“Well…” he sighed.
“Well…” she sighed.
“That was…” they both said in unison.
Oh good, a moment of comic relief to ease the tension. Alas, it lasted only moments before rigidity refilled both their bodies… well… both their bodies minus the one and only area that would have welcomed rigidity.
She knew she had to say something, but what do you say? She felt it would be too cliché to mock, “Don’t worry, it happens.” Besides, that DOESN’T happen, not to her anyway! He must have been reading her mind as he blankly stared at the ceiling and said, “I just don’t know what to say.”
A few seconds, that felt like hours, passed and he rolled over onto his side. She turned and stared at his bare back. She frowned and suddenly started to feel a little pissed: had he just, literally, given her the cold shoulder?
No, no. She was being irrational, he was just embarrassed. She reached out and touched the back of his neck in a comforting way. His body recoiled in such a subtle way that she almost wondered if she’d imagined it.
“Don’t worry, it happens” She accidently said.
The moment the words slipped out of her mouth she wished she could take them back. They were even more cliché out loud than they had been in her head. Yet, despite her brain screaming “SHUT UP!!!” she continued the verbal diarrhea and spewed out, “I’m embarrassed too.”
He lay completely still, wordless. She was sitting up now, with one hand on her head and an expression of ‘Eek’ on her face. She wanted so desperately to stop the words from coming out of her mouth, but it was like she had been taken over by some alien force:
“You were probably just really tired, or maybe dehydrated. I once read in Cosmo that sometimes guys can’t get it… uhh… you know… after a hard workout. Did you workout this afternoon? Or maybe, it was all that spicy food we ate. Does spice affect it?”
‘SPICE?’ She yelled internally, “What the fuck does spice have to do with anything?”
The room filled, yet again, with an overpowering silence that was hot, heavy and hard… all the things that “he” wasn’t. He continued to lie motionless, and she continued to feel a tremendous amount of embarrassment for both his lack of performance and for her wordy torrent.
All of a sudden, the awkwardness overwhelmed her and she began to giggle to herself. It was one of those really quiet nose giggles where you can’t tell if the person is laughing or crying. She put her hand over her mouth to try and muffle the sound, but it was no use… they had begun. The awkward giggles: they were more relentless than a bad case of the hiccups.
It wasn’t long before the quiet nose giggles merged into the high-pitched school-girl “he he’s.” By now he had rolled back over and was glaring at her, which only provoked the situation further. Within seconds her eyes were welling with tears, her face was beat red, her mouth was wide open, and she was simply givin’er. The laughter was so loud she was sure it would wake his roommates. Unfortunately, that only made the situation all the more awkward and therefore all the more hilarious.
She knew, at this point, the situation was beyond salvageable. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could be done. In the midst of her laughter she threw on her skirt and tank top and headed for the bedroom door. Without turning around she said/giggled, “Thanks for an entertaining evening.” And with that she walked out of the bedroom, out of the apartment, and down the street never to return again… and laughing all the while!
