Ignore the Warning Label Pt. 03

"Thank you for sharing all of that with me. I'm honored you trust me this much."

She sounded very tired, but at least a little bit lighter. "Well, like I said, my regularly scheduled fake therapist sister wasn't available, so it was you or nobody."

"There! Sarcasm is good! But seriously, I know it isn't easy to open your secrets up to somebody and I admire your bravery." Malcolm always said stuff like that, and it made me feel good. And, in this case, it was true. She had laid a lot of really heavy personal shit on me and it couldn't have been easy for her. "Still, you seem to think you're the only one who was, shall we say, promiscuous in school. Far from it! Would you like to hear one of my stories? It's funny."

She considered for a second. "You know, yeah, I would like to hear a funny story about you."

"Great! Now, have you ever read any of the old Nancy Drew books?"

"Yeah, a really long time ago when I was just learning to read. I don't really remember too much about them."

"You know how all the books have these really formulaic dramatic sounding titles? Nancy Drew and The Secret of the Old Clock, Nancy Drew and The Mystery at Lilac Inn, Nancy Drew and The Clue of the Broken Locket?"

"Oh, yeah. Of course."

"Well, let me tell you the story of Devyn Buckley and The Case of the Rainbow Dildo!"

That earned a genuine laugh from her. "The what!?!"

"Yep, you heard right. The rainbow dildo. Now, when I say rainbow dildo, I mean fucking full hippy rainbow. It's even twisted around the shaft so it looks like a unicorn horn. It's without any shadow of a doubt the gayest thing I've ever owned.

"So, to set the stage, I liked sex a lot when I was in college. I still like sex a lot. Sex is pretty fucking awesome. I liked sex a lot and I was pretty aggressive about getting it. As a result, I had a lot of hookups. I went to parties and basically threw myself at the hottest body there. Male or female depending on my mood and who was around.

"Anyway, one morning at the very end of the semester, just before I was going to leave for Christmas break, I found a gift-wrapped package outside my door. It had my name on it and inside was this technicolor sex toy monstrosity. It came with a note. It said something like 'I was holiday shopping and found this. I thought you'd find it funny. Have fun!' The only signature was a heart and a capital 'D'" in the middle of it."

"No! Don't tell me—"

"Yep, I didn't know who left it there. There were two possibilities from among the three women I'd hooked up with that semester, Dominique and Diana. I felt like I had to acknowledge it, send a 'haha, funny joke' text message or something. I mean, you can't just get given something like that and say nothing! But I also didn't want to admit to either of them that I'd slept around so much that semester that I didn't know who 'D' meant!"

"Wow. Okay, I admit, even at my worst, I never had that problem." Vivian sounded amused, a little more like her normal self. "What did you do?"

"Like any great detective, I lay out all my facts. It was obviously not from a man. Had to be either Dominique or Diana, my third hookup's name didn't fit at all. Both of them knew me well enough to know I wouldn't be weirded out by getting a dildo as a gag gift from them. I needed ways to differentiate them. I went back to the note, trying to remember if I'd ever seen either of their handwritings. That's when I noticed it was written on some kind of Sailor Moon stationary paper."

"Your first clue! I used to love Sailor Moon when I was growing up. I always wanted my hair to be like Usagi's"

"I did too. It wasn't a big clue, but it gave me a little bit to go on. I spent hours going through their social media profiles, trying to find if either of them had ever posted anything about liking Sailor Moon. Diana was pretty active in campus sports so there were lots of soccer tournament updates and pictures. Dominique was the type to post pictures of every meal she's ever eaten. There was tons and tons of material to get through, and none of it helped me at all!

"I found myself making wild guesses. Dominique was active in Pride; did that mean she was more or less likely to think a rainbow unicorn horn dildo was funny? Diana was more assertive in the bedroom and liked to use toys more; did that mean she would be more likely to pass by a sex shop while holiday shopping? Finally, I found it! Diana had an old Halloween picture of herself dressed up as Sailor Moon! She had the hair and everything actually pretty well done.

"So, with no small amount of self-satisfaction in how I solved the mystery, I texted Diane happy holidays. She messaged me back instantly: Deyvn! I'm freaking out. You gotta tell me, do you sign your notes with the letter D?"

Vivian gasped, then cracked up. "No way!"

"True."

"So the whole time you were trying to figure it out, Diane was in the same boat with you?"

"Yep. It turns out that they were hooking up with just as many partners as I had. It just never occurred to me to wonder if Diane and Dominique might know each other too."

We laughed some more at my college misadventures until Vivian needed to sleep. She thanked me for listening to her and cheering her up, and my heart swelled a little. My heart had been through a lot that day and I was definitely ready for bed too.

When I got upstairs and settled back in beside Malcolm, I remembered what he'd said earlier that day about Vivian reminding him of me. He'd turned out to be much more right than he probably imagined. There were differences, but we were very similar in a lot of ways.

The biggest difference between us, I thought, was that I'd met somebody who genuinely cared about me and wanted to get to know me as a person. Somebody who'd shown me, one porn link at a time, that he was every bit as perverted as I was and that it was perfectly fine. My best friend who had always made me feel wanted, even if I'd despaired of finding romance with him until very recently. I had Malcolm.

Vivian hadn't. She deserved better.

But it wasn't enough to feel sorry for her. I needed to try to make it better. She had reached out to me for help, and anybody would could get through that much crap and still manage to smile like she did deserved to have their faith rewarded. I wanted to be her friend and confidant like Malcolm was for me. I wanted to show her that she deserved to be loved for who she was, the kind intelligent woman and the slut at the same time.

I only hoped I could make a difference.