I'm Having More Fun Than You (9 page)

I’ve realized that, believe it or not, many women have a stronger sex drive than I do. I slept with this chick once, and about a minute after we finished, she turned to me and said, “Karo, let’s see how many times we can fuck tonight.” And I was like, “Actually, I think I’m good.” I don’t know why women are obsessed with having sex more than once in a night. Listen, everybody loves orgasms, but for women, the more the merrier. For guys, there’s a law of diminishing returns.

I really don’t understand the point of the much-lauded simultaneous orgasm. Can’t I just have my own orgasm? You’re getting a whole bunch; I only get one. If you don’t mind, I’d like to enjoy mine without worrying about getting you off at the exact same time. You see, guys
give
girls orgasms. It’s a manual procedure. One hand here, one hand there, medium thrust, and…we have liftoff. But girls don’t give guys orgasms. The male orgasm is like flying on autopilot. No matter what she does, I’m gonna get where I’m going eventually.

Ultimately, for women, sex is really all in their heads. I’ll be sleeping with a girl, and she’ll whisper, “Karo, I had a really stressful day at work. The market was way down. I’m just not gonna be able to have an orgasm.” And I’ll say, “I had a pretty tough day too. Turns out Uncle Frank has cancer. It’s terminal. So…a little to the left? Uncle Frank would have wanted it this way.”

You know the sex was great when you open your eyes and you’ve forgotten where you are for a moment; like you’ve gone back in time. I have to stop myself from muttering, “What year is it?” Now the good part about sex is that it’s awesome. The bad part about sex is that it’s messy. In movies, sex always ends with some sort of dramatic flourish, and the couple float gracefully into each other’s arms. In real life, sex ends with a grunt and then a frantic search for the forty requisite tissues. Of course, the box of Kleenex is always
just
out of reach, like in
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
when he can only get a fingertip on the Holy Grail. If no tissues are available, I’m usually instructed to roll clear while the girl disengages and makes a mad dash to the bathroom. Of course, all of this is done in part to prevent the sheets from getting dirty. The very sheets, ironically enough, that not seven minutes ago I was fucking vigorously.

TALES OF WHOA

If I’m hooking up with a girl who’s previously hooked up with one of my friends, sometimes she’ll ask, “Karo, you swear you won’t tell Evan about this?” I always promise to oblige, then immediately resume struggling with her skinny jeans. Of course, the first thing I do upon leaving the scene is call the guy friend in question and tell him every detail—including the fact that the girl asked me not to, which is often the best part of the story.

When a man is telling his friends that he slept with a woman, there’s one phrase that he’ll usually use. He’ll say, “I fucked the shit out of her.” Not “I slept with her,” “We had sex,” or “We made love.” No, it’s “I fucked the shit out of her.” We are not deterred from using this phrase, despite the fact that it is very rarely true. I could go home with a girl, not be able to get it up, and then prematurely ejaculate, and the next day I’d still be like, “Yo, I fucked the shit out of her! I’m the man!”

I would venture to say that I derive more pleasure from telling and retelling a good, crazy, wasted hook-up story than from the experience itself. I don’t even think I need the actual hook-up, just the memory of it. Like the plot of the movie
Total Recall
but with blow jobs. Every guy treats his history of one-night stands differently. My friend Moobs (so nicknamed because of his prominent man-boobs) always carries a digital camera and has a picture of every girl he’s ever hooked up with. Looking at his Facebook albums is like flipping through the women’s section of an old Banana Republic catalog, except you know all the clothes ended up on the floor. My surgeon buddy Shermdog, whose prowess is the stuff of legend, maintains a cordial relationship with virtually all of his hook-ups, and I believe checks in with each of them on a biannual basis. That’s what I call bedside manner.

Occasionally, I’m fortunate enough to be a part of the story even though I wasn’t part of the action. For instance, in 2006 I was sailing with some friends along the Great Barrier Reef. The tour got interesting one night when I awoke to find an Aussie chick climbing into bed with me on the deck of the ship, clearly wanting to hook up. In my drunken/sleeping haze, it took me a few minutes to realize she thought I was my buddy Mike. Noticing she had already removed her bra (how did she know my weakness?) and fearing an international incident, I hesitantly told her that I was not, in fact, Mike. Incredibly embarrassed, she flitted away, crying, “All you Americans look the same!”

I think that tales of one-night stands are the universal language of twentysomething and thirtysomething males. Put two random dudes in a room together and eventually they’ll start swapping war stories from the previous weekend’s conquests. When we grow older, get married, and have kids, we lose that common bond. That’s why golf is so popular. Put my dad in a room with some other old guy, and eventually they’ll start swapping war stories from the previous weekend’s back nine. The thing is, I don’t play golf. So I guess the best excuse I have to continue sleeping around is that I still want to be able to relate to my friends without picking up a five iron.

DOWN FOR THE COUNT

Sometimes, I’ll be hooking up with a girl, about to sleep with her, and she’ll all of a sudden get concerned that I “get around” too much. “Karo,” she’ll ask, “how many girls have you slept with?” And I respond, “To be honest, I don’t really count.” But she’ll persist, asking, “Well, is it at least, like, less than a hundred?” “A hundred!?” I’ll grimace. “Is that your standard for sleeping with a guy? I don’t know if
I
want to fuck
you
now!”

Of course, I do count. We all do. I may not know all their names, but I do know how many there have been. Yes, it’s crude. Yes, it’s immature. Yes, I probably shouldn’t have bet my buddy Claudio who could sleep with the most girls by Thanksgiving one year. The fact is, I’m a thirty-year-old dude. My days of organized athletics are over. I don’t have time for fantasy sports. This is all I’ve got. Besides, no one gets hurt (except for Claudio, who still owes me fifty bucks).

Even if it’s only for his own personal gratification, a man takes great pride in how high his “number” is. Which is why, in my running lifetime tally of how many girls I’ve slept with, I’ve begun to include fractions. Like if a girl wants to have sex but I’m just too fucked up and can only infiltrate the outlying regions, that’s two-thirds. If I fuck the mattress for ten minutes by accident, that’s a half. Count it! My buddies will ask, “Hey Karo, did you get laid on vacation?” And I’m like, “Hell yeah, two and an eighth girls!”

When a guy isn’t sure if what he did the previous night should count as getting laid, the next morning he’ll convene a tribunal of his friends to analyze the evidence. Think of it as The Hague of drunken sex. Both sides of the case will be argued and the man in question will be ridiculed incessantly for not sealing the deal beyond a shadow of a doubt. The tribunal is quite forgiving, however, and will generally award a point (or fraction of a point, as the case may be) as long as “yes” is the answer to the question “Was there intent to penetrate?”

THE DOUBLE STANDARD

It is without question that men and women are judged by different standards. If a girl sleeps around, she is called a slut. If a guy sleeps around, he gets a book deal. Even so, women should be cognizant of the double standard and take some measures to protect their reputation. You don’t want to end up like my ex-girlfriend’s best friend. This chick was always growing out the front of her hair and it looked ridiculous. So I gave her a nickname: Bangs. The name worked on two levels because she also fucked everything that moved. Get it? Bangs. I thought it was brilliant. My ex-girlfriend? Not so much.

There are a few surefire ways for a guy to determine whether the girl he’s with gets around. For instance, if I’m hooking up with a girl and, when she takes off her jeans, she takes off her thong at the same time, that’s a big red flag. Listen, even if you’re gonna sleep with me anyway, at least go through the motions of acting like you don’t do this every night. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the enthusiasm—but I’d feel a lot more comfortable if we stuck to the usual two-step process.

Believe it or not, there are actually certain instances when being labeled a slut can be a positive thing. For instance, let’s say I tell a friend that I just met a girl on line at the grocery store and we totally hit it off. If my friend says, “Dude, I know that girl. She’s a total whore,” I’ll be really disappointed. But if I’m wasted at the bar and I tell my friend I just met a girl on line for the bathroom and we totally hit it off, and my friend tells me she’s a total whore, I’m thrilled.

I love when I run into a slutty girl I haven’t seen in a while, and she introduces me to her new boyfriend. I’m like, “Oh, hey Melissa.” And she says, “Karo, I want you to meet my boyfriend, Jack.” I shake Jack’s hand and tell him it’s nice to meet him, but I also chuckle discreetly and think about whether or not he knows his girlfriend slept with…everybody.

LAY OVER

One of the most important keys to a successful one-night stand is having an exit strategy. First of all, no one wants to sleep next to a random person. I don’t even want to sleep next to someone I like. There’s only room for three arms to be resting comfortably in bed, and the fourth never has any place to go. I believe one-night stands are like rescuing someone from a burning building. You want to get in and out as quickly as possible, and then, maybe, you call a few days later to make sure everyone’s OK. If you’re at someone else’s place, you need to leave as soon as you open your eyes. Breakfast? You gotta be kidding me. You’ll be lucky if you get a wall post. And if you leave now maybe I won’t even Twitter about it.

In my bedroom in LA, my bed is purposely set eight to ten inches away from the wall. This allows me to sleep undisturbed while the girl makes a quick and easy exit in the morning. And by “sleep undisturbed” I mean pretend to be passed out until she leaves and I can finally take a shit. But in an effort to heed my own advice, when I’m at a girl’s place, sometimes I overcompensate and leave too early. I’ll go to the bathroom right after sex and never come back. I’ve been told this is offensive.