I’m sorry to myself that I want to be that wild vivacious juicy woman, but just don’t think I’m there yet. I’m sorry I spilled red Curacao down your light linen shirt, but who wears linen in the middle of February anyway? I’m sorry I’m not that cool, smooth, confident vivacious woman I portrayed myself to be, when really I’m just a tripping, flipping, Curacao spilling, not apologizing- lunatic in reality. Online, I feel this freedom to chat away my briefcase of sins, no extra large duffel bag full of issues and check them at the Internet door. I feel free online to explore the me I’d like to be. I want to be a person who doesn’t drop eggs, lose ex's, bump end tables…and stutter. I do stutter sometimes. Sometimes I think of what I want to say and it comes out like, “I uh uh..I wish.. I could dump.. my.. my head in a bucket a buck..a bucket of of..fucking tranquilizers.” Horse tranquilizers. The BIG ones that are difficult to swallow, those would be good. It 's not that I think I need to be medicated because I really don’t believe in drugs, but I’m also not one for apologies either so I don’t know any other way to rid myself from this feeling that all dates are like therapy sessions.
So we chat online. I tell you of my failed dreams to become an opera singer, my taste for cotton-candy colored cashmere, and we meet somewhere in between your flair for neon light installations and my stuttering out the next line. Now we don’t meet eye to eye because we are typing to one another - not physically in front of one another.
Physically we meet…well, I get there first. I order a hurricane and try not to finish it before you arrive, so that I can eloquently keep up. And while I’m waiting I tap my forehead, and under my nose, and the tip of chin, and then I tap my wrist repeatedly, so that my pressure points can do the work to relieve myself of the nerves that I know are going to spill something, like my next drink all over your white shirt.
I tell myself over and over that although you had 10 great pictures of yourself, one where you were making a Mohawk out of shampoo at the lake shower, and another of your lovable dog Winston we probably won’t get along.
To calm myself down, I tell myself that you’re probably going to be donning pleated pants and a buttoned up version of plaid, and that I have nothing to worry about because we probably won’t get along.
I see this understated guy walk through the door - in jeans. He orders a beer at the far end of the bar. I can tell already that you’re it. Maybe you’re not my it forever, but you’re the guy I’ve been chatting with online, and you do have the same wavy brown beautiful crown that’s in your pictures, and you might even be a graphic designer like you selected in your profile. So I put my head down beneath the bar and tap the point below my nose three times, and take a deep breath. You walk over and sit down.
We shake hands. We smile. I like looking into your green eyes. But I don’t feel comfortable, not yet. I feel this wave of tightening. It starts in my shoulders and then travels down my lower back and before you know it, sitting up in a bar stool is using all my muscles. So at least, I can act cool. I can fool you into thinking that I’m not some rigid uptight little girl who should probably not be allowed to be out on dates or leave the house. So I figure it’s time to drink a bit. Not too much, but then before I know it I’m done with my third lemon-lime sensation and now the bartender has placed something before me that’s pink and red and orange and it’s off the “Foo Foo” drink menu.
It’s my turn to roll the rubber pigs and add up their positions. So I shake 'em in my hand, blow on them seductively, and then with a wild spastic motion I flail one pig snout down (10 points). And just as I bring my arm back up, I knock the other savory swine off the bar, sending him and your drink to their demise. There you are on the floor with a lit match in your hand searching for a small rubber pig. A ha, you save the guy. You stand up, and to my own surprise you have my drink all over the front of your shirt, and there’s even a cube clinging to the linen.
I look into your green pools and I confess, “Sometimes I say the most awkward things at the most awkward times, and most of the time I do the things most other people are too agile to do.”
While blotting your shirt with a napkin you say, “I think that’s pretty perfect. Let’s just try to keep the pigs on the table.”
Inside, I apologize to myself.
|
Justin
Written by Guest on 2008-01-27 13:18:03
I think that is pretty perfect. |
Sha Nae Nae
Written by Guest on 2009-07-28 17:16:59
Dude...that was awesome!
WTF are you doing, working the job you are working...? You should be a fucking author! 
Ain't no lie!  |
