Due to an unexpected turn of events, beginning with a torrential downpour, my Saturday night plans got upended, and upended again, resulting, ultimately, in my attending a comedy night at a neighborhood bar, with a close childhood friend (a woman). We were the second-oldest couple in the bar, and the oldest in the comedy room. By almost a generation.
We sat ourselves down near the back of the room – a room that holds fifty or so – on tall bar stools. My friend sat to my right, and, to my left, there was a folding chair, occupied by a very pretty woman whose forebears, I would guess, came from the subcontinent. She wore a very short denim skirt, a black top, and a jacket. She had red lipstick, and bright eyes. “Is this seat taken?” I asked, as I sat.
“No,” she said. “Go ahead.”
The evening unfolded slowly. The comics were… mixed. I won’t go into the details of the show, but suffice it to say, there was a comically problematic organizing theme that simultaneously wasn’t funny and served as an ineffectual escape route for comics who feared their material wasn’t killing.
The woman to my left and I kept stealing glances at one another. Me looking down (the bar stool was high), her looking up. I definitely felt (imagined?) chemistry.
One of the comics had a ham-handed routine which began by asking anyone in the audience who’d had a threesome to clap. Stupid me, I clapped. As did one other man. And, to my right, my good childhood friend, D, slapped her hand on her leg as she held a drink and a glow stick. The comic noticed me and the other guy. He missed (or was intimidated by?) D. Anyway, he grilled the two of us. “How would you rate your performance in the threesome?”
The other guy didn’t hesitate. “Eight!”
The comic turned to me.
“Um,” I stammered. “Which one?”
That got a good laugh. The comic seemed, at this point, truly flustered. “I guess… on average?”
I paused. “Six?” I said, more a question than an answer. I didn’t want to get in a pissing match (more than I already was) with the other guy, and, honestly, in all things, I like to imagine it’s just hubris to position myself too far above average. I got 99th percentile on every test I took, and confusedly thought that meant I was smart until well into my forties, when I realized that tests are designed to label people like me smart (and to label those who are less like me less smart). I know my sexual strengths, and I know my sexual weaknesses. I’ve definitely been a nine in a couple of threesomes. And I’ve definitely been a three. Six felt totally reasonable.
“How about foursomes?” the comic asked. “Anyone been in one of them?”
I clapped, tepidly, this time. [A note: if I’m a comic and a dude says he’s been in a threesome, I turn to his date and engage with her. If he had, he might have learned that D and I had been in at least one and maybe several together – neither of us really remember the number, as it was several lifetimes ago. This dude either lacked those comic survival instincts or, instead, was just intimidated by my friend’s vagina. Or both.]
Fast forward: the neighbor to my left and I continue stealing glances. We manage as much small talk (very little) as we can, given the atmosphere, and I reach for my ever-handy notebook. I go out to buy a round, and, while out there, write a short note, including my phone number. I don’t want to spook her, and I don’t want to be uncouth. I wait for my chance. A bit later, I head out to go the bathroom and I see her standing along the back wall, in the front room of the bar. I approach her. “I wanted to give you this,” I said. I had another line or two ready, but she fled the bar faster than I would have imagined possible. As she fled, I thought I detected a perhaps-drunken wobble to her gait.
“Oh well,” I thought. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
D and I had an early night. I grabbed some tacos from a truck after we left, and I walked her home. We celebrated the fun we had, and I turned to walk to my home, a ten-minute walk from hers. (We live in the same neighborhood in which we grew up.) I crashed, hard.
When I woke up in the morning, there were two missed calls, and a text. “Hi.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“Who’s this?” I texted. “I _think_/hope I know….”
“It’s M,” she texted back. “The girl from last night.”
Damn!
Well, I am/was excited, but… she’s scared of me. I can feel it, already. She takes too long to respond. She’s laconic. I have the sense I’m enticing, but intimidating. And I’m not sure how to proceed. All my instincts are wrong. I want to flood her with writing, appreciation. For her outfit, for her body, for her face. (I could do that, of course; all were fantastic, all were inspiring, all have left me if not desperate, at least longing, just to spend some time with her.) But she needs a more delicate touch, I fear, than I am capable of in my combination of obsession and ardor. And so, now, I wait, as, perhaps, she ghosts me, retreating into the negative side of her ambivalence.
[These are shitty AI images. She’s much hotter.]
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