The Ladies Boy

By the age of three, little Ripper Clemens had already had sex 30 times with 29 different women. The 29th was his downfall; the only one to come close to surviving the morning-after shunning that had become all but routine for the infant casanova. A Ripper date ended at 10:30 sharp with a thank you note and a single rose, tied to the woman’s leg while she slept. They knew enough to see themselves out, he knew enough to keep on pretend sleeping.

This latest one, this problem, was like the others; an older woman, two months shy of 25 but with the upper arms of a 19-year-old. And like the others, she was drawn in by Ripper’s natural charisma. The boy was a prodigy of sexual magnetism, his mysterious eyes piercing the souls of women like a knife slowly pushing into a balloon, except without the pop.

That he was three had not yet come up in conversation, and he appreciated that. Normally, it was the focal point; conquest after conquest breaking down in tears during post coital snuggling with vocal attempts at self-consolation. “You’re too young!” they’d cry. Or “I can’t do this!” Or “my husband is waiting in the car!” But Diane seemed utterly unphased by his youth or the questionable legality of the situation.

“I’ve had younger,” she’d say between puffs of the giant novelty cigar she would occasionally pull out and wiggle around by her mouth. It was said as a point of pride, and Ripper imagined her sitting down with a checklist numbered one through a hundred, slowly ticking off each year as she slept her way through a century. For a three year old, it was a surprisingly abstract thought.

Her cavalier attitude made the sex all the more interesting. She would lay in bed motionless, sometimes half asleep, letting Ripper slip and slide his way around her body. It was a freedom he was unaccustomed to, as most women ravaged him before he could make a move, tearing through pair after pair of OshKosh B’Gosh overalls with a wild abandon normally reserved for hungry cocker spaniels. Now he had independence, and the gratification could come at his pace for once. They made love all night long, really hard, and long past Ripper’s bed time.

Ripper instinctually woke up at 10:15 the morning after and began to write his obligatory thank you note, courteous without being a tease. But he stopped himself, unable to muster the words that would push away this miracle woman. A single tear welled up in his eye, the first of its kind not brought about by a temper tantrum or an accidental poop. Emotions like these were for five year olds, he thought. Not him.

Wiping away the remnants of feeling, Ripper noticed the pile of sheets at his feet where Diane was supposed to be. And then he felt it; the gentle scratch of ribbon around his ankle and the wet rose stem that was almost as long as the leg to which it was attached. Diane knew his tricks, or had stumbled across the same foolproof way out on her own. Either way, she broke his little heart without so much as a word.

Now he knew what it felt like. Ripper grabbed his favorite stuffed doggy, rolled over and, finally letting his age catch up to him, cried like a baby.