Holly agrees it might be a good project as long as I promise only to attempt bad sex. She’s an academic, so she decides to chart this all out for me. We decide that random bad sex would probably have to involve a stranger. We decide I need to keep a log of it all, and that there has to be a way to sort it out. She remembers the old Sears catalog ratings of “good / better / best” when buying products and decides that will do. Our final scale runs: Worst / Worse / Bad / Boring / Good / Better / Best—and that’s it, I’m off for the hunt.

Driving down Broadway the first night I sense one problem. I’m already wet at the promise of getting laid by someone new. I try to control myself by reciting the Dewey Decimal system out loud.

The lounge at the Holiday Inn on Colfax is the first stop. I’m wearing fishnet stockings and leather, but my hair is pulled back in a ponytail and my turtleneck rides high, a sort of combo slut/cheer-leader look. It doesn’t take me long to pick out a paunchy-looking, balding guy at a table by himself and start the flirtation.

He tells me his traveling salesman story, the exquisite details of selling hospital equipment, while I brush his leg with my boot and watch the surprise in his eyes at his luck. He’s a Rat, I find out—outwardly cool, self-controlled, but passionate.

“Push the button on my watch,” he says, holding his wrist out for me to see.

I push the button.

“Tell me what it says, Kenna.”

I’m stifling a laugh. Can I pick them or what? “It says, ‘WANNA FUCK?’” And in large letters no less. “Pretty damn clever.” I don’t remember any mention of Rats having crass taste in jewelry.

“I had it made special in Taiwan.”

Maybe, just maybe, I’ve found what I’m looking for, and on my first try. I don’t want to sleep with him. So I will.

“Wow,” I say, flipping my ponytail. “And, yes. But do you know where the word ‘fuck’ comes from?” Now why on earth would I share this with him? But I do. “It’s actually a mystery, but they think it might originally be from the Scandinavian ‘fokka.’ There’s one written record of the word in 1278, and then nothing, nothing at all until three hundred years later, maybe because it was such a taboo to say it.” They probably didn’t even make these watches back then.

He reaches over and twists my hair in his meaty hand and whispers, “I’ll show you where fucking really comes from, sweetheart.”

A kiss, the check, and he’s guiding me to his room.