Arriving over at Jenna’s around noon on a weekday seems strange, as it always does — meaning not just here, but anytime I’m hanging out in anybody’s house during these circumstances. It still feels like skipping school or something, even though I haven’t worked a quote unquote normal job, with weekends off, in years. She’s in her bedroom getting ready, and the home is otherwise empty, with her parents out earning their own paychecks, all of which only adds to this sensation. In this split level, on this sleepy suburban street.
“So…what did you do last night?” she asks, making idle conversation while applying makeup in the mirror atop her dresser.
“Eh, nothing much,” I admit, stretched out on her bed, alternately playing with and attempting to fend off her pair of yipping lapdogs.
“Hmm. I thought you had plans with Joe.”
“Having plans with Joe is about the same as having no plans at all,” I scoff.
I like that she is getting dolled up, for just a regular old day on the town, hanging out with yours truly. It must indicate that she considers these outings significant on some level, even when we are mixing in such decidedly dreadful activities as a scheduled doctor’s visit, a routine checkup, bookended by first a light lunch, then later some shopping. Having gotten such an early start, it’s still not even six o’clock by the time we return, which bodes well for my possibly skipping out of here at a decent hour.
“Hmm, I wonder where Mom and Dave are,” Jenna marvels, as we descend upon a still empty house. “They must be out on a date night!” she speculates, dripping sarcasm, while doing a little side to side rump shake, hands held out from her hips.
“Oooh ooh!” I coo.
“Oooh ooh!” she repeats, laughing. “I mean, I guess I could call them, but…do I really care?”
After discussing the matter momentarily, it’s decided that Jenna will begin firing up a pot of spaghetti sauce for our own dinner. She stands at the stove mixing up this concoction, as I hand her various boxes and spices from the nearby pantry door. Continues stirring until apparently satisfied, the burner on low, before turning to face me with a devilish smile.
“This sauce needs to cook for a while,” she tells me.
“Okay,” I shrug and nod, “that’s cool, whatever.”
To this, Jenna raises her eyebrows suggestively and says, “no, what I meant was…we have some time, hint hint. This sauce needs to cook for a while.”
“Ohhhh! Now you’re talkin!” I reply, and pull her toward me for a kiss. Soon enough we are racing upstairs to her room, where the clothes are thrown aside and we jump into bed for a quickie. Although as is so often the case, this merely leads to some heavy conversation and giant, sweeping, emotional outbursts from her.
I’ve suffered through enough of these same scenarios to know that they are usually not some calculated stunt, using sex as a bargaining chip. It’s some hormonal thing and these females often can’t stop themselves, a tendency surely only heightened by Jenna’s pregnancy. Still, about the last thing a guy wants to get wrapped up in at this moment is a textbook’s worth of deep discussion about our future together. My only consolation is that at least it’s not, like, four in the morning, lying here with some girl you just met who wants to ramble at length about every moment of her childhood.
“Why don’t you want anything serious?” she asks me, once we’ve at least made enough progress to dress and head down to the kitchen for some food.
“Well I’m not trying to be a dick, but…I just really don’t have time for that right now. I’ve got too much going on.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Like what, you think you’re just gonna string me along so you can play the field?”
Mmm, perhaps not itself missing the mark by much, if at all — and yet, that’s still just one piece of the puzzle, however large it might be. “I didn’t say that. There are just a million things going on. Plus I’m working a ton of overtime right now. If I’m seeing someone, it’s gonna be on my terms. Sorry, but, I mean…that’s all I can do.”
By now, her parents have returned and are in the living room chortling at sitcom reruns. I believe this does assist my cause, though, keeping our voices low and our interactions somewhat muted. All of which also helps me scoot out the door at a somewhat reasonable hour, with Jenna exhausted and having to work in the morning tomorrow herself. Mostly though she now projects a half queasy face — although I know it’s not the dinner rocking her stomach, but rather these interactions with me.
Driving across town, I inevitably replay our most recent conversations. Dealing with these women is so gut wrenching half the time because they are not only highly emotional, but because they also know they can often use these emotions as a weapon against you. Me coming right out and saying that I only want to see someone on my terms provokes them to react as though this is something so ghastly, only a monster would admit it. But what do they want? Jenna just wants to wrest control, too, and see me on her terms. The only difference is that she refers to this as “normal” instead, as would just about any female, and again act as though any truly rational human being would agree.
In my mind, though, I spelled out what I’m interested in — take it or leave it. Yet as I pull up outside the agreed upon club, along the outerbelt demarcating this city’s northern rim, the packed parking lot and swarms of people crowding the patio find me soon forgetting about all of this. This place is a new one for me, O’McDonohue’s, which I can already see is attempting to pull off some hybrid of an Irish bar meets beach party hotspot. Is this an Ohio thing? That pub up on South Bass Island, on a much smaller scale, had a similar vibe. Then again, I suppose Ireland does technically have some beaches.
Bolstering this impression, that exact same zany cover band from our second night up there is currently gracing the stage right here. They must make their rounds all over the state and beyond. Right now they’re playing the Blood Sweat & Tears oldie Spinning Wheel, which I’ve never been crazy about, but they’re making it their own in a Tom Jones-esque over the top manner that might improve on the original. Soon enough I’m distracted in turn from this, however, by the random eye candy sights, then in spotting Dylan at the bar. In a highly coincidental twist — or not so much, I guess, to anyone who really knows us and is aware how we operate — it turns out he too was running equally late, and only got here a few minutes ago himself. Therefore, right on his heels, I’m able to order my first beer as well.
“Where’s Debbie and her friends?” I question, “you see them yet?”
“Yeah I actually thought I spotted her out on the patio when I drove by. You wanna head out there and see what’s going on?”
Though it is not exactly warm out and the band is playing inside, space heater towers solve the first problem, a wall rattling volume the second. When we eventually locate Debbie on the surprisingly crowded patio, the open umbrella at their table seems an odd touch in this weather, although it will act as a handy beacon whenever we wander away. Accompanying her around this spacious round table, thankfully, we find not a single one of Dylan’s lame coworkers, but a slate chock full of unfamiliar and in a couple of cases highly attractive faces. Debbie’s sister Shaun isn’t much to look at, older and plumper, with frizzy yellow hair, but there’s this okay redhead, Kristen, and a hot skinny chick with blonde hair named Jamie. Tom is Jamie’s hilarious, wisecracking boyfriend, while this Bob character is apparently someone Kristen just picked up at the bar about an hour earlier. This last point could be the most inviting of all, as it indicates she’s obviously not opposed to getting friendly with total strangers.
“Nice to see y’all could make it,” Debbie says, “I wasn’t sure if you’d come or not.”
“Hey, are you kidding me?” Dylan jokes.
“Yeah we wouldn’t miss this for the world,” I add.
“Are you gonna be nice tonight?” she asks.
“What!? We’re always nice!” Dylan replies, as though offended, “weren’t we nice up at Put-In-Bay?”
“You were nice,” she tells him, points to me and says, “he was being an asshole!”
I playfully lunge at her finger, bare my teeth and chomp at the air, as though intending to bite it. Yet as the conversation lurches on from us, I’m wondering how it is that our perceptions of shared events can differ so wildly, from person to person. She appears serious and all, but I can’t think of a single occurrence up there that would lump me into the asshole category — just some garden variety wisecrackery, nothing really out of the ordinary nor even all that markedly different from Dylan’s. Unless she’s talking maybe about that kiss that I requested, which she did after all bestow upon me. This all leads to the next thought, that maybe she wants to believe I was acting like a tool, because she’s attracted to it. Either that or, well, its complete opposite, that she’s telling herself this to establish some distance from what was probably a half drunken email she sent me.
As far as her friends are concerned, they mostly seem like a great bunch. Shaun doesn’t necessarily cotton to our antics, and Bob looks unsure whether he should, but it’s not an issue with anyone else. Tom is trashed and ripping off the one liners at a pace exceeding our own, while his girlfriend, Jamie, is the rare knockout who apparently finds guys most amusing when they’re being completely idiotic — in other words, right in our wheelhouse. Yet those two are all but welded at the hip, and it’s hard to imagine anything breaking them up anytime soon. Kristen is friendly enough, too, though devoting most of her attention to getting acquainted with Bob, Bob who Dylan and I have somehow gotten on this kick of lightly teasing. Actually I’m not sure teasing is the right word, because there is no joke or punchline, it’s just us polling Bob for every slight matter that pops into our head.
“What do you think about this song, Bob? You like it?”
“Yeah Bob, is this something you would listen to at home?”
The truth is, though, regarding this question if nothing else, that no one is paying much attention to the band. And since it’s jammed sardine tight inside the joint, while furthermore getting progressively colder the longer we sit out here, with a wind kicking up that the heaters can’t combat, Debbie suggests that we all head back to her place. Even though entailing another lengthy drive to the east side of town, it’s hard to interpret this as anything but a wonderful suggestion, pointing a clear path forward for Dylan or me or both to get somewhere with the ladies in this crew.
Citing Tom’s drunkenness, Jamie tells us they’re bowing out in favor of heading home. Everyone else is game, however, including the newest addition Bob, which gives way to discussing logistics. Dylan and I decide to drop one vehicle off at our apartment, and depart immediately after scoring Debbie’s address and some directions. Upon arrival at our place, mentioning the frequency with which I’m always stuck taking the wheel, Dylan volunteers to drive us out there in his truck.
This odyssey feels like the mirror image of my visit to Jenna’s earlier. Instead of daytime on a sleepy suburban street west of the outerbelt, it’s now well into the p.m. hours, a sleepy suburban street east of town instead. The atmosphere within promises to be more rowdy than domestic, too, and in fact we can even hear them as we park along the curb and approach this small ranch type house.
Debbie is renting this cozy little house from Shaun, who lives about an hour north with her fiancé. And stepping inside this place, I observe with a slight grin that every home I’ve ventured inside of in this township, they all smell the same. An aroma of freshly bloomed flowers, somehow, despite the month.
Spotting us, Debbie cracks open a fresh bottle of Captain Morgan. Bob and Kristen are sprawled out in the brightly lit living room, well advanced in their drunkenness, and though refraining from getting too physical in front of us, they hold one another so close that their bodies are essentially intertwined on the couch. Shaun, who is changing out of her club clothes, reemerges wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, not especially a great look for her. Though the numbers are theoretically lining up okay, she is after all spoken for, and anyway, the thought of who might end up with her is a grim one indeed. She does herself no favors by flopping into the middle of the living room floor, her rather large form projecting into much of the available space.
Shaun and Debbie get on this kick comparing themselves to one another, which is possibly true from a personality aspect. However when they speak of an extreme similarity in appearance, I really don’t see this whatsoever. It’s maybe just kindness on the part of the younger sis. Maybe Debbie is headed for Shaun-land, five years from now, but there’s no reason that should concern us now.
Elsewhere, we continue to peg Bob as pleasant and respectable enough, though he remains unsure quite how to take us. Slathering on accents that aren’t quite British, more like that of a Revolutionary War era colony type, as we invoke phrases such as simply must to suggest what Bob should or shouldn’t do. Like grab another drink — that’s an affirmative. Yet it isn’t as though we have the market cornered with our weirdness, as these ladies contribute plenty in that direction themselves. Shaun and Debbie both casually mention that they often sunbathe nude in the backyard, which isn’t exactly something you hear every day. And they think this one creepy next door neighbor guy might on occasion peek over the fence, though this hasn’t deterred them in the slightest. Hmm, I suddenly begin to think, these girls are shaping up more and more like keepers every minute.
Then there’s the strange scene awaiting us when taking a leak in what is otherwise a clean, modern looking, properly feminine accented bathroom, everything matching and with again a hint of floral in the air. Yet there’s no avoiding what by any reasonable estimation is the centerpiece of this room: a gigantic wicker basket, nearly as tall as the toilet seat, overflowing with a mountain of tampons. As the first to witness this bizarre scene, I don’t even say anything, though my impression is confirmed once Dylan later enters and exits the facility.
“I hate to ask, but what’s with the giant basket of tampons in your bathroom?” he questions.
The entire room bursts into hysterics, as Bob and Kristen have plainly wondered the same thing, while for the sisters, it’s more a laugh of red-handed embarrassment. Though if so, why leave this towering monolith out in plain sight to begin with? To be clear, I hadn’t noticed that the tampons themselves were of a particularly large size, so this neither proves nor disproves anything about our theories concerning fat/skinny girls and their respective pussy dimensions. And Debbie recovers nicely in explaining this phenomenon away.
“You’ll have to ask Shaun about that one,” she says.
“We should bring that basket out here and play pick up sticks,” I suggest.
“Pick up ‘pax,” Dylan corrects.
Though the rest of us continue knocking back the Captain Morgan, Bob is slowing down, saying something about needing to drive home. This of course only leads us to implore him that he simply mustn’t abandon us at such a crucial juncture. And since nobody takes us up on our quite novel gaming suggestion, his talk of leaving introduces a certain stale aura into the air, the unmistakable vibe of a party grinding its gears to a standstill. To combat this, Kristen suggests throwing on a movie.
“Eh, all we really have here is workout videos,” Debbie says, “I don’t even have cable right now.” To demonstrate, she scoots across the floor, begins pawing through random electronic related detritus collected underneath her TV.
“Oh, come on, we know you’ve got pornos in there,” Dylan challenges, “where’s Toilet Tramps Volume Four?”
“Tongue My Ass Volume Three,” I suggest.
Despite our best efforts, though, enthusiasm is flagging all around us. Shaun is virtually asleep on the floor, while Bob, who was obviously just testing the waters in his threats to leave, remains conjoined with Kristen on the couch. They’re not just throwing dreamy eyes at one another but are making out some too. And as far as Debbie, though not tipping her hand a ton, I would say that tonight if anything she seems more into Dylan than me.
But then everything shifts as I’m emerging from my second trip to the restroom. Opening the door, I encounter Debbie standing outside it. While only a happenstance encounter, as far as I know — having still not even discussed that email — she and I begin kissing in the doorway, before essentially switching places. Average though she may be, average is somehow a whole lot more appealing to a guy after a dozen cocktails and with the clock reading three a.m. And then a short while later, as Dylan is off pissing again, we pick up where we left off.
“I was kind of wondering…what you were getting at with that email,” I admit, unable to think of a better way to phrase this.
She laughs and says, “um, isn’t it totally obvious?” Then collects herself to add, “but no, you showed up over there at the restaurant the other night, and I thought, okay, wow, he cleaned up kind of nicely. Even Janice said to me, whoa, who knew he was so cute! And I was like, well, no, you could tell that up there on the island, even with all the hair and…everything else…”
Still, this victory lap is short lived, or should we say it doesn’t come without complications. I’m initially feeling okay about the unexpected twist until I open my eyes and discover a pattern to all this. Whenever Dylan leaves the room, Debbie starts making out with me. However, I eventually realize that the reverse is also transpiring — she is working both of us in this manner. So who knows what kinds of sweet nothings she is possibly blowing into his ear also. She was trying to be discreet about it and had gotten away with this for quite some time before she left the room with both of us sitting there and we were able to compare notes.
Yet after Dylan and I have finally discussed what is going on here, this only opens up a far more compelling and as currently unanswerable question: okay, so where does any of this ultimately lead?
“You ever skied the Swiss Alps?” I ask Debbie at one point, an old joke of Joe’s that I couldn’t resist reviving here.
“Huh? No, but I have been skiing,” she says.
“Well, you’ll have to show us later,” Dylan giggles mischievously.
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