Chapter 4: Belinda's Rules for Virgins

I woke up at midday with a mild hangover and my face burning from third-degree pash-rash. I pulled on my robe and trudged to bathroom, and as I sat on the toilet, I jerked in surprise at the crazy-woman looking back at me in the bathroom mirror. God help Emma Watson if she ever looked like this; I had bloodshot eyes, hair in a crazy tangle, and my lips and chin were glowing red and swollen. I looked like a meth-addict's mug-shot.

Stretching for the medicine cabinet while I peed what felt like an entire case of Victoria Bitter, I gobbled a couple of paracetamol and smeared cold-cream over my face without rubbing it in. By the time I flushed the toilet and brushed my hair, I was thinking about Kevin again and was on the slow path to recovering some of the previous night's good cheer.

Belinda was in the kitchen making coffee.

"Please, please tell me you're making one for me," I pleaded, squinting as I shuffled into the bright daylight of the kitchen.

"Regretting our actions of last night, are we?" she chirped, way too cheerfully. "Good God!" she squawked, turning around and seeing me for the first time. "What happened to your face?"

"I don't want to talk about it," I groaned, sitting at the counter. "At least not until you've finished making me coffee."

She ignored me – as usual – and came over to inspect the damage. "Ouch! That hurts just to look at!" she sympathised, going back to work on the coffee machine. "I hope it was worth it. Do you want two coffees? Is he still in the bedroom?"

"What? No!" I clipped back, probably a bit more vehemently than was warranted. "He didn't stay ... we didn't..." I left the sentence unfinished, my cheeks burning with colour to match my lips and chin.

"Bullshit!" she giggled. And then she called, "Kev! Get yourself decent and come out! Otherwise you'll miss out on coffee."

"I'm not bullshitting," I smiled at her playful presumption. "He's not here."

"I've seen that kind of beard-burn before," she leaned against the kitchen bench and studied me. "In the mirror, no less. It comes from an all-nighter of hot sex. Are you telling me you boffed him and sent him packing? 'Cos that's harsh, Jeannie."

"I'm certainly not telling you that," I shot back, trying to get annoyed, but still blearily blissed-out with new love and wanting to share. "I'm telling you we kissed and then I sent him packing so I wouldn't be tempted to boff him."

"What? When?" she sounded confused, but I think she was starting to believe me. "It's midday now. What time did you go to bed?"

"About six," I said. "If you're going to grill me, can you at least do it over coffee?"

"But..."

"Coffee!" I demanded. "No more details until I'm caffeinated." She quickly finished frothing the milk; I could see her almost bursting; dancing from foot to foot like she was busting for the toilet.

"Details!" she blurted, plonking the coffee in front of me and slopping a bit on the counter. She pulled her stool close and stared at me expectantly.

"What, no chocolate sprinkle?" I pouted, enjoying my little bit of power, relishing the anticipation of sharing and a bit frightened at the same time. Belinda jumped up so fast I had to catch her stool before it fell over. She came back with the chocolate shaker and pounded out two brown clouds, some of which settled over the foam on my coffee.

"Details!"

"Have you considered a career in waitressing?" I asked, suppressing a smile.

"Have you considered a career in comedy?" she shot back. "Details, Jeans. You have five unaccounted hours from when you left the party to when you went to bed. You say you didn't boff him. Or are you using the Clinton definition? Don't make me run that red dress under a black-light?"

"There are no details," I laughed in spite of myself. "And no, there are no cum-stains on my dress, thank you so much for the imagery," and then in a pretty bad Texan drawl: "Ah did naht have sex with they-at may-an!"

"You're serious, aren't you?" she looked at me sideways. "You had a five-hour pash-fest with Kev."

"Four and a half," I said. "We walked around the block to warm up for the pash-fest."

"Four and a half hours of pashing?" she studied the red gaps beneath the cold cream with a pained expression.

"Uh huh."

"Clothes stayed on?"

"Yep."

"Undies too?"

"They're clothes, aren't they?" I smirked.

"The Clinton impression cost you some credibility," she quipped. "And no coming whatsoever?"

"With Kevin?" I asked, knowing she would get the implication.

"Bullshit!" she blurted, eyes boggling. "You sent him away with blue-balls and then went and finished yourself off with that jackhammer you keep in your drawer?"

"Oh!" I blushed again, sipping my coffee and looking away. "Sorry, I didn't realise it was that noisy."

"God, don't throw it out!" she said earnestly. "It makes Andrew super horny. Rhinoceros-horny. In fact if you could throw in some moaning, you'd be doing me a favour."

"Oh my goodness," I blushed redder still. "I'd love a way to salvage some dignity from this conversation. I'd tell you I didn't bother with it last night..." I sniffed my fingers for effect; trying to appear brazen and unconcerned about my masturbation to hide my embarrassment, " ... but I don't think it would help."

"Yeah, over-sharing, Jeans," she frowned. "There's just one thing still unclear."

"And that is?" I was feeling more confident now, I could see that Belinda wasn't going to judge me. I probably should have known that all the time.

"Why?"

"Why what?" I didn't understand.

"Why not get him to finish you off?" she asked simply. "You didn't kiss him for five hours and decide you didn't like him."

"Four and a half."

"Whatever," she waved it away. "It's not like you're saving yourself for..." Belinda fell silent with her mouth open; the question unasked. The silence spun out for a few seconds while I watched the results of an internal dialogue play out on her face. "You're a virgin," she said finally.

I wasn't as embarrassed as I thought I would be. I wasn't really embarrassed at all, in fact. It wasn't like she was dancing around the table, pointing at me and singing "Nyah-nyah-ne-na-nyah" like a primary school kid. Even so, I couldn't put words to it; I just made a resigned, shrugging expression with my mouth that probably looked pretty funny behind the cold-cream.

"One more question," she asked seriously. "How did you keep his hands out your knickers for that long?"

"I didn't need to," I replied, a bit surprised she would ask. I thought it was nice that he didn't take liberties.

"Not even... ?" she cupped her own breast suggestively.

"Nope," I said proudly. "Perfect gentleman."

"So Kev's a virgin, too?" she raised an eyebrow and sat back thoughtfully.

"What? No!" I blurted. "I mean, I don't know. Why would you say that?"

"There's only two plausible reasons why a guy would pash for five hours..."

"Four and a half," I interrupted.

" ... whatever, for four and a half hours without copping a feel. Either he's never done it before," she paused.

"Or?" I asked. "He's a gentleman?"

"No," she smiled. "Or you cuffed him to the bedposts."

"Funny girl," I smiled ironically.

"One more question?"

"You said that about five questions ago," I observed.

"Do you want to?" she asked.

"Want to what?" I asked obtusely, knowing exactly what she meant, but prolonging the admission.

"Boff him, you dope," she said. "Let him park his car. Slip you the sausage. Get the mad-milkman to make a special delivery down Pleasure Lane..." I had to hold up a hand to stop her; I sensed she could go on like this for a while.

I still didn't answer though.

"Well?"

I sipped coffee, making an "Mmm-hmm" affirmation into the cup that I hoped sounded non-committal.

Belinda looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments.

"Will you let me do something for you?" she asked in her serious voice.

"You're not going to break him in for me. Not even if you beg," I said in the best deadpan I could muster.

"I'm being serious," she said, still quite seriously, and two such statements in a row is close to a record for Belinda. "How many women have you heard say their first time was a wonderful experience?"

"Heaps," I answered.

"Not counting erotica," she stipulated.

"None at all," I confirmed. "Not one." The logical implication – that I was building myself up for a big disappointment – was coming through loud and clear.

"There's a reason for that," she went on. "Most women have their first time as a teenager, and it's usually with a teenage guy, and often he's a virgin too." She took a sip of coffee while she assembled the speech in her head. "Here's the thing: teenage guys are the worst lovers in the world; virgins are even worse. Put them together... ?" she made a mock explosion gesture with her hands. "They don't know where anything is; they don't know what you want; they can last longer than about thirty seconds; and worst of all: they don't care."

"But Kevin's not a teenager," I defended his unproven sexual prowess. "He's in fourth-year; he's got to be at least twenty-one or two."

"Doesn't matter," Belinda waved me off. "It's the virgin-factor. They only get better with experience, not age."

"You understand that I'm not sending him off to Belinda's better-boffer boot-camp, don't you?" I said, only half joking.

"I'm taking this seriously," she said. She sounded a little hurt that I wasn't. "I've been working on a set of instructions – kind of a recipe – for girls to use on their first time." She paused, waiting for that bit to sink in. "I want you to try it."

It felt a bit surreal having someone take such an interest in my sex life. I was feeling mixed emotions: a little bit of embarrassment, some lust from thinking about sex with Kevin, some apprehension because Belinda was almost certainly right about the disappointing sex with virgins, and finally, a sprinkling of excitement at the possibility of a fairy-tale first time ... or maybe just one that was memorable for the right reasons.

Even if I didn't use her crazy-girl Kama Sutra, it couldn't hurt to listen, right?

"Make me more coffee," I said, "and then tell me."

Kevin called a little after 3pm. That probably sounds desperate to normal people, but by 1:30pm I'd showered, eaten, applied four different types of soothing balm, anti-inflammatory gel, topical steroids, and finally concealer to my chin. By 2pm I was a graduate of Belinda's school of virtuous virgins and had begged her to get Andrew to send me Kevin's number without telling Kevin, and saved it into my phone. By 3pm I had been staring at it for an hour and had begun silently swearing at it for refusing to ring.