"You might as well put it in your mouth," I snickered when she held a pretty clear one with a nice pink swirl an inch away from her face, inspecting the design.
Nicole snorted in amusement and put it back down, telling the nice man that she'd be back later on. Her arm was slung through mine as we made our way down the first row of booths. There were so many people here that I didn't know what to think. I wasn't really sure what I was expecting from the porn convention, but so far all the bystanders seemed like your average Joes. I even spotted a few Crocs along the way and shuddered, remembering that my doctor wore Crocs and I would really, really hate to see him here.
"Nikki, what should I do if I see someone I know?" I asked.
I knew I shouldn't care what people thought. I usually didn't, but there was something about the idea of being caught at a porn convention by, let's say, my neighbor, my mom's friend, my mailman, my boss, or just about freaking anyone I knew, that made me feel uber uncomfortable. Nicole and I had this discussion at least once every six months. We blamed society for making sex seem so dirty and wrong.
There was nothing wrong with sex. There was nothing wrong with masturbation, blow jobs, anal, or whatever. There was nothing wrong with anything sex related, honestly, besides bestiality, which I refused to even think about. But I was still embarrassed to be seen here and that made me feel shitty. I wanted to feel secure and nonchalant like Nicole did.
"Well, there is something you could do. It's called, get this, saying hi. Have you heard of that before?"
I just laughed at her as we paused in front of another booth with a wide assortment of glittery, jelly-looking toys, and I knew I let out a tiny squeal of excitement. I looked from one side to the other to make sure my kindergarten teacher wasn't standingrighttherebefore leaning over the table to inspect the treasures laid out on the blue velvet.
After the saleswoman, another nice looking middle aged lady in an "I heart NY" t-shirt and denim shorts, showed me a particularly fantastic looking red hummingbird and sold me on its finer attributes, my wallet was thirty dollars lighter. Luckily, I came prepared and stashed my new little friend in my gigantic purse while Nikki laughed and started shoveling out her own thirty dollars.
"Those are pretty nice," a particularly nasally voice said into my ear.
"Uh," I stuttered, turning around to look at the owner of such a creepy ass voice. A short, stocky man with glasses that rested precariously on the bridge of his nose stood there with a weird smirk on his face.
"When you put it on the fourth level of vibration, it's unbelievable," he practically groaned out, eyes rolling and everything like he was reliving some fond memory in his head.
How the hell did this man know what the fourth level of vibration felt like?
I grabbed Nicole's forearm and dragged her away from the booth as quickly as I fucking could before the man came back to his senses. That was the kind of person I was expecting at a porn convention. An uncomfortable feeling of ick crawled across my skin as I tried to mentally bleach out the roll of his eyes.
"Hold on," Nikki hissed as she thrust her little package into her purse. "What the hell was that about?"
"Level four vibration," I said simply and she grimaced, nodding.
"Disgusting," she agreed and started thumbing through what looked like a pamphlet of some sort. She nodded solemnly, finding something on the page that she was looking for and winked. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. We need to take advantage of our time. I want to see that fucking sex beast, Calum Burro," she said in a sultry, Spanish accent. She could never say his name with a straight face, and I couldn't hear it with a straight face either. Calum Burro was her absolute favorite porn star. Yes, we had favorites. What's funny was that obviously Burro wasn't his last name, you know, but I was fluent in Spanish. I knewburromeant donkey. Seriously though, I could see why he chose Burro as his porn stage name. That man was hung like a horse. Yes, I knew a donkey wasn't a horse, but I got his drift.
"He has an autograph signing in an hour, so we should head over there and then do whatever," she continued.
I snatched the pamphlet out of her hand and started looking through it quickly. If I was here, and I was, I was going to take advantage of this shit, I guessed. I wanted to screech in excitement when I saw the name I'd been looking for on the list of people signing autographs.Thank you, Lord Jesus, I said in my head. I really didn't feel comfortable being here, and if this was the one and only time I came to a porn convention in my life, well damn it, I was going to tap into my inner Nicole and take advantage of it even if it was only for a minute.
"I don't give a shit what we do. We're going to Andrew Wood's booth if I have to get through my old minister to get there," I stated with as much conviction as I could muster.
Chapter 3
I had never seen Nicole this excited before.
I've seen her excited, but neverthisexcited. She got excited about the little things in life: sales at Macy's, getting the perfect seat at the movie theater, when I'd buy her a white chocolate mocha from Starbucks, firing her employees when they messed up— things of that nature, however, her reaction right then was unheard of. I had always doubted that shaking in excitement was a part of her DNA. I had no idea her pretty, almost golden eyes could glitter like a kid's at Disney World. I also, sure as hell, didn't know that she started yapping a mile a minute when she got really ecstatic.
Jeez,why?
Any other person would assume that she was on crack by the way she was acting in line. Her big, flaxen mane was flapping from side to side as she looked down the walkway between the booths trying to spy "the love of her life." Nikki was the most amazing looking girl I had ever seen in my entire life; paired up with a loyalty to her loved ones that rivaled a German Shepherd's and her passion for standing up for others, she was a force of nature. She was the real deal inside and out. She also knew exactly what she wanted from life, which only heightened her larger-than-life personality. Right then, what she wanted was to get on Calum Burro's radar. There was no doubt in my mind that the half man-half horse wasn't going to have any idea what hit him.
"Kat, is my make up okay? I don't have runny eyeliner or anything, right? Do my boobs look good?" she ranted.
I tried my best not to roll my eyes, because really, this was pretty freaking cute despite the fact that her giddiness was borderline annoying. I loved it when Nikki was happy though. "Your face is perfect as always my dear, and your gigantic boobs look motorboat-able." I winked at her and she grinned.
In few words, she wanted Calum to motorboat her tits. I laughed my ass off for a solid thirty minutes when she admitted that to me a few months before. He could totally do it, I'd seen those 34D's in person more times than I could count, and those puppies were immaculate.
"Shit, I need to go pee. Will you hold my spot for me?" she asked, I nodded.
He wasn't scheduled to come out and do autographs for another ten or fifteen minutes, but there were already eight people ahead of us and at least another ten behind. The eight bitches in front were all dressed up like trashy versions of country girls in microscopic cut-off jean shorts. If that wasn't bad enough, the old geezers behind us were wearing enough make up to supply Sephora for at least six months. It was pretty weird to think that all of these people around me had masturbated to Calum Burro at one point or another. The mental image of the woman behind me, who was old enough to be my great-grandmother and wore something renaissance slash gothic inspired, enjoying some solo time made me want to gag a little.
I was trying to keep my head down as much as possible. The nervousness that bubbled through my veins at getting caught seeing someone I knew was absolutely overwhelming. I thought I'd crap my pants if I recognized someone.
