Male Slut

by Julie Robinson

“It’s like a physical sensation,” was Shannon’s lame-ass answer as to why she was acting so I’m-not-fourteen-anymore-but-you-wouldn’t-know-it giggly after a perfectly fine man asked her out.  “I haven’t felt this way since the fifth grade when Alan Pintar asked me to meet him after school behind the tennis courts.”  Yada yada yada.

I’m happy for my friend and all (her future date did show us some very yummy buck naked pics), but after I heard about Alan Pintar’s three (or four?) wives, Alan Pintar’s dead younger brother, and how the only reason Shannon was not currently married was because she was “waiting on Alan Pintar,” I pretty much tuned her out.  Besides, the only reason she kept rambling on was to deflect my attention away from her new involvement with Trevor.  Truth be told, however, that wasn’t garnering too much attention from me either.  No, the man I cannot get enough of--the man keeping me up at night—is Trevor’s father, Rodger “Hubcap” Hubbard.

“Hubcap” (so named because he’s so tough that “Hub would cap yo’ ass!”) was a police officer for over thirty-five years and is now barely hanging on due to his pulmonary disease.  My attention perked up when Trevor lovingly referred to his father as a “gigolo”.  “My dad would call up Zelma, Silvia, Yolanda . . . and they always gladly welcomed him back. I would ask, ‘Dad, how is it that you do what you want, call out of the blue, and all these women keep letting you back into their beds even if you don’t talk to them for over a year?’ and Hubcap would say, ‘Son, if you do it right, they always come back.’”  Trevor explained that Hubcap had a keychain with keys to dozens of women’s houses on it.  He would wear it proudly on his belt loop—Barry White impersonating a janitor.

Hubcap definitely had a way with women, and I wanted to know his secret.  Trevor believes it had to do with communication, “Some part of them just doesn’t care,” he explained even though he could barely believe it himself.  “My father is a sonofabitch, but you always know what you are getting because he communicates.  He tells them like it is.” 

Thinking to myself, I believe it also has to do with confidence.  Trevor told Shannon and me that his father would waltz into a bar and declare boldly, “Is she a hubcap?  Who’s going to be my hubcap tonight?”  This has rubbed off on his son, Trevor, who has his hand on Shannon’s knee and is whispering in her ear as she squirms and giggles.  “I guess I learned it from my father, but I try and tell women, ‘Look, I can offer you great sex, great food, and great conversation but no more’—seriously, why is it so difficult?”

“Eventually someone falls in love and it gets complicated,” I chime in and all three of us face one another nodding our heads. 

“Men hate the drama—and it seems like it’s nearly impossible to just keep it simple,” Trevor offers.

“Well, men and women respond differently to sex,” I’m gaining momentum. “For women it’s a way to bond.  Men don’t get that same emotional connection from the physical act.  That’s why I try to have sex like men.”  And that takes me back to Hubcap.  “If you call your father a ‘gigolo’, what is the female equivalent to that term?”

Trevor thinks for a brief moment and says, “Unfortunately, there isn’t a good counterpart for women.  We have ‘slut,’ but that carries a lot of baggage. “

“I want a cute, fun word to describe my interactions with men,” I whine.

“What about ‘gigolette’?”  Trevor beams with pleasure from his new word.  I beam with pleasure as well.  I can’t wait to be a gigolette and have the same kinds of interactions as Hubcap with my male friends.

So, gigolette it is—for now.  I may not sashay into bars, point to the man I want in the moment, and get him to his knees—but I do want to have the same kinds of long-term, enjoyable “relationships” with lovers who value the time we share and don’t ask for much more.  And, I want a nifty little keychain from where the men in my life jangle as I strut my stuff.