The Bet I: Bonnie
"Are you crazy?!!" I looked at my friend, Simone, who was sitting across the kitchen table from me. I was in complete shock. We had had this bet going since the beginning of the summer. It was silly really. We both watched the same soap opera and I had bet her that a couple on there would last and she said that they would end up breaking up. Since we both watched the program every day the bet got pretty intense, until finally the wage was 'whatever the winner asked you to do'.
Simone won and now she was calmly telling me what she wanted me to do - have sex with her older brother, Peter!
"No, I'm not crazy," Simone said simply. Simone was like that, very cool and collected, and she always got her way.
"But I've never even had sex before and..."
Simone interrupted me, "Are you telling me that you're saving yourself?"
Her tone was slightly sarcastic and I bit my lip. "No... I'm not saving myself... But to lose my virginity over a bet?"
"Listen Bonnie, a bet's a bet. You lost and its time to pay up. I know that you aren't saving yourself and you don't have any moral reason to say no. You told me that the only reason you haven't slept with any of your boyfriends was because the relationships never lasted long enough. And I know that you're on the pill so you don't even have to worry about getting pregnant. So what's the problem?" Simone eyed me, waiting for my answer.
She was right, I was on the pill for medical reasons and everything else was true. Everything was ringing too true, I realized that Simone had probably been planning this for some time, and she had gathered info about my attitude towards sex over the past weeks by asking questions here and there. It made me a bit angry. But I knew that I was cornered. Simone was like the leader of our clique at school. If I didn't live up to my side of the bet I knew that this story was going to get around. And Simone would tell it in such as way that would make me seem immature and silly and no one would even question that fact that she had asked me to do something so insane. I also knew that if I did have sex with Peter that she would never say anything about it to anyone. As long as Simone got her way everything would be fine.
I thought about it for a few minutes. Peter was nice and good-looking. He was home for the summer after his first year in college. It certainly wouldn't kill me to have sex with him...