Chapter 21 A Brief Experiment with a Sore Vagina
Date four was an absolute doozy. A doozy that involved cycling through the Gap of Dunloe. Episode Thirty-Six: “Bicycling with Bret the Boastful.”
Tadhg drove me down a windy single-track road, and all the tourists and all their massive buses fell behind and decided not to follow.
The landscape was stark and rocky and beautiful, and I was so very glad that Tadhg was driving instead of me.
We worked our way slowly down the mountain, then along a seam of river where the plants were even lusher and the greens more vibrant.
When we finally came to a stop, a man was waiting there, all dressed in Lycra, and my soul deflated like a whiny balloon. This guy was going to be a lot. I could tell. Just how athletic is this going to be? His bright, shiny bike helmet strapped snugly into place gave me reason to worry.
“What time do you call this?” He smiled, but despite the smile, it felt more like a real jab than a playful tease.
“I think we’re a few minutes early, actually. Were we not supposed to meet at two?” Tadhg checked his watch. “It’s one fifty-eight.”
“No, we were supposed to start our cycle at two, which means really you should have been here by a quarter to at the latest, so that I had time to properly adjust her bike. She’s not even dressed for it. Does she have a helmet?”
The she in question looked down—black jeans, random ubiquitous T-shirt covered by light gray sweater, holes for extra-casual punk-rock style, and/or because I kept pulling it on that one sharp corner of the kitchen cabinet. Whoops. At least the jeans were stretchy. I could probably manage it.
Then, very much without my consent, my eyes did the obligatory sweep over my date. The spandex was . . . extremely tight; white and neon yellow scalded my retinas. Don’t look at his crotch! Do not look—Well, there it is.
He looked down at himself and up to me, clearly catching the can’t-fucking-miss-it laser-beam line of vision, then looked away with a decidedly smug smirk.
It was nothing to write home about.
Under his matching neon helmet, he had the face of a man in his late forties, within my conceivable age bracket, I thought.
Which, unfortunately, would make this whole thing more awkward rather than less, because it would feel more like a real date.
He had a healthy, sporty physique with an extremely low BMI.
How would I know such a thing? Because I could see every inch of the man as if he were naked and had been merely spray-painted in obnoxious colors.
“Maya, is it? I’m Denis.” He held his hand out to shake, and I followed suit robotically. Can I please crawl back to the Jeep and curl up for a nap? “Good thing I brought an extra helmet, right?”
If you had an extra helmet all along, then why did you bother asking if we’d brought one? He held it out to me and waited for me to put the cursed thing on over my mess of hair.
“Thanks.”
“Get your leg over, then.” He smirked and patted the bike seat.
I silently acquiesced and then came several long moments where he did “adjustments” that seemed to change nothing.
“Right. Let’s get this show on the road, missy.”
Ew.
Tadhg locked eyes with me and nodded ever so slightly, secret code for You all right with this guy? I gave a wry grimace and nodded back as my date fiddled with his reflective ankle bands.
“Right. We’ll see you at three thirty,” Tadhg said to both of us, then, turning to me, added a stern “Call me if you need anything.” The lock of his eyes on mine gave me a little shiver.
Denis, who had been waiting against his will for an entirely-too-long, life-changing several minutes due to our being only two minutes early, hopped on his bike and promptly left me in the dust.
I caught up to him, not so far away, stopped in the middle of the road with one foot on the asphalt in the universal stance of Look at me having to wait for you.
“We’ll have a stop at that vista there, and then we can chat. Your driver said you’d be having lunch already, but I’ve packed us a little dessert for stop four.”
“Oh, okay. Nice. You’re in charge,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. And then I looked at his crotch.
He grinned smarmily. “I usually am.”
Nope. Don’t like that.
There were . . . as one might have expected in Ireland . . . hills. Hills that made my thighs burn and reminded me mercilessly with each pedal that I was still sore from yesterday’s sextravaganza. I had to stand on the pedals to make it up the hill.
I’m way too tired for this, I said with one struggling push of the pedal.
I didn’t get enough sleep, I said with another.
If I must ride, I said with another painful push of the pedal.
Then why can’t it be a ten-foot-something angry Irish farmer?
But then we crested a hill, and the scene opened up in front of us, and my breath caught.
The road ran coyly away in a little winding ribbon that looped back and forth against the heather-covered rock, squeezing itself through the valley dotted with fluffy white sheep and past what looked like a pale blue lake in the distance. It was much too perfect to be real.
We pulled our bikes over for our previously scheduled stop one.
I enjoyed a quiet moment of wonder, probably also scheduled.
It was gorgeous. I was desperate to know where the road led, and delighted that, despite all the work, I would soon get to find out.
I snapped some photos. Denis happily joined me for the selfie without being asked.
Sixty seconds of reverence completed, I was unceremoniously launched into date mode. He sat on the stone wall and gestured for me to do the same.
“So, what do you do for work, Maya?”
“Oh. Well, actually, I have a podcast.”
“Doesn’t everybody?” He smiled. “Me? I’m a solicitor. Or at least I used to be. Early retirement, you know how it is.”
“Oh. That’s nice. Lucky you.”
“Ah, well. A bit of luck, perhaps, but mostly hard work. Nose to the grindstone and all that.”
“Sure. Okay.”
“But seventeen years of long nights at the office paid for themselves, if you catch my drift.”
“Yeah. I think I do.”
“Cool seven figures.”
“Uh-huh. I got it.”
“And you’d be surprised what you can get outside of Dublin for your money. When I sold my two-bed flat in Ranelagh, I bought a damn manor out here in sheep country.”
“I see.” I allowed my eyes to drift to the scenery and wondered whether he would even notice if I stopped listening or, say, fell off the wall and was eaten alive by bloodthirsty weresheep.
Thank God for the sheep. I watched them pull up grass, mowing the valley one baby step at a time, bleating occasionally for no good reason.
“Eight and a half thousand square feet and change left over, that’s what it gets you.”
“Nice.”
“First thing I did was put in a sauna . . .”
Damn. You know what? I really love sheep. Just look at them over there. So majestic. I wonder what it would feel like to squeeze one around the middle in a bear hug.
“Well, you really have to employ a gardener at that point. Anything else would be mad . . .”
“Oh, absolutely.” I’d call that one Bathsheba and that one Gabriel. I wonder if they can be potty-trained and let in the house, or would they leave their little pills everywhere? I need to google that. I could do it now, he probably wouldn’t notice. Can I get a signal here?
“Goodness, would you look at the time? We’d better put the rubber to the road, or we’ll be late for stop two.”
“We can’t have that.” I sound dull as dishwater.
“Chop-chop!” He actually just said “chop-chop.”
“Yep. All right. Just let me get this”—stupid, ugly—“helmet on.”
“You really shouldn’t take it off next time. More efficient.”
“Oh. Thanks for the pro tip.” I wonder exactly how dim he thinks I am. Like just regular not-too-bright? Or more of an entirely vacant nobody’s-home-and-they’re-never-coming-back?
On stop two, I heard about his new Audi and how much it cost to get a matte wrap.
I couldn’t get enough pictures of sheep, as it turned out. I would send hundreds of them to Simone at my next opportunity, just to see if I could make her curse me out for misuse of my selfie stick.
On stop three, I heard about his passion for cryptocurrency and was given several long-winded tips for developing my own portfolio.
I didn’t sweat it, though, because I knew what stop was next. Stop four. The dessert stop.
The weather was perfect, the sky was blue with fluffy white clouds, and there were baby lambs. Babies!
I pulled in after him to a little grassy spot by the lake. I had to hand it to him, the stops had been beautifully planned for all the best views.
“All right, Maya, you can sit right there. I wouldn’t worry too much about dirt, because you dressed down.”
“Oh. Thanks. Whew, what a relief.”
He smiled, humoring the simpleton. “I brought a travel towel for myself, though. White shorts. Can’t get them muddy, or—”
“It’ll look like you crapped yourself?” I blinked.
“Quite.”
I suppose this threw him off his game a bit.
He hadn’t scheduled for any excrement chat at stop four.
He was notably quiet as he retrieved the dessert.
I was really hungry after all that pedaling.
I hoped it was pastries. And chocolate. I hoped it was flaky chocolate and strawberry tarts and a bottle of champagne.
He’s got all that money to splash around, right?
It wasn’t.
It was two apples and a single Ziploc bag of trail mix.
Conclusion: date unsuccessful.
Uncontrollable variable: my irrational belief that the precise size, curvature, and left-or-right-side preference of my date’s penis remain mysterious to me until at least an hour into the date—minimum.