Welcome to part 4! If you missed the previous entries:
This is my longest blog entry ever. You might want to get a beverage before reading it.
Episode IV: A NEW HOPE
(A vast sea of stars serves as the backdrop for the main title. War drums echo through the heavens as yellow text scrolls from the foreground to the background. Blog readers hum the main theme from Star Wars.)
It is a period of great unrest in the life of the ACCORDION GUY. Plagued by the EVIL EX-GIRLFRIEND and babysitting friends with POOR IMPULSE CONTROL, our hero has his sights set on THE WAITRESS.
Unfortunately, The Waitress is involved with a cur known as THE ARTISTE, a vessel of POINTLESS ART STUDENT BABBLE and ODOR-CAUSING BACTERIA.
Unbeknownst to our hero, a series of EVENTS is about to unfold. Events that will change everything…
Chicks Dig It
It was a good day.
I spent most of it hammering away at my laptop at Tequila Bookworm and ended up finishing my report ahead of schedule. I shut down the laptop and moved from my usual perch at the bar to one of the easy chairs in the back with a copy of Maxim.
I was undisturbed for about half an hour before a British voice startled me as I was reading an interview with Kelly Lynch.
“A Maxim reader. There’s no end to a Scorpio’s depravity, is there?”
“Well if it isn’t my favourite Scorpiophile. What d’you suppose is worse, a Scorpio, or a Scorpio groupie?”
“Touche.”
She peered over the cover the magazine. One page was filled with the text of the interview, while the other had a full-page photo of Ms. Lynch wearing only a construction helmet and vest, posing strategically behind a jackhammer she was supposedly operating. She clucked in mock disapproval.
“That’s art, you know,” I said in my defense.
“And this?” she said, pointing to the copy of Spock’s World from the cafe’s bookshelves that I just finished reading.
“You can’t keep a good Trekkie down,” I said. “Besides, it’s kind of fun reading someone’s imaginings of the history of the planet Vulcan. And Bones comes off as completely un-redneck in –”
Oops. The geek factor might have been a bit much. “Ah, never mind.”
“Anyway,” she said with a little sigh, “the reason I came over here is that I was wondering if you knew if there was anything going on tonight. I have the night off and I’m a little bored.”
“I was planning on going to ‘Chicks Dig It’ tonight.”
Chicks Dig It is a DJ night that takes place every Monday — even to this day — that spotlights women DJs, a rarity in the business.
“The sounds perfect. Would you mind if [The Artiste] and I came along with you?”
Couldn’t we drop The Artiste off at a kennel first? I thought.
“Sure,” I said, “what say I meet you here at around 10 tonight?”
I met The Waitress and The Artiste at the Bookworm at the appointed time. The Waitress was reading the issue of Maxim that I’d been reading earlier that day, while The Artiste was reading a Milan Kundera novel — which one, I forget — in the most obvious look-at-how-deep-i-am manner possible.
“‘Ell-o, Jo-way,” said The Artiste, “We are goeeng to be dancing to the electroneeeka tonight, yes?”
You weeel be keeping your malodorous bah-dee downweeend, yes? I thought.
“Uh-huh,” I answered. “DJ Chocolate’s spinning tonight, and she’s quite good.”
“Let’s get going!” said The Waitress, and off the three of us went.
On the way there, The Artiste told us about school in his native country.
“We used to wear these red…cloths…how do you say?”
I’ll be damned, I thought. People really do say “How do you say” with Euro accents.
“Neck-ker-chiffs,” he said, treading on each syllable as if it were an eggshell. “We ‘ad to wear them as part of the Junior Communist League. We called them ‘Leneeen’s Diaper’. Ha ha ha!”
I couldn’t help but think of the Trotsky line. Oh, how I wanted to acquaint his head with the pavement.
We arrived at the club just in time to catch the start of DJ Chocolate’s set.
“C’mon, [The Artiste], let’s dance!” implored The Waitress.
“No, no, I prefer to stand steeel and leesten,” said The Artiste. “You dance…weeth…weeth your leetle friends. And Jo-Way.”
I wasn’t going to argue. And we danced for most of the night. The Artiste leered at her, but spent some time mentally undressing some of the other girls there too.
At the end of the evening, I bade The Waitress and her loser boyfriend farewell and started unlocking my bike for the ride home. I had conflicting feelings: happiness from having danced with her all night, but annoyance that in the end, I was just the opening act and The Artiste was the headliner.
I’d just tossed the U-lock into my bike bag when The Waitress came up behind me.
“Hey, this was fun. We’ll have to do this again,” she said. “Here, give me your phone number, and I’ll give you my pager number.”
After the exchange, she hugged me goodbye and ran off to join The Artiste.
Well, I got digits, I thought. Now if only we could lose [The Artiste].
Adios, loser!
A few days later, another friend of mine who waited tables at the Bookworm told me that The Waitress and The Artiste broke up acrimoniously.
“I don’t know the exact details,” said The Other Waitress, “but apparently he’d been stalking her after the breakup. He’d follow her around all day, and finally, after he’d been loitering all day here, she snapped and dumped a pitcher of water on his head.”
“It’s probably closest he’s come to bathing in months,” I said.
I wondered how long an appropriate waiting period I should leave before giving her a ring to go and “hang out” would be.
“Hey, [The Other Waitress],” I said, “tell me what you know about [The Waitress].”
An Unexpected Call
A week had passed.
I was expecting it to be a mellow Saturday night. My uncle had invited the whole extended family to dinner at a Chinese restaurant downtown, and after that, I had no plans for the evening. I thought that I might go down to the ‘Worm for a late-evening coffee and thumbing through both Harper’s and Maxim.
My phone rang. I excused myself from the table and tried to find a quiet corner of the restaurant. Since it was a Chinese restaurant, there were no quiet corners to be found. I took the call in the entrance stairway.
“Hello, is this Joey?” It was The Waitress.
“Hi, [The Waitress]! Great to hear from you! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I got off work early and was wondering if you’d like to join me for a drink.”
This would normally be the point during which I would wake up.
However, no such thing happened, which meant that this was really happening.
“I would love to. When would you like to meet?”
“In about half an hour? At Tequila Bookworm?”
“Perfect. Dinner’s winding down right now, so I should be able to meet you there and then. Looking forward to it.”
“Me too. Bye.”
I hit the “end” button on the phone and did a little victory dance.
“Who da man?” I asked myself.
“You da man!” I replied.
“Damn skippy, yo!” I said back.
I clapped my hands over my head. “Self high-five!”
(Yes, it was dorky. You’d have done it too.)
Since I was already dressed for an evening out, I biked straight to Tequila Bookworm from the restaurant. The Waitress was sitting at the bar, reading a book. This was the first time I’d seen her dressed to go out: she wore a grey halter top and gray skirt. She looked hot.
“Hello!” I said. “You look great. I love your outfit.”
“Thank you,” she said, greeting me with a hug. “I’m dying for a drink.”
I suggested that we go next door to Taro Grill, where they placed us in a quiet, out-of-the-way booth. We ordered Amaretto Sours and started trading stories about ourselves. I told her about how I got kicked out of the Yamaha Organ School. In return, she told me about some strange game she and her friends played at the age of thirteen in boarding school: she was the Faerie Queene, but since she was a bad Faerie Queene, she had to submit to many spankings.
“Clearly all the porn flicks that take place in a boarding school have an element of truth to them,” I observed.
We spent an hour or so just getting to know each other. It was the first chance we’d had to actually have a conversation that wasn’t interrupted by the demands of her job nor any programming I did on my laptop at Tequila Bookworm. There were no dull moments or awkward silences; the conversation flowed like water.
My phone rang. I answered it.
“Hey, Joey! It’s [Crabs]!”
“Hey man, what’s up?”
“The Bears and me, we’re at Buddies right now. You wanna come dancing?”
“Hold on,” I said and turned to The Waitress. “My friend is at Buddies in Bad Times. They’ve got a great dance night tonight and has invited me. Do you want to come along?”
“That sounds like fun! I like dancing with you.”
This has got to be the best date ever, I thought.
Girl, I want to take you to a gay bar
There was a line outside Buddies. Normally, I’d have been annoyed — sometimes you had to wait for an hour before you’d be able to get in — but with my present company, I’d have gladly waited a week.
We started talking with two people behind us: a guy from Glasgow whom I’ll call Renton (after the Trainspotting character) and a girl from Toronto. They’d somehow met through exchanging letters, so I’ll call her Pen Pal.
Pen Pal told me that she’d been showing Renton around Toronto for the whole week and that this was his last night in town. She’d decided to take him here, as it was probably quite unlike anything in Glasgow.
Renton was eyeing two raver girls who were making out behind him.
“I love this city! Are there beautiful girls snogging everywhere?” he asked.
“On every corner,” I replied, “and often in regulation French maid outfits. It’s the law.”
We waited a good forty minutes before we were let inside, but it didn’t matter. We were having such a good time talking that I didn’t notice the time passing.
Once inside, it didn’t take long to find Crabs, who was with his friends, The Bears. The Bears were big bearded men with pot bellies, both wearing Hawaiian shirts. I did the introductions and bought a round of drinks.
Me and Crabs. At this point, the evening is still going well.
“You’re a cute couple,” said Pen Pal to me. “How long have you been going out?”
“We’re not going out…yet,” I said. “This is just a date. Of sorts. She called me up for drinks.”
“Oh, she likes you. You’re a handsome man,” she said.
Ooh, a date and an ego-boost. It’s good to be the king.
Me and Pen Pal. She’s actually quite cute when she’s not blurred out.
The music was as eclectic as ever. The DJ wrapped up a three-song alt-rock set with Spacehog’s In the Meantime… and started a dance set with ABBA’s Take a Chance on Me. Upon hearing the opening a capella, “If you change your mind…”, The Bears went berserk.
(The only real difference between gay bars and straight bars, when you boil it down to basics, is whether it’s the boys or the girls who scream when ABBA comes on.)
“C’mon,” said The Waitress, taking me by the hand and pulling me towards the crowd, “I want to dance. Follow me.”
“Anywhere,” I replied, although I’m sure she didn’t hear it.
We danced for a half-dozen songs, flirting all the while. The music was great, my dance partner was cute, and I was having the time of my life.
After a few more songs, we decided to take a break from dancing. I led her off into a quiet corner of the stage.
“I’m having a great time,” I told her. “I’m so glad you called.”
“Me too. I knew I was going to have fun if I called you.”
“You can call me anytime.”
“You know, I’ve had my eye on you for a while.”
“Me too.”
Is this really happening? I wondered.
This was end-of-a-John-Hughes-movie moment, the sort of thing airline pilots would call a “textbook landing”. It was time to close the deal. I put an arm around her waist and drew her closer. Our faces were closing, maybe only an inch apart now…
…when I felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back. What the hell?
I turned around to see who was trying to ruin the best date ever.
It was Renton.
“I really need to speak with you, Joe,” he said. “It’s…it’s very important.”
“Not now, [Renton]. This is a really bad time.”
“Please.”
Is this really happening? I wondered, again.
The Waitress squeezed my hand. “See what he wants,” she said.
I sighed and squeezed her hand back. “Okay. Wait here. Think very impure thoughts.”
That got a smile.
Renton’s lament
“[Renton], ” I said, “[The Waitress] and I were…you see, I’m trying to have a moment here. A moment, which I might add, you fucking interrupted at the fucking wrong time. Whatever it is you interrupted me for had better be very im–”
No sign of my rant seemed to register on his face.
“Hello?!” I shouted at Renton. “Did you hear any of what I just said?!”
“I’m in love with [Pen Pal] and my heart is breaking, Joe,” he said, the sound of unrequited love mixing in with his Scottish brogue, “You look like a bloke who’s got it together. What should I do?”
You sir, I thought, are sadly mistaken. Any “having-it-together-ness” he might have been seeing was the product of blind luck and metaphorical duct tape.
Pen Pal was a short distance away, dancing and flirting with a gaggle of guys on the stage. The song playing was The Prodigy’s Firestarter.
During the breakdown, where the rhythm cuts out, leaving nothing but a falling synth line, she planted a “but wait, there’s more” peck on the cheek of a guy who looked just like Indie Rock Pete.
I’d have been well within my rights to say “Well, fella, ’tis better to have loved and lost, yadda, yadda, yadda.” That, or the less sympathetic “You must have me mistaken for someone who gives a shit.”
Surely there’s some chapter in Miss Manners or a similar book on etiquette where it says that it’s bad form to interrupt a guy about to have his first kiss with a cute blonde with a sexy British accent.
However, I couldn’t just leave him there. The poor guy looked broken and had a beaten-puppy-dog expression on his face. I recognized his posture as the Slouch of Ignominious Defeat. He was where I was, in the sense of state-of-mind, not too long ago. He was also in a strange city an ocean away from home with no one to turn to. It would’ve been nice if I had someone to turn to at the club when I was feeling low. I couldn’t just leave him there in good conscience.
“Be with you in a minute,” I said with a sigh.
I turned to face The Waitress, who’d been right behind me all this time, her hand in mine. Even just holding her hand was such a kick.
“He looks like he could use a friend,” she said.
“Let me talk him down. And then we can, um, pick up where we left off.”
“That sounds fair,” she said, with a smile.
“You’re the best,” I said, and gave her a slow peck on the cheek, as a way of saying “Thank you for your patience. You will be rewarded handsomely.”
“C’mon,” I said, as I started to cut through the crowd on the dance floor. “Bar. Now.”
Impromptu counselling and butterscotch schnapps
“I need cheap and plentiful drinkage for a heartbroken friend to drown his sorrows,” I told the bartender.
“We’ve got butterscotch schnapps, a buck-fifty a shot.”
“Sounds absolutely disgusting,” I said, pulling a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet. “I’ll take a dozen, please.”
I took the tray of vile alcoholic sugar-water to a nearby table. As I sat down, I realized it was the same table where Pudgy Guy first made his move on Crabs.
“Look man, you’ve got to be realistic,” I said, “You’re leaving when? Tomorrow, isn’t it?”
Actually, I already knew he was leaving the next day. It was just a conversational trick to actually get him to say something and to make sure he was listening.
I continued. “So let’s say you and she hit it off. You’ll have, at best, one romantic night and then boom — you’re on one side of The Pond, she’s on the other. And then what happens? Something long-distance? How long will that last? It’s guaranteed heartbreak.”
“But I’ve never met anyone like her before!”
“But no one is like anyone else. That’s because each of us occupies a different location in spacetime.”
“Huh?”
Serves me right for quoting Spock’s World to a non-geek. It made perfect sense to me. (I can be such a nerd sometimes.)
I decided to try another tack. “Uh, let me put it this way. The ones you really care about, that’s how you’re supposed to feel about them. Yeah, they’re rare, but that’s what makes them special.”
“What’m I gonna do, Joe? I’ve got it bad for her.”
“Look, you’re a good-looking guy, and you’re from Scotland! There’s lots of pretty girls there. You’ll find someone there, and you’ll be happy because she’ll always be around, and not thousands of miles away.”
Everything I said made perfect sense to me, but I was speaking with the distanced rationality of man who was trying to resolve the issue as quickly as possible so he could resume getting his swerve on. Maybe he already agreed with me in his head; it looked like his heart would need a little more time to catch up.
“I know. It’s just hard, s’all.”
“To women,” I said, raising a shot glass and borrowing a line from my buddy George: “Can’t live with ‘em, and shagging guys is too messy.”
(Only later did the irony of saying such a thing in a gay bar hit me.)
“Right,” he replied, and then tossed back the schnapps. “Fuck, that’s dead awful,” he said with a grimace. “Let’s do another.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Me and Renton. This shot is also from earlier in the evening, before he interrupted our “moment”.
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