The Art of Hand Sex

This is so embarrassing, she thought.

Embarrassment. She knew it as a noun. She'd known it as an emotion before. She'd known it at different temperatures; hot, warm, mild. She'd known it as the colour that flooded her cheeks at the worst of times; blood red, magenta, rose. She'd known it as an ache in her heart. She'd known it as hot tears on her cheeks and on the tip of her nose. She'd known it as words that she'd let fall off of the tip of her tongue.

But never before had she known this level of embarrassment. She thought that if it ought to have a specific height it'd be as tall or even taller than that tower that the French are so proud of. If it had to be given a specific weight it would be twenty times heavier than fifty blue momma whales on steroids.

"Steroids!" She groaned, burying her face in her hands. Why did her mind keep reminding her of that moment? Was it necessary for her to relive it every single minute that she lay there? Apparently so.

It had never occurred to her that things might go horribly wrong when she came face to face with the gods. In her twisted and horribly cliched little mind everything had always gone the right way, otherwise known as the way she had wanted it to go.

Picking through the botched memories, she could see them in her mind. She was walking towards them. They looked as wonderful and as amazing as she expected them to look. Music was meant to be beautiful though, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise. After all, they did define music.

Her mind whirred back to her horribly high level of embarrassment. Even now, as she lay in hospital with no one but herself in the room, her cheeks were coloured a shade of red so deep that it hadn't even been discovered yet.

When she'd first woken up, she purposely forced herself to relive the moment over and over again, numerous times. It was some sort of punishment. She let herself openly regret the one statement she made over and over again. That only lasted for some long and treacherous ten minutes.

Then she suffered from a five-minute-long bout of depression and wondered, over and over again, if she was ever going to see them again. 'Them' being the gods. Those who defined the meaning of music. Those four men who brought joy to her life.

Andrew John Hurley. She could vaguely remember his shoulder-length brown hair. He'd been wearing a purple hooded sweatshirt and a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans that were beautifully frayed at the ends. He had been the first to notice when she stopped breathing.

Joseph Mark Trohman. His hair had been as awesomely curly and frizzy as she had expected (and hoped) it was going to be. She had so desperately wanted to touch that afro and then offer to let him touch hers.

Patrick Martin Stumph. Most she knew called him 'fat' and poked fun at his chin but she thought that he resembled a teddy bear and an extremely huggable one at that. The urge to hug him was so overwhelming. She almost threw herself at his feet.

They were all that she wanted them to be and even more. It may sound cliche but theyfulfilled exceeded her expectations.

And let's not forget her personal favourite (and she did feel guilty for choosing a favourite out of the four), but not by much, Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz the third. He was wearing that purple and grey hoodie that she'd so wanted to buy from Clandestine only to find that it was limited edition.

He had looked up at her with his million-dollar smile and her heart melted instantly. It didn't matter that his smile was only worth half a million in coins where she was from, it still meant the world to her.

"Hi," he grinned at her, standing up and holding out a hand for her to shake it. That was where the problem started.

Her pulse began to speed up and her heart demanded more oxygen but her breaths became shallow and her breathing slowed to an almost halt.

He wants you to shake his hand, her thoughts screamed at her. Shake the fucking hand!

She responded, just in time too, and shook the hand of one of her most admired rockstars. And he was, in her opinion, by far the best looking.

"I think I just lost my virginity through my hand," she stated, forgetting that these were rockstars and not her best friends that she was talking to.

And then she realised what she'd said a second later. Embarrassment pulsed through her. It was too late to take those words back. They hung in the void between her and them. She'd succeeded in making the conversation awkward. She'd killed the flow of speech before it had even been birthed.

That's when her breathing stopped and her heart demanded more oxygen than ever. But she just couldn't provide the essential gas needed to think, needed to speak, needed to live.

A look of concern crossed the face of the drummer. And then everything went black. She woke up in her hospital bed. Oh, the embarrassment.

Trying to pass the time but not spend it reliving the moment she'd spent weeks waiting for but messed up so well, she looked at the clock mounted on the wall on her left. It told her that it was almost two o'clock in the morning.

"Good to see that you're alive and uh... alive," the all-too familiar voice of Peter Wentz chuckled.

Four men trooped into the small hospital room. It suddenly seemed smaller than ever. Colour was flooding her cheeks no matter how hard she tried to fight it down.

"Hi," she choked out. She wanted to apologise for the comment involving her hand and her loss of virginity through a shake of said body part but the words didn't come and she didn't want to kill the conversation again.

"I used to have a cousin with asthma," the drummer with long brown hair and the name Andy Hurley stated.

"Used to?" She croaked. Her voice felt somewhat alien to her. It was odd how she hadn't said anything horribly embarrassing yet, considering the situation.

"He died back in '97," Andy looked very sad. She felt bad for asking because she'd known the answer beforehand.

"Dude, your aunt's dog didn't count as a cousin," Joe, the frizzy-haired guitarist, laughed. "Anyway, can dogs even get asthma?"

"MooMoo did not get asthma, Joe, he was born with it," Andy said grumpily, throwing himself into the chair in the corner and crossing his arms over his chest.

"Do you have any pets?" The teddy bear asked. It was obvious that he was looking for a slight change of topic because Andy was getting upset.

"Yeah, one dog called Laces. He's all messed up though. We have a stone kitchen floor now because he ate the linoleum one," her voice sounded so normal. She felt nowhere near as calm as she sounded.

"Sweet," Peter laughed. "I wish my dog was cool like that. He just sits there and does nothing."

"That's not true!" She cried indignantly. "Hemingway is an awesome dog. We can totally trade."

"Yeah, she's right. Hemingway farts a lot too," Joe laughed.

"Swapping him might not be such a bad idea," Patrick chimed, looking thoughtful, "Then he wouldn't be there to give me the evil eye."

"But he would," Andy pointed out, gesturing to Pete who was watching Patrick with a look of deep irritation.

"You got a problem with my dog, Stump?"

"Uh..."

It wasn't until some almost one hundred and twenty minutes later that the four boys announced that that they would have to leave in order to reach their next venue in time.

She had almost completely forgotten about her embarrassing comment, what with getting to touch Joe's hair and receiving a hug from Patrick and getting a signed poster from them all, when Peter turned around on his way out of the door and said, "By the way, I think it is possible to lose your virginity through your hand."

Once again, she felt embarrassment in the form of colour filling her cheeks. A deep shade of red that you've never even heard of.