Blind Date

My friend Al—I believe I may have previously introduced him to you as the Reverend Father Alabaster Fudge—well, he noticed that I’d been down recently.  “Down” as in a bit of a funk, forsaken, lovelorn, lonely.  I’d been (still am) on a terrible string of bad luck in the realm of love.  In fishing metaphors, I’d been casting my line, day in and day out, but hadn’t felt even the faintest nibble.  No, that’s too generous.  It’s more like I hadn’t even begun casting yet because, when tying the line, I pricked my finger on the rusty hook and developed a nasty—and fatal—case of tetanus, eventually succumbing to the infection in an agonizingly twisted and spasmodic state of loneliness.  So, doing what friends do, Al suggested I allow him to set me up on a blind date.  To be honest, my initial thought was, “But, Al, how can you, a man of the cloth, a man of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, know anything about the billion-piece jigsaw puzzle called Love that we lay men and lay women must struggle to piece together each and every day of our miserable existences?”  But, of course, I didn’t say that, and, of course, I let him do it, let him set me up on the blind date, so grave was my state of desperation. 

And by blind date, I mean truly blind.  Al coordinated everything.  I wasn’t allowed to know anything except that her name was Jennifer and that we’d be meeting Friday at 7 p.m. at the Chili’s bar.  Well, I was a nervous wreck all week, and when Friday finally came around, the whole deal had me feeling like there was a rabid calico trapped in my stomach, shrieking wildly and going haywire, mistaking my innards for its ball of yarn.  So, I decided to get there an hour early, get a feel for the place, maybe throw back a Margarita of the Month or two.  I walked in and, lo and behold, the place was packed.  I snagged the last two open seats at the bar, which only meant that, instead of sipping my ‘ritas and psyching myself up for this blind date, I now had to play the part of the snooty lunch table schoolgirl, telling anyone who showed up that he or she couldn’t sit there because the seat was taken.  Like, scram! you fugly bitch!

Which, not even ten minutes later, is exactly what I tried to do when this very strange and disheveled character appeared and pulled out the last seat.  And by “tried to do,” I guess what I mean is I let out an inaudible half whimper in protest.  But, I should also note it wouldn’t have mattered—and it actually would’ve been quite embarrassing—because, as it turns out, the seat was, indeed, already taken by this dude (hereinafter, for simplicity’s sake, the “Dude”).  It wasn’t until then that I noticed the two, cheap rocks glasses on the bar top, halfway off their coasters, the ice in them nearly fully melted, as well as a stack of uncrumpled paper, the top edges of them being saturated by the slow and creeping flood of the condensation from the drinks.  Anyway, the Dude seemed lost in his own world, muttering to himself as he retook his seat.  He attempted to flatten out the pages with his hands, took out his phone, and then began to transcribe whatever was on the pages into a text message, clicking and clacking and tapping away with his two index fingers, like a giant fucking chicken.  I stole a glance at the pages and immediately noticed the bad penmanship, the even worse spelling, the big, blocky, childlike letters—some of them backwards, I swear, like the “R” in Toys R Us.  On his phone screen, I made out the plea: “pleese dont do this.”  Weird.  Now, maybe you just needed to be there, but I feel like I can get a pretty good read on people, and the Dude’s aura screamed trouble, so I prepared myself to simply sip on my ‘ritas and mind my own business, steal no more glances at him and his project or whatever the hell he was doing, and wait for Jennifer.

Which is exactly what I tried to do.  And this time, I sincerely tried, but let me tell you, the Dude made it incredibly difficult.  To start out, the guy sitting next to him, well, his food came out, and he asked the bartender for a knife, and the bartender said they didn’t have any knives at the moment, only forks.  For whatever reason.  The guy was slightly perplexed—no knives?—but, like a normal human, he left it at that.  I mean, I get it.  It’s a Chili’s for fuck’s sake, and there aren’t any knives?  Whatever.  Anyway, just like me, the Dude overheard this, but instead of letting it go, he decided to assume the role of the offended party.  When the bartender came back over, he asked him, “You don’t have any knives?”  I looked at the bartender and could tell he was like, umm, no, I literally just explained this to the guy right next to you, we don’t have knives, but, no, he was a professional about it and simply said, “Sorry, like I just told this gentleman here, only forks.”  The Dude then elbowed the guy and said, “Can you believe this?  No knives?!”  The other guy just shook his head and gave a quick laugh.  This is when I manned my battle stations, prepared myself to remain vigilant, as I’d been alerted me to the fact that the Dude was not just an innocently intoxicated if not slightly bizarre guy at the bar, but rather a dangerously annoying one at that, one to avoid interaction with at all costs.  You know the type.

Thankfully, the Dude eventually lost interest in the whole no knives thing, and he went back to transcribing his text.  But it wasn’t long until he held up his hand and called out to the bartender for another whiskey Mountain Dew.  That’s when the bartender came over and said that they didn’t have Mountain Dew, only Coke products, to which the Dude responded, somewhat defiantly, that that was impossible because he’d already had three of them.  Again, I looked at the bartender and could tell he was like, I don’t know what to fuckin’ tell you pal, we don’t have any Mountain Dew, but, again, he was the consummate professional and simply said, if just a tad irritably, “No, sir, we only have Coke products.”  So, that should’ve been the end of it, like, just get something else, Dude, stop acting the fool, but what do you think the Dude did instead?  I’ll tell you: he doubled down and insisted that he knew better than the bartender what products were kept behind the bar and that he’d rather have the rocks glass shoved up his ass before he’d be called a liar and made a fool at this Chili’s.  Well, the bartender, still calm and collected—admiringly so—he decided to play along, or perhaps he felt like he had no other choice but to on account of this nutjob.  He asked for the name on the Dude’s tab so he could look him up in the system and see what he’d been rung up for.  But the Dude said that he didn’t have a tab because he’d already been closed out, to which the bartender responded, no, he hadn’t, he was the only one working there and he would’ve remembered that.  This went back and forth for a few minutes, which is when the Dude began searching for help from his neighbors—namely me and the no-knives-guy—doing the whole “can you believe this guy?” and “you can back me up, right?” routine.  Like I said earlier: dangerously annoying, and, based on his recent outburst, potentially prone to self-harm? 

Anyway, the no-knives-guy eventually broke down and told the bartender he’d cover the Dude’s tab, whatever it was.  Psycho move on his part to get involved like that.  If it weren’t for the fact that I was meeting Jennifer, I would’ve skedaddled on out of there as soon as the Dude started talking about shoving tumbler glasses up his ass.  But the no-knives-guy’s altruism had assuaged things, at least for the moment.  The Dude had surrendered himself to the enjoyment of a whiskey Coke, and he was daintily sucking away at the little cocktail straw when, out of nowhere, he started balling.  I guess the cheap alcohol had finally caught up to him, or maybe he’d been so moved by the generosity of his bar top neighbor.  No-knives-guy, figuring he’d already done his part, pulled a fast one and got up and left, which the Dude noticed before I did because, before I knew it or could stop him, he’d swiveled over to face me and displayed the disgusting wreck that he’d become, with his scrunched up and quivering face, snot bubbling at his nose, weird black marks running from his eyes (was he wearing mascara?).  Anyway, I don’t mean to be insensitive, because the story he forced upon me did wind up being a bit depressing, but he began blubbering on about how his wife had just left him, despite her having sunk their life savings into his recent hospitalization.  Turned out, he’d been in a medically induced—and uninsured—coma for a little over a week after having stove in his cranium on the coffee table in an attempt to imitate the white-socked slide from Risky Business.  I just shook my head when he asked me if I knew how much something like that cost.  A lot, I guessed.  Well, the Dude’s missus realized how foolish and irresponsible that was—not just throwing away all that money, but throwing it away on the likes of the Dude.  He was pathetic and just wasn’t worth it.  (The Dude said this, not me.)  What a depressing and somewhat morbid turn of events!  And here I was, trying to ready myself for a blind date—which reminded me.  I checked my phone and saw that it was 5 minutes until 7, and the place was just as packed as it had been when I first walked in.  I don’t know what came over me, and I’m sure I’ll have to answer to Al for it soon, but I told the Dude to keep his head up, that everything was going to be A-OK, and that, if he played his cards right and wiped his fucking nose, he could maybe turn his entire life around that night.  When I was greeted by only the vacuous and brain-dead stare of the drunken fool, I explained that a lovely lady named Jennifer would be walking through the front doors at any moment and, more than likely, sitting down right next to him, and that if she happened to ask if his name was Sterling, he should simply smile and nod and say yes.  Before he could ask me what I was talking about, or what I’d done with my bow and arrow, as if I was Cupid’s chubby ass himself, I’d left a twenty on the bar top, gotten out of my chair, and headed towards the exit, passing on my way out a lovely lady who definitely looked like a Jennifer.