Penthouse letter? Ha. More like a footnote.

Since I decided to skip yesterday, I thought I would write something entertaining.

Years ago I was at my friend Stacy's house. I used to hang out with her quite often, almost constantly as was my wont with good friends. Yeah, it put me at risk of being a pest and being overly available, but I was young and stupid. I also thought Stacy was totally hot and with the crushingly tragic hope of the quiet innocent, thought if I was a good enough friend she'd fall for me. Ah, I crack myself up.

On this particular day, her parents were out of town and another of her friends was with us. So we were relaxing in the shady downstairs, sipping whatever it was that Stacy had liberated from her parent's liquor cabinet and mixed with cola. In the course of the verbal meanderings, Stacy and Julie started telling me how they were thinking of organizing an orgy.

I was still very much a virgin at this point, much to my despair. This announcement shot a tremor of icy electricity through my entire body. It was a reaction I tried to suppress behind politely interested sang-froid. In retrospect, I'm not too confident I played if off as cool as I had wanted. They were walking challenges to my terminally frustrated libido. I was terrified they were only taunting me. At the same time, I would have gnawed off my right leg to be on the guest list.

They went on at length about how many people needed to attend, what the ratio should be, what the timing should be. They asked me questions. They wanted to know my opinion or perspective. I might have been oblivious to a scary degree, but it was very clear to me, I was not only on the guest list, I was on the steering committee. My pulse was thundering.

Shortly after we finished our tumblers of purloined booze, Julie focused her attention on Stacy. It seemed at the time that she had had an inspiration and wanted to bounce it off Stacy while the idea was fresh and vital. With the perspective of years looking back, she may indeed have been struck by inspiration, but she was also keying up her friend. We had been discussing sex for over an hour in excitingly, explicitly vague terms. There was a male only scant feet away that she trusted. She was as delicately poised as a drop of mercury atop a sheet of ice. Julie was a gust of wind.

She too was a virgin, but I think she wanted to have something happen and needed someone else to play pathfinder. That person would be Stacy.

Before I knew it, I was curiously following the two girls down the hallway to Stacy's room. The conversation was just changing location for all I suspected at the time. How I could have been that gullible and naive at that time and not get totally obliterated by someone I'll never know.

I remember that I was sitting on the bed while the two girls started an escalating round of "what if" with each other. I listened intently, my mind racing with the images their words evoked in my brain. Suddenly, they wanted to see how something would work and wanted to know if I would help. Namely, they wanted to lash me to Stacy's bed with a bathrobe sash.

Where women are concerned that I find attractive, two facts have been my neon-lit, clearly marked Achilles Heel; I'm curious as room of ferrets and possessed of the self-preservation of an emo lemming at a razor-blade sale.

Suffice to say, it was a matter of mere moments before with wide-eyed trust and curiosity I had my wrists bound loosely to her bedposts. When I was tied to their satisfaction, Julie started exhorting Stacy to whip off her shirt. To my astonishment, she did. She then started toward the bed with a speculative expression. Julie was in the process of removing her shirt when it all came crashing down in jagged, fiery ruin.

Stacy's parents had come home without us hearing. So her father came into the room to find this lovely tableau.

Stacy screamed, "Oh shit!" and hit the door at a dead sprint. Julie wasn't that far behind her. I did my best to slip my bonds unobtrusively and expeditiously while her father's attention was directed toward his fleeing half-naked daughter. I didn't waste any time getting out of there, but I am quite certain my face only escaped bursting into flames by the cold jolt of adrenaline flooding my system. Cock-blocked by circumstance.

Many are the times over the years I have wondered how far things would have gone if we'd not been interrupted.

Oh well, if you can't get the romp; make sure it's worth a few laughs in the telling.