The Error of Arithmetic

It all started with a simple question.

Well, maybe not simple, but it was a question none-the-less. It was one of those hypothetical “what if” types of questions, something for you and your drinking buddies to argue about while you all feel like god damn geniuses ‘cos of the alcohol. But that’s the thing about it. You may think you’re some kind of freaking Einstein just because new worlds are opened up to you while your brain is floating on a hazy sea of mash liquor, but in reality you’ve just been turned so damn stupid that studying the floral patterns on the wall paper seems as difficult as studying quantum physics. At least, that’s the way it was for me.

At the time I had just polished off my fifth long neck. I can remember looking at Norm saying, “Hey man, I got a question for you.”

He took a long draught off of his beer before turning to me, “Yeah?”

“Okay, so you know how we’ve been ranking girls on the one to ten scale all night?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, then check this. If you have a threesome with a five and a three, right? Is that like having plain sex with an 8?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you drunk already?”

“Nah man, for real. The math adds up.”

“No, it doesn’t. Not with sex.”

“Well, how would you rate it?” I asked, challenging him to come up with something more brilliant than my booze-addled noodle had already conjured up.

He thought a moment. “Okay, you take the lowest one—a three in this case, right? That’s your base number. Then divide the highest number by two and add it to the base, so that’d be four and a half. Or is it five and a half? Oh whatever, I’m too drunk to add.”

“Your system needs some work,” I said, cracking open another bottle.

“Oh yeah? You wanna put some money on it.”

I paused with the bottle halfway to my lips. “What do you mean?”

“Fifty bucks. I bet you fifty bucks that you can’t honestly say—from experience—that doing a five and a three is like tapping an eight.”

“Where am I supposed to find a couple of chicks who are up for it?”

“You know Jen and Holly?”

“Yeah,” I replied apprehensively.

“They’d be down. I heard ‘em talking about you last night.”

I took a minute to think about it. He was probably right. One was a whore and a pack-a-day smoker, while the other weighed as much as me, but the numbers were right. Still, I began to have doubts about my system when faced with the reality of the proposition. Like any good man, though, I shoved those thoughts away, instead latching onto pride and false bravado as I flashed Norm a shit-eating grin.

“You just lost fifty bucks, my friend.”

Surprisingly, convincing the girls to do the deed was the easy part. They’d had about as much to drink as I had, so when I called them up it didn’t take long for them to warm up to the idea. Even without my dear friend Jack Daniel to aid my efforts, I don’t think it would have taken much convincing. Norm gave me a parting wink and stumbled off to his dorm room while I made good on my intentions and went to escort the ladies back to my room.

Now, if no one has realized this by now, one of the cardinal virtues of alcohol is its effect on the powers of perception. Some would call it a detriment, but in the realm of sexual conquest it’s quite the asset. The prime “hook-up” time is that period in your drinking cycle where “drunkness” and “horniness” are evenly balanced. You know that feeling--light headed, a little tipsy, but everything is warm and fuzzy and you feel like you just can’t go wrong. It’s that period where your senses are just hazy enough to obscure some of the ugly, but not enough to make your dick go limp. It’s a hard balance to achieve, let alone sustain. The true masters can keep enough alcohol flowing into their systems to keep it going all night, but most people hit the high for about thirty minutes and then it’s all downhill. That was me as I escorted the “ladies” back to my room—downhill.

The previous portion of the night is all kind of blurry to me, but unfortunately I remember the rest with vivid accuracy. The buzz was fading all too quickly, and as I positioned myself on the bed between the two of them, I began to wonder what the hell I had gotten myself into. With obscene rolls of fat on one side and the suffocating halo of cigarette smoke on the other, I stared blankly up at the ceiling, my manly pride warring with my sense of dignity.

I could feel a course prickling sensation as one of them slipped her thigh over my abdomen, and I gave an involuntary shudder.

“Ooh, looks like someone’s excited,” Jen purred, her smoky breath burning the insides of my nostrils.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. As the alcohol’s effects on my mind faded, so had its effects on my penis.

“I think he needs help,” the other said huskily. “Just lay back and let us do the work.”

It was a good thing, because at that moment I was fighting to keep all of the beer I’d drunk that night from coming back up. Most guys I know think that letting the girl do all the work is the epitome of sexual bliss, but when it’s coming from a cow and an ash tray infected with God knows what, then it’s a different story. I closed my eyes, feeling the sensation of multiple hands and mouths on my body as I desperately tried to imagine I was in bed with someone else.

But that was easier said than done. I mean, the mind is a powerful tool, but when the bed is leaning to one side and the only thing keeping you from rolling off is a huge flabby road block latched onto your crotch, anybody’s imagination is going to be hard pressed to expunge even the smallest portion of the reality unfolding around you. To make matters worse, the slurping and moaning sounds coming from below my waist made it sound like my penis was a deaf man drowning in quicksand, crying out with the toneless bereavement that only someone deprived of hearing for all his life can muster.

And for all their efforts, he wasn’t having any of it. No amount of sucking or caressing could coax the little soldier into standing at attention that night. For once, the smaller head was actually the smarter of the two.

“I, um, sorry to interrupt,” I said a bit too loudly, trying to be heard over their obscene duet, “but I really have to piss.”

They frowned, trading doubtful glances.

I took advantage of the brief reprieve and slid off of the bed. “Um, you two get started without me. I’ll be right back.” I didn’t wait for their response and made a bee-line for the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I locked the door behind me and began to look for a way out with the desperation of a doped up crackhead running from the cops.

Unless I wanted to dive through two panels of sheetrock into the next room, the window was my only way out. I started for my chosen means of exit, but stopped. It was cold, I was naked, and that moment the thought of streaking around campus in forty degree temperatures was not very appealing.

There was a knock at the door.

“Hey, I don’t hear you peeing,” came Holly’s voice. She jiggled the door handle, “What are you doing in there?”

“Shit,” I muttered aloud.

“What’s that?”

“Uh . . . I said I’m taking a shit!”

“But you said . . . “

I didn’t listen to the rest of it as I grabbed a towel off of the rack next to the shower. Cold be damned, I could endure a little frostbite better than I could bear what lay waiting for me in bed. I opened the window and popped out the screen. Thank God I lived on the first floor, because otherwise it would have been a long drop and I sure as hell know I wouldn’t have been able to keep that towel on all the way down.

As soon as my feet touched the grass outside, I booked it. I didn’t have any idea where I was going, but I knew just about anywhere was better than where I had just been. To hell with this shit, I thought to myself. To hell with my pride. To hell with fifty bucks. And to hell with arithmetic. I was gone.