After about 15 months of antisocial behavior (aside from a few quiet evenings with close friends), I decided it’s time to stop being a hermit long enough to remember why I became a hermit in the first place. I got an invitation to a Halloween party being thrown by a girl who I haven’t seen since high school and probably haven’t talked to since junior high or earlier.
Why? No clue. She found me on MySpace, and with nothing to back me up but a hunch and some strangely phrased messages, I get the impression she’s harboring — or, at least, harbored for longer than anybody should — a crush on me. I figured this would lead to awkwardness because she mentioned in several messages how much she talks about me with her boyfriend of seven years, and my initial thought was, “Gee, a party where I get to hang out with a girl I have no interest in and her jealous boyfriend? Where do I sign up?” But shit, it’s not like people are beating down my door to invite me to parties of any kind, so I thought I’d seize the rare opportunity to wet my beak in the social world yet again.
Turns out, the only people I’d know at the party is this girl and her hot best friend*. That was somewhat discouraging, even moreso when she subtly let slip that her immediate and a lot of her extended family would be populating the party. It was sounding less and less fun by the minute, but I was secretly pleased; it’d be easier to justify a life of solitude if my ever-decreasing forays into the world are rip-roaring wastes of time.
So I took a drive to where she lived, suspiciously close to the major technology company where I worked for several months last year and earlier this year, and as I rumbled down a street heading away from said tech firm, the road narrowed, the speed slowed, and the street dead-ended at a cross-street that reminded me way too much of Illinois’s Lake County, my least favorite county on Earth: cracked, narrow roads running through heavily wooded, faux-rural countryside. This was a little slice of Cook County for which I held immediate and extreme disdain, but I pressed on, following the confusing MapQuest directions to a side-street cul-de-sac that branched out into an even narrower road, barely the width of one car. Like the horror show of Lake County, there were no streetlights whatsoever, so I was fumbling around looking for the address in pitch black.
I finally found it, a gargantuan house with one of those U-shaped driveways that my dad always joked existed so that when realtors drove you up and told you the price, you could keep right on driving. The driveway was the only one loaded with cars, and the only one with a porchlight on, so I assumed this was the right place even though I couldn’t see the house number.
I went as The Dude from The Big Lebowski, because my wardrobe and current unkempt state allow for a reasonable and cheap facsimile. More specifically, I went as The Dude from the first scene in the movie, buying a quart of half-and-half from Ralphs in the middle of the night, wearing a bathrobe, a t-shirt, sweats, and sunglasses. I thought later, on the drive home, that I should have brought my checkbook and passed around 69-cent checks for everybody. It would have been somewhat appropriate because my “custom checks” are tie-dyed. But I didn’t think of this for the party. Instead, I fumbled up the driveway in a pair of sunglasses like an idiot. I had to take them off halfway up because I couldn’t see where the fuck I was going.
Even though I got to the party fashionably late, not many people were there. This was because, apparently, the hostess told everybody different times, between 7 and 9. The only people there at the time of note were her boyfriend of seven years…and the odd-girl-out they were very obviously and unsubtly trying to hook me up with. She was decently cute, but like most women, she had absolutely no interest in me, and I wasn’t about to flirt. Baby steps, cowboy. This is the first big, non-funeral social event I’ve attended in a very long time, so I had no intentions of running around flirting with every uninterested girl there. I didn’t plan to be there all night.
I didn’t want to mingle, either. I hadn’t seen the hostess or her hot friend — who didn’t show up for about 45 minutes — since high school, and it’s not like we were best friends back then, although the hostess seems to think we were. That’s neither here nor there; part of the reason I never go anywhere is that half my friends live out of state and the other half are married and use that as an excuse to avoid me. I thought maybe, since both of these girls were so excited they found me on MySpace, if their boyfriends weren’t jealous nutbars, maybe I’d have a new circle of friends to latch onto until I reveal myself to be the needy and neurotic mess I actually am and they suddenly find themselves too busy to “hang.” So I decided this party would be a good opportunity to get to know all of them and see how comfortable I was in this group.
The initial answer: not very. For one, the painful attempt to get me involved with that cute, uninterested girl would be annoying on a regular basis. If she’s not interested, stop trying to push us. I couldn’t care one way or the other. I wouldn’t turn her down, but I wouldn’t exactly see a lasting relationship coming from it. For another, I felt incredibly awkward and embarrassed around the hot girl. It’s kind of hard to get over the humiliation of stone-cold rejection, even if it did happen almost a decade ago. She really shut me down, and although my feelings toward her are completely different now, it’s impossible to not feel embarrassed or self-conscious. I feel like if I look at her too long or if I give her any more attention than I give anyone else, everyone will start thinking I still have the hots for her.
Their boyfriends were surprisingly cool, though. Well, actually, the hot girl’s boyfriend was kind of a douche to me, maybe because he knows The History and wants me dead. The hostess’s boyfriend was really nice, though. We didn’t have too much in common, but he spent the whole time trying to make me feel comfortable, so in return I pretended to be really interested in all his gearhead stories. Okay, I actually was interested in all his gearhead stories, but I barely understood what he was talking about, and I didn’t want to keep stopping him with questions like, “How much does it cost to rebuild the engine on a 10-year-old Blazer?” or “What’s an oil change?”
The only problems came when they would leave. The hostess would go off to mingle, the boyfriend would go off to “talk shop” with the hot girl’s ice-cold boyfriend (also a mechanic), and I’d be left pretty much alone. But, of course, the pool table had been beckoning me all night. Little known StanFact™: during my first semester of college, I hated life in rural Iowa and the college in particular so much that me and my friend Amanda would go to the commons and play pool together for 6-8 hours a day. Sometimes more. Every day. For more than three months. I wouldn’t exactly go pro, but I got good. Real good.
Then I left and never played again, aside from casual games where I’d be ruined by having to deal with those nonstandard baby tables or some other bizarre restriction. But here at this house was a regulation size table in pretty good condition, just sitting there unplayed. When the boyfriend suggested we play a game, I jumped all over it. The hostess put the kibosh on it, fearing that too many guests would show up and we’d end up accidentally cracking someone’s ribs with the cues. However, about an hour after that, when I was left pretty much alone to hit on the cute uninterested girl, an older gentlemen busted out the equipment and racked a game to play with the hostess’s next-door neighbor, a short, middle-aged single woman.
I watched them play for a bit and, realizing I was getting nowhere with my half-hearted flirting, I said I’d play whoever won. They were both agreeable enough. The older gentleman, who was pretty good, seemed to get frustrated by the total incompetence of the neighbor. I think he wanted more of a challenge and thought I’d bring it.
Then he lost. It was one of those stupid things where he cleared the table and then scratched on the eight ball. He seemed a little pissed and had no interest in playing me, under the guise of being a gracious winner. So it was me and the incompetent neighbor. Eh, I thought. Pool is pool. Maybe I’d crush her and she’d leave me alone. I had a pretty good run, nailing several before I just had no options but to clear out a small cluster. When her turn came, she just kinda rested the cue practically on top of her thumb and shoved it forward, with no control over the direction, speed, or english. I’m not exactly Mike “The Mouth” Sigel, but I was embarrassed just watching her. She was having fun, though. I tried to be encouraging, but it was kinda rough. She was very giggly and good-natured about her lack of ability.
After I crushed her for two games, we decided to play a third (nobody else was interested). This time, after her fumbling slaps at the ball, I decided to suggest a better technique for holding the cue. I gave her some pointers, and she looked baffled. “Show me,” she said. So I demonstrated with my cue. She watched, making exaggerated attempts at looking but really seeming like she wasn’t getting it. I sighed and came over behind her, took her hand, placed it on the cue, and as soon as she arched up, essentially sticking her ass into my crotch, I realized I had walked into something really, really moronic. Where are old, world-weary pool-playing men when you need them? Or, more importantly, why couldn’t Amanda have stuck her various sexy parts into my crotch so many years ago?
I gulped and felt a bit flushed, moreso when I felt an involuntary stirring in Li’l Stan™. But I pressed on, showing her how to hold the cue like a normal person. She glanced back at me, grinning skeletally. “I’ll give it a try,” she breathed. This could not be going worse.
I backed up as quickly as possible to give her room to take the shot. She did, like a total dunce, then turned toward me, arms outstretched like she wanted to hug me. She still had that goofy grin on her face, and she shook her head wildly. “I’m just not getting it.”
I suddenly felt like Jack Tripper during one of those moments when Lana Shields would come around and make some kind of really awkward plumbing-related sex puns. “You’re doing fine,” I muttered, trying to keep my distance. She could tell, and for whatever reason she didn’t want me to slip away. But slip away I did, inching closer to the pseudo-bar near the pool table, where there were more than enough witnesses for her to be cool — I hoped.
It didn’t stop her. She got very touchy-feely after that, always grabbing my shoulders, my wrist, my hand, winking periodically. As a result, I was playing even worse than a pool player who once was kinda decent but hasn’t played for six years. This made a game that could have been ended with a couple of simple runs stretch out way longer than it should have. Worse, it was loaded with stolen glances and awkward smiles and assorted lovey-dovey crap that, really, isn’t even okay with a woman who isn’t double my age.
Finally, it was down to me and the eight, and I had a pretty clear shot. There were a couple of stripes in my way, but if I got the right angle I could have nailed it. But just as I was about to ram the cue forward, motion caught my eye: the neighbor slid her hands up her torso, trying in vain to shove her breasts up even further than her push-up bra would allow. I jumped the cue ball, right the fuck over the eight ball, and right into the corner pocket, losing the game.
“Good game,” I said quietly, and she came over and gazed into my eyes and shook my hand for way longer than she should have, talking about how much fun she had had and smiling and just utterly thrilled to be somewhere near a swarthy idiot half her age who wasn’t “taken.” I told her I’d play another game but I was getting hungry, at which point I ran upstairs to the kitchen and found the hostess, the hot girl, and their boyfriends. A few minutes later, the neighbor came up and — looking over her shoulder at me much of the time — told the hostess’s mom what a wonderful time she had had and how sorry she was to leave so soon. She still seemed very happy and giggly, so I thought maybe I had made more of the situation than necessary.
Then she winked at me. Not for the first time that night, but it was very obvious and definite, and she turned around and sashayed away. Shortly after, my dog allergies (the hostess has two) started to ruin my life, so I decided to make some polite excuses and leave. In addition to not having much fun to begin with, the strain of having my favorite game ruined by awkward, MILF-y flirtations made me want to get as far away from this house as possible.
I went out into the darkness. and felt my way through the cars until I got the street, where mine was parked. As I sat there and waited for it to warm up, I noticed a light on in the upstairs of the house next door. I thought for a long, pathetically serious moment about the pros and cons of me stepping out of the car and knocking on the neighbor’s door. Because it’s not like she was hideously unattractive; she was just uncomfortably old, and I wouldn’t want to be accused of being “age-ist” or some other equally made up and stupid term.
I continued to think long after the engine was warm and the vents had been blowing hot hair long enough to make me a little sweaty. I cut the engine, and sat there for a couple of seconds in silence, eyes fixed on that lit window, one hand on the door handle. After an indeterminate amount of time (probably not more than 10 seconds, but I don’t have a clock in my car and time is funny when nobody’s keeping it), the light in that window went out. I started the car again, did a 10-point turn around the tiny road, and left this odd little neighborhood.
*This goes into my hilariously misogynistic “hot-girl/ugly-girl” dynamics theory, which states that when two girls become best friends, for whatever reason, it’s always a hot girl paired up with the ugly girl. And, invariably, a dorky and unattractive nerd like me will fall for the hot girl and make pathetic attempts to woo her, which will be ignored by the hot girl but embraced by the ugly girl, who will either witness with her own eyes or hear secondhand the sadness of my existence. I shit you not, in high school this happened to me every time I got a crush on an attractive girl. So in this case, the girl who found me on MySpace is the “ugly girl” of the scenario, and I had a crush on her hot best friend for, like, three years between seventh grade and freshman year of high school. [Back]
Posted by Stan on October 29, 2006 4:40 PM
