It's happened so quickly, jumped from talking to this. She's such a uni woman really, when it gets down to it. If we weren't dressed we'd be having sex already, the way things seem to be moving. And I think I like her, but Naomi keeps coming into my mind and that makes a mess of things. I think I like Imogen, but I'm not sure about this, and she is just so drunk.
But it's worse than that. She knows what she's doing and I know nothing. I don't want to look like an idiot now. The biol book flashes into my mind, and I don't know what I want. And she's a biped, goddamn it. Do I have to back off until she omits her left leg? That's just about all I know, almost the whole extent of it. That and a few twelve-inch-Paddle-Pop-sucking porn pictures - nothing that tells me how this goes. Nothing that tells me how to hide the fact that I've never done any of this before.
She might have to take the lead here. And, after watching her with the door knob, I figure there's a real chance one of us could get hurt. Naomi, it'd be fine with Naomi, slow with Naomi. I bet it would.
She lifts her body from me, kneels over me with her hands on my chest. Light comes in the window, cast from a streetlight in the shape of the panes of glass, onto her chest and her face.
She pulls her top off over her head and the light glows on her skin, making her black bra look even blacker, as though even I believe, for a moment, in shades of black. There's a pause, and we look at each other. I reach out to her, put my hand on her, but just on her stomach, nowhere it hasn't been invited.
There's something you should know, she says, and then looks surprised.
A muscular wave convulses through her, I can feel it under my hand, and all I can do before she hurls vomit at me is turn my head.
And this is another totally new experience. It hits with a warm splatter, throws itself across the side of my head, and there's no getting away. It blocks my ear, sticks up my eye, slides down my neck, all in a long, slow fraction of a second. I would feel better if I screamed, I think, but I try not to even breathe in case I suck some of it in.
Oh my god, she says. Oh my god.
And I think she might be going to cry, but another vomiting wave hits her and she bends down beside me and throws up next to my pillow. I slide out from under her and I wipe my head on my doona cover, but the stink of vomit is all about me and I'm only just holding back myself. I try very hard to think of something else. As if that's possible when someone's just vomited on your head.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nick Earls is a qualified medical doctor from Brisbane. I've met him once at a reading. 48 Shades of Brown is one of the many great (and funny) books he's written. He autographed my copy with the inscription "may you never find dirt in your pesto" :) At least that's what I think he wrote (doctor's handwriting and all...)
