I woke up at five-twenty on a Tuesday morning and found myself seated next to Vivian on the first bus into the city. In my morning stupor, I managed to deduce that she must have been able to coax me out of my well-deserved post-finals slumber enough to get me out of bed and dressed. Actually, I noticed, I was only technically dressed. As I yawned, I unbuttoned my shirt, re-aligned it, and buttoned it up again. Vivian, clutching her pre-purchase receipt in both hands, noticed my arousal and smiled brightly. "Hey, you're up!"

"Yeah," I muttered while I tucked my shirt into my sweatpants. "What time is it?"

"Almost six," she lied. I groaned and dropped my forehead onto her shoulder. "No, we're almost there!" she protested before pushing me upright. When she let go of me, I flopped back down onto her.

We stepped off the bus just as the sun began to rise, two blocks from Roundworm Records. Roundworm Records was our favorite record store, partly due to its choice location, equidistant from the nearest bus stop and the finest crack west of the East Side, and partly due to its selective inventory-you could be sure you would never have to wade through any shitty popular releases before getting to wade through all of the shitty indie releases. I stumbled after Vivian toward the barred-up doors of Roundworm, and formed a line which at its peak would consist of me, Vivian, and a guy whose knees were engulfed in an invisible inferno.

Two hours later, the owner-a thirty-something ex-punk from New York-casually strolled up and unlocked the gate. "Morning," he said to me with a nod. I raised my hand in acknowledgement. "Hey, Viv."

"Good morning!" She bounced on her toes and thrust her receipt at him, still grasping it with two hands.

"Is that for the Zamfir tribute album?"

"No-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know what it's for," he interrupted as he pulled the door open. Vivian slid past him and hurried toward the New Releases section. I waited for the owner to kick down the doorstop and then followed him inside.

Vivian was frantically scanning the shelves. "We haven't put them out yet," he told her. "I'll get you one from the back." The moment he emerged from the storeroom, she intercepted him with the fifteen dollars and fourteen cents she had counted out two weeks earlier.

"Hi Mr. Sheehan, hi Mrs. Sheehan!" She greeted the surprised looks from my parents as she ushered me back into my house and up the stairs to my room. I sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands while Vivian put her CD in my stereo-she had unwrapped it on the bus-and rapidly tapped the "play" button. She hopped backwards onto the bed next to me, sending a small shockwave across the mattress, and wrapped her arms around me, squeezing me in anticipation. As the first power chords roared from my poor thirty-two Watt speakers, she sighed happily. I nodded my head and tapped my foot a couple times, then grimaced, closed my eyes, and fell onto my back, with Vivian still attached to me.

I awoke for the second time that day with the overhead lamp assaulting my bloodshot eyes and Vivian's mouth assaulting my blood-engorged penis. Even though I wouldn't have gone so far as to say that I wanted her to stop, I was sincerely annoyed that she apparently thought she could just yank my pants off and summon an erection at will. Well, of course she could, but that didn't mean she should. "It was already like this when I found it," she mumbled when she noticed me stirring. I knew in my heart that erections like those didn't arise from indie rock alone, but lacking both the energy and the concrete evidence to claim otherwise, I just crossed my arms over my eyes and groaned pathetically while Vivian relentlessly fellated me.