Another story from several years ago. This one I did edit for grammar and voice. It probably could use one more look over but c'est la vie.
I think one could understand why I was paralyzed when I heard my phone ring after my post work out shower. I use the term workout fairly loosely since senior citizens can lift more than I can and with better form but what is one to do?
“Theeeeese Prrreeeccciioousss Thiiinnngs…” my lime green phone sang to me. I really did need to change that ring tone.
By now I had removed E from my phone. That didn’t exactly end our communications but having to search for his number on an old text message or misplaced work related contact sheet seemed to be sufficient enough to deter my Franzia induced need to yell at him electronically.
He was, unfortunately, the only person with his area code that called me. I mean, maybe there were more but I had tricked out my phone with funny nicknames and pictures and never actually viewed anyone’s numbers anyway.
I was frozen. I was still naked from my shower. I let it go to voicemail.
No voicemail.
SHIT now I have to call him. I mean I didn’t have to call him I could have left well enough alone but I always call him. That’s what everyone always does, right?
“Hey.”
“Hey, E what’s up?”
“Listen…I had reservations for four for this beer dinner thing…and everyone bailed on me and it’s to late to cancel…it’s all taken care of anyway but I hate to pay for a spot that isn’t used. You wanna come? Everyone else I called is busy.”
“Everyone else? So I’m your last resort?”
The silence on the other end was slightly deafening but he eventually continued.
“No…I tried people that like beer first.”
“I like beer. It has alcohol in it doesn’t it?”
“No…I mean…yes. Listen I’m here and its going on right now. It’s just down the street. Do you want to come?”
Sadly, I didn’t hesitate in the least, “I’m coming now.” SHIT why did I blurt that out.
I got there just as people were finishing the first course. I’m not exactly the classiest of broads but I’ve had a few wine/food tasting sort of experiences. I was expecting way to small glasses of way to expensive wine served to you with tiny portions of unidentifiable but beautiful food while someone on a violin annoys you in the distance.
However, shifting in an uncomfortable folding chair while an older gentleman with a microphone was getting teary eyed talking about hops as I choked down lukewarm food and wiped my hands on butcher paper table cloths while being glared at by bitchy tattooed lesbian servers in poorly fitted sundresses was not exactly what I was expecting.
“Well, at least I can get drunk,” I thought. That was until I looked down and realized what looked like a shot glass size of lemonade was actually the first round of beer. Even the regulars were complaining that the portions had declined in recent months. “It’s like a beer shot!” said E’s Asian lesbian friend. “It’s smaller than my last shot of Jack Daniels,” I replied. I should take this time to point out that the glass was probably the equivalent to a small cup of coffee at Starbucks but I didn’t bother to actually pay attention to portion control at the time…especially when it came to alcohol.
Things with E were as they always were. I’d catch him sneaking glances at me. He’d catch me sneaking glances at him. We talked. We laughed. You know, just the usual things that typically lead to an amazing romantic relationship (when not stilted by one’s emotional hang ups.)
I was, as I so often am, the doting wife. I was quiet in front of his friends when appropriate. I laughed when laughter was required (despite whether something was funny.) I became more myself once I realized the lesbians next to me (who loudly discussed their various co-ed softball team war stories) were entertained by my almost foreign vulgar gay male humor.
I ended up greatly enjoying some of the beers, especially the darker lagers. My favorite was one E hated because it was too dark. That might have been my reason for loving it.
“I pegged you and M as the same” E said when I began discussing the beer. M was a coworker of ours who could more than hold his liquor especially if it was in a martini glass with as much pink fruit juice as possible…and garnished with a sparkler.
“What do you mean E?”
“I mean I just thought you…err…”
“Loved ridiculously fruity martinis all day every day? No you have me pegged wrong. (Which was a habit of his) Don’t you remember our last time at Joey’s?”
The last time we all went out I had one a bet. If I could abstain from making a vulgar remark for an entire day than I was to be purchased a cocktail by all of our co-workers. Every one of the girls and homos I worked with ordered the fizzy grapefruit hardly any alcohol champagne-tini special of the night. When it came to my turn the bartender, despite her expectations, heard me say “Can I get a Jack Daniels on the rocks with a twist of lime and can you make it a double?” After choking on her own surprise all she had to say to me was “that’s a pretty butch drink for such a flaming homosexual.” All I had to say to her was, “Where’s my drink?”
The check came or at least the checks for all the other tables. Sir E was apparently forgotten. While I’m not the largest fan of the “dine and dash”, I figure if a server hasn’t figured out that the party of four at the end who is still there 20 minutes after the festivities has ended hasn’t paid, well that’s their own fault. What else would we be doing but waiting to pay? The server couldn’t have possibly thought we were hanging around to actually pay attention to the older gentleman with the barley and hops tears, could he? E had become fixated on free pens the old man was giving out and I promptly took one for myself ignoring his look of longing for said pen. (If you don’t work in customer service I don’t expect you to understand the joy of a good pen.) Then E, pretending to have a conscious for once, tracked down the server to insure we paid.
Apparently $75 apiece is the going rate for mediocre food and shot glass size portions of beer. E said he only wanted $20 a piece (a contrary to the “everything is taken care of” comments made earlier that evening). I gave him $40. He then slid me a $10. This gesture began what I’d like to call, “The Dance of the $10 Bill” (which is NOWHERE near as erotic as I’d like it to be.) He pushed it to me. I pushed it to him.
“I was prepared to pay the $75 and you cut me slack anyway. I don’t need it”
“I wasn’t expecting to get any money from this so you’re giving to much.”
We passed the $10 back and forth communicating through cave man like grunts of disapproval until staying at the table was just no longer a respectable option.
“This $10 is just going to end up right back in your pocket,” I said.
“Nothing will end up in my pocket,” he said.
We finally got up and headed out of our roped off area and into the general bar (waving good bye to the emotional hops man as we went). E stopped.
“So what’re you doing?”
“I work early tomorrow but to pretend like I’d go to bed right now would just be a joke.” I was, by now, already planning on walking him home…kissing him…showing him once again that he should fall in love with me. You know, just the necessities that the situation called for.
“My lesbian friend just told me that she has a friend here that she wants me to meet and if its that guy in the corner I’m going to vomit.”
In one of my prouder moments I said “HA. Well you have fun with that baby. I am not sticking around.”
Before E could protest, lesbo Alex (because heaven forefend she lick pussy and be called Alexis) walks right up to Vomit Inducing Boy and proceeds to introduce him to E.
“Please don’t leave me with him,” E whispered.
“Really? You are going to ask me to stick around and save you from this? Me?
He wasn’t unattractive. In fact I might have thought he was cute had he not been my competition. On closer inspection I realized he was more or less the another version of …well…me. Tall, thin and could pass for a leader of a Nazi regime if only he had some muscles to speak of. By now I had noticed his t-shirt, which was clearly a threadless.com concoction.
“Where’d you get your shirt?” said E.
“Threadless” said VB awkwardly. I could hardly start to put on my “surprised and interested” face before E started engaging me in conversation and leaning closer and closer in order to ignore his new date.
I was, however, fixated on the graphic design of the shirt. It was the silhouette of a woman on the right side and a man on the left. She was facing him and he was walking away from her. They were both standing on a bridge and in the middle of the bridge was a fire. I later learned the title of the t-shirt was “burned bridges.” “Appropriate,” I thought.
I could see the “Please don’t leave me” look in E’s eyes when the lesbian attempted to cast me off with a “Don’t you work early tomorrow?” (That’s the last time I entertain lesbian Asians with my various uses for the C word.)
I paused. “Yes, yes I do.”
During all of these intros, E’s attempts to make me stay and AL (Asian Lesbian)’s attempts to make me go I had taken E’s $10 and wrapped it around the pen I had stolen for myself that he so desperately wanted. (Again, if you haven’t waited tables, you don’t know the joy of a good pen…)
Savoring E’s desperation I hugged him goodnight, dropped the $10 wrapped pen into his pocket and walked quickly out of the bar.
He called me twice that night. For once, I didn’t answer. I was to busy laughing the whole way home.
