Threesome

So the summer I studied abroad in Florence, I didn't go whoring 'round at the bars every night. One rainy night in particular, I was still hanging 'round the boarding house at seven pm because I'd had a term paper to write. Having gotten that squared away, I padded down the hall from my room to the communal fridge to grab a bottle of Limoncello (this was long before I got sober) I'd left chilling in there. On the way back from the fridge to my room, I caught sight of Enrique and Jon, two of my male classmates.

"Evening, boys," I greeted them, "I thought you went to Cinque Terra with all the others."

"Nope," Enrique said, "we had tickets to the soccer game, but that got rained out, so here we are. What's that you got?"

"Oh, this' just my 'cello," I grinned and made a bowing motion, as though I were playing the bottle like an actual cello. "You two care to join me for a musical interlude?" They looked at each other, shrugged, and followed me back to my room. I knew they were thinking I wasn't their favorite person in the world, and quite frankly I had never been so in love with them. They were from Spokane, Washington, I'm from Brooklyn, New York. They were outdoorsy, I'm...NOT. They spent the entire first week of the trip making fun of my accent and I had zero sense of humor about that. But everyone else had cleared out, it was pouring rain, and I was bored goddamn it. Better to drink with them than drink alone.

"The guests drink first," I plopped down on my bed and offered the bottle to them, "must be a good hostess." Enrique drank, straight from the bottle (hey, we were college kids roughing it) then passed the bottle to Jon, who sipped. Jon passed it to me and I drank.

"Ahhhhhh, that's refreshing," I announced. And it was, nice cold Limoncello. I lit a cigarette, and one of them said something about how smoking was a filthy habit. But as we continued to make a dent in the bottle, they each started bumming cigarettes off me. They were the kind who smoked when they drank. Whatever. I had plenty of cigarettes and I'd been raised to share.

I hadn't eaten since NOON that day. Noon being when the pensione (Italian for boarding house) serves the Italian equivalent of dinner, and because of the rain I hadn't ventured out in search of anything else to eat later in the afternoon. A wise man would tell you not to drink on an empty stomach, but there was no wise man present on that occasion. Drinking from the bottle, as opposed to pouring neatly measured shots into a shot glass, probably didn't do me any favors either.

So the Limoncello got passed around and around. We talked, the three of us, about what I have no recollection. At one point, I know I visited the bathroom at the end of the hall, where I peed like a racehorse and then proceeded to vomit Limoncello into the bidet. That wasn't very classy. I got back to my room just in time to hear Jon announce, "I can't drink this," as he waved the nearly empty bottle of Limoncello, "anymore. It's too sweet. I've got a bottle of Grappa in our room, I'll just go grab that." He loped off and I knocked off the Limoncello. I placed the bottle gently on the floor by the bed, or at least I thought I did. The fact that I heard the tinkle of breaking glass should have told me I did not place anything gently, but I needed to hear Enrique say "Goddamn it, don't throw the empty."

Jon returned with the Grappa. "I've never had Grappa before," I said,

"You old lush," he said, handing me the bottle with a laugh, "this stuff is strong, though." I paid him no mind, probably because I didn't have any mind by that point, and chugged Grappa like it was water. "FUCK, that burns," I yelped, "WATER, I need water!!" Neither of them moved to get me any water. One of them, I don't remember which, took the bottle, and they each had a shot.

Now this is where things start to get downright fuzzy. One of us (the fuck if I know which) mentioned the movie Threesome (starring the youngest and only blonde Baldwin brother) and something about how the three of us sitting around in a room together was kind of like a scene from that movie. From there the talk turned to threesomes of a sexual nature. Yes, I know, the stars of the movie Threesome have a threesome in the movie (well, sober, 36 year old present day me knows that, but drunk 19 year old me sitting there in the Florentine bedroom with two guys didn't KNOW any goddamn thing for certain) and we started talking about our own sex lives in general.

I couldn't take my own clothes off...I was drunk and disoriented. But I didn't say no. I know I was on all fours on the bed at one point, but that I...well, I couldn't balance myself in that position. I felt a pair of hands roughly pulling my arms behind my back, heard an "Oooooooofffffffff" as one of them gracelessly tumbled off the bed in an attempt to get his shoes or his pants off. I blacked out before either man penetrated me, and when I awoke, everything hurt.

I was aware I'd been repositioned...moved so that I lay on my left side. The two were one on either side of me, both of them in me. I was afraid, but I was no stranger to being terrified during the sex act. It was not my first sex, but it was my first threesome and my first anal sex. I wondered if either of them had bothered with a condom. When they finished, I was rolled onto my back. Jon got up, while Enrique mounted me, but not for round two. He just held me down.

"You want anything? Glass of water, a cigarette? Jon's gotta piss, he'll get it while he's up?" I nodded, only really half-there. Enrique held me until Jon returned from the toilet, bearing a glass of water and a cigarette. I was horrified to see that Jon had the start of a shiner under his right eye.

"You hit him?" I asked Enrique.

"No, I'm right handed," Enrique said, "but you, well, that's another story." My eyes got wide. "Yeah, you were crazy," Enrique continued, "talking 'bout how you hate yourself and wanted us to throw you a beating. Jon-O there said he don't hit girls, so you punched him and said 'How bout now'" Aghast, I drank my water and smoked my cigarette.

"So," I said between gulps of water, "when you two were in me, did you wear a-"

"Neither of us had," Jon said, "and I figure after you hit me you OWED me skin on skin contact."

"Great. There any Grappa left?"

"Bottle went flying across the room," Enrique said, "right after you hit Jon-O, you threw the bottle, was half the bottle left too. Man, you were crazy. Screaming to high hell. We had to get control of you."

"Whaddaya mean 'get control' of me?"

"Let's show 'er." Jon said. Enrique got off me and the two pulled me up off the bed and into a standing position. They held me by my flabby upper arms, and for some reason that caused inexplicable pain. They walked me to the room's full length mirror, an arduous task. For me, not them. Once they had me in front of the mirror they let go. And I stood there, naked as ANYTHING, with nothing to do but look at my own body.

The bruises told the story. Bluish purple 'round my upper arms where they'd obviously had to hold me to keep me from falling on my face. Rug burns on my knees from where I'd been kneeling and/or been dragged along the carpet. "What made this?" I asked, pointing to a two-inch wide bright red stripe across my breasts.

"My belt," Jon said, "I didn't wanna, but you made me. Thanked me for it and everything. And there's more."

"More?"

"Turn around, take a look at your ass." I turned and found quite a few more stripes on my ass.

"Enrique did those," Jon said, "after that first one across your tits, I couldn't go on."

"Who is Fred?" Enrique asked. "And what'd he DO to make you hate yourself so goddamn much?"

"I don't remember," I lied right to their faces, "that's what a blackout is, you fucking say crazy shit you don't remember after."

"Oh, this was not a blackout," Jon said, "this was...a good fucking reason to perform an exorcism," Enrique nodded in agreement, "seriously, girl, if this is what you call a blackout, you need to quit drinking before you kill yourself and take a few people with you."

"Now look you two," I grabbed hold of the dresser to hold myself up, "something happened here between the THREE of us. I sure as shit didn't fuck myself in both holes, did I? Can we all agree to make like it never happened? Or is the rest of this trip gonna be weird?"

"Fine," the two of them said in unison, matching blank looks on their faces, "you wanna make like this didn't happen...it didn't happen."