Riding Solo Excerpt

Lurking the online casual sex encounters of Craigslist I have to be quick with the real ones: let’s grab a drink and then… or spend some time together… or wanting it now! If they include a grainy camera-phone picture taken in their bathroom mirror, then that is enough authenticity for me.

My laptop’s battery heats my thighs as I wait for lonely women to come home from their failed dates, put away leftovers, turn off the Biggest Loser, and hop online for a quickie. After chickening out and deleting multiple e-mail accounts, I’ve shuffled Chris and verb so many times I’m on the last one: verbChrisverb. I’m meat in a sandwich of action.

The picture I attach shows me standing next to a sculpture of the Eternal Flame of Knowledge in front of my university’s library. I used to walk by on my way to my ex-girlfriend Kisha’s dorm, flicking the tooth of my belt open and closed. In the picture, my hands are tucked into my jeans’ pockets, thumbs threaded through the belt loops, shrugging, like it’s nothing.

Kisha felt vulnerable naked, but would strip down as long as I admired her, tracing the curves of her dark chocolate skin with my white finger to the peach-fuzz above her butt. I discovered early on that even though men like to see women naked, women like to be naked with someone else.

If the encounter asks for a cock shot, then it’s a gay dude: Come on. It’s just a mouth. Or a tranny: I’ve got a gloryhole.