“Okay, I like the sound of this. But once we find our version of the BB, then what do we do?”
“What do you mean ‘then what do we do?’ You talk to him, kiss him, screw him… whatever you want to do with him. We can even make it a little game. Whoever gets farther with their BB that night is the winner and buys the other breakfast the next morning. We can whore our way through our book boyfriends until we determine what each of our ‘type’ is.”
“That’s no fair! You are obviously going to win all the time; I’m at such a disadvantage! I don’t just want to give away my virginity to the first guy that comes along to win some game,” I argued.
“Oh Sam,” Evie replied, “I’m not going to just sleep with guys that I don’t want to sleep with just so I don’t have to buy breakfast the next morning or to beat you at some game. The true point of the game is to find a guy that’s a keeper, one you seriously want to date, the side game will just make it more fun until we do!”
I thought about what she said and knew she was right. Evie had devised a perfect way for me to meet different kinds of guys and the game would help me to break out of my shell, lose some of my insecurities, and do things that I would most likely be too timid to try. I’m not sure if it was the empty bottle of wine that sat in the kitchen trash, the possibility of finding the happily ever after I had read about time and again in my countless books, or the fact I definitely did not want to die a virgin, but I found myself saying, “Game on. May the best book whore win.”
Chapter 2
The following morning came way too soon, and before I had even opened my eyes, I felt the throbbing in my head. Before the previous night, my alcohol consumption had been limited to a glass of wine on two separate occasions; both times I had stayed the night at Evie’s house. My parents would have never allowed me to drink, not for any reason. When I finally managed to roll out of bed to turn off the screaming alarm clock, I headed straight for the kitchen to grab a glass of water and some aspirin from my purse. I heard the shower running in Evie’s room so I knew that she was up and getting ready and that I needed to get moving. Our spa appointments began at 8:00AM and it was already 7:15.
After showering and throwing on some of Evie’s clothes she loaned me, since I literally left my parent’s house with the clothes on my back, I found her waiting for me in the living room. Luckily the medicine had kicked in and I was feeling a little more human.
“You ready for your makeover? To find out how beautiful you truly are when you aren’t hiding behind all of that hair and those frumpy ass clothes?” she asked with a huge grin on her face. I knew she was just as excited about this as me, maybe even more so.
“Absolutely. Let the fun begin.” I responded, returning the smile.
Even though I had grown up in San Antonio, which was far from a small rural town, it was nothing compared to the large metropolis of Houston. My only visit there had been when I had come with my parents for a day tour of the Rice campus. I was so glad that Evie would be the one driving us around. She had visited family here often and even though she didn’t know exactly where everything was, her memory paired with a trusty navigation system was sure to not get us too lost. So we jumped in her car and headed out.
Upon arrival at the spa, we were quickly checked in for our “A Whole New Me” package, which I thought was an especially fitting name for my current situation, and were whisked away to strip and change into plush white bath robes. I had never been to a day spa before, so I had asked Evie all kinds of questions on the way over about what to expect. I was most nervous about the waxing and the massage. The waxing scared me for a couple of reasons ~ first, I had read about how painful it was and I knew that my threshold for pain was at like a -2 on a scale of 1 to 10; and second, I couldn’t believe that I was going to allow a complete stranger to not only look at, but touch my private area. Evie tried to calm my nerves by telling me that the aesthetician sees women’s pussies and asses all day long, much like a gynecologist. For her, it would be like looking at any other body part-an arm or a leg. This didn’t make me feel much better, but I really didn’t have a logical argument. The massage scared me for similar reasons. I knew it wouldn’t be painful, but I wasn’t quite sure I was comfortable with a stranger rubbing their hands all over my body. I know this seems a little prudish but let’s face it, I was a prude whether it was my choice to be or not. Evie finally told me to shut up, everything would be fine. I needed to just enjoy the day, so I did exactly that.
The first service I was scheduled for was the waxing. I thought I might as well get the toughest part over first, right? I soon found out that tough wasn’t quite the right word to describe exactly what happened to me on that table. Awful, dreadful, agonizing, excruciating, unbearable… was the terminology that needed to be used when people described having their hair ripped out by the root on the most sensitive parts of one’s body. I truly felt bad for the technician that was trying her hardest to keep me quiet and still. I was pretty sure that the pain associated with waxing had to be up there close to childbirth with no drugs. At one point, I’m pretty sure everyone in the building heard my pleas for her to stop, but she ignored my requests and just kept on manhandling my vagina and ass. What seemed like hours later, she announced she was finished and that I should come back every two to four weeks for maintenance. Did she not remember that only moments earlier I was frantically trying to escape her grasp and screaming obscenities that would make a sailor blush? Words that I was pretty sure had never passed through my lips before. I just replied with an “okay,” put my robe back on, and allowed her to me lead me down the hall to another room where an elderly woman was waiting for me.
“Hi Scarlett, I’m Joan and I’m going to be your massage therapist today,” she said as I sheepishly entered the room.
“Hi Joan, please tell me you aren’t going to hurt me,” I replied.
Her hearty laugh filled the room and helped relax me a bit. I also noticed this room was much different than the first one I had been in. Instead of bright, cold, and sterile, Joan’s room was dimly lit with instrumental music lightly playing in the background and an aroma of lavender and eucalyptus teased my nostrils. It was serene and tranquil, and I found it very soothing.
“No sweetie, I’m not going to hurt you. I hope to do just the opposite of that. Let’s get you out of that robe and help you forget the torture that Tina just put you through,” she chuckled.