He’d known he wasn’t wired like his friends halfway through freshman year in college. It was three days after his midterms while they were blowing off steam when he admitted having had a threesome during a drunken game of “never have I ever” to his buddies.
“DAAAMNN MIKEEEYYY!” The chorus of hollers and high fives made him feel uncomfortable. He didn’t bother letting him know it’d been happening for weeks. His reticence (and later refusal) to reveal the names of the two “sluts” granted him the nickname “Mysterious Mikey,” with his friends, and from then on he allowed them to believe what they wanted about his sex life, using little more than shrugs and half-smiles to communicate on the subject.
There were so many times over the next few years that he’d wanted to say something. To tell them to stop calling the women he slept with “sluts,” and to stop making assumptions that he was the king of “hit it and quit it.”
But they were so proud of him. They were so happy for him. And part of him felt somehow responsible for having let it gone on so long. Then, during their senior year, the rest of the guys started pairing up with their girlfriends. One by one, they stopped rallying every Friday night to head out to to go “prowling” at the bar, playing their favorite game of “Whore or Horror?”
The game consisted of selecting an unsuspecting unattached female bar patron, voting on whether she was a “whore” or a “horror story,” and then sending off the player to try to take her home.
“Whores” were the ones who’d accept a drink, hand over their phone numbers, or put out, while “horrors” were the ones who would turn them down.
Mike hated the game, but the guys all thought he was incredible at it. “All the chicks are whores for Mikey!” they’d say. “Mysterious Mikey strikes again!”
The truth? He’d walk over to the women and tell them the truth. His drunk, obnoxious friends were pissing him off the way they were talking, and he just wanted to buy them a drink, talk to them for a few minutes, and then walk away.
More times than not, he’d end up chatting with them for a while before heading back, and several times it’d end in some sort of contact info exchange.
He made it a point never to leave with any of them or let his friends know if further contact resulted in sex for fear that they’d be branded as “sluts.”
Once the last of the group had coupled up, Mike was the only one left that wasn’t in a long term relationship. At least, not that any of them knew about. He was still seeing Jasz and Kerri from freshman year on occasion, but the two had transferred to another campus and were living with two other open couples in a rented house downtown. They’d begun making preparations for their wedding in the Fall after graduation.
He also had a fairly regular date night with Skylar, whom he’d met during a game of “Whores” junior year. Skylar and he had started off as just friends, and then friends with benefits, but Mikey had quickly learned that he had an uncanny ability to fire his heart out of his cock. She had quickly become someone special to him; but she’d been dating Jeff for years and after a few conversations and some scheduling arrangements, Mikey and Skylar had settled on weekly mid-week overnights and one weekend a month. He was an usher at their wedding last month.
But, as far as his friends knew, “Mysterious Mikey” was the last remaining bachelor of their original crew, and during their Monday night poker games, the guys would prod him for details on his conquests.
“Farrah doesn’t even shave her legs anymore, man. She’s so stingy with her pussy I don’t even fuckin’ mind that it’s hairy when I get it, know what I mean? C’mon, man. You’ve gotta be pulling some tight, hairless cunt still…those bar bitches are still trying.”
It was during one of those Monday night games when Mike’s phone began buzzing in his pocket. It was Skylar. She never called during poker night. Concerned, he picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
The chuckles, whistles and whispers of “booty call” faded into the background as he focused on her voice. “M…Mik…Mike.”
“Skylar, what’s wrong?” He put his hand up to silence the guys and shot them a glare.
They stared, confused for about ten seconds of silence before he spoke again. “Skylar, wait there. I’m coming over.”
He set his phone back in his pocket and put out his cigar. “Gotta run, guys.”
“Wait? Where are you going?” Richard asked.
“Yeah. Who’s ‘Skyylerrrrrr?'” crooned Paul.
Mike looked around the room at his so-called friends. These guys who he’d been keeping a whole world hidden from for nearly four years. Here he was, on the brink of graduating, and he’d been holding on to them like a security blanket full of holes that had started to smell long ago.
It was time to rip off the mystery.
“My girlfriend,” he started. “I’ve been with her for a year. She and her husband just found out his mother has cancer. His name is Carl and he and I play softball once a month. I’m also dating Jasz and Kerri from freshman year, and Brandon from the coffee house down the street and I have been talking about the possibility of hanging out more. In the time that you’ve known me, I’ve had over 20 partners, not all of them women and none of whom was a slut, or a whore, or a bitch. At least, not in the way you define it.”
“And I’m done here,” he added as he walked out the door.
With special thanks to a friend of mine for permission to include the line that inspired this story.
polyammering 