Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy by Ophira Eisenberg Page B

he said my face had a pretty neon outline around it. Your face is pretty would have worked for me, but we were getting closer.
    In my sparse white bedroom, decorated only with a couple of postcards and one two-dollar deli plant, we lay propped up on pillows on my futon, listening to Tom Waits. Ryan was . . . still talking. He wanted to review the history of civilization in the confines of my room, starting with Greco-Roman times, and I wanted to reenact a Bacchanalian ritual. I edged over ever so slightly so our thighs were touching, hoping that if our bodies came close enough together, magnetic forces would take over. I felt nothing. I couldn’t sense any flirty vibes coming off him,and with the acid, you’d think I’d actually be able to see them. As he continued with his commentary, now about how eyesight is the most complex example of cellular division, it struck me that he might not be that into me because he was too into himself. I was a mere prop in his solo trip.
    Eventually the drug started to wear off, and our eyes flickered with fatigue. It was 1:00 AM , and one thing was clear through my fading LSD-tinted contacts: It wasn’t going to happen with Ryan. He was a stubborn and loquacious research subject. Our parched lips briefly touched before he left, the kind of kiss you get from a confused third cousin. This fieldwork was going to be more challenging than I’d anticipated . . . and soon I’d need to apply for a research grant. Ryan never gave me the five bucks for his portion of the acid. My mother would say, “That’s how the rich stay rich.”
    Back in anthropology class, I spent the entire lecture intently studying every other single male specimen in the class, sizing them up, ranking them, and mentally pie-graphing the results like I did back in Cheryl’s basement. In my kinship chart, I narrowed down the criteria to two categories: my general interest and percentage chance of it actually happening. I needed to cut my teeth on some surer bets. My top two prospects: the supernerdy redhead Kieran, because he looked like the male version of the sexy librarian and might be a vivacious animal under that maroon cardigan; and the mildly exotic Ramon, a Middle Eastern–looking boy with a bumpy nose who spoke perfect Quebecois French. I’d pursue them in that order of difficulty. Screw waiting around to get roofied at an Omega-Delta-Who-Cares keg party; I was handpicking my fraternity.
    I got Kieran into bed immediately. It was almost too easy, and he was too thrilled and too thankful, like I’d granted his Make-A-Wish. I surely wasn’t his first, but I was one of four. His inexperienced hands almost shook as they touched me, and the sex itself remained in its earliest stage of development: very perfunctory with virtually nothing in it for me. All I got was a mild workout. I waved good-bye while he was still in bed, dazed in his tighty-whities, and bought myself a coffee on my way home so I could get some postcoital studying done. Nothing is a bigger turnoff than someone who is overly grateful. Blech .
    Next, I asked Ramon out for a drink. He complimented my leather cap, and I invited myself back to his apartment. Things went so much faster and smoother when I took charge of the date. Ramon turned out to be so nice that I wanted to go out with him just to see if I could make him angry. If he were in a tribe, it would be with the levelheaded hunters. He was also some sort of genius who’d already obtained a computer science degree and had returned to school to get an anthropology degree, for fun! If his idea of a good time was getting a second bachelor of arts, I was about to show him another dimension. He also owned a business—some spacey company that made lasers or photons or luncheon meat or something.
    Ramon didn’t have any roommates, but he certainly knew how to entertain. Once we were in his place he swiftly moved us from a glass of wine in his kitchen to something a little stronger in his