Taryn – Day eighteen

With the refrigerator door held wide open, Stefanie stared at the bare shelves for some time. After scanning the door’s compartments again, she swung it closed with a bang.

She wrinkled her nose. “You were serious.”

“I told you.”

“Not even wine remnants.” She glanced around the kitchen and then looked at me. “You always have wine remnants.”

I’d tossed everything with alcohol in it into the dumpster downstairs, and had no intention of bringing anymore into my house any time soon. I shrugged one shoulder and raised my eyebrows. “I got rid of everything.”

“Are you done forever?”

“For now. We’ll see. I don’t know.”

She looked me up and down and then cocked her hip. “Did mister thirty days put you up to this?”

I scowled at her. “No.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m serious. I just decided to lay off for a while. When I get drunk, I act like an idiot.”

She opened the pantry and grabbed a jar of peanut butter. “You’re fun when you’re drunk.”

“I don’t have to be drunk to have fun.”

She unscrewed the lid and poked her finger inside. “I can’t answer that.”

“It wasn’t a question.” I shot her a look and motioned toward the silverware drawer. “Get a spoon, that’s gross.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll put the spoon in there, eat it, put it back in, eat it, and then do it again. If I use my finger, it saves a spoon.”

I chuckled. “Saves it from what?”

“Being washed.”

“My silverware doesn’t have a life expectancy. Grab a spoon.”

She sucked her finger clean and then looked in the jar. “If you were drunk, you wouldn’t care.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“That’s my point. You need to drink to be yourself.”

“I’m myself right now.”

She walked past me and into the living room, then flopped into a chair. “You’re more fun drunk.”

I leaned against the door opening and looked at her. “It’s Tuesday at 11:00 in the morning. What were you going to drink before work anyway?”

“Obviously, nothing.” She fingered another scoop of peanut butter from the jar. “Act like you haven’t had a drink before work.”

Sadly, I had. I didn’t know what the definition was of an alcoholic, or if it required some special gene to be in my gene pool, but my guess was that I had most of the characteristics of one, regardless.

After talking to Marc about what happened, I no longer felt the need to mask my feelings with alcohol. I decided I’d face my days sober, and learn to accept the feelings that came along with abstinence.

Instead of accepting what life had dealt me, I chose to drink so I didn’t have to. The drinking brought on other problems, and my way of dealing with them was to drink so I didn’t have to accept them.

Looking at it all now made me feel foolish. The thing I found to be the funniest was that in the absence of alcohol, my life and all the problems I felt it presented were still right where I left them.

In my lap.

I promptly realized how much of a disaster my life had been for the last ten years. It was a decade I couldn’t change, but I could make an effort to see that I never made the same mistakes again.

“I’m not trying to adopt a holier than thou attitude, Stef. Really. I’m just saying that I’m not going to drink for a while.”

With the jar of peanut butter nestled between her legs, she scanned Netflix for something to watch. “How long’s a while?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many days left?”

I had stopped counting. In cleaning my car’s interior earlier in the morning, I’d realized I hadn’t marked the calendar in a few days. Only after marking the days that had passed with an ‘x’ did I realize how many were left.

“Twelve,” I said.

“Fucking weird.”

“Orange is the New Black, or the thirty-day thing?”

“The thirty-day thing.” She poked her finger in the jar and then shoved it in her mouth.

“I don’t think so.”

“Of course you don’t.” Her eyes were glued to the all-female prison show. She turned up the volume. “But how can that be? It’s weird.”

“It’s not. In the past, I looked at boning as the beginning of a relationship. You meet, you screw, and if you like each other, you continue. I can’t even tell you if any of the guys I screwed had a single redeeming quality. I don’t know anything about them other than their dick size.”

She let out a laugh.

I shot her a look. “What?”

She continued to stare at the television. “Now you know everything about a guy except for his dick size.”

“I don’t care about his dick size.”

I did, but I didn’t. I preferred a big dick, but if he had a nub, I’d find a way to make it work. If nothing else, it would be easy to deep throat.

“If he whips out an uncircumcised two-incher, I bet you say otherwise,” she said in a snide tone.

“I bet I don’t. If he’s got a two-incher, at least I’ll be able to take it all in my mouth.”

“That’s be the only one I’d be able to swallow. God. I swear.” She looked at me and rolled her eyes. “It’s every guy’s dream. I hate sucking dicks. It’s dumb. And, after I gag, it’s all over.”

“I can’t swallow it all, either. But I like to gag. It’s weird, it turns me on.”

“Turns you on? How can that be? If it gets into that reflex deal, I’m done. Until the next holiday. If it happens again, I’ll go on a no blowjob campaign.”

“No blowjobs? That’s dumb.” I realized what she said, and let out a laugh. “Next holiday? What does that mean?”

“Blowjobs are dumb. Guys shouldn’t need their dicks sucked. If I had a dick, I wouldn’t make anyone put it in their mouth. And, I only suck dicks on holidays.”

“Nobody makes me do anything,” I said. “Only on holidays? Every day’s a holiday?”

“They expect it. They get it out, and they look at it, and they look at you. And then they do that thing with their eyes. That put this in your mouth thing. I swear. I’m like, really? I got sick of it, so I made a rule. Only on holidays.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yep.”

“You only suck dicks on holidays?”

“I just said yes. Holidays, that’s it.”

“How did I not know this?”

“You never asked.”

“Do you on the random holidays, like Boxing Day, and Father’s Day and stuff?”

“New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. That’s it,” she said, extending a finger with each holiday she named.

I chuckled. “You left out Christmas.”

Her eyes remained fixed on the television. “I don’t suck dicks on Christmas.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “It’s the best holiday of them all.”

“Precisely,” she said. “I’m not going to ruin Christmas by putting a dick in my mouth.”

“If I had that rule, I’d have to accept holidays from every country on earth. I’d even make up my own. Blowjobs make guys happy.”

“Diamonds make me happy.” She raised her hand and stretched her fingers wide. “See any?”

I chuckled at her logic. “Do you ever wish you had a dick?”

“Like, one of my own? Yeah. Sometimes. Like now. This show’s dumb, and I’d probably be playing with it just because I could.” She said. “Just eating peanut butter, watching Netflix, and stroking my dick.”

“I wish I had one sometimes, too. But not to play with. I’d like to feel what it feels like to have sex with one. I think it’d be cool.”

“If I had a dick, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off it. I swear. I’d be playing with it all the time. It’s just crazy how they go from all wrinkled and stupid looking to being all stiff and fun. I’d always be messing with it just to watch it do that.”

I leaned away from the door and checked the clock. “You’re weird.”

“I’m not the one in a thirty day no-sex relationship.”

I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. I was growing quite fond of Marc, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to imagine losing him. I hoped if nothing else, we could continue our abstinence for another thirty days if need be. I’d be willing to go thirty more, and thirty after that if need be.

“Well, I’m happy to be where I am with who I am.”

“I hope it works out.” She glanced in my direction, and then looked at the television. “Really, I do.”

“I do, too.”

She paused the show. “This show is stupid.”

“It’s time to go to work, anyway. We need to leave in ten.”

She turned off the television and stood. “I need to get something to drink. It doesn’t have to be coffee, though.”

“How’s a chocolate malt sound?”

“A malt from that Ocean whatever place sounds awesome.” She put the peanut butter in the pantry and then looked at me. “What made you think of that?”

An awesome guy who doesn’t drink, has a thirty-day no-sex rule, and possibly a two-inch uncircumcised dick.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I had one the other night and really liked it.”

She reached for the front door. “Come on,” she said excitedly. “Let’s go.”

As we hustled down the stairs, she glanced over her shoulder. “This is a great idea. Maybe you’ll be okay not drinking after all.”

Yeah, maybe I will.