?With or without music??

?With.?

Feona slipped me a memory stick through the slot in the glass, leaning closer to make sure I heard her. She looked straight at me, plain, pale face plaintive, her words slow, loud and clear.

?There are twelve songs on that, miss. Start from the first track. The Nine Inch Nails. Mid-volume, not too soft. I want to hear it, but I want to hear him, too. He has to make sounds, too.?

Feona, as with all of our patrons, had particular requests. Yet she did seem a bit more concerned with the details than others. Most choose their music from our own library and are satisfied with our equally wide selection of theme suites, all of which are open for any and all adjustments. Feona, on the other hand, had printed out screenshots of dingy bedrooms from noir and gangster films, arranged them in a ring binder, and pointed out to me the elements she wanted. A random smattering of empty beer bottles. A fat ceramic lamp with a graying crocheted lampshade. A cracked mirror with fresh red smears (fake blood or lipstick, she clarified with much diplomacy). Ashtrays. A naked, tattered mattress. She wanted it decayed. Nelson and Edwin, the company gophers, were out with the van, scoping out garage sales and ukay-ukays for her precious prerequisites. Every patron is God.

Unica Unlimited is the first and best devirginization station in the Philippines, currently with 64 five-star branches and over 20,000 satisfied customers. We pride ourselves in our precise personalizing policy, ensuring that every single virgin to walk through our doors struts out not just with a milestone under his belt, but with that warm, warm feeling only a perfectly executed fantasy can impart. It had only been two years since the sex service sector was legalized in the country, following the gradual, decade-long revolution brought on by Zancal, the male temporary sterility pill. Together with the female pill, intercourse was finally 100% baby-safe, and no amount of badgering from anyone?even the profoundly pissed Catholic Church?could thwart this staggering opportunity. Unica Unlimited had patterned itself after the devirginization stations that had flourished in Europe and the United States since then. We aim for nothing less than world-class first-times.

After giving me quite a few more specifics, written out for me from a list she had saved on her digital organizer, Feona left the building to rest and prepare herself. She would be back around 12:30 a.m., having scheduled her event for 1:15.

I leaned back in my chair. It was 6:30 in the evening. There was plenty of work to be done; I had several other devirginizations to organize and monitor prior to Feona?s. Nights at any Unica branch are naturally hectic, and my old stint as manager of the once-infamous band The Mastards had attuned me to regularized bedlam. That evening, however, my drive was slow to kick in.

I stared hard at Feona?s client specs form?fat from several additional sheets?clamped down onto my beloved clipboard. All of the information on it was solely Feona?s, crammed into every smidge of white in her tiny, boxy print. I contributed none of the details. It was all hers, all hailing from her own imagination and experience, likely a fusion of countless little facets from films she?d seen, books she?d read, conversations she?d had, maybe things she?d already done. As was the case with all other requests I?ve received and brought to arresting, irresistibly tangible life. Yet the devirginization she had specified was also something else entirely.

It mirrored mine. A hair too accurately.