I watched Oprah in the afternoons. I played with my kitten, whose favorite game was running up my bedroom curtains. Movies kept me occupied on date-free nights off. I was a Blockbuster regular. My dad traveled a lot, working on his deals, trying to hustle, but when he was home and I didn’t have to work, we shared a nightly ritual, visiting an Italian café after dinner where we’d stand at the bar, him sipping espresso while I slurped an affogato. Barnes & Noble became my second home since I’d always loved to read and the rest of my free time I spent dicking around on the Internet, just like the rest of the world. My life was boring, except when I was at work.
I started going out with some of the cocktail waitresses and bartenders after work. Never having been a club-goer, I only agreed to go at first because of Sunny. She’d quickly become the Queen-Bee of the servers and was always up for partying after work and since I was still jealous of her, I decided that I couldn’t let her have all the fun. As soon as the registers were added up, a large group of us would head to downtown Fort Lauderdale, where the bars stayed open until four or later. It was a scene, a meat market of drunken idiots looking for hook-ups and I couldn’t stand it, but I went anyway because in the back of my mind, all Sunny envy aside, I hoped each time I went that that would be the night I finally met someone.
Clubs sucked. Smoky bars were misery. I hated every second I spent “going out” but I forged onward anyway because I needed a place to wear all my fancy clothes somewhere other than in front of a humidor and because there was always that slim chance that He would be there, but He, whoever that was, never showed up. I got groped. Nineteen year olds in basketball jerseys tried to get me to booty dance with them. The crew from work tried in vain to get me drunk, to get me to try this shot and that drink always swearing I wouldn’t be able to taste the alcohol, but I always could. Relax, smoke a clove, they’d say and not a night out could end without at least ten people asking me what was wrong or telling me to smile and I’d get weary of it all and hop onto a barstool or try to melt into a corner until it was time to leave.
Guys hit on me surprisingly often and not all of them were fresh out of high school or wearing their pants five sizes too big and hanging at their knees with their boxers on display. Educated professionals went downtown too but nothing ever progressed past brief conversations shouted into ears over screaming techno. They’d ask me something, I’d never be able to understand them and I’d yell back “WHAT?” They’d repeat whatever insignificant question they’d asked, I still wouldn’t understand, so I’d nod as if I did and try to smile. I gave out my number a few times but no one ever called.
Sunny and I avoided anything beyond the simplest “heys” and “how’s it goings” but I’d watch her from an unnoticeable distance, flouncing her curls, flirting with everyone. I watched her in a kind of awe. I wanted to know how she did it. Where did she get that confidence? What gave her that magnetic quality, charisma I guess, that was more than beauty, but also beauty? She was the kind of girl who did body shots and climbed up on the bar to throw herself around to “Baby Got Back” even though her butt was microscopic. Guys loved her. Girls loved her too. Cherish had long since given up on getting me to make out with her and Sunny herself admitted that she’d hooked up with her on several occasions, which actually made me jealous in the most unusual way I’d ever been jealous before. No fair! Cherish had been MY bi-sexual, promiscuous stripper! They’d grind against one another on the dance floor and tongue kiss dramatically. Guys, as I’ve stated before, go out of their minds for any sort of lipstick lesbian activity and Cherish and Sunny would have to literally push men away from them, though you could tell they got off on causing a scene.
By spring the shopping, the going out, all of it, had worn on me. I said I wanted to have fun, but I never did and when Sunny left, fewer and fewer of my coworkers went out. She’d been a great social organizer. Some people have that talent I guess. I wasn’t glad that Sunny had a car accident but I was glad she was finally gone. Don’t be alarmed. She wasn’t dead. She was barely even hurt and she shouldn’t have been driving back from a night out in South Beach, likely still tipsy though she claimed she was just tired, at five thirty in the morning anyway. Sunny totaled her car, running it into the median. She broke her wrist and you can’t balance a tray of cocktails with your arm in a sling, so her brief career at the Kittikat came to a swift end. We never saw her again. This pleased me enormously.
42
I gave up on going out soon after Sunny left. I’d gone because in some way I thought I was supposed to – that “going out” was what fun was. I never had fun at clubs though and I resigned myself to the fact that I was never going to meet a decent guy at a crowded bar.
Maybe I hadn’t wasted seventy-five bucks on a psychic after all because her prediction was coming true. There was no romance in my future. None. I still read the horoscope in the Lifestyle section each day. I also checked my online horoscope on Yahoo! so that I could compare the two and I half expected one day to flip open the newspaper and find my horoscope advising that lonely Scorpio should just give up ever trying to find true love.
Dull date after dull date ended without a kiss and you know what? I wasn’t turning most of these guys down. They were rejecting me and trust me, quite a few of them would have been lucky to snag a girl like me. What did they all want? Oh never mind. I forgot. Brazilian super models. That’s right.
I saw the new Tom Cruise movie with a stock broker who told me straight up that I had to pay for my ticket because he wasn’t going to shell out for an investment that wouldn’t bring any returns.
“Huh?” I’d asked, confused.
“What can I say?” he said with a Woody Allen shrug, “You’re not my soul mate. I’ll see a movie with you, but you’re not my soul mate. Do you want popcorn? I don’t. The line looks way too long.”
“No, but how can you know that I’m not your soul mate? We’ve said all of about ten words to one another,” I demanded.
He said with soul mates it was always love at first sight and he hadn’t felt a thing when I approached him in the theater lobby. Well, at least I enjoyed the movie.
Fine, I get it. The guy didn’t feel anything for me. It happens. Maybe Asher, the personal injury attorney I’d been emailing, would work out. Maybe he’d be the one.
Asher was hilarious. His sarcastic commentary on pop culture had me practically peeing in my pants from our first phone conversation and he had a compassionate side as well. In the summers, he volunteered on the beach saving baby sea turtles. His hobby was outrigger canoeing and he even played a little Hawaiian ukulele. This guy was cool! We spent two hours on the phone one night while I listened, genuinely fascinated with his stories, about the trip to Spain he’d just returned from.
“We have to meet,” I sighed.
And Asher was enthusiastic. We’d agreed to meet in downtown Fort Lauderdale for dinner at an Italian restaurant that he loved. I decided to wear something I already had in my closet. Perhaps this is where I went wrong. Maybe things would have gone better if I had that new Bebe satin, pencil skirt, though I doubt it.
Asher looked good. He’d come from work so he still wore a grey suit. Stocky, tanned, hazel-eyed, he was pretty cute, except for his hair, which was so out of place compared with the rest of him that it seemed a mistake. Asher had a mullet. A real mullet. I’m talking a mullet that belonged behind the wheel of a Camaro flying down the highway to get to the monster truck show early before the line for beer and pork rinds got too long. It was a rebel yell of a mullet, side parted, feathered no less and fanned out around his broad shoulders and I couldn’t stop staring at it.
“Are you looking at my hair?” Asher said with a trace of coyness and a smile.
“Umm, hmm. Kind of,” I admitted.
“Do you like it?” he asked, “Girls usually love it.”
They did? Who was he dating? Meat Curtains?
I blinked. I couldn’t say no. That would be mean and Asher was such a cool gu
y otherwise.
“Do you want to touch it?” he asked.
I was taken aback.
“I’m good. I think I want more bread actually.”
“You shouldn’t load up on carbs, especially since you ordered pasta, but seriously, let me ask you something.”
“Ok.”
“Do you think I should cut my hair? I’ve been thinking about cutting my hair.”
What was the right answer?
“Do you want to cut your hair?” I asked.
I really wanted another roll. And butter. Cheese would have been good too because cheese makes everything better, especially when combined with butter and bread and I would have much rather been eating carbs and fat than having this conversation.
“I don’t know. I’ve been growing it for a while and like I said, girls love it. It’s the whole Patrick Swayze thing.”
“I’m pretty sure Patrick Swayze has short hair now though.” I said.
This was before Patrick Swayze died, alas.
“Yeah,” Asher said, “But back in his heyday his hair looked like this. People tell me I look like Patrick Swayze all the time, like back when he was in Dirty Dancing. Remember Dirty Dancing?”
“Are you kidding, of course! Nobody puts Baby in the corner and all that. I cut all my jeans into shorts one summer because of that movie,” I said.
“Ok then and you had a huge crush on Patrick Swayze didn’t you?”
“Umm, no. Actually I didn’t. I thought his hair was stupid looking and he didn’t really have a mullet, I mean, long hair per se in the actual movie. It was kind of long, but not like, dramatically long.”
“But he did in the ‘She’s Like the Wind’ video.”
“I didn’t really like that song,” I said, “I was more of a Smiths fan back then.”
“You didn’t like that song? You’re the only girl I have ever met who didn’t love that song and who didn’t have a crush on Patrick Swayze.”
Asher was aghast. I tried to make him feel better.
“You know, you really do look a lot like Patrick Swayze,” I said.
I wasn’t lying. The more I looked at him, the more I saw it and though I wasn’t particularly into Patrick Swayze, looking like him wasn’t a bad thing. Patrick Swayze was an undeniably handsome man even if Patrick Swayze wasn’t my type.
“I do, right? So I should leave my hair long?”
“I’m going to be honest. I always thought Patrick Swayze really came into his own when he matured and cut off his mullet. And I have to ask, Asher, did you really grow your hair long to look like Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing because you thought girls would go for it?”
“Of course!”
“And you’re not being ironic?”
“No!”
“Would you cut it for the right girl?”
“Absolutely. Without hesitation.”
He walked me to my car to say goodnight and I engaged a dating tactic known as “The Stall.” Everyone’s done it. You linger, prolong the conversation while standing at the front door or the car in an attempt to elicit an invitation to continue the date, to plan a second date or better yet, a kiss. Slowly, you move closer, you tip your chin at a kissable angle, brush his arm lightly with your fingertips. You smile and try to look at him softly and seductively, although you have no idea what to do with your face to convey the sultry come-hither suggested by this month’s Marie Claire, so you probably end up looking as if you have terrible gas, which actually, you do. I did anyway. I’d been holding in a fart for hours, which always seemed to happen to me when I was on dates, and I was so terrified that it might trumpet out that I walked in short, clipped strides clenching my butt cheeks together for dear life. Asher asked if I was in pain and I blamed it on my heels. My shoes were pinching my toes I lamented. On our second date, I vowed to take a couple Gas-X ahead of time.
Asher didn’t suggest a late night cappuccino. He didn’t invite me over to see his apartment or look at the photos from the much discussed Spain trip and he sure as hell didn’t try to kiss me.
“Victoria,” he started, taking a half step back from me, “I think you have a really pretty face.”
“Thank you,” I said and felt myself blushing, which thank you Jesus he couldn’t see because we were outside in a public parking lot standing under the orange glow of a street light.
He thought I was pretty! He was going to kiss me! He was going to cut off his mullet for me! We were going to get married and save sea turtles together!
“But I have to be honest,” he went on.
I nodded, feeling every bit of enthusiasm draining from me. I unlocked my car door.
“Look,” Asher said.
“You don’t want a commitment,” I finished his sentence for him. I’d memorized these lines well by now. He didn’t have time for a girlfriend. His job. His family. He had a lot on his mind. I wasn’t his soul mate. He didn’t want to settle down. Blah. Blah.
“No, I don’t. I mean, it’s not right. I think you’re sweet and funny and adorable. The guy who gets you is going to be very lucky, I’m sure of it.”
“Ok, well…” I didn’t know what to say, so I opened my car door.
“I don’t want to lie to you,” he said.
“Why not?” and I meant this sincerely, because maybe a lie would have been preferable to what he actually said.
“Like I said, you have a pretty face.”
He shuffled around and pulled on his chin. He looked down at the pavement.
“But you just don’t have the body type that I prefer,” he confessed.
I stood shocked for a few seconds, blinking, probably a little open mouthed.
“You really should have just lied,’ I snapped, “The ‘I don’t want a commitment right now’ usually suffices.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to give you false hope.”
“Asher, you just don’t have the haircut that I prefer and you know what? On this date I did NOT have the time of my life,” and with that I plunked down into the driver’s seat of my car with zero grace and quickly shut the door. I was too embarrassed to even look in Asher’s direction, so I have no idea if he tried to stop me, but I have a feeling he didn’t. He probably went to the bar across the street and tried to pick up one of the several off duty, anorexic strippers who were slinking around looking for rich guys to take them shopping at Arden B. I should’ve just taken him over there myself and introduced them. Asher, meet Krystal, Ki’ra and Manipulation. They’d probably love his ridiculous, stupid mullet.
I waited until I was discreetly around the block before I really floored it. I whipped around turns delighting in the squeal of the tires against the asphalt. I shoved a Hole cd into the stereo so I could blare “Violet.” Fucking men. Who did these guys think they were? They acted like Jdate was a catalog where they could just order up the perfect girl. Their sense of entitlement made me sick. Their expectations for what a girl should be were infuriating and unrealistic, and who could possibly live up to their standards? Their template was nothing short of insanity. I knew what they wanted of course, and I wasn’t it. No wonder strip clubs were so popular. Guys didn’t want real women, like me. They wanted a fantasy and that’s what the Kittikat gave them.
The perfect girl is, above all, thin, but she has boobs. More than just a string bean, the perfect girl has a career and she’s into it. She’s climbing some kind of a ladder (burning calories doing it) and she’s smart. She also parties like a rock star. Men seem to praise female self-control only when it concerns diet and exercise. They like girls who treat every weekend like it’s Spring Break in Cancun and of course she’s never hung over afterward. In fact, on Monday morning she gets up, extra early so she can work out for an hour, and goes to her high powered job wearing a sleek business suit and of course she always wears sexy lingerie underneath it. A demi bra with lots of lace, garters and thong panties naturally, because that’s both comfortable and practical. She’s ferocious in bed. She probably wears one o
f those plastic lady cop outfits and twirls handcuffs around her index finger, but somehow she never comes off as slutty. She helps his mom with the dishes. Mom loves her actually. The perfect girl is into extreme sports. She’ll tell you about how skydiving is “AH MAY ZING.” She drinks like a man and knows all about football, yet she’s one hundred percent, giggly pink girly. She eats nothing but salads and Splenda and God knows she never gets gas. She has no bodily functions actually. When she goes to the ladies room with a group of her friends she isn’t peeing or touching up her makeup. She doesn’t have to because it never gets messed up. She’s just going in there for female bonding. People look up to her. Since elementary school she’s been the captain of every team. Homecoming queen may be a cliché, but for her it’s a reality. Lead roles in the spring musical because oh yeah, she can sing. And dance. You should see her on top of a bar. She probably doesn’t want a commitment. A bundle of contradictions if you think about it, so can she possibly exist? And if she did exist, what made these guys think she’d go for them?
Compared to the mythical perfect girl, I definitely couldn’t measure up. I had not one of her qualities. Not one. On paper I looked terrible. My Jdate profile should have read: “Out of shape, high school dropout, strip club hostess lives with parents and has irritable bowel syndrome. Can’t sing or dance. Hates to party. Will not bungee jump. Ever. Really wants to get married. Badly. Please email.” A Philippina mail order bride with a hare lip was preferable to that. But in real life, if someone got to know me I was funny, pleasant. I’d make a really good companion, or at least I thought I would. I was creative, sensitive and perceptive. I had character. I just didn’t have any accomplishments and I just wasn’t skinny enough.
Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat Page 27