It terrified me when she acted like a slut. I said, “Let me get unbuckled.”

Bob’s fantastic wedding weekend, plane ride from Boston, dry in-flight peanuts, mysterious hotel on the ocean, the grooved tracks of nauseating similarities between us and every other person in this hotel, in the world.

I stared at her. I wanted to get married, too. I wanted to be swept away. Phylida and I had talked about our whole lives—where to live, how to live; we met the other’s family, everybody loved everybody, yabba blabba—the only thing left was, like, pull the trigger, get that ring!

She said, “Your winky is starting to get a little small.” She said this in a bright voice, ashamed of herself. She held it at the base—the outline of her lips was white—and tried blowing me.

I could feel myself spiraling away from sex toward all my fears and anxieties. I tried to “get metaphysical” with my fears, to keep with my psychologist’s urging (she, of the fluffy, Native American “dream catcher” on her gray office wall) so they didn’t overtake me. I looked down at Phylida, beautifully pumping away, and the face of Steven Spielberg floated into my mind, expressionless, bearded, dumbfounded. I thought of how much money he had. He had a private jet with customized woodwork interior, a daybed with a nightstand and a cup holder. A friend of Bob’s, some jackass named Dan who helped me plan the order of who gave what toasts this weekend, also had a private jet. Shares of Dan’s amazing start-up company cost twenty-six cents apiece two years ago. At this moment they’re worth forty-seven dollars. Some of the other invitees were in on Dan’s first stock offering; they had names like Lafayette and Sky. I didn’t have enough money to be showing my face around this crowd. Sometimes when I traveled for work I pretended I was a foreign spy. I wasn’t a spy. Dan would be arriving in his jet today; in a half hour, in fact. I knew that because Bob once suggested I pick Dan up with my personal chauffeuring services but I actually wouldn’t be able to because Dan could go fuck himself.

What was with the old, baggy, stained underwear Phylida wore? They looked like something from a nursing home. And what about that chin hair? What about the Italian woman in my office with the extremely high-heeled black suede boots, who did this little secret cha-cha with her legs whenever she came and stood by my desk?