“Bae, I thought you knew what you were doing!” whined Nerlens Noel’s girlfriend, Moniqua, who was lying naked next to a similarly-naked and similarly-frustrated Nerlens.
“So did I,” he mumbled through gritted teeth. “But girls don’t come with instructions.”
Moniqua sighed. “I told you bae, it goes down there right between my legs.”
Nerlens ignored his girlfriend’s explanations. “I’m so confused right now. I gotta make a phone call.” He reached over to where his pants were in a heap on the floor and grabbed his phone out of the pocket.
“I can’t believe this,” Moniqua said, rolling her eyes but otherwise not attempting to stop her boyfriend, who glared at her while waiting for the call to be picked up.
“Hey, this is Luc,” responded Luc Richard Mbah a Moute from the other end of the line.
“Thank god you picked up, man. I need some of your sex-wizard wisdom in a real bad way.”
“Is this Jerami or-?”
“It’s Nerlens. Sorry,” Nerlens apologized. “It’s just that I’m in the middle of something, so I forgot to say who I was.”
“So, what’s going on over there?” Luc asked. “You remember all my advice from before?”
Nerlens looked down at his fingers. “Yeah, yeah, for sure. I did have to take some of the c…c…what’s that word? Oh yeah, condoms! I had to take the condoms off my fingers because my phone wasn’t working with ’em on.”
“I still think that the condom goes on the ding-dong and that you only need one of them,” Moniqua interjected, frowning.
“Well, the instructions on the box clearly state otherwise if you bothered to read them,” Luc said dismissively.
“He can read,” Nerlens pointed out, reverence in his voice.
Moniqua snorted. “So can I! Let me see that damn box.” She picked up the empty Trojan box from the bedside table and looked at the back. Her facial expression turned from confidence to bewilderment as she attempted to decipher the words. Finally, she pointed at the diagram that accompanied the text. “See! The picture says you have to put it on your wiener and not your fingers.”
“If you look at white people’s fingers, they kind of look like that sometimes. That’s just the condom box being designed by a bunch of racists and not showing black-people fingers,” Luc responded through the phone.
“Ohhhhh,” Moniqua said. “Now that you mention it, white fingers do sort of look like that.”
“See? Luc always gives the best advice! You shouldn’t doubt him, babe,” Nerlens scolded. “Now, Luc, I wasn’t calling about the condoms. I had that part all figured out right. But now, I can’t figure out what to do at all.”
Luc bemusedly laughed. “What have you tried?”
“My girl says that it goes between her legs, but I don’t know what ‘it’ is, or where in between her legs ‘it’ goes, or if this is when we use the lube that I bought.”
“Facetime me,” Luc said simply.
Nerlens smacked his forehead with his still-condomed hand. “Duh! Then you can see what I can see. Hang on.” After struggling to figure out this little-used feature of his iPhone, Nerlens finally got it to work, and Luc’s smiling face appeared on the screen.
“Got it!” Nerlens said. “Let me show you what’s happening.” Convinced of Luc’s credentials as a sex expert, Moniqua did not complain about her naked body being on display for him as Nerlens panned the phone’s camera all across her body.
After thirty seconds of this, Luc made a face. “That’s weird.”
“What?” both Moniqua and Nerlens asked, worry in their voices.
“There’s supposed to be a hole right underneath her belly button. But there isn’t. Did she get in an accident or something?”
“Do you think I should make one with a scissors?” Nerlens asked.
“No, no, don’t do that, but tell her that she should see her doctor. Something’s really screwed up with your girl, dude.”
“Oh my god. I never knew,” Moniqua whimpered, near tears. “I never knew I was defective.”
Luc now had a serious expression on his face, a far cry from his good-humored expression from just a minute ago. “I’ll let you two work this out. But, Nerlens, remember: intimacy is the most vital ingredient to a lasting relationship.” Suddenly, the facetime call ended, and Nerlens was alone again with his girlfriend.
“So…” Nerlens started before trailing off, redirecting his attention towards taking the condoms off his fingers one-by-one.
“So,” Moniqua responded.
“I don’t think we can see each other any more. Sorry babe,” Nerlens said, not sounding that sad about it.
“But-”
Nerlens shook his head. “No, babe. You heard what Luc said. Inti-whatever is important.” He stood up and pointed at the door of his bedroom. “Now get out of my bed.”