Play Me Backwards by Adam Selzer Page A

explanation.
    Stan’s basement room was not so much a bedroom as a suite. In addition to his bed there was a couch and an armchair—his “throne”—that had been spray-painted black. The cushions were always kind of sticky, but being able to tell yourself it was just thepaint was kind of reassuring. Adjacent to the main bedroom was a bathroom, a laundry room, and a storage room. It was, in many ways, a more spacious version of the back room of the Ice Cave. The wood-paneled walls were covered in posters for metal bands and newspapers from days when the headline was about some terrible disaster. There were stains on the walls and the ceiling that I never asked about. Here, we devoted our weekends to the pursuit of evil: playing video games, watching movies, and eating ungodly amounts of nachos.
    When I arrived after the outing to Hurricane’s, Stan was reclining in the chair, drinking one of his concoctions and playing a video game. The ashtray held a whole pile of cigarette butts.
    â€œThere you are,” he said, like he’d been expecting me. “How did it go?”
    I pulled up a chair from the little table off the side where he ran Dungeons and Dragons games, and took a seat.
    â€œIt went well, actually,” I said.
    He looked over at me. “Not so well that you got laid or anything, though, or you wouldn’t be here.”
    â€œWell, her parents were home, for one thing. It was a good first date. That’s all.”
    He focused on the game for a second, then nodded.
    â€œHow long has it been for you?” he asked.
    â€œAbout a year.”
    â€œWas Brenda your first?”
    I nodded.
    Brenda.
    Brenda was a regular at the Cave and in the basement for a while.A peculiar thing about her was that when she had sex, she made noises like a cow. We all knew this, because she was not overly particular about who she slept with and wasn’t above doing it in the break room while people were working, or in Stan’s laundry room during parties, even though there was no actual door, just a burlap curtain that didn’t exactly make the room soundproof.
    Brenda got along great in the back room of the Ice Cave. Now and then she and Jenny would try to outdo each other and see which of them could be the bigger freak and, even though Jenny was very much into doing things her parents didn’t want her to, Brenda always won. Jenny still had a filter in her head telling her when enough was enough; she might take off her shirt in the break room now and then, but the bra stayed on, at least, and she didn’t sleep with just any guy who happened to be around when she got bored. She never sucked a guy off for half a bottle of vodka. I didn’t know for sure Brenda had done that, but I heard that she did, and knew her well enough to believe it.
    Jenny hated Brenda.
    I didn’t like her all that much myself, but somewhere along the line Brenda decided she wanted to fool around with me, and I wasn’t in much of a position to say no to much of anyone at the time. I didn’t have had the nerve to, really. So I started making out with her now and then. After a few weeks at second and third base, she dragged me into the laundry room in Stan’s basement, stripped naked as nonchalantly as you would to take a shower, and told me to get to work.
    She didn’t really make it seem like I had an option, so I did as I was told.
    I wasn’t a very good worker, though.
    For one thing, it took me forever to get it up. At home, in bed, just thinking about naked girls was enough to get me hard, but here was one in person, and it was like all the nerves and veins leading to that part of me had been cut off.
    She should have cut me some slack. Given that I was only inches away from several pairs of Stan’s dirty underwear, not to mention a litter box that hadn’t been cleaned out in a while, it wasn’t the easiest place to get in the mood. There are probably less