Winning Appeal(50)

“Oh, well, I’m totally comfortable with it.”

“Have you ever had sex with another man?”

Evan was again faced with a conversational dilemma: should he lie and try to impress her with just how comfortable he is with homosexuality by claiming to have had at least one experience, or should he honestly report the truth because Tina prefers her men to be unflinchingly straight?

“No. I’ve never had sex with another man…I mean, I just never really had the urge.”

“Oh. That’s what I figured. That’s cool. So now I just have two more questions before I can reach a decision.”

“A decision?”

“Yeah. A decision about you.”

“About me?”

“Yeah. You know, whether you’re someone I’d want to date.” She grinned mischievously. “Or just have a fling with.”

Evan’s face broke into a huge blush of relieved optimism. He didn’t have a clue where the conversation had been going, and now he finally received a clear signal that things had actually been going quite well.

“Sure. Bring on the questions.”

“Now this may strike you as a bit forward and vulgar, but we’ve talked about quite a few intimate issues, and I’m feeling very comfortable with you…”

“Ask away.”

“Are you hung? All of my men have been really well endowed. So I’m a bit spoiled in that department. And I always need to check.”

“I’m very well hung,” Evan replied, proud to be answering such a promising question from such a sexy woman.

“But all the boys say that.”

“Well I can prove it,” Evan replied, blushing a little.

“All the boys say that too.”

“But not all of them can.”

“True…Do you know why that is?”

“Because not all of them are hung,” ventured Evan.

“Nope…Because not all of the boys who are hung are uninhibited enough to prove it. Which brings me to my second and last question.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m a very sensual and uninhibited person, so it’s very important for me that my man be equally sensual and uninhibited.”

“I think I probably am.”

“Well, the way to find out if you are, in fact, as uninhibited and well hung as you say is really quite simple…” Tina seductively licked her lips and suggestively looked down with interest at Evan’s groin area. He suddenly realized where she was going with all of this.

“So your next question is whether I’m uninhibited enough to prove to you, right here, that I’m well hung?”

“Right here. In the Bowery Bar.”

Evan was dumbfounded because he had never before encountered such a request, and felt genuinely torn about whether to grant it. He looked at the inviting, azure eyes in her ravishing face, and then passed over her sultry, perfectly curved body, as if to weigh carefully the certain humiliation he would experience upon publicly revealing himself against the joy of a potential “score” with one of the sexiest women he had approached in years. He remembered that he hadn’t come this close to succeeding with anyone, much less a stunner like this, in a painfully long time. Evan imagined how he would later think himself a coward and a fool for having walked away from the opportunity. He looked around the bar quickly and didn’t notice anyone in particular paying attention to the two of them. He calculated that he could probably drop his pants quickly and then pull them back up before anyone could see. “Hell, I’m still young and crazy,” he thought. “At the very worst, I’ll just have a funny anecdote to tell everyone,” he told himself.

Evan tried to look Tina in the eyes with complete cool, but he started blushing as he fumbled awkwardly with the button at the top of his pants. Tina just stood there, propped up against the bar, looking mildly amused but slightly unimpressed with how long Evan had taken to reach his decision and implement it. She glanced at her watch. It was 12:50 a.m. Evan thought she might actually begin timing how long it would take him.

He finally unfastened the top button and quickly unzipped his pants. Tina still looked unimpressed. He knew he had to be more adventurous about the whole thing if he was going to prove to her that he was as uninhibited as he claimed to be. So, after tucking his thumbs under the waistband of his underwear, he looked her straight in the eye again, smiled for a moment, and then pushed everything down with a confident and unreserved extension of his arms.

As he stood there exposed, Evan became acutely aware of the many people in the immediate vicinity who – up until that moment – had seemed oblivious to him. Evan noticed the thirty-something barman in black trying to sneak in peeks while serving some customers at the bar. He noticed an attractive young couple that had stopped making out by the bar to watch. He looked at them for a moment, and they laughed self-consciously, returning to their tongue lock but occasionally angling themselves for another view. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed four slick-looking guys in their mid-twenties, joking amongst themselves about this guy just twenty feet away whose pants were dropped in front of this babe. “Now that’s what I call balls at the Bowery Bar!” one of them yelled. Evan pretended not to notice this group or hear its heckles only because there were too many of them for a threatening stare to do anything but goad them into even more obnoxious behavior. The only thing to do now was get it over with as quickly as possible, and walk out with the gorgeous prize that would vindicate virtually anything he had done in public. Who could argue with his manliness or his judgment if, after he pulled his pants back up, Tina gave him one of those triumphant, Hollywood French kisses, and then took his arm and walked out of the bar with him?