“Let’s get this lovely lady a drink,” Lance said.
“That okay. I don’t normally drink before… well, nine in the morning,” I said, waving my hands.
“Give her that breakfast drink we had in Manilla,” Jeremy suggested.
“Breakfast drink?” I asked, thinking about Hudson’s disgusting protein drinks. “I don’t like kale.”
“Kale!” Peter blurted and doubled over with laughter. “No kale, beautiful. We’re talking about a Blow Job!”
My face got hot again, and I was sure that I was fire engine red. Damn it. I so wanted to be cool, but my cool was coming out as a middle-aged housewife. New bras or not, I was all June Cleaver and not a drop of Beyoncé.
“Blow Job is the name of a drink,” Hudson told me, extricating himself from his friends, and he shrugged again, as if he was embarrassed, too. It was hard to imagine him embarrassed by anything, and his discomfort was endearing.
“Give this woman a Blow Job!” Peter yelled at the ZZ Top bartender. A minute later, I was handed a thick and creamy drink in a short tumbler.
“Yum,” I said, honestly. It was like the best smoothie ever. Like a smoothie with no fruit and vegetables. I downed the drink, like it was Ovaltine, and another one was handed to me. “Creamy. I don’t normally like blow jobs, but this one is delicious,” I commented and belched.
“This was great, but we need to get going,” Hudson told his friends.
“Hud wants to leave, men,” Lance announced. “You know what that means!”
It turned out that it meant that Hudson needed his hands and feet zip-tied, his pants pulled down, and thrown onto the bar where Jeremy sat on him. By then, I was feeling the Blow Jobs like I was trying to wake up after surgery.
“Hudson wears briefs?” I said out loud, studying his half-nakedness, as he struggled on the bar.
“Did you say you wanted another drink?” Peter asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said, swaying on my feet. I was dimly aware that Peter was holding me up. “Maybe I did?”
“Keg stand!” Peter yelled.
“Keg stand!” the others yelled back.
“Keg stand!” I yelled, too. “What’s a keg stand?” Peter picked me up in his arms, like I was his baby. “Are you crazy? You’ll hurt your back,” I said.
“Keg stand!” he yelled again, ignoring me.
“Drop her and give me my pants back,” Hudson grumbled from the bar counter.
“I kind of like being carried,” I said, gazing into Peter’s eyes, and belched again.
Even though I wasn’t cool, even though I was a middle-aged housewife wearing sweatpants and Skechers walking shoes, the coolest, hottest men in America had made me one of theirs. For the first time in my life, I was part of theincrowd. I was Marsha Brady. So, it didn’t matter to me what a keg stand was. If it included being in theincrowd and being carried by a handsome young man with no body fat, I was all for it.
“Keg stand!” I yelled, which drew another round of hoots and hollers.
The bartender dragged a beer keg out from behind the bar, and Lance tapped it. “Oh…a keg,” I said, understanding slowly invading the alcohol-doused corners of my mind. “A keg…stand? Is that like a nightstand?”
“Tony, take a leg,” Peter said.
“I’ll get the valve,” Lance announced.
“No fair,” Jeremy said, still sitting on Hudson. “You guys get the fun part. I’m stuck with old man Hud.”
In a blur, I was turned upside down, held up by my legs. Lance told me to open my mouth, and he stuck the hose in it.
At this point, I should have begged off the keg stand. I should have left well enough alone. But I was a sucker for peer pressure, especially when the peers weren’t my own peers, and I was giddy with excitement that they thought they were. Peer pressure aside, if two Blow Jobs weren’t making me especially stupid, I would have freed Hudson with the nail clippers in my purse and left while I still had a couple brain cells left.
But the Blow Jobs were making me stupid.
