Stepping into the gathering was like being pushed under a waterfall of sound. The Cocktail Party Effect was operating at full power. Everyone was talking at the top of their lungs ... and voices. Trying—and failing—to out-talk their neighbors in the crowded rooms. Your ears automatically try to tune out the din, but, with each person trying to out-shout all the others, a soft-spoken person couldn't get a word in edgewise.
I'd been invited in the usual way, as a friend of an acquaintance of a buddy. So I didn't know anyone. But it was better inside than out, what with the chill in the air, as a Philadelphia late fall frosted the outside air. Drifting between knots of people earnestly trying to converse with flailing hands and jerking bodies, seeing lips move, and hearing disjointed words and phrases, I wandered from group to group.
Finally, I settled near the cooler where there was some beer, and wondered why I'd come. Certainly not to flirt and make time with a woman, as I desperately wanted. The prostate operation that'd saved my life from cancer had also resulted in a damaged nerve, resulting in a permanent case of "floppy doodle." Retaining sensation, and still having functioning balls just made it worse. Longing, wanting, desperately needing some sex, and unable to get any, ever again.
I still remembered the last and only time I'd been successful picking up a girl, post-surgery. I can still hear the cruel laugh and screech in my ear's memory, when it became obvious that I couldn't "get it up," then or ever. That's when I had to leave my job, and go out on my own as a self-employed guy, just to avoid the buzzing vicious female gossip centered around "old dickless."
I worked 24/7, trying to drown myself in work, but found I just had to get out and socialize. So, finding myself at this party, I backed up against the wall, and tried to make sense of the noise. One group was talking textile design, as I heard fragments like "weave," and "bias," and "color vulvas" (I think that was "values"). My attention wandered to another node, where I sorted out computers and systems. No thanks, my former friends did too much of that as it is. Sigh.
No one seemed to know what a Public Adjustor was, or did, or cared to find out. Sigh, again!
As I was searching for another group, something kicked at my shin. I glanced down at a pretty Asian face of about 5' nothing inches, looking up to my 6' 6". The face said something like, "gimmit uh bear." I answered intelligently, "huh?".
She tried again, shouting, face working, "gimm tuh bert." Again, I answered, also yelling, "what?"
Her face spasmed in a quick grin, and, reaching up, she grabbed by necktie, and yanked my face down to her lips. This time, I distinctly heard, "Get me a vuckin' beer," she commanded, adding "God damn Engrish rang ridge."
Four steps to the cooler, surrounded by nodes of screaming party-goers. My height was an advantage, as I simply snaked two beers with one hand from the cooler, hauling them dripping ice-water across two sets of half-exposed bosoms, complete with blond hair and vacant expression. Boob-possessor girls squealed and spun around, the wrong way. Smiling smugly, I gave one to my necktie-pulling companion. I tried to talk, but with the noise, plus our unequal heights, I couldn't catch but one word in ten.
I solved the problem by simply sitting on the floor, cross-legged. My chance-met companion squatted in front of me, sipping from the bottle, and banging her elbow on the wall, same as me. We both missed each other's names in the noise, and much of a few minutes of attempted small talk. But I did catch that she'd watched as I dribbled the ice from the beer cooler on the two sets of breasts. Meanwhile, I got an eyeful, looking up her slim thighs to the shadows under her short skirt.
Yes, she caught me looking. Then she just grinned again (100-watt grin), and sipped her beer. My forever-to-be limp cock tried pathetically to stiffen and jerk, but had to settle for a weak spasm. Then, without warning she set her beer down on the carpet. It promptly fell over spilling beer in a puddle on the carpet.
"Give me han'," she ordered.
I extended my right hand, as the left still held my own beer. She guided my admittedly slender middle finger down to my palm, and applied some force to mark the point my finger made on the palm. In my case, just to the muscle at the base of my thump. Then she put her little hand into her small purse, dangling from her shoulder, and pulled out a small tape measure. She measured from the lowest point that my finger tip reached on my palm to the tip of the finger itself.
I raised my eyebrows, questioning.
She said, casually, as she put the tape measure away, "finger tip to finger reach is crows to pemish side."
"Pemish side? Crows?"
"No. Not 'crows,' crowsh. Not 'pemish,' pemis. God damn Engrish rang ridge. You know. Rong finger rengt means pemice big."
"Spell it?," I asked
"You know. Pemice. Eight and haf' inches. Dat's right, yes. P-E-M-I-S."
I finally figured out that my chance-met Asian pretty girl was talking about estimating my penis size from my middle finger length!
Then came one of those moments. At a party, when everyone is talking, yelling, there comes a moment, unplanned, not organized, when everyone simultaneously stops, takes a breath, to keep on speaking. There is a brief, stunning silence, into which I yelled, at my absolute loudest, into the deafening silence ...
"NO. PENIS. P-E-N-I-S!"
The stunned silence continued for one, two, three heartbeats, as all eyes turned toward me. An anonymous voice from the other side of the room clearly commented, "that's something I really wouldn't want everybody to know, don't you think." The roar of laughter drowned everything else out. I heard other comments like, "Hey, dickless, I can lend you an inch or so to spare." Someone else said, too clearly, "maybe you better let us take care of your date." The old song started up, "Does yer cock hang low? Does it wobble to and fro? Can yuh tie it in a knot? Can yuh tie it in a bow? ..." And so on.
I started to get up, to slink away from this party, ready to vow never to see another person socially again. My little Asian chance-met companion grabbed me by the necktie again, grabbed up my beer, snatched another from the cooler, and guided me out the door onto the patio. She dragged me to the far end of a plastic lawn couch, and pulled me down to the seat. Then she grabbed at a pile of black something, and forced what seemed like an oversized black cotton quilt over the both of us. Some scrambling arranged it around our legs, and over our heads. Only our faces were exposed. The rest piled up on our laps and at our feet.
Still holding firmly onto my necktie, my party-met girl friend kissed me thoroughly. I kissed back, wanting to be urgent, knowing that I literally had all the time in the world to kiss.
