Dildo Girl Meets Dick Girl

Dildo Girl Meets Dick Girl

or, "A Box Full of Dildos"

I wasn't going to make it on my own. After covering rent and utilities I would be left choosing between gas for my car or food. I put up an ad on the intercollege electronic bulletin board, "Roommate needed for internship!" Somewhere, someone else had to be in the same position as me. I never expected it to be Brandi McCormick.

Three years ago, Brandi and I had graduated from the same high school. We were both artists. That's where the similarities ended. We were friendly, but never friends (though I still give her credit for teaching me how to draw a horse in middle school). After high school, we went our separate ways to pursue a degree in art. My rocking portfolio got me into a prestigious art college in Chicago with a full scholarship while Brandi went to a state school. With a stroke of irony's brush, we landed internships at the same multinational corporation.

I hooked up with Brandi on Skype and we worked out the details. She hadn't changed. She still looked like a cartoon to me. She kept her yellow blonde hair parted down the middle and hanging straight on either side of her pretty, oval shaped face. Her cute little nose reminded me of Anime noses. When she smiled, she flashed matching dimples on each cheek.

Her first words to me on Skype? "I love your hair!" I forced a smile and mumbled thanks as I wondered if I could live for three months with her. My hair is short, shows the remnants of the last three dye jobs and looks like a hot mess on top of my head. I'm not known for my fashion sense. I'll wear a baggy t-shirt with skinny jeans. My nose, eyebrow and lips are pierced. My fingernails are gnawed on stubs that are never allowed to grow farther than my teeth can nibble. But I am the "go-to" person for projects big and small. School needed a mural? I'm the person to tap. Design a poster for a band performing at a local club? Do a double run of my posters because half of them will get stolen.

The differences in our personal styles showed on moving day, too. I was surly from the drive. My things were crammed inside of trash bags and duffle bags. Even my beat-up old Jeep with mismatched doors looked out of place in the parking lot of the furnished apartments. Arriving early, I had schlepped my things inside the apartment and claimed the master bedroom for myself. Returning for a final inspection for whatever had rolled beneath my seat, Brandi pulled up next to me. She was sunshine and chipperness. "Valerie!" she screamed as she ran from her car and grabbed me in a hug as if we were best friends. She was a willowy wisp dressed in bright colors. Her compact SUV was half the age of my Jeep and remained a single color of paint. Her belongings were neatly organized in boxes and suitcases. I forced another smile, accepted her hug and volunteered to help her carry things upstairs. This was going to be a very long three months.

The apartment felt as vanilla as Brandi looked. I was sure she would love it. Instead, the moment she walked inside her bright, happy, 'life is such a fun adventure' smile faded. She sighed as she looked around. "Do you know if those pictures come down?" She was talking about the pseudo art of abstract shapes carefully picked to match the furnishings. She marched to the biggest piece hanging above the couch and pulled. It took two tries before she pulled it off the wall. Tape in the corners had been placed to keep it straight. She dumped it behind the couch. "Better," she said, her happiest smile returning. She ripped another, smaller piece from off the wall next to the TV. "I hate fake art."

"I can see," I said and helped her pull off the rest of the faux art. Maybe she would be okay after all?

On our next trip to her car I grabbed a box neatly marked "Clothes, Underwear, Toys and Fun!" That worried me. In case it turned out to be a box of board games, I began to plot ways of murdering Brandi. On the way up the stairs, I tripped over the threshold of the door and dumped the box across our living room. I swear it was accident. "Shit! Sorry!" I called behind me and stooped to pick up her belongings. That's when I stopped and stared. Scattered across our living room space were clothes, underwear and the largest collection of adult toys I had ever witnessed in one location. "What the fuck?" I asked.

"Oh shit," Brandi said, dropping her box and scrambling to pick up the mess. "They're just things," she said with a face as red as the panties wrapped around a long, blue dildo.

"Uh-huh," I said with a huge smile. I squatted down and helped her refill the box. I limited the things I picked up to clothes. I kept an eye on the collection of toys she picked up. It was a mix of vibrators, dildos, butt plugs and devices I couldn't name. "Get lonely much?" I asked unable to stop myself from having some fun at her expense.

"It's not like that," she said, still blushing.

"That many of them? Boy, he or she sure liked you."

"By my boss," she said. That made even less sense and she realized it. I wasn't sure if she was going to laugh or cry from the weight of her embarrassment. I knew what I want to do. I wanted to laugh my ass off. "You know what? Fuck you," she snapped.

"You certainly have the tools for it," I said before I burst out laughing. Brandi glared at me for a long moment, picked up a couple more toys and then she started laughing, too.

She was quieter as we made four more trips until her car was empty. Every time I caught her eye, I smirked and she blushed a bit. "Stop it," she said the last time and smirked with me. I have to admit how much I enjoyed her embarrassment. Like I said, I knew Brandi in high school, but we hung around different people. My friends were the band geeks, Anime nerds and gamers (which probably sounds redundant to some people). Brandi hung out with the beautiful people. She had been friends with cheerleaders and basketball players.

"Okay, tell me the story," I said as I stood in the doorway of her room and watched her unpacked. She gave me an innocent look that lasted as long as it took me to nudge the box of her toys with my foot. She picked it up and put it next to her bed.

"My boss rented a space that used to have an adult bookstore," she explained. She told me how they found the box in the basement. They laughed about it and she was told to throw it in the dumpster. "When I took them out, I peeked inside the box and wondered what else was in there. So I put the box in my trunk."

"Now that's some junk in the trunk," I joked. Brandi rolled her eyes at the pun. She was trying to make her bed and I helped her with the sheets. "So what happened then?" She told me how she plopped the box down in front of her roommate and they had a laugh-fest as they sorted through them. I rolled my eyes. "Wait, I think I read this story. You started drinking. Started playing. And the next thing you know, you and your roommate are making sweet, sweet love, right?

What she said next surprised me. "And I suppose you've never been with a chick?" It wasn't a denial of the story.

"Why does everyone think that about me?" I asked. I hadn't. It wasn't from a lack of offers. I don't know why I never did it. It felt too trite, like too much of a cliché: bohemian art student practices art and free love with all comers.

"Because you look like a lesbian," Brandi said, answering a question I had asked rhetorically. "Even in high school you looked like a lesbian." Things went downhill from there as our cultures clashed. To me, her and her high school friends had been soulless consumers of pop culture. I didn't like the way her kind looked down at my friends. I didn't like the way they dressed. I didn't like their music and I sure as shit didn't care for their "I'm good because I'm better than you" attitude.

"Is that what you and your cheerleading friends thought?"

"Half my cheerleading friends were lesbians," Brandi laughed.

Her laugh and easy admission about her cheerleader friends threw me off. There had been rumors in high school about girls kissing girls, but I had never believed them. I knew these shallow girls. They were the kinds of girls who picked dates by the caliber of car they drove. If they kissed at a party, they did it to attract the attention of the right guy. They were flash and style without substance. I didn't believe Brandi knew any better and I called her on it. "As if you would know."

"Remember Jessica Brooks?"

Jessica Brooks was the worse of the worst. Mixed with her prim and proper attitude was a bible-thumping religious streak that offended me. I still remember the biology class where she wanted to argue evolution versus creationism with the teacher.

"She was my first girl," Brandi said.

"You are fucking kidding me," I laughed.

"Nope. She said it was how she stayed a virgin."

"Doesn't her kind think homosexuality is a sin."

"She did, between guys. Between girls, it didn't count. We weren't sinning, we were just fooling around." Brandi smirked as she studied me. "You look surprised."

I didn't believe her. "You're saying you did more than kiss her, right?"

"She was my first pussy," Brandi said and when I gave her wide-eyed look for her candor, she started laughing. I was trying to play catch-up with my impressions of Brandi and it showed.

"So are you... you know, gay?" I asked. It felt like a funny question to ask her. People like Brandi aren't supposed to be gay. They're supposed to be bible thumping activists protesting in front of a Planned Parenthood. Guessing I went both ways was easy, even if it wasn't true. I didn't care if people thought I did. I'll admit it, I'm weird. I like being different and I have my weird traits. I don't shave my armpits. I spend a lot of time naked because I don't get dressed until I have someplace to go and I don't care who sees me. I don't wear underwear, which some people think is strange. I cut my own hair. I like it when there's a bright color mixed into my hair. I don't know. In college, I blend in. Back home? I'm still a freak and if people wanted to wonder about my sexuality, they could.

Brandi laughed at my question. "Hardly," she said, pulling open the drawer to her nightstand. She began feeding the drawer toys from her box. She held up a blue, jelly dildo that waved back and forth. "Would a lesbian want this?"

"I don't know," I said, feeling overwhelmed with new information.

"Trust me, I love dick more than pussy," she said. She kissed the tip of the fake cock and put it in her drawer.

"Okay, that's just wrong," I said. I wanted to leave. Watching her putting away her stash of sex toys felt too personal but I was glued in place. It felt like driving by a car accident. You don't want to look and yet, everyone slows down and rubbernecks. "How many do you have?" I asked before I realized I didn't care. She had more than seemed normal. I amended the question. "I mean, you have favorites, don't you? Why keep them all?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I have my favorites, but I think I use most of them pretty regularly."

"What's regularly?"

"Every couple days?"

"You do it that often?"

"Don't you?"

"I don't use a toy," I said instead of answering her question about how frequently I masturbated. I'm normal. I'm not afraid to touch myself and I do it a few times a week. I wasn't addicted to the idea. Some days I might do it two or three times in a row and then I would go two or three days without doing it all. If I had a boyfriend, I might do it just once every... I stopped my line of reasoning as I realized my answer was the same as hers.

"You should try it with a toy. It's more fun. You can borrow one of mine if you want. I wash them and everything."

I laughed. She said that as casually as she might offer to swap clothes from her closet. "I think I'm good."

"I'm telling you, it's better when it buzzes," Brandi said. She twisted the one in hand on high and made it buzz. "Dicks don't buzz and toys never go limp."

"Yeah, whatever," I said and wandered to my room. I still had clothes to put away, too. As I sorted through my duffle bags and trash bags, I thought about the strange girl in the room down the hall. I had thought I knew her and her kind. She was supposed to be shallow and empty headed. Instead, she felt weird. I wasn't sure how else to put it. She had so many toys!

What surprised me most were the three different sized butt plugs I saw her putting into the drawer. What could Brandi know about anal sex? In my world view, anal sex should have too much of an ick factor attached for Brandi to even consider it. I had at least done it, more than once and with two different guys. Boyfriends number two and four had been lucky enough to do me up the butt. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I liked to so much, I never did it with boyfriend number five. Hell, maybe she thought the butt plugs were odd shaped dildos.

"Want some help?" Brandi asked standing at the door to my room.

"Almost done," I told her without looking around.

"So what's your college like?" she asked and we started talking. We talked about our classes and the people we had met. We talked about art and exhibits we had seen. We talked about the purpose of art and who we liked and didn't like. We talked for hours until it was after five and we realized we didn't have food. Laughing at ourselves, we loaded into my Jeep and found a grocery store. We pooled our money, bought sushi for dinner, yogurt and coffee for in the morning and a big box of cheap wine for tonight.

We ate our sushi and started drinking wine. "So who was your first?" she asked me around a mouthful of rice and raw fish.

"Terry Bunker."

"I don't remember him."

"He was a band geek. Trombone player. Big lips?"

"White guy?"

"Yeah, but he still had big lips. I liked his lips."

"Sort of fish mouthed?"

"Yeah," I agreed though I didn't like slur.

"Tall and skinny?" she asked. I nodded. "Okay, I remember seeing him around school."

"Your boyfriend tripped him once," I said. She asked who and I told her, "The basketball player."

"Larry? Larry Simms?" she asked. I nodded. I didn't know his last name, but his first name sounded right. "Yeah, I remember that. He wasn't my boyfriend. I mean, I guess he was because we went out a couple of times. I broke up with him because of that."

"No shit?" I asked and she shrugged.

"I don't date jerks."

I stared at her with new eyes. Was I wrong about her? "What about you? Who was your first?"

Her answer made my world feel more orderly. "Gary Johnson. Senior prom night," she said. "How fucking trite is that?"

"Hotel or backseat of his car?" I asked.

"I made him rent a hotel room. A nice hotel room. And he had to have wine."

"Trite as hell," I laughed and tried to pay her a compliment. "Though I will say you're much cooler than I ever imagined." It didn't go over as expected.

"Fuck you, Valerie Johnson," she snapped. "You always thought I was Miss Priss and I've never been that girl. I saw the way you and your loser friends would laugh at us when we walked through the hallways. Or the way you and your friends would act during a pep rally when my friends were on the floor trying to show some school spirit. Well, let me tell you, I think it takes balls to get up in front of the whole school like that and dance around like an idiot. More balls than sitting in bleachers and cracking jokes."

"Wow, really?" I asked. I was stunned.

"Those girls were my friends. Sure, half of them were stuck up bitches. But the other half were cute and funny and really cared."

"And gay," I said, trying to make a joke.

"A couple," Brandi said. "A couple were sluts and a couple more were prudes. What about your friends?"

"Did you ever look at my friends?" I asked. "I think most of them are probably still virgins." That brought a halt to Brandi's rant. "I mean, come on. Half the people I hung out with liked to dress up as Anime characters or attend Sci-fi conventions. Do you really think they were getting laid?" Brandi smirked.

"Do you really think that's true?" she asked.

"I don't know. Maybe. From what I've seen on facebook, most of them still like to play dress-up."

"Why are they so weird?"

"They're not weird, just passionate," I explained.

"Do you think I'm weird?" Brandi asked in a small voice.

"Before or after I saw your collection?"

"Before," she said, though she smiled at the reference.

"Yes," I admitted. "I don't get people who have to wear the right thing and fit in."

"You want to know why I do that?" she asked. I nodded. "Because I'm afraid of standing out." She collected our empty plates and picked up our wine glasses. She tossed the plates in the sink and filled the wine glasses. She sat back down on the opposite end of the couch, sipped her wine and looked at me. "Can I tell you a secret?" I shrugged. "I always wanted to be like you."

"Bullshit."

"I'm serious. I like you. I like you're 'I don't give a fuck' attitude. I wish I could be like that."

"Then do it," I said.

"I'd rather blend in."

"Then keep that toy collection under wraps," I joked. I knew it was my second reference to it in just a few minutes, but I couldn't keep my mind off of it.

She nodded and smiled broadly enough to show her dimples. "Now you know my deepest, darkest secret. So what's yours?"

I gave her a steely eyed stare that had no impact on her. She was waiting for a real answer. Fine. What the hell? "I draw dicks," I told her.

"Like penises?"

"More like cocks. Hard dicks. I love'em. I love how they look. I love the lines and veins and different shapes. So whenever a guy is hitting on me, I offer to draw his prick, but he's got to make it hard for me."

"And men let you do that?"

"Some do." I told her the story. I wasn't lying. It started as a joke with an old boyfriend. He was complaining how I was always sketching something, pulled down his pants and told me to "sketch this!" He was hard and I had made him sit still until I was done drawing it. Then I had ripped the picture out of my sketchbook and tacked it up on my wall for everyone to see. Later, another of my guy friends had said something about the drawing. He said something about having one I could sketch and I told him to whip it out. He did and I did (draw it that is). I had tacked it up next to my boyfriend's drawing, which had pissed off the boyfriend. So, he left me but I kept both pictures. Before I knew it, another guy had made the same offer and my collection had grown. "It kind of became a thing."

"Can I see one?"

"Sure," I said. I grabbed one of my sketchbooks from my room and we sat side-by-side on the couch, flipping pages with my book on the coffee table. Not all the pictures in my sketchbook were dicks, but a good number of them were. There were pictures I didn't feel comfortable posting in my room, pictures of dicks caught in the act of having an orgasm. Spent semen dripped down their lengths like hot wax on a candle, forever captured in time.

"Are these all real?" she asked. I knew what she meant. Where they all taken from life studies?

"Not all of them," I admitted. I absentmindedly pointed at the one in front of us. "This one was." It happened to be a picture that showed the remainder of an orgasm dripping down his length.

"Did he, you know, cum?"

"Yeah, he did. He asked if he could and I wanted to see it."

"You still do great pencil work," she commented. A few were rough sketches and few more I had labored over long after my model left. There's a knack to improving realism without making it look fake. Brandi squirmed. "Okay, enough," she said, closing the book and squirming.

"Problem?" I asked, smiling. The pictures were getting to her. I had seen it happen before and I thought it was funny.