Warning: my quirky sense of humour? stereotyping?
Never Kissed a Girl Part 2
There are days when you hate the media for writing lies about you. And then there are days when you hate them for writing the truth.
After the war, I'd been labeled everything from "violent psychotic" to "poor misguided lamb." My favourite was "suicidal maniac." Until today, though, I'd never thought myself to be any of those things. All it took was one Relena Peacecraft, and now I was absolutely positive that I was definitely suicidal, if not also a complete and utter maniac.
The dinner with the French dignitaries had lasted an unprecedented five hours, not including the cocktail party precursor. This was followed by a ball, of all things, which Relena, thankfully, retired from at a quarter to two in the morning. Then there was a two hour meeting with the security team during which I'd had to defend my honour, my manhood, and my "official height" as listed on my identification papers. I didn't understand why they were being so difficult. I was only trying to ensure that Relena's safety would not be adversely affected by this last minute change up.
If there had been any doubt that I was a maniac, I removed it with a few well-picked phrases from my "List of Things Not to Say in Front of Dignitaries" (as given to be by Relena at the onset of my employment). It got everyone to shut up and agree with me, though. Quite an effective way to end a meeting, if I did say so myself.
What finalized the conclusion that I was suicidal, however, was the fact that I then had a forty minute briefing with Genevieve while Relena packed my luggage, and then both women shoved me on a private jet without telling me my destination.
You know, I'd fought tooth and nail to get this job.
That woman was going to be the death of me.
* * *
My first destination on Relena's "booty call" itinerary, as she called it, was Greece.
Genevieve said that I wasn't ready for French girls. I didn't know what that meant, but I decided to take her word it.
According to the information on my handheld, I was scheduled to arrive in Athens at 2pm. A limousine would be waiting to take me to my hotel where I was to wash up, take a three hour nap, and change into "Outfit #1" (here there was a notation that Relena had clearly labeled my clothes) and immediately proceed to something called a "Supper Club." After that, I was to be picked up by a town car and driven to a nightclub of some sort.
As it turned out, the supper club was a thinly veiled mixer for heterosexual singles. One of the girls Relena knew from high school (the group I playfully referred to as her Ladies in Waiting), was living in Athens now and she liked to hold these dinners for her single friends. Apparently, having met the love of her life while sightseeing at the Temple of Apollo, she now felt the need to "set up" all of her friends so that they could experience similar levels of happiness. Of course, no one could possibly hope to attain her level of happiness; she was the epitome of happy and she never missed an opportunity to remind us of this fact.
Needless to say, I did not find a life partner there. I didn't even find a bed partner. All the men were straight and all the women were more interested in the chocolate buffet than any of the men present.
I could only hope that the nightclub would be different.
When I arrived at the big, black, box of a building, I realized the Genevieve was trying to tell me something. She had given me two completely different experiences to juxtapose against each other. The first was about long term commitment. This second one was about physical pleasure.
Upon entering, loud music and flashing lights assailed my senses, as did the heady aroma of men and sex.
Genevieve had booked me into a homosexual drinking establishment, which actively encouraged intercourse between its patrons, if that sign above the back room was any indication.
Not two steps into the club proper I was accosted by a large man wearing nothing but leather chaps. He looked me up and down, and then he leaned in to speak to me.
"I'm nine inches, cut," he bragged in heavily-accented Standard, leering at me in the process.
And it was at that moment, standing in a gay bar in Athens, that I realized I really was, indeed, completely out of touch with my penis. I didn't even know its measurements. I felt horribly guilty for having neglected it. After all, it had sacrificed so much for me. Those formative years when young boys all over the world were discovering the joys of masturbation and sex, I had been training for and fighting a war. Then there was my incredibly rushed university degree and the intensive process of getting into the Sanq Royal Guard so I could legitimately watch over Relena. Now that I had the job I worked so hard to get, I simply didn't have the time to play with Little Heero. And I suspected that I didn't even know him anymore.
Poor thing.
I looked down and petted my crotch gently, mentally promising it a good heart-to-heart conversation before bed tonight.
Meanwhile, though, I had my own burning question.
Excusing myself from my Greek admirer, I exited the club and pulled out my cell phone.
"Does size matter?" I blurted out, even before Relena could say hello.
* * *
After Athens, I continued my journey eastwards. In Cairo I met beautiful Egyptian girls. In Jerusalem there were equally beautiful Israeli boys. Moscow tossed more men and women at me than I could count. Beijing was overflowing with leggy females. Thailand proved to be filled with gorgeous people of indeterminable gender, and Tokyo, the home of my ancestors, showed me that boys could look damn good wearing eyeliner.
By the time I reached Australia, my penis and I were very well acquainted. We had had many lengthy discussions over the course of my travels. I was now quite knowledgeable about his measurements and how he compared to others. I was also quite aware that he did, indeed, have preferences in the satisfaction of his needs. Actually, I discovered that Little Heero had a lot of preferences. I'd been half way around the world and nothing was appealing to him. Who knew that my penis could be so discriminating? After all, up until a couple weeks ago, he had been content with my right hand. Now that he was given choices, he was suddenly Mr. Picky-Pants. Apparently, it was all or nothing with my penis.
Suffice to say that Sydney did not provide anyone who inspired me to deviate from my tried and true morning routine either.
As I hit North America, I began to despair for my booty-call mission. I had to call Relena.
"I don't know what you want me to do," I complained. "I've been hit on more times than I can count. I've flirted shamelessly with everyone on two legs, and even a couple who were flat on the floor, drunk. But nothing is happening!"
I thought I heard muffled laughter.
"And, dammit, Relena, if you have me on speakerphone I'm going to get back on that plane so I fly over there and kick your ass!"
There was an audible click and I swore, loudly and creatively.
She chuckled as she replied: "Okay, Heero, what's going on?"
"Just what are my mission parameters, Relena? What exactly am I supposed to be doing? And that had better not be Lecavalier that I heard laughing!"
"Relax, Heero, it's just Dorothy Catalonia. You remember her, right?"
Yeah, I remembered her, freakishly aggressive girl who kept stabbing at everyone with a fencing foil.
Not waiting for me to answer aloud, Relena carried on: "Well, your mission parameters are to find and bed as many people as you can. Try to have as much fun as possible."
I thought about it for a moment. I thought about the millions of good-looking, good-natured, available people I'd met so far and I came to a conclusion of sorts.
"I don't think lots of random and anonymous sex partners are my idea of fun."
"Okay, well, then try to find yourself a long-term relationship. Try to find any relationship, Heero. Try to get a life."
I scowled at the phone.
"I can see that, Heero. It's unbecoming and it will give you wrinkles."
"I want to come home and go back to work, Relena." I was whining, but I couldn't help it. I was so tired and frustrated; I almost stamped my foot.
She threatened me with a real dismissal if I returned to work before my allotted vacation time was up. She also asked to me to tell Little Heero to suck it up and just try something new for once.
Why she chose to address my penis directly was beyond my comprehension, and not a little bit embarrassing.
So I hung up and resigned myself to the Americas.
Little Heero did not deign to respond to Relena's comment. At all.
* * *
There was a guy who worked at the Sanq consulate on L1, she said. Colony boys were different, she said. He was perfect for me, she said. Tall, muscular, and very sweet, she said. I'd love him, she said.
"Hello, Heero? I'm Eric Ericsson."
Don't tease him about his name, she said.
Pasting a smile on my face, as best as I knew how, I stepped forward to shake the man's hand. He was indeed tall and muscular; I'd put him at about six feet and at least two hundred and thirty pounds. I felt like a little girl standing next to him. He was also quite sweet, if that's what you called giving another man yellow roses on the first date. Didn't he know that yellow roses meant friendship?
Arg. He'd turned my inner monologue into such a queen.
Which turned out to be ironic, because the date itself was enough to turn a gay man straight, let alone my bi ass.
Eric Ericsson turned out to be anything but sweet. He was incredibly chauvinistic and incredibly sleezy. He took me to a dive of a bar for dinner, and he kept trying to feel me up.
Then he kept trying to make me feel him up.
And if I had thought that his physical size made me feel like a girl, his actions on the date made it quite apparent that he felt I was a girl. He opened doors for me. He pulled out my chair. He ORDERED FOR ME. He dominated the conversation, speaking in his remarkably monotonous voice. He kept telling me what he thought I should or should not do with my life. He kept telling me how he had a great job and that he'd like to "take care of me right." Whatever the hell that meant.
At one point, he even commented on my "figure," snagging half my pasta in the name of "saving my waistline".
You wouldn't treat a real girl like this, would you? Certainly not in this day and age.
When I started ordering my drinks two at a time, he started making remarks about "getting me drunk" accompanied with much eyebrow waggling.
I wondered just what Relena had told Eric about this date.
But really, I could have dealt with all of this if only the man wasn't so incredibly boring. He had such a limited repertoire of sentences and phrases. He would repeat himself every five minutes. It was like listening to the world's shortest and worst-selling record on repeat.
In the end, Little Heero was definitely Not Impressed.
The evening wasn't a total loss, however, and I had one bright thing to tell Relena when I called her from my hotel room. (Yes, mine, not Eric's).
"Hey," I said, as soon as she picked up the phone. "Do you remember Duo Maxwell?"
"Duo Maxwell?"
I could hear almost hear her brain working. That little diplomat inside her was furiously rifling through her filing cabinet looking up the stats to go with the name. She made a living on being able to recall faces and names at the drop of a hat.
"You remember that blue dress you wore for your sixteenth birthday party? The one with the short sleeves and the bow at the hip?"
We'd been friends long enough for me to know how to jog her memory. When she confirmed her recollection of the dress, I continued.
"He's that other Gundam pilot, the one who shot me on the pier that night."
"Oh! That's right! He's the one with long hair and likes to wear black. I remember now. What about him?" she asked, and I could hear her curiosity.
"I ran into him at the restaurant today," I said, trying to sound nonchalant, "oh, and by the way, Eric Ericsson? Bad date. Bad, bad date."
She chuckled. "You didn't tease him about his name, did you? I told you he's really sensitive about that!"
I vehemently denied teasing the big dull dullard. "Apparently, it's not just his name that's repetitive," I explained.
She sympathized with me for a while before gently nudging the conversation back to my old war buddy.
"So what's this you were saying about running into Duo?" she asked, interrupting my impression of Mr. Repetition's repetitive speech patterns.
"See, even you wouldn't have been able to stand Eric," I couldn't let it go without one last comment. "But anyway, I was contemplating suicide by martini when some guy got up on the bar and started to make a scene. Duo helped the waiters talk him down. We're having lunch tomorrow."
I could almost hear Relena shaking her head.
"You lack some of the finer points in the art of anecdotes, Heero," she said with a chuckle. "So that's what you wanted to tell me? That you have a date with Duo Maxwell tomorrow?"
"It's not a date," I protested. "This has nothing to do with the penis vacation."
"Sure thing," Relena agreed quickly.
A little too quickly.
Curiosity piqued, I asked: "Are you... Am I interrupting something? You seem like you really want to get off the phone."
She muttered something about private offices and...privates?
I really wanted to see that office.
* * *
Lunch with Duo turned out to be one of the strangest things I'd ever experienced. And this included the time in Ottawa with Relena, four bottles of wine, and a whole roast turkey.
Duo told me he was on L1 working as a freelance security consultant. It made sense to me, seeing as 15-year-old Duo could break into any building. I could only imagine what grown-up Duo could do. He must have been good at what he did, though, because he was dressed very nicely in deliberately faded jeans and a sweater I knew cost two hundred credits.
I knew this because I was wearing a very similar sweater.
So we showed up wearing matching outfits, but that wasn't the strange part.
We both ordered sandwiches, I had tuna and he had a turkey club. When our food arrived, Duo asked if I wanted to share. I'd never "shared" my food with another guy before. Not in a public restaurant, anyway. It seemed a little intimate.
Okay, it seemed a little girly.
But for some reason, when Duo asked, I simply picked up half my sandwich and plopped it on his plate. He grinned at me and returned the favour. I stole a few of his fries. He speared a few forkfuls of my salad. We both ordered coffee after the meal.
Still, this wasn't the strange part.
The strange part, the really, really weird part, that made this more perplexing than that 10lb turkey in Ottawa was the fact that I did most of the talking during lunch. It was almost like I was performing a monologue. I'd always thought of Duo as the talkative one, but today, between sitting down and paying the bill, I'd managed to spill my entire life story up to and INCLUDING THE PENIS VACATION.
Apparently I was lacking some intrinsic filter between my brain and my mouth.
Knowing that little sticky-fingered Duo, he probably stole it.
He had laughed when I inadvertently blurted out my frustrations with the wild goose chase Relena had sent me on, but somehow I knew he was laughing with me and not at me.
I remembered liking that about Duo. Back during the war when I was so gawky and awkward, Duo had always made me feel comfortable.
He was surprising like that.
I was glad to see this attribute remain in the man he had become.
It was odd hanging out with someone I hadn't seen since I was seventeen. There were so many years between us; it should have made a difference. Yet there we were, sitting in a café so easily, like we'd been friends since childhood.
I wondered if Relena would be satisfied if I came back with a "friendship" from this mission that she'd given me. After all, a friendship was still a relationship of some sort, right?
I voiced this thought to Duo, who pointed out, in no uncertain terms, that Relena had granted this vacation to Little Heero and that coming back with a "friendship" really didn't help Little Heero at all.
I pointed out that Little Heero would probably be happier coming home from vacation with a new friend rather than a severe case of latex chafing.
We both stared at my crotch for a minute.
That was when he offered to join me on my tour through the colonies.
I didn't know what to think, so I told him I'd see him tomorrow and went back to my hotel to call Relena.
I told her that Duo had expressed an interest in traveling with me on the remainder of my vacation. She asked if he knew about my covert mission and I told her yes. I also said that I'd considered his impact on the mission and judged it to be beneficial. After all, Duo was a people magnet. People were drawn to him like flies to honey. Having Duo around would definitely be an asset to my ass-hunt. Relena, however, had reservations about my logic. She asked me about Duo's sexual orientation. I didn't know the answer, but neither did I deem it pertinent.
I told her so.
I thought I heard her laughing at me.
Relena did not have Duo's way of laughing with me rather than at me.
It was disconcerting.
TBC...
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