Sharing

Saturday at the door, a girl asked about my bottle of water. She picked it up, took a long look at its level and stared at me. "Is this yours?"

"Yeah. Put that down."

She didn't. "I need a sip."

"Don't do that," I said. "I already drank outta that."

"So? I'm thirsty."

"Did you hear what I said? I already drank out of that bottle. Put it down."

She unscrewed the cap and took a slug. "I don't care. I'm thirsty."

"You know," I said, "you people have to be fucking kidding me. Are you all just incapable of leaving me the fuck alone, even for a second? Why the fuck you gotta touch my fucking water? You gonna go get me a new one now?"

"Oh, calm down. There's still a lot left."

"That's not the fucking point! Do I know you? Have you had your shots? How the fuck do I know you didn't leave a fucking pool of herpes on that bottle? Take the fucking water and leave me alone."

I turned to Freddie with my hands out, palms upturned. "You believe that shit?"

"What shit?" he replied. "That girl was pretty hot."

"She just grabbed my fucking water and took a sip out of it. How nasty is that? Who the fuck does that?"

"I don't think she's in any danger outta you, bro. Don't STDs go away when you never get laid?"

"Good point," I said, fetching a backup bottle out of the podium, "but it's still pretty disgusting. I mean, who the fuck takes a sip out of somebody else's drink? Especially a water bottle, where your whole mouth goes around the thing? It's not like she sipped out of my glass from a different lip mark, or with a straw or something."

"Lemme ask you something."

"What?"

"Would you have sex with that girl?"

"In what context?" I replied. "You know me. I don't dip in this pool."

"Okay fine, Forty-Year-Old-Virgin. I'll put it in your terms. If you started dating that girl, and after a six month courtship period where you two split milkshakes and went to drive-ins and sat in the parlour with your mom, would you bang her?"

"Obviously, dick."

"And," he continued, "before you actually went through with it, don't you think there would have been lots of times where, even though you weren't actually nailing her, you'd have been busy jamming your tongue down her throat? Or maybe getting hummers? Like tonight, for example. If she came out and talked to you for a little while, and said she wanted to take you back to her place, you wouldn't at least do that?"

"Probably not, after what she just pulled, but I get your point. We'll stick lots of body parts in lots of different orifices, but if someone puts their lips on our water bottle, we go ballistic. I get it. It's hypocritical."

"When you think about it, yeah."

"So what you're saying is that you'd hang onto that water bottle after she drank from it?" I asked.

"Fuck no. That's disgusting."