"You are upset, are you not?" he asked.

Upset? I was stark-raving mad. I couldn't understand why a traveling man would come to the United States and not jump at the opportunity to be manhandled by an American girl.

I knew that I couldn't physically overpower Lupe, but there was a chance of him losing some strength after a couple more drinks. I wasn't a huge fan of being on top, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and it looked like I was going to have to ride him like a pony.

"I'm not upset," I told him, "not at all. That's very sweet. Let's go have some drinks in my room."

I got a water glass from the bathroom and poured Lupe a nice long whiskey straight from the minibar. "Let's do a shot," I said.

We started kissing again, standing up, and then fell onto the bed. After a good thirty seconds, I reached for his penis, but he stopped me. "Slow down, slow down," he said.

This guy was really pissing me off. What was the story? I appreciated the idea of taking our time in bed, but not beforehand. After I got him naked, I would gladly roll around for hours if that was what he wanted.

"Are you seriously not going to have sex with me?" I asked.

He pulled me to him into a sort of cuddling position, which suspiciously felt like a full nelson.

This guy was gonna drive me to drink… more. I lost my steam, grabbed the remote control, and found the Animal Planet channel.

The next hour consisted of us snuggling and watching eight morons compete in different challenges with animals. I had heard about men getting blue balls before, but didn't know it could happen to a female. At that very moment, my vagina was turning a deep shade of navy.

"Do you want to go to that party?" I asked him.

"Not really, this is nice," he said and burrowed his face into my shoulder.

This guy was a hot mess. Who on earth behaved like this? What was the point of traveling if you wanted to sit in hotel rooms and watch TV? He must have grown up in the wild, with no civilization at all, to think this was a good time. I was struggling to come up with ways to get him to leave, but I was too exhausted. I tried to fart, but nothing came out. Then he started to snore.

I fell asleep shortly after I resigned myself to the idea that I was, in fact, sharing a bed with someone who wouldn't put out. This was not the ending I had envisioned for the evening. Instead of steamy South American sex, the entire night was spent with Lupe holding on to me for dear life like a koala bear to a tree branch. Being cuddled while awake is nice, but when I'm sleeping, I need space. I kept waking up every hour, trying to nudge him toward the other side of the bed, but he slept like a big dead log. My shoulder started to ache from lying on my side, but there wasn't any other choice; whenever I turned around all I got was hot breath in my face. I was close to tears and thought about calling hotel security, but I didn't want Lupe to end up in the clinker.

At around seven A.M. I picked up the hotel telephone, went into the bathroom, and called myself on my cell, which I had placed next to Lupe's head with the ringer on high. I ran out of the bathroom in a fit of panic to answer my cell and saw his eyes open slightly. "Hello?" I answered inquisitively. "Oh, no, we do? Oh, of course, I'm just, I'm just aaaah… okay, I'll be here." I hung up. "Shit!" I screamed.

Lupe bounced up. "What is it?"

"I have a meeting in ten minutes, and it's in this room. You're gonna have to go. I am sooooo sorry."

"It's okay, it's okay, what kind of meeting is it?" he asked.

I wasn't prepared for his English to work first thing in the morning and was thrown off guard by the question.

"It's with the manager of this hotel, actually. Shoniqua and I are thinking about buying it."

"Oh, I didn't know you were into real estate. Shoniqua told me you were a professional ballerina."

This was news to me. "I am… a ballerina… but I also buy buildings… hotels mostly… and then fix them up and sell them." I said this with about as much believability as Pamela Anderson as a lifeguard.

"Oh, okay… when do you think you'll be done?"

"It's gonna be a long one," I said. "Why don't you give me your cell number and I'll call you tonight."

"I thought maybe we could go to the zoo today," he said.

This came as no surprise to me, considering his affinity for things in captivity. "Probably not, but I'll call you later," I said. He told me he had no cell phone and asked for my number. I gave him Shoniqua's.

He got dressed and came over to kiss me good-bye, grabbing my face for what felt like an hour. He just kept staring into my eyes. "I had a beautiful time last night."

"Yeah, it was a real hoot," I said.

After he left, I locked the door, slept for another three hours, then put on a robe and went straight to Shoniqua's room.

"What's up?" she asked as she opened the door.

"What's up? What's up? Not Lupe's penis, that's for fucking sure."

"What happened?" she asked.

I got into bed with her and told her about my night of torture. "Well, bitch, that's what you get when you fuck with a sister and make her piss herself."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Think about it, Magnum P.I.," she said, with a big smile on her face. "You white bitches aren't the only ones who can plan some shit. I told Lupe that you only had three months to live and that this trip was our last hoorah. I explained that you had been treated terribly by men in the past and your dying wish was to be adored emotionally, not sexually." She paused and added, "I also told him you had herpes." Then she burst into maniacal, uncontrollable laughter.

"That's not fucking funny," I kept saying, all the while trying to control my own laughter. When I couldn't any longer, I decided to go up to my room and laugh in private. I refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing me entertained by my pathetic circumstance.

"Fuck off," I yelled as I left her room. "By the way, he wants to go to the zoo today!" I shouted as the door swung shut.

Lupe called Shoniqua several times after our trip to New York to check on my status. "I'll be honest with you, Lupe," she said on their last call, "it doesn't look good. It doesn't look fucking good."

I WAS ON the phone with my doctor's office trying to get my hands on some Vicodin.

"What do you need it for?" the nurse who answered asked.

"I'm in a lot of pain," I lied. "I had a bit of bad luck over the weekend."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but you'll need to be more specific, Ms. Handler."

"Fine," I said. "If you must know, I was skydiving and my chute didn't open."

"Oh dear god, are you all right?" she asked me.

"Yes, I'm okay, I'm just in a lot of pain," I told her.

"What… where… how did you land?" the nurse asked me.

"In a tree," I said.

"Have you been to the hospital? Is anything broken or bruised?" she asked me.

"No, it's mostly internal injuries, nothing you'd be able to spot externally. I also feel like I'm suffering from posttraumatic syndrome, so I may need some sleeping pills."

My call waiting beeped and I told the nurse to hold the wire.

It was my sister Sloane, whose wedding was two months away.

"You can bring a guest to the wedding if you want," she said.

"Hold on," I said and clicked back over to find that the nurse had hung up on me.

I clicked back to Sloane. "Fine. Who?" I asked her.

"I don't know. One of your girlfriends or if you meet a guy you want to bring."

The thought of bringing a love interest to my sister's wedding had about as much allure as joining the Navy SEALs. Every time I brought someone home to meet my parents, whether it was just a friend or an actual boyfriend, my family felt compelled to remind me that I had terrible taste in people, and that they liked me better when flying solo. They all agreed that my friends in California were shallow and brain-dead and we were all much better off when I left them behind.