She had never orgasmed at the hands of another. This is the thought she chewed over while roaming the the grounds of Alhambra, that magnificent castle that so proudly and unashamedly boasted the once spectacular presence of the Moors in Spain. She’d seen everything there was to see in Granada — in all of Spain, really — and she’d fucked every guy she could manage to woo. She had written the whole time she traipsed around that country and was enjoying a steady stream of cash from freelance work, which did not hurt her newfound vagabond lifestyle. She had accomplished so much in just a year and instead of being proud of everything she had done and the name she’d made for herself, she sat on a bench outside the Alcazar smoking a cigarette and lamenting the fact that she had never orgasmed at the hands of another.
Cigarette after cigarette burned out and the butts she collected in an empty coffee cup. She was waiting for a date, a man she had met at a bar the previous night, to whom she had drunkenly given her phone number. She barely remembered what he looked like in the cloudy haze of her hangover, but she suspected he would not be nearly as attractive as she had thought him the night before. Her beer goggles had betrayed her once too many times for her to count on them, but aside from seeing the Alhambra, she had no plans for the day and so allowed this man to meet her. The worst that would happen is that she’d get a few free drinks out of him and go home with a happy buzz to masturbate.
When he arrived it was with timidity. He tapped her shoulder and she turned around to see his face: small, rounded with eyes too large and hair too closely cropped. But the mouth was pleasant with thin lips and crescent shaped lines at the ends of his lips when he smiled. He greeted her in English and though she was fluent in Spanish she didn’t feel like moving away from her native tongue today, so she let him yammer on an apology in broken English about being late. She stopped him, stood up and, taking his hand, began walking away. He stumbled after her in shocked silence at first and then asked her what she had seen today.
“All of Alhambra,” she stated, releasing his hand and lighting another cigarette.
“You can’t have seen all of Alhambra,” he laughed.
“Why would I say I had if I hadn’t?” She was annoyed with him already.
He laughed harder and shook his head. “No, no! I mean, the Alhambra complex is too big to be seen in half a day.”
He was right and she hated that he was right so she stayed quiet and smoked her cigarette while they walked. It took him a few seconds to notice her strike on conversation and he decided to change the subject.
“What do you do?” he asked and he erupted with glee when she told him she was a writer. “So am I!”
She eyed him skeptically. She had met enough people in her life who had claimed to be writers only to have it turn out to be a hobby they possessed about which they felt so strongly that they presented themselves as scribes. “Do you get paid to write?” she challenged and was more annoyed with him when he nodded yes.
“It’s for an adult website,” he explained. “I write erotica.”
She laughed, not believing him and continued to laugh when he said, “I’m thinking of stopping, though, because I’m getting too used to it.”