, noisily I'll add, and this poor fellow took it to mean I didn't want to be there. "Are we gonna do this or what?" he said. Well, I was so darn embarrassed and had no idea what or why that just happened, I snatched my clothes up and high-tailed it out of there as fast as my short little legs would carry me. I never saw that young man again, and that was alright with me. Years later someone taught me the meaning of the word queef, and that's when I realized what had happened that awful night. It may have been a natural occurrence, however, it was about the farthest thing from sexy there was and except for one time after with my husband, has never happened again. 

Shortly after our marriage, my late husband confessed to me about the worst one-night stand he had ever experienced. In his words, it was a complete “cat’s ass trophy!”

Mike had met this lovely girl at a keg party. The party was being held at a clearing in the woods on a balmy summer evening. Sharon was an earthy naturalist, wearing a tie-dyed halter top and sarong. She had brought her faithful companion, “Buster”, to the event. Buster was a large, black and white, Great Dane. Mike and Sharon hit it off, drinking beer and talking for hours around the campfire with Buster at their feet.

The couples’ conversation turned romantic and lead to passionate kissing. Mike took Sharon by the hand, into the woods, to a place covered in soft moss. They fell to the ground in anticipation. He kissed her neck and gently raised Sharon’s cotton skirt up to her ribs, revealing a tiny belly-button charm. Smiling, Mike then managed to kick off his boots, unbuckle his jeans and toss them. He dove in with a heavenly “thrust”.

They were really “going to town” when Mike suddenly felt something wet and warm slide across his butthole and testicles. Turning around, he saw Buster licking him . . . then Buster raised up on his hind legs in an attempt to “join the orgy”.

Mike shrieked and “dismounted” Sharon, immediately. ("This is not going to happen.")  He told me, later, that he had never lost an erection so fast!

     All of this happened because I woke up late. If I hadn’t woken up late that particular day none of this horrifying nightmare would ever have happened. The minute I woke up I had to go to the bathroom, and I mean I had to take a shit. I frankly just didn’t have time, so on this fateful day I left the house and headed off to work uncomfortable.

     At the time I was working at an elementary school on the Costa del Sol in Southern Spain. All day long I was dealing with children speaking to me in a foreign language that I hardly understood. Adorable little Spanish children that melted my heart and annoyed me to death all at the same time.

     It was almost Christmas and directly after school that day was the Christmas dinner with the entire staff. I was getting a ride from my friend Roberto, and certainly didn’t want to inconvenience him by having him wait ten minutes while I ran to the bathroom. Not only is that rude, it’s entirely un lady-like, and I really wasn’t sure how to say “take a shit” in Spanish. So off we went to the Christmas dinner together.

     This holiday dinner turned out to be extremely fancy, but to my joy and surprise included something that I truly love: FREE WINE. Being around only Spaniards and myself, the only way to avoid the awkwardness was to pound as much free vino tinto as humanly possible. The dinner basically involved a lot of nodding my head, laughing even though I didn’t know what the hell was actually going on, and hoping to god no one asked me a question directly. About seven glasses later, I was invited to join my coworkers at a local bar afterwards for dancing.

     Three cervezas more at the new bar, the time had finally come. I was so inebriated at this point that I didn’t give a shit where I took a shit. My drunk ass headed to the tiny toilet in the bar, and finally allowed myself to do what I had been waiting for all day long. By no surprise at all, as usual in Spanish bars, I quickly realized that there was no toilet paper. In my blurry mind I figured I would just, you know, shake it off and deal with it later. I shortly thereafter immediately forgot about the major problem that was happening in my nether-regions. Back to the dance floor I went to dance my booty away.

     At the time there was this American guy living in the exact town where the bar was, and in my current state I figured calling him would be the best plan of action. His name was James, and I had hooked up with him once before. I basically just gave him head in the hallway of this hotel and he came in 44 seconds. This guy wasn’t exactly my type, but there was something about him. He was cocky, and cocky I like. I sent him a text suggesting we meet up for some drinks.

     Thirty minutes later I was sitting on the steps of a old Spanish church waiting for James. I could not have been more excited when I saw him coming from around the corner. James was preppy, with reddish blonde hair, and quite stocky. He was going to be a lawyer, and wore cardigan sweaters far too often. We walked together to another local bar near the beach and he bought us some beers and a couple shots of whiskey. And then more shots of whiskey. Too many shots later we were off to his apartment.

     The minute we walked in the door it was hot. He slammed me up against the wall, sliding his hand around the back of my neck and pressing his lips against mine, sliding his tongue into my mouth. He reached his hands roughly up the front of my shirt, grabbing and massaging my tits. James took my shirt off, throwing it recklessly on the floor. He ripped my bra over my head, not even bothering to unhook it. My boobs were suddenly in his face, and his tongue all over my nipples. At this point we were still at the bottom of the stairs in his apartment. We stumbled up the stairs, so fucking drunk that we were literally bouncing off the walls stumbling up to the living room. I sat on the couch and James ripped my pants off my body, ripped my underwear off and started eating me out. I was moaning in pleasure whens suddenly James stopped.

     He stood up.

     “I’m sorry Liz… but … but I just can’t do this anymore”.

     I immediately thought he had some kind of problem with my vagina. Of course every woman is sensitive about their vagina and live in constant fear that there might be some kind of odor that may be less than appealing. I was so hurt and upset that I just screamed at him.

     “What? You don’t like my vagina? You think it smells or something? Well fuck you!”

     To which James kindly and oh-so-nicely replied:  “No… no, it’s… not that. The smell is coming from… well the… other part of your body down there. You’re a cool girl, and so I want to be straight with you, but I’ve literally got shit on my hands right now, and the smell is… it’s just awful”.

     Oh. My. God.

     At that point I immediately remembered the horrible fiasco that happened earlier in the night. My drunk idiot ass, instead of apologizing and immediately leaving like a normal person would do, just jumped right up.

     “I’ll just take a shower then. No biggie! I’ll just take a shower and everything will be fine and I will be right back.”

     I ran to the shower as fast as possible. Afterwards I just went traipsing back into the living room, dripping wet, and all I could find was a hand towel so that’s all I had covering me. I must have looked like the hottest god-damned mess he had ever seen in his life. And guess what? James just came right over and we continued right where we left off. The man kept going! And we fucked right there on the couch where the great shit incident of 2010 had occurred. And we fucked again in the morning.

     After finally getting home the next day, it really started to dawn on me how disgusting and mortifying the night really was. At the time I really just wanted a fuck buddy who lived nearby, and James was quite good in bed, but I was too embarrassed to tell even my closest friends. The poor man had had my shit in his mouth. After much contemplation and finally having the nerves to tell my roommate about the literal fucking nightmare that had happened the night before I somehow decided that it was a good idea to send James a Facebook message. I really needed to clarify that I was in fact a clean person, that this was just an isolated fucked up incident and so not the norm.

     The following day I sent him this message, verbatim:

     “I just want to throw this out there while I still have my dignity. Although I think I pretty much lost that last night haha. Well for my own sanity I just wanted to clarify that I normally do have really good hygiene, I swear! It's just that there wasn't any toilet paper when I went to the bathroom and I was planning on going home afterward and I was so drunk that I wasn't thinking clearly to solve the problem and then I forgot all about it. Anyway just wanted to clarify what happened during the worst situation that has ever happened to me! And thank you for acting so... normal and mature. In a couple of years this story might be really funny but right now I just want to kill myself. Well if you ever want to bone again let me know, I could use a fuck buddy in Spain. I promise to shower beforehand...ha.”

     I contemplated my sanity sending the message. After clearing it through my roommate  and assuring myself it was the right thing to do, I was then faced with the arduous task of titling this most awkward message. It came to me almost immediately.   

     Shit Happens.