2004-08-11 - 4:13 p.m.
A Weekend of Uneventful Weekend Events in III Parts [Part II]
SUNDAY, or, I Just Should Have Stayed Home
Early Sunday afternoon, went to the Diversey bridge to see Cher who said she’d be there bird watching and yelling at canoers or some such thing. She wasn’t there, so I rode my bike down some bike paths. She’d later tell me that her plans got screwed. Rode a while, and then it was back to Market Days where, at 8:00 that evening, I’d intended to see A Flock of Seagulls in the 7-11 parking lot. Oh, this was the ‘80s rock band and not just a bunch of birds. Although in retrospect, I think watching a bunch of seagulls fighting over food in a parking lot might’ve been a hell of a lot more interesting. Saturday, Effie told us that she’d heard Saturday at Market Days usually has more straight people and Sunday is when the boys and girls come out to party hard.
So I’m walking around and some shirtless guy rollerblading through the dense crowds starts talking to me. I notice that the guy is wearing cut-off jeans shorts.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” say I.
“What are you doing?” says he.
“I’m looking for my friends,” I lie. “See you later.” I start walking fast.
The street was packed, and people bumped into one another, and, in the only clearing, this guy is standing, waiting for me. “Why are you making me work so hard to get your number?” rollerblade stalker asks.
Now, in instances such as this, any normal thinking person would probably just diffuse the situation with a quick, “I’m straight.” Or “FUCK OFF!” And I’m thinking just that, but I say, “Sorry. I’m seeing someone.” Then, in my head, I yell at myself, “What the hell are you doing!!!?!!!”
“Well, I just thought I’d let you know that you’re cute,” my stalker stays.
“Thank you.” I reply. “I wasn’t feeling very cute when I got here, but now that someone’s told me—I feel much better about myself.” “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” my brain screams at me.
Lucky for me, stalker rolls away, leaving me to ponder all the horrible ways one could be murdered by someone wearing rollerblades and cut-off jeans shorts.
I planned to get on my bike and go over to my friends Sean and Karen’s place to eat dinner, and then go back to see the bands. Now, it turns out that Lady Miss Kier, the singer from the early-90s band Dee-Light, was going to play at 8:30 that evening. Being a hopeless nostalgia freak—and, above all else, wanting to get the most of the five dollar admission “donation” that I gave at the entrance—I figure I can catch a half hour of A Flock of Seagulls and then head over to Lady Miss Kier.
On my way back to my bike, I see a guy that I know from work. Aside from “Hello” and polite hallway or elevator banter acknowledging the weather, I’d never really spoke to co-worker W.
It turns out that co-worker W, an older man, is a very gay, very educated, and very literate man. His PhD and extensive travels, however, do not keep co-worker W from being very vulgar and a complete freak. We walked and talked and discussed our views on relationships, sex, and, naturally, diseases. Perhaps he felt comfortable talking to me, perhaps it was all the beer he drank, but about fifteen minutes into the conversation, he declared, “I love to suck dick! I could suck dick all day long!”
I was mortified. How does one respond to something like that?
“Good for you!” I said. “I hope one day, you get your chance.” I wanted to tell him that at one point in my life, I was convinced I could survive eating nothing but pizza. But after several days of the stuff, I never wanted to see pizza again. I didn’t want to encourage him, so I said nothing.
So co-worker W goes on to tell me that I should have sex as much as possible. “Get that dick wet,” were his exact words. “You should hit on any pussy you find.” I tell him that I’m really too lazy to actively pursue a relationship, sexual or otherwise. “Besides,” I say, “I have this long list of questions that a girl has to answer before I even kiss her.”
“Like what?” he asks.
“Well, first I have to know if she now has or has ever had a sexually transmitted disease. Does she get cold sores?—”
“You’re hung up on God,” he interrupts.
“?”
“I grew up in the age of AIDS,” he says, “and girl, let me tell you—you can’t worry about all that shit. What are you worried about?”
“Diseases!” I say.
“What? HPV? I had it. I got it burned off with liquid nitrogen. I doesn’t come back. Big deal.”
I couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“Just put a rubber on that dick and get out there and get it wet as much as possible,” he reiterated.
He started to get philosophical, and, again, said that I was afraid of being punished by God for being human. “We’re all gonna die sometime. Life is too short to get hung up on all that shit.”
“Look,” I said, “I don’t wanna die some horrible, painful death because I had sex. That’s fucked up. Besides,” I continued, “I KNOW I’m gonna die. The way I see it, death is like Los Angeles. I don’t mind being there, it’s how I get there that matters.”
He seemed lost by this. He asked if I wanted to go into a bar. Being the amateur masochist that I’m learning I am, I said yes and accompanied him. We sat at the bar in a place called Buck’s where he ordered a shot and a beer for himself and a bottle of water for me. We talked some more.
“When’s the last time you had sex?” he asked.
“About a year ago on the 4th of July.”
OK. I was dying to know, so I asked the same question of him.
“Yesterday,” he answered.
“Yesterday?”
“Yeah. Yesterday.”
“And the time before that?”
“The night before.”
“The night before! Holy cow! OK. How ‘bout before that?”
“Um…let me think. Wednesday.”
“Holy shit! Were these all with the same person?”
“No.”
“Where did you meet these people?”
“I met two of them in bars.”
“Where was the other one?”
“We had sex in a sex club.”
“A sex club?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“What kind of pick-up lines did you hear?”
“Well, one of the times, the guy just started talking to me. Regular pick-up lines. You know ‘How are you?’ and things like that.”
“How ‘bout the other time?”
“Well. The guy came up to me and stuck his tongue in my mouth.”
“Dude! You mean to tell me that a guy just came up to you and stuck his tongue in your mouth? If a guy did that to a girl in a club, she’d have the bouncers and cops all over him.”
“Well, we stared at each other for, like, five minutes. We cruised each other. It’s called cruising.”
“And what about the sex club?” I was by this time staring deep into a train wreck that I couldn’t take my eyes off of.
“I went in this room, a guy came in, and he gave me a blow job. Save my chair,” he said, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
He went to the bathroom, leaving me to ponder all the horrible ways one could be murdered by someone with a PhD and HPV.
While he was gone a guy came up next to me to order drinks. “Hi, “ he said. He looked like a regular, older sort of blue-collar guy.
“Here we go again,” I thought. Of course, I said, “Hi.”
“What’s you’re name?” he asked.
“Tell him you’re straight,” I thought. “Tell him you’re straight.” Instead, I told him my name.
“Is that your boyfriend, your lover, your partner, you’re with?”
“Tell him yes,” I thought. “Tell him yes.”
“No.” I said. “He’s a co-worker.”
FUCK!
He asked all the usual flirty questions. It seemed like W was gone for half an hour. The bar was packed, the bartender was slow, and I was slowly killing myself with my own stupidity.
The guy finally got his drinks and W returned. “I think I got a hook up in the bathroom,” he said.
Great! I should have left right then and there, but instead I went over to the jukebox. The jukebox in that place isn’t bad. The bar went wild when the songs I played came on. Several songs into my jukebox set, W went back to the bathroom, and the other guy came back to talk.
“Did you play these songs?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
He asked what I did for a living and I answered by asking him the same. He told me what he did, where he went to college, etc. He gave me his card and said I should call him. “You’re cute. Keep playing good music,” he said and walked away.
W came back and I told him I had to go. I thanked him for the water and was on my way.
