April 1, 2012
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Out with J
My oldest child tells me to go out and decompress with friends, “You’re too stressed out, Mom. Go have a couple laughs with J. We’ll be fine here.” I ask if he’s sure, and he looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, “I’ll be home by 12:30.”
I get cleaned up and primp a little, even though it’s only a local watering hole and it’s just J. I arrive before he does. While I’m walking across the parking lot, he swerves in, waving crazy and pulls into a parking place. I laugh, “You drive like shit!” He limps over and gives me a half hug. He tells me that his mom is getting pissed off that he’s always going out. I laugh, “Did you tell her that it was only me. I’m not like real, or anything….” He groans and says that she just wants him to stay home more. His step-father isn’t well. To be honest, she isn’t either, diabetes is taking it’s toll. I tell John to spend some time there hanging with the family.
The bar isn’t busy, but J thinks that it will become busier as the night goes on. We order drinks from a young blond waitress with big, fake boobies and 6 big gold hoops in each ear. She asks me what a Cape Cod is. I tell her, and as she walks away I look at John, “At least she has boobs…That’s something.” He laughs, “Seriously? She’s worked here for at least a year and she doesn’t know what a Cape Cod is?” I wave it away, “She probably meant to ask me WHERE Cape Cod was..” We giggle at our mean comments. We’re still waiting for our drinks 10 minutes later. She comes back to take our order again, because she’s really a walking, breathing blond joke. This time she remembers to put our drink orders in and brings them back to us, smiling. She sets J’s drink in front of me and mine in front of him. We thank her and switch them after she walks away.
J takes a sip of his Long Island Iced Tea and makes a face. He squeezes his lime and orange slice into it, gazes longingly at the lime slice in my Cape Cod, so I quickly squeeze it into my drink before he can steal it. “You don’t look happy with your cocktail, Pardner,” I say. Without a word he pushes it towards me, I take a sip. It’s awful. I try mine, “Thank goodness a Cape Cod is easy.” The joke was on me, because my drink is equally terrible.
We drink them anyway. The DJ is setting up to start his gig at 10 pm. A tipsy man at the bar asks if there will be Karaoke. I announce that if there is I’m paying my tab and leaving, “Karaoke is Japanese for ‘Get the hell out of the bar, you just think you can sing!” Tipsy man comes over to tell me that I’m really funny, “I’ll have to remember that!” I wink at J, “You should write it down so you don’t forget.” Tipsy man proceeds to start asking people sitting near him for paper. He returns later with paper, questions J and I to see if we’re a couple. Then he tells us that he’s an author, has me write down my quip (which I didn’t find all that hysterical) and my name (I only put down my first name) so he can credit me. Then he walks away. I look at J who says, “I thought he was going to be smooth and ask for your digits.” I shook my head, “Too drunk.”
The manager comes over and takes our next drink order. He has a shiny, bald head. J tells me that he has an after hours club in the warehouse district. A topless bar, not even close to being on the up and up, so J says he’d be scared to go, “I’d be afraid that it would be raided.” The manager will be the one who brings our drinks from then on.
Boobs comes back and asks if everything is okay. I resist the urge to say, “It would be more okay if you actually brought us a drink”, but I decide that when I pay the tab I’ll just let her know how not okay we were by giving her a less than stellar tip.
We drink and we talk. J shows me carpet burns on his knees. I raise my eyebrows, “Really? Who?” He laughs and tells me that he hooked up with N. She wants to hook up on occasion. J will never change, so I laugh too. He tells me about some of our other friends, who make him look tame.
Then he asks me about D. I shrug, “He sends perky, happy emails and texts. I reply in a way that conveys my deep annoyance. I’m not even nice. I’m so coldly polite that he’d have to be completely retarded not to know that I’m not happy talking to him.” J sits back, “He knows. He’s biding his time. He knows that you’ve always broken in the past. When you do, just realize that it’s just a familiar game and that you’ll end up crying again.” I don’t say the obvious, which is that I shouldn’t even talk to D since he IS an asshole. Instead I sit back and look disgusted. I also don’t say that I won’t go over to D’s house, that I won’t talk to him on the phone, because I know I’ll end up with him again, believing his bullshit. J knows that too. He tells me to treat D like a “bootie call”, “Just go over, fuck him, then leave.” I look miserable. J continues, “I guarantee that he’ll not be happy with that. He can talk big when you aren’t here, but he was wanting you to stay the night all the time. If you were nothing more than someone he wanted to have sex with then he wouldn’t want you to stay.”
Angel me whispers, “Projection.”
The lies that D told, that I was looking for a daddy for my kids, that I was looking for someone to live with me, that I was looking for more. Those were obviously easy to disprove. But if D was projecting, then the picture was far more disturbing. I had told him many times that I wouldn’t live with anyone, that I’d never marry. I had reiterated over and over that my kids have a dad, that H will get the parenting thing right given some time. D isn’t comfortable with kids, but he understood my desire to spend time with them (or so it appeared). He threw back cocktails at the same bar, at the same table with C and J, and announced that he’d never date another woman who had kids. C had remarked, “That narrows the playing field, D. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with a woman having kids.” To me, C had confided, “As fat as that motherfucker is he shouldn’t be so damned picky.”
D had always gotten distressed and argumentative when I swore I’d never live with someone or that I’d never marry. He had suggested that I get “black out” shades in my bedroom at the new house in case he ever needed to crash when he was working nights. He said he wanted to take me on a weekend vacation to the Keys, to the west coast.
He said a lot of things, nice things.
Angel me whispers, “Maybe he was the one who was starting to expect too much. Easier to accuse you of the same. Then he can be big and bad in front of the boys. He doesn’t realize that he looks like a fool. He even admitted that he knows he’s an asshole. But how many drinks did he throw back that night? How much liquid courage did he need?”
“HELLO?” J waves at me to bring me back. He knows I’m thinking about D. He jokes to bring me back. I end up getting up to dance to dreadful music. Our drink quality never improves. The service sucks. People leave. The bar never gets busy. I head to the restroom and a young lady strikes up a conversation. She compliments my dancing, my bravery because I’m the only one in the bar dancing. I tell her to come dance with me and she does. Then I get her talking to J. I check my phone. It’s 12:15 am. “Time to go,” I wink at J. He doesn’t walk me out. I leave him talking to the girl.
He gets no where with her, but that’s okay too.
I go home and get on the computer. There’s an email from D. It’s all rainbows and unicorns farting glitter. How fucking annoying can he get? He talks about a mutual friend who he works with, the guy fell asleep during a meeting. I snidely comment that soon he’ll be finishing his work week and he could celebrate his birthday. Then I tell him that I’d offer to take him out to dinner but I’m sick of being rejected.
He can’t act like I’ve been vague. Devil me snorts laughter, “Yes he can.”
When I go to the social networking site I check to see who commented on a funny campaign poster that someone cleverly photoshopped and that I posted for laughs. Two of my friends have taken over the thread and now run with it, witty as hell. I’m going to play the obtuse blond on this one so I feign ignorance, hoping that they take it over the top. It’s not a role that I play well though, and it begins to fall flat. Surprisingly, D chimes in, and he’s adopted the same obtuse role, different from his usual sarcastic self. T jokes that she and M are on a different page…obviously. I take the joke in a different direction and make a saving throw for D.
Devil me giggles, “So much for not wanting to have anything to do with you. He just sacrificed himself in public, sounding like an idiot. Mighty kind of you to save his sorry ass. Why comment on it anyway? Why send you emails about stupid shit that happens at work? And he wants C and J to believe that it’s only about getting sex from you?”
He’s a poser. The fair weathers can take him out to dinner. They won’t, of course. Hopefully, they won’t call me in early so I’ll have no excuse to take him out either. Devil me laughs, “Not that you have to make excuses. He said ‘No thank you’. And then the wealthy friend who dates gay boys cancelled on him last minute too. I wonder if she even offered or if he was just bullshitting.”
Serene, fresh as a daisy. Hanging with the kids.
