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Almost Sex by Buz Ecker

I slipped on the ice downtown, hit my head on the street pavement, and died. But I’ll get to that
later.

First, it was her panties which I caught a glimpse of one Saturday morning, when I was at our
local library, sitting in a chair reading the paper, minding my own business. The panties were white, and
she was blond with long hair, long legs, a skinny face and she wore these shoes that looked like a Roman
emperor’s, you know, the kind that lace up the ankles? Well, maybe not a Roman emperor’s, perhaps it
was of European design, like what ladies are wearing in Paris these days. No, not Paris. I think I read
those kind of shoes are worn in New York City, mostly. No, not there. Well anyway, that doesn’t really
matter to the story of my death, so I’ll just move on.

Then I saw this young blond another Saturday, with the long legs and so on, a couple weeks
after that, and now the panties were pink, but here she was a college girl, probably, and I was closing in
on 50, an RCH away. Now I went each Saturday, because I couldn’t keep my mind off her. I even took my
beloved wife of 22 years with me a few times, so she wouldn’t suspect anything, not that she would, but
that’s what I was thinking, because I was in like this altered state sitting across from this young blond
thing Saturday mornings. I was counting on there being no panties soon, so I struck up a conversation
with her. I was too nervous to remember her name, but she sure smelled good, kind of like church at
Easter. I am well aware of that smell, because, after all, I do go to church on Easter.

I was losing touch with reality, and I made stupid mistakes driving the car, and almost hit
someone on a crosswalk, and my wife was in the car, and she made me stop and let her drive. I was
quickly losing my mental faculties in this altered state, all because of this blond college girl, and my
crotch was kind of taking over everything about me. And I never did regain the full use of my brain. I was
dizzy and walking around in a trance mostly, and had trouble getting complete thoughts out, like I was
high on pot, not that high, just a little. See, I have a big head, and a gut, and arthritis in my hip, and black
moles on my back from which three inch hairs protrude. The hairs aren’t really black, more of a dark red
color, which I can see using my wife’s hand mirror reflecting off the full length bathroom mirror. Three
inches is probably an exaggeration, too. I’ve tried to stick a ruler down my back to measure, using my
wife’s hand mirror in the process, but I could never reach the mole hairs. Then I had the bright idea to
use a metal tape measure, but the tape somehow released back into the housing, which put a decent
cut in my right armpit, but I’m getting off track, let me go on to my death.

It wasn’t too long after that when we met in her apartment one Saturday morning. We were
going to look at her Shakespeare book, or maybe it was For Whom the Bell Tools by Hemingway, but as
soon as we walked in the door, she began kissing me and we had squishy sex on a sofa. I never did figure
out what was going on with her, and why it all happened so fast, and me being that close to 50, but
what was I supposed to do? And the thing is, I did not have Cialis, and everything was fine, anyway. Plus,
I don’t really need Cialis. My family doctor agreed with me when we had “the talk,” when I referred to it
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as pre erectile dysfunction. So I really don’t suffer the same fate as some of my neighbors, who have
indicated they need heavier milligrams of Cialis or Viagra. But, having said all that, as a rule of thumb,
when it was the rare time that my wife drank bourbon, I tripled my dosage, just to be on the safe side,
because, after all, it was pre erectile dysfunction. The trouble with that line of thinking, with the
bourbon and tripling the dosage of course, was that I got erections throughout the next day at the most
inopportune times. Like at Sam’s Club, where the fat people go on scooters to get free samples of food,
there I am with a God damn boner by the paper towels, and I have to untuck my shirt to hide myself.
One time I was at the swim club with my wife, and here comes one for no reason whatsoever, and I had
to go to the restroom and just sit on a bench there until everything settled down. There were lots of
boys who went in there, many with their fathers, with me in that condition. I can only imagine what
went through some of their minds. I had a towel over me, and said to everyone that I didn’t feel so hot,
and got up as soon as I went down. But all this doesn’t really enter into the story about how I hit my
head and died. I just felt compelled to set the record straight, that it was considered, in my case anyway,
as pre erectile dysfunction.

I mean, she was a cutie, and so young, and everything just happened so fast, like it was fate.
Innocently going to the library once to read the paper ended with me eventually cheating on my wife of
22 years for God’s sake. But the way I figured it, I’d be okay, I just wouldn’t tell my wife. That settled
that, and we could stay married, and I would continue putting the bourbon on the counter by the fridge,
just as a hint.

That didn’t happen.

My wife washed my clothes a day or so after the squishy sex with the young thing, and my wife
smelled the lingering odors and saw the stains in my drawers and pubic hairs, and I was in for it! I tried
to explain it away, that I was all tensed up about this and that and had a wet dream, but she would have
none of it. Plus there couldn’t have been pubic hairs, unless they were mine, because the blond cutie
didn’t have any. I read in the New York Times that the younger generation do that, the “Barbie Look.”
No, it wasn’t the New York Times, it was The New Yorker. Well, wait a sec, it had to be the New York
Times. Well, I think it was, but let me move on, because that really doesn’t matter about all this anyway.

I figured I’d still be okay. I could just work it out with my wife, and stay married, and I would
promise I would never do it again, and we could move on. That didn’t happen, either. She got a divorce
lawyer and was set in her ways, and I could only see the kids with her around on weekends, and all sorts
of shit, and I had to scatter. God Dammit!!! All for some young blond thing who I did not need Cialis for,
with my pre erectile dysfunction diagnosis.

After the divorce was final, I stayed with some friends for a while, plus I got our 20 year old
black cat that uses the litter box, but only when it’s convenient. I began to drink copious amounts of gin
every day to numb the pain, and even started to smoke pot again, which I hadn’t done since college.
See, there were me and Big Nasty, Scrotum, and Dog Leg. We all lived in the frat house together. We got
stoned most nights and got all fucked up, and ran naked through the girls’ dorms, and tossed water

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balloons from the roof of the library. No, it was a classroom building, and we waited to take our clothes
off until we were on the roof. No, that’s not exactly true, but I’ll just move on again, and try not to get
stuck on points that don’t really matter.

I was stoned and drunk a few months after the divorce, and was sitting alone at a bar uptown
near the apartment where some dude was letting me crash for the time being. We were on the baseball
team when we were in 6th grade, and he played short or third, or maybe it was left, but I do know it was
6th grade, because that was the year we won everything. We almost won in 5th grade, but really sucked
in 7th, because our starting pitcher with the heat moved to Indianapolis, or Chicago, or wherever.

I stumbled out of the bar, slipped on the ice by the curb as I began to cross the street, hit the
bejesus out of my head on the pavement and died instantly.

But I figured I’d still be okay. See, from what I had read, I was now going to follow this blazing
white light to Heaven and be with all my loved ones who died before, like my Dad’s parents. I never got
along to well with that set of grandparents, but they were loved ones, so what can I say? The white light
was there sure enough, but then I got waylaid by a Nun like apparition, wearing a long black robe, sitting
at a wooden desk straight out of the 1940’s with scratches all over the top. It was foggy and dreamlike,
and still pretty white, and I could not see her face under her hood, only her hand and fingers. She was
holding a clip board.

So much for this, I thought. Nuns are Catholic, and I was Episcopalian, so that must mean you
have to be Catholic to proceed through the white light and all. That’s what I figured, anyway, but then I
thought there might also be Episcopalian Nuns. At least I think so. I’m not sure. I remember going to a
Convent when I was a young teenager, and I thought it was Episcopalian, but that was a long time ago,
and I wouldn’t swear to it, certainly not now, of all times. She motioned for me with a wave of her hand
to sit in the chair across from her.

So I sat down across from her and she looked at the clipboard, at least her head was bent that
way. And she began to ask questions:

Nun: I see that you slipped on the ice and fractured your skull, and that’s why you’re here. Her
voice sounded old, kind of high pitched and shaky.

Me: Yes.

Nun: OK. Let’s review some pertinent facts of your life. It says here the number of times you
masturbated in your lifetime. Well, I’m not going to divulge the exact number she gave, but it was
absurd. I quickly ran the numbers through my head, the years, the months, the weeks and subtracted 13
years, because I must have begun around there. Then I came up with an average number of times I
would have had to have masturbated each day, and that can’t be! She either mistakenly added me with
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several other people, or possibly confused me with Scrotum, who was red every time he got out of the
shower.

Nun: You cheated on your wife and got divorced, I see here. That’s not good at all.

Me: I’m so sorry. I really couldn’t help it.

Nun: It says here that you were an altar boy all through high school, but that you were always so
hungover, it took all the strength you could muster up to keep from vomiting during the service.

Me: Oh yeah. I remember that.

Nun: That doesn’t look good on your life record, does it?

Me: No, ma’am. I was immediately concerned, as she began reading more from the pages on
the clipboard, that she would bring up the first time I got stoned, which was actually the third time I
smoked it. No, it was the second time. Well, it could have been the third time that I smoked when I
actually felt the effects, or the second, but let me move on again. See, I got home from the second or
third time I smoked pot, and my parents were asleep, and it took me the better part of half an hour to
try to lock the back door, so I started laughing, then I was in tears from the laughter, then I thought I
was being too loud, and one of my parents would wake up and see me in this shape, so I left the door
lock alone, and I crept upstairs and climbed into bed. But I lay awake for most of that night, thinking I
heard undercover policemen lurking around in the bushes below my bedroom window.

Nun: You called your poor mother up on April Fools’ Day when you were 23, and informed her
that you got a girl pregnant, and that the girl’s parents wanted you two to get married.

Me: Yes, I remember. That was just a joke I played on her.

Nun: OK. But did you know this single event in your mother’s life caused her to take a variety of
prescription drugs like Ativan and valium for the rest of her days?

Me: No, I did not know that.

Nun: It says here that you entered college and quickly made friends with Theodore, Garrett, and
Leonard. That was Big Nasty, Scrotum, and Dog Leg.

Me: Yes. They were great friends.

Nun: You ran naked through girls’ dorms with them seventeen times. I wasn’t about to argue
with her, especially at this time, but it was not seventeen times. You four set another fraternity house on
fire, filled the administration building with dead animal carcasses in the middle of the night, and played
cards nude in the boiler room where freshmen were sent who you did not want in your fraternity. There
are several pages of this. Shall I continue?
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Me: No ma’am. She didn’t mention the night we lit off a case of cherry bombs on the Dean’s
front porch, but it was probably lurking somewhere in the pages she was reading.

Nun: There’s a pattern in your life that we generally don’t like seeing up here.

Me: Well, after all, I did go to church.

Nun: It indicates that here, but you really did not go to church on a regular basis, correct?

Me: Well, I guess so.

Nun: Then you somehow married this wonderful wife of yours and moved into a quiet
neighborhood and had two children, yet you continued in your behavior. You put For Sale signs in
peoples’ yards, hung Halloween lights in the middle of the summer on neighbors’ gutters, stuck condoms
in all sorts of places like purses and coats. Did you know you alone were the cause of one couple down
your street almost getting a divorce?

Me: No, ma’am. I did not know that. I actually did know this, and the wife found a condom in
her husband’s coat pocket which I had secretly put there during a party, but I did not know it firsthand.
So, technically, I felt confident that I wasn’t lying. Wait a sec, now that I think about it, it could have
been the husband who told me, or it was their next door neighbor. No. But let me move on.

Nun: Let’s see… She was now on the fifth or sixth page, and it looked like she was glossing over
some of the information to find the main ones, I guess. I stared at her bony fingers and her dark robe,
and I still could not see a face under her hood, and it was foggy as all get out. There’s another episode
with sex you had with another woman not long after you first got married.

That’s not exactly correct. Well, maybe it is. It depends on how you look at it. I was going to tell
her it was only a blow job, but then I thought better, considering I was already dead, and this was a Nun,
and it was foggy and bright and all, and I had it figured that this was all some kind of pre-examination
before I was let into Heaven. Anyway, “blow job” was out of the question, and oral sex didn’t sound too
promising, either.

Me: It was almost sex.

Nun: It says here that you threw a handful of cicadas on your sixteen year old daughter while she
was using the restroom. Wow! She had everything! I’d forgotten that.

Me: Yes, that was a joke.

Nun: And yet your daughter was on Xanax for a year after that, correct?

Me: That wasn’t from throwing cicadas on her, was it? I never knew that.
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Nun: I have a fairly large stack of pages here. This is the life you led.

Me: I mean, I did go to church. I did not go every week, but surely every other week. I guess it
was once a month. No, probably not even that. I know for sure I went on Christmas and Easter. Anyway,
let me get back to me and the Nun.

Nun: We’re not keen on adultery up here, plus you have led a lifetime of general mayhem.

Me: So that’s it? I thought I would be forgiven all this.

Nun: We never forgive this much. I still figured I was okay. There had to be much worse people
than me. Look at all the low lifes I used to hang out with. If I was headed to eternal purgatory, at least I’d
know some people.

Just like that, I got sucked into a tunnel, like the ones you see at playgrounds, and there were
other people who I did not recognize. And we were all naked, and it was getting warmer and warmer.
My pits started dripping with beads of sweat the size of small jelly beans, you know, the kind that don’t
taste so good, but they’re still called jelly beans.

Then I was dropped out of the tunnel, and everyone here was naked and screaming, and there
were flames all over. I might as well start looking for Big Nasty, Scrotum, and Dog Leg. Surely they’re
dead by now, plus I can easily recognize them, because I have seen them each naked hundreds of times.

Well, maybe not hundreds of times.