2004-10-13
I picked up a girl at a bar last weekend.While such an act is commonplace in the young American social spectrum, I'm nonetheless gloriously unhip to the practice. I'm just not wired that way. I'm incapable of walking up to someone in a bar and flagrantly hitting on them with the goal being some potential play after last call. Especially this past weekend in Dawson with my old Scout camp buddies in tow, because I'm very happy to say that when I'm in Dawson drinking beer, eating meat, playing poker, and sitting around a fire, my sexual organs get a rare and well deserved break from active duty.
Yet, there we were on Saturday night at the Dawson Country Club (read: redneck bar) where there was beer to be drank and karaoke to be sang. I did "Piano Man" a little earlier that night than I normally would have, seeing as I like to bust out that song later when the patrons are oiled to the gills, but the performance brought the only pretty girl in the bar over to me to request that I sing, "Your Body Is A Wonderland" for her.
Uh, well, sure!
It was obvious that she was kind of into me, and my friends kept (loudly) urging me to dance with her, sing her another song, etc. etc., to which I coolly replied, punctuated with a swig of my Pabst, "I'm not too worried about it." That's all I would respond with. "I'm not too worried about it." Because I'm not in Dawson to scope out the babes, I'm in Dawson to get pissed with my buddies and sing the great soaring anthems of the 1980's.
So why and how the girl - whose name was Jessie - and her friend ended up around the fire in Dayvo's backyard still eludes me.
It was 1:30 AM and I was close to 20 down and amazingly sober when we all sat around the fire. Jessie and I shared a log and sat close and whatnot, and it was - to put it nondescriptly uninterestingly - nice. We talked, we laughed, and yeah, we canoodled. The party was spreading out and I was going to ask Jessie if she felt like taking a little walk when I got the hiccups. I don't get the hiccups much, so I laughed it off. Unfortunately, laughing off the hiccups doesn't actually rid oneself of the hiccups. As I was slowly learning, nothing does.
Five minutes pass.
Then ten.
TWENTY minutes go by, and still the hiccups remain. Jessie wasn't too perturbed about it, which was pretty cool of her, but I still wanted to be rid of the damn things! Then, from the horizon to my heels in half a second, I felt sick. I thought to myself, "Holy Moses, I'm going to vomit." So I very casually rose and told Jessie that I'd be right back. I ambled up the steps, Dayvo called out for a beer, I gamely answered, strolled inside to the bathroom and did my dirty horrible business.
Imagine. 20 beers down and the HICCUPS are what do me in. Only me.
So I finish up, wipe my red, watery eyes, and open the door. She's standing RIGHT there. Apparently she had followed me in for the reason that I would've WANTED her to follow me in, had I not had to engage in an involuntary personal protein spill. The look on her face said, "The vomit was yours. I didn't want to believe it. I... I..." And my look said, "I know." That was pretty much the end of our evening.
It was embarrassing, but hardly bad enough to ruin my night. The girls left shortly afterwards, and we guys just continued to drink our beer and laugh at the world. In the morning, we nursed our headaches with cigarettes and coffee, laughed about my vomit hiccups, and made tracks for our various homesteads. We still got our pride. I still got my pride. I still got it. We still got each other.
INCIDENTALLY: The fact that a bedsore killed Superman is without a doubt pop culture's greatest irony.
-Andy