Mr. One Night Standing-Room-Only: Part 2

(part one is here)

Twenty minutes after tipping the shady valet, we roll up to Pleasure Emporium and K directs me to a vacant parking lot right next to the entrance.

I hesitate.

"I don't think we should park here."

"What?"

"I just don't think we should park here."

"Amy, there are tons of spaces here. There's no one around."

"Yeah, and why not?"

"I don't know. Maybe because it's 3 a.m. and we're at a porn store."

"Are you kidding? These are peak hours." K looks at me suspiciously, but I plough on. "There has to be another reason. I don't wanna get towed."

"Don't be so paranoid. There's no towing sign. You'd rather park down the dark alleyway?" (It's exactly like the one my mother always warned me about.) "It will be fine."

Inside is a little different than I expected. The few times I'd been to similar places in Gainesville, it was always accompanied by two or three giggling girls, trying to find the perfect gag gift for a prudish friend. Or once, accompanied by drunk frat boys, who high-fived each other by the lesbian porn while a friend and I decided to wait outside before being piled into someone's truck and mercifully driven home.

The interior of Pleasure Emporium in Miami Beach lacks all pretense. As the sole nervously giggling girl, I stick out in a way that makes the other customers eye me with annoyance.

Oh no, real live girls, a tubby middle-aged man grasping a video garishly emblazoned with "Barely Legal" is panicked-ly thinking as he hurriedly directs himself towards the cash register, his pallid skin glowing beneath the florescent lights.

Near a rack of painful-looking fetish videos, a young couple smile at each other and confusingly exude normality. Suddenly the man's hand slides down from his girlfriend's waist and slaps her hard on the ass. Moderately alarmed, I scamper to the back of the store where K, standing before a wall of vibrators, starts firing questions at me.

"This is so small, how can it do anything? I don't understand, what is the remote control for? Is more power better? Do they sell batteries here? This one looks like an electric toothbrush. The woman on this box is hideously ugly. Is that supposed to get me in the mood? Why are they so expensive, isn't there any other way?"

"Um... your cell phone has a vibrate setting. You'd have to have someone continuously calling you though... um... I guess I can stay up late on Tuesday nights, I have no classes on Wednesdays. My fingers would get pretty tired from dialing though... maybe you could just dial yourself from another phone? Then your fingers would get tired, and that would sort of defeat the purpose of a vibrator... ummm..."

"Amy," K and I are both laughing, and continue to do so until an overly helpful Pleasure Emporium employee strides over to us, brandishing what looks like a key chain.

"Hello ladies." Trying to be slick, but looking straight out of a cheesy night club, complete with a shiny shirt, too much hair gel and acne. "I was wondering if I could offer you some help."

He seems like a nice enough guy, but one has to wonder why he has this job. K starts directing her questions at him, and as he demonstrates the disproportionate power of what I thought was a small key chain, I wander away and try to look inconspicuous.

It's hard to look inconspicuous in a porn store.

Bold and liberated as I like to think I am, the harsh lighting and direct gaze of this guy is making me blush. Maybe I'm only bold when other people are shy? I don't want to think about it, so I reluctantly turn back to K, by herself now, and ready to go.

She pays, and we step outside.

Oh, fuck.

"Hmmm... look at that. My car's gone." As if casually observing.

K sways on her heels a bit and looks from me to where my car was parked, as if waiting for the punch line. I give up on the punch line and start harshly laughing, which then segues into whining. Am I cursed?

The last time I visited K in Miami, she was living in a notably safe area of Coral Gables. Parking my car in front of her house, we went out to dinner, and when we got back at around 1 a.m., I found the front window of my car smashed and a tote bag stolen. It was a cute bag, but I imagined, with satisfaction, the thief's disappointment; it contained a bikini and Vera Bradley make-up bag. Calling my then-boyfriend, with whom I was supposed to spend the night, I discovered that he had fallen asleep and I was stuck. The morning after included pricey towing and a bitter argument; we broke-up about a week later.

A few days before our visit to Pleasure Emporium, I had been showing my friend R around Delray Beach. Spotting a parking space, I decided to make a left turn and put my blinker on, pausing for a gap in the traffic. Angry, urgent honking came from behind me. Whoa, who's the asshole? I just want to turn, I thought to myself. Upon turning and facing glaring headlights and more honking, it came to me: oh wait, I'm the asshole. It was a one-way street. Luckily, I was able to turn into a parking lot before being hit - or arrested - where I was greeted by an hysterically laughing restaurant employee taking out the trash.

"Hey, remember that time I visited you in Florida and you almost killed us?" My friend would ask me later.

"Which time?" I'm not exactly the best driver, but standing outside the porn store, I can't really blame myself.

"God damn it!" K, having progressed from denial, is shouting. "We were only in there for fucking 20 minutes."

We trudge back inside and are once again greeted by the overly helpful employee. Immediately ascertaining what's happened, he's so nice I really regret my previous silent snickering at him. He even offers to let one of us drive his car to the towing lot, but it's out of the question, as neither K nor I can drive stick, and we don't have enough cash.

"Two hundred dollars if we get it tonight?" K breathes into the phone after dialing the towing company. "And $250 if we get it tomorrow?"

Seeing no other options, we call a cab, and while waiting for it, make conversation with the employee.

"Where were we supposed to park?" K muses.

"There's like this sketchy looking alleyway." It figures.

"So what do you do all night?" I ask. He gestures at a television screen showing anime porn with the sound turned off. Ew.

"So do you girls toke up?" Why do people ask me this question so often? Just because I'm with a friend who is buying a vibrator at 3 a.m. doesn't mean I'm high.

"Oh, you're Jewish? You must toke up a lot."

"You listen to ska? Hah. You toke up?"

I'm never sure what the appropriate response is to this question. Yes, I have smoked marijuana in the past, but I really wouldn't consider myself a regular user, and I've never used the phrase 'toke up.' I give my standard answer.

"Umm....." Awkward. It's always taken for an affirmative, and the following sentence is typically either an offer or a request.

A horn blares outside, and thanking our new best friend, K and I exit and slide into the taxi. I'm admittedly a little too paranoid about things, but being picked up from a porn store and riding in a taxi at 3:30 a.m. for half an hour with my female friend while wearing a revealing outfit is not quite relaxing. Being directionally challenged and unfamiliar with Miami roads, I'm convinced that the driver, who is blaring rap music, is driving us into the middle of nowhere.

'Nowhere' isn't a gated community though, and as we arrive back at K's apartment, the whole thing suddenly seems hysterical.

"I could make my own porno, and sell it at Pleasure Emporium." K's the one who's going to be paying for the towing, and we're trying to think of quick money-making schemes to avoid wasting that much money on something that's not clothes.

"Ooh, I have an idea! I could call up Mr. OneNightStand, tell him I'm pregnant, and need $300 for an abortion!"

"Amy, that is the perfect solution! Seriously, it solves everything. I mean, he can afford it. We can even ask for more!"

"Um... I was actually kidding..."

Twenty minutes later I'm halfway into dreaming when K's voice calls me back.

"This turned out to be one expensive vibrator. It better be worth it."

"Hmm... 'I still jerk off manually,' " quoting "The Big Lebowski," but K misses the reference. She shakes her head and repeats what has become my favorite of her catch phrases.

"I keep trumping myself."