Sex and Skittles

Sure, I’m an addict. But aren’t we all?

That there is every sex addict’s favorite string of words. Go to a sex addicts anonymous meeting and you’ll see. I’ve heard them say it millions of times, maybe billions, I couldn’t be sure. Even I had said it. Even I found myself still saying it around mixed company, even though sex addiction was one of those things you could get away with. Sex addiction is like being a bisexual woman (try being both), people aren’t going to look at you much differently once they know, they’ll just start picturing what you look like doing things naked. Sex with a man, with a woman, with both, with neither. Sex on a plane, sex on a train—and all the other Dr. Seuss horseshit they can imagine. They’ll picture all of it, and they’ll smile at you and say: it could be worse. Maybe it could. But it probably couldn’t get any grosser. 

Right now, there are sixteen used condoms in my bathroom trash can, floating around and mingling with tissues, bloody tampons, and about two dozen Reese’s cup wrappers. (Might as well add sugar addict to the list, too. I’m shooting for extra credit.) The point is I’m disgusting, and I know it. I’m a loser of a twenty-four-year-old girl, whose purse is full of condoms, and dental dams, and lube, and candy. I don’t even have a driver’s license. Gross, and perverse, and childish. But this is who I am. This is what I do. I’m not sure when I became disgusting, but the change must have been rapid because I can’t for the life of me recall a transition. 

Now I spend my time searching out ways to get my fix and spending all my extra money on sugar at the drugstore across from my job. I’m a waitress at a diner, where at least one pubic hair is found in the wedding soup per day. You try to explain to the customers that it’s probably just beard hair, cooks, they always have beards, but that doesn’t seem to soothe them. They’re insatiably angry, I’m insatiably uncaring (and horny), and then I go home. No, I go to the drugstore. I go to the drugstore, and I buy candy, knowing full well my grandmother is diabetic. I don’t care. Time runs out for all of us; if I go with a box of Milk Duds in my hands, I’ll be more than satisfied. But today he’s there. 

“Let me guess… Mike and Ikes?” 

I try to ignore him, standing there behind the counter with his golden-brown hair and crooked smile. He always wants to talk to me. I always want to fuck him, but I don’t. At least, I haven’t… yet. 

I stride past him without a word and do my usual ravaging of the candy aisle, picking out a bit of this and a bit of that. I land on a few bags of Sour Patch Kids and a king-sized Almond Joy. I also can’t help but toss in a box of Trojans, which I hate myself for doing. I had more than enough condoms at home, in my purse. I had enough condoms to have sex with every man in this city thrice before I even came close to running out. I even had an array of sizes (I don’t discriminate). I put them on the counter with the candy because I wanted him to look at them, I wanted him to scan them, and I wanted him to know I was having sex. I wanted to imply it was just something I did: buy condoms, have sex. For once I wanted someone to look at me and imagine what was under my diner uniform with its stupid picnic blanket apron. He would probably think I was insane if he knew what I was really like. Insatiable, addicted, what most people would call easy…

But Landon, that was his name, was completely unruffled by my attempt at subliminal messaging. Most straight men didn’t have the capacity for flirting outside of “you’re hot” so I wasn’t necessarily surprised, but I was a bit agitated. He must have noticed the way my lips slightly pursed because then he was smirking, like there was some inside joke between us. And he asks how work was, because he knows where I work, because of this stupid fucking apron. 

“Fine. Stupid,” I say without much of anything in my tone, maybe a hint of annoyance. He hadn’t even looked at the condoms as he scanned and bagged them, he was too busy looking at me. I felt particularly unsafe under his gaze, knowing how he made me feel. I really wondered what kind of person he was. Did he face toward the shower head when he showered or away? Did he sleep on his back, or his side? His stomach? Did he talk to all the girls who came through here like he talked to me, like he knew me somehow? Like there was something invisible between us that he liked, that he enjoyed? It was taking everything out of me not to lunge over the counter. I felt weak in my knees, but in the fainty way, not the sexy way. 

I realized I wasn’t paying attention to anything he was saying as he stared at me waiting for me to hand over my cash, which was clasped in one of my hands. My tips, what little of them I had. I zoned back in and blushed slightly, looking down at the money, counting out the bills with my nubs of fingernails, bleeding at the cuticles. (Add nail biting to that addiction list, and maybe Landon, too… that’s TBD.)

“Did you hear what I said?” Landon speaks again, as I’m holding out the money. He takes it and starts counting the bills rhythmically, with his long, slender fingers. I can’t help but think about what they’d feel like against my skin, in my mouth. I swallow so as not to drool when I reply, mumbling that I didn’t hear him, no. 

He smiles. Fuck him and his pretty smile, his glittering teeth. He could have been a girl if not for his sharp jaw, his raised cheekbones. He had a pimple coming in on the side of his forehead, red and swollen, even that made him look perfect. He was The Boy Next Door, and I wasn’t listening again. 

“Sorry… What’d you say?” I didn’t even know how old he was, I was just assuming he was in college. Those hands had to be college boy hands. 

There’s a party, he informs me for probably the fourth time because my brain won’t shut the fuck up. He says it just like that, expectantly, wanting me to fill in the hard part. The asking part. My hand is already inside one of the bags of Sour Patch Kids now, popping two into my mouth. My legs were still a bit wobbly, I needed sugar badly. I needed him worse. 

“You want me to go to a party with you?” It came out of my mouth in sort of a laugh, which I hadn’t meant to sound patronizing, but it might have. It was just that I felt… giddy. The weight of the condoms in my drugstore shopping bag finally held meaning, maybe even promise. He nodded, and now he even seemed a bit shy, a bit frightful of my answer. Of course, I told him parties are stupid, but I agreed to go anyway. In the next ten seconds he was jotting his number onto my receipt. I practically skipped home, hot everywhere.

---

Choosing a party outfit is a science, one they don’t teach you in school, but they should. You won’t use biology or geometry, but you will need to look good, one of these days.

I’d always been an OK dresser, the type that knows what looks good on her body type. Party outfits were all about balance. You must look cute, approachable. You must look sexy, but not whorish. Not too much leg, not too much cleavage, not too much ass. You need an equilibrium. I’d never been good at balance, except for these instances. 

The trouble was that I was attending this party with Drugstore Boy, so my usual options went right out of the window. Everything I had suddenly seemed too safe, or too bold. I stood in front of the closet tearing clothes from hangers and dressing myself like a doll for hours. Eventually, I found myself standing in front of the mirror in my underwear. My body was fine, alright I supposed. I’d never given it much thought, because I had the type of figure people liked, generally. Thin, hippy, and feminine. My boobs were a bit small; I was thinking as I shifted my purple bra strap, eyeing my thighs below the trim of my lace thong. It was a matching set, a pretty lilac against my fair skin. Would Landon like it? Suddenly my face was red, and I was scrambling to shove a Twix bar between my lips. He was at my door thirty minutes later.

I had settled on this short black dress, plain and simple, with a pair of black buckle shoes and white socks. I almost wore tights, but the sex addict in me couldn’t justify wearing something so hard to wriggle out of. Not tonight. 

When I pulled open the door he was already smiling, and the whole car ride to the party was him whispering how pretty I looked. Over and over like nothing else would surface in his mind. I’d never blushed so much in my life. I couldn’t remember the last time a boy had been so… earnest with me. He was so totally soft, attentive. He asked me how the temperature was in his beater car, which I doubted had working AC anyway. But it was the thought… the effort. The condoms in my purse might as well have been pulsating with how my brain was completely fuzzy with desire for him. By the time we were walking into the party, I was trailing behind him sneaking a handful of jellybeans into my mouth to hold me over. They dulled the heat in my core only so much.

It was weird, being taken to a party for a date type thing. I had done it before, and other times it had seemed extremely inconvenient. There were always too many people, too much noise, nowhere to run. It seemed Landon had thought this through though, because he immediately found a room for us to sit and chat in. (This was the type of arrangement I often had with my hookups. Meet somewhere, find a private place. A bathroom stall, a supply closet, a room at a party–whatever. I tried not to think of this, but I was thinking of this.)

The house was nice. I wasn’t sure who it belonged to or how Landon was related but that didn’t seem to matter. We slipped away from everyone else into a bedroom on the second floor, where we sat down on the carpet (because if we sat down on the bed I thought I might lose my mind).

“You don’t seem like a party girl,” Landon comments as we’re both taking sips of our lukewarm beers. I’d have much rather had something sweeter, a milkshake maybe. Alcohol never did much for my nerves. He was right, I told him as I leaned against the wall of Whoever’s Bedroom. He admitted he wasn’t much into parties either, but he didn’t know if I’d have agreed to dinner. 

“So, you’ve wanted to ask me out for a while?” Is the next thing I ask because I want to say can I kiss you? What kind of kisses do you like? Tongue, or no tongue? He seemed like he might be the closed mouth type, chaste, sweet kisses, until he got going, at least. My body prickled and burned. It took everything out of me not to go rummaging in my purse for a Hershey’s Kiss. I sipped my beer instead. My stomach fluttered, and hurt.

A while, yeah. You’re interesting, Landon goes on, as his eyes roll over me. They’re big and brown, his eyes. When they look at me, I can feel their gaze like a physical touch. I chew my lip and shiver and press out of my mouth a question about why in the world he finds me interesting. 

“The candy, that’s interesting. You must have a real sweet tooth,” Landon chuckles, and he must be mocking me because his smile is so saccharine I wish I would just drop dead right then and there. 

“Something like that,” I say, trying to breathe, knowing my eyes are trained on his mouth. I need to kiss him so badly my fingers twitch around the neck of my beer bottle. The sex addiction is climbing my throat, warming my esophagus. I realize in a flash that I haven’t had sex in forty-eight hours. That was a new record for me. 

Are you okay? I hear Drugstore Boy say, and then the sex addiction pours out of me, hot and thick. But really, it’s the sugar addiction, spilled all over the front of my black dress, in the ends of my blonde hair, a spattering of brown and pink and blue, candy colors muted by stomach acid. I’d eaten nothing but candy all day, anxiously, trying to soothe myself. 

We’re in House Party Stranger’s bathroom a breath or two later, at least that’s what it feels like. In a few blinks Landon has hauled me up by my wrist and taken me away. My vomit smells sharply of stomach acid and Aspartame. And suddenly my dress is off. He took my dress off, just like that. It was so unceremonious compared to what I had imagined, and highly less romantic seeing as he was trying to clean me with paper towels like a child. 

“It’s okay,” Landon says, in a voice so soft while he’s trying to get the puke out of my hair, staring at my body in my purple panties, but like he wants to make sure I’m alright. There’s no heat in his gaze. I want to die, but mostly I want to stop crying. But I don’t, and Landon just keeps whispering that over and over. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. 

The next things that come out of my mouth just sort of start and keep rolling, like I may as well have just vomited again. 

Did you know I’m a sex addict, and a sugar addict? I spent all day shaving my vagina and binging on candy, thinking we were going to have sex tonight, nervous we were going to have sex tonight. I’m anxious all the time; I bite my nails till they bleed. I don’t even have a driver’s license. I’m a mess, in every sense of the word, Landon. But you’re so kind, I say, and my voice is cracking even more now, as the tears pour. You’re sweet. You should be with someone who isn’t so haunted. I’m a ghost in my own life. I’m the problem and the solution but I’ll never change. I can’t. I’ve tried.

There’s a thick silence in the room as I finish my ramble and Landon is looking at me really hard, like he’s trying to find something in my pathetic face. Surprisingly, he doesn’t look upset. Not at all, he looks curious. Perhaps even a bit endeared. 

“Maybe we should have just gone to dinner, huh?” That’s what he says. He says it with a smile, like he hasn’t just finished wiping the memory of a Snickers bar out of my hair.

He takes me home, but first I dress in a pair of his gym shorts and a t-shirt he finds strewn in the back of his car. They smell like him, like his sweat, and are better than my puke dress.

I slept in his clothes that night, too tired to change, stomach empty. A whole bag of candy corn goes untouched on my bedside table. 

I don’t think of sex with him or anyone else; I don’t think at all. I just fall asleep, satiated by the knowledge that Landon and I are going to dinner tomorrow night. I get a second chance.

For once in my life, there’s this moment where I feel full. This moment where I’m lying there and I don’t have to chase the next high, the next fix, the next orgasm to feel better. This fullness. This–the feeling I’ve been addicted to all along but just couldn’t find.