After a three week lull . . .

I came home last night (this morning?) at 1:35 a.m., and found an Ulta Salon menu stuck to my door. It had been torn in half and scrawled on it in red lip liner (or maybe even lip stick), was the following message:

Lost your #. Call me.

Of course, it was signed by Ubermom. She'd gone radio silent the first week of September, after I did something sort of inconsiderate and I was convinced she hated me. I called her today, and she responded with complete nonchalance. Asked if I wanted to see her. I told her I'd call her later, as I was at work. How bizarre. Thing is, I have a complete "out" here . . . I don't have to call her. In the long run, I'm probably best served by not calling. There are a couple of more promising irons in the fire, truth be told. And by "more promising" I mean far less crazy.

Dénouement: Ubersaga Chapter IV

As she pulled her dress over her head and removed her bra, I recalled the last few lines of an anonymous 17th Century madrigal that I had long ago memorized:

No beauty she doth miss
When all her robes are on:
But Beauty's self she is
When all her robes are gone.

The room was hot because she made me light the four decorative candles that I had in there, and it was July, after all. We’d left “Mezzanine” playing in the living room at high volume.

The “boundaries” agreed upon earlier in the evening were soon forgotten.

At exactly 8:00 a.m. I was jolted awake by an obnoxiously loud musical ring tone. It was her mobile phone. She had apparently set the alarm on it to wake her. Before I could take stock of the situation, she was up and dressing. I couldn’t register it all at once, but by 8:10 a.m. she had come around my bed, kissed me good morning and good bye, and had scampered out of my room.

I heard her talking to Frankie, so I got up and put my boxers and a tee-shirt on. I walked out of my room and bumped into Frankie in the hallway, as I heard my front door shut. As I greeted him, he went into the guestroom, and I could see that he had made the bed and that his waitress was no longer there.

“Where’s the waitress?”

“She took off.”

“Didn’t you drive her?”

“No, she followed me in her car.”

He had peeked out the blinds in the guestroom and I joined him. We could see the STS pulling out of my driveway. We caught a glimpse of the vanity plate on the Cadillac as it drove away: “UBERMOM.”

Frankie was the first to laugh about it: “Didn’t ubermom offer to give you a ride back to your car?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“So I guess you’ll be needing that ride, then?”

“Let me jump in the shower real quick. Do you mind?”

“No.”

“Cool. Hey, any interest in catching a 9:00 mass?”

“Sure.”

Seven Hours Later: Ubersaga Chapter III

The STS pulled into the spot in my driveway normally occupied by my car, which, you’ll recall, I left behind. As we entered my house, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell was in store for me there . . . given that heretofore the night had been going so smoothly. I turned on the light as we walked in and she made a bee-line for the stereo and my music collection.

“What are you drinking?” I asked.

“Surprise me,” she answered.

I opened my liquor cabinet and stared at it for a moment. I settled on one of my favorites for the fairer gender: a shot of vodka and a shot of Pama pomegranate liqueur, topped off with tonic water in a rocks glass filled with ice. No garnish. Because I’m lazy that way. I poured myself a glass of Crown Royal, and walked into my living room, where she had put the Cure’s "Disintegration" album on and was busy dancing to "Fascination Street." I sat and watched her dance for most of the song.

I had forgotten he was on the way by the time Frankie showed up with his waitress. The waitress brought a cooler full of Beck’s beer with her. My girl paid no mind to Frankie and his lady friend, but kept on dancing in a sort of preternatural fugue.

“We’re gonna hit the hot-tub,” Frankie announced triumphantly. His waitress said nothing, but it was evident she regarded my lady much as one regards the average cockroach. Frankie found the towels in the linen closet in my hallway, and he and the waitress popped into my guest room, emerging in the towels a couple of minutes later. They went out my back door, leaving me alone with the dancing blonde.

The chick sat to drink her drink, and lit a cigarette as she did so. We sort of talked, but there wasn’t really much to talk about. After drinking about half of her drink, she asked if I had Kahlúa. I said I did, and she asked if I’d mix her a White Russian. I got up and did so, and she changed the CD to Depeche Mode’s "Violator" album. I brought the White Russian back to the couch. Even though I'm in my third decade of life, I never seem to remember the formula for doing this, which I've been using since adolescence, but somehow I made my move, and we started making out. We kissed for a while, and when she came up for air, she spoke:

“Do you have any weed?”

I don’t smoke weed. I have no weed at my house. Maybe I should, for just these sorts of moments. I don’t know. I don’t even know that I would know where to get any weed if I wanted to anymore. And even if I had some, I don’t know that I’d smoke it, even if a hot chick wanted to smoke out with me. I’ve never been a big fan of psychoactives. All in all, I love my booze. It occurred to me that back in October of 2004 I bought a case of whippets as party favors for a bachelor party and I had sort of forgotten about it. Also, my buddy Laz’s ex-girlfriend was Czech, and on one of her trips to Prague, she had brought me back a bottle of absinthe.

“I don’t have any weed, but I do have whippets if you want. . .” Don't think that the juvenile nature of the suggestion was lost on me. I may as well have suggested that that we huff some Liquid Paper out of a paper bag.

“You do???” I dug my cracker out of a junk drawer, and brought the box of whipped-cream chargers over to my coffee table. I filled a balloon full of N2O for her and passed it over. As she fazed out, I did a whippet myself. Then I refilled the balloon for her and she did a second whippet. As she was blowing in and out of the balloon, Frankie walked in and looked at us in what I can only describe as confusion. He said nothing, fished a couple of beers out of the cooler his waitress had brought over, and went back outside. I resumed my make out session, which we punctuated by cigarettes, whippets, and more drinks. That went on for a while.

“Look, we need to establish some boundaries,” she interrupted, “because I don’t usually do this sort of thing.” I love the inevitable disclaimer that every woman seems to give in this situation. I call it the I’m not usually this slutty speech. I let her talk, anticipating her ground rules as if she had read the same guidebook that they must distribute to girls in middle school: in summary, everything short of actual intercourse would be OK, but she wasn’t going to have sexual relations of the Clinton variety with me. I agreed. Eventually, we went through all of the whipped cream chargers.

“Have you ever tried absinthe?” I asked her.

“You have absinthe? Really? I’ve wanted to try it since I read Oscar Wilde.” That comment surprised me. I should note that throughout the night, she’d shown some idiot savant tendencies, like when she referenced Cyrus the Great in a conversation back at Carpe. It sort of fascinated me, given the overwhelming vacuousness of the rest of her conversation. I nodded, got up from the couch, and changed the CD to Massive Attack’s "Mezzanine" album.

I had the bottle of absinthe, but none of the requisite accoutrements. I brought the bottle over, along with a liter bottle of Voss water and a sugar shaker. Czech absinthe tastes like Windex – very chemical like, as opposed to say, Spanish absinthe. You need to cut it with quite a bit of sugar and water to make it palatable. I poured the absinthe over a tablespoon of sugar in a highball glass and lit it on fire. The lights were very dim in the living room and the burning absinthe cast an eerie blue light on the scene. I poured the water into the glass, extinguishing the flame. I thought she’d complain, but the taste didn’t seem to bother the chick as she slammed the absinthe like she would have a shot of tequila. She asked for another, and I looked at her impressed. As I poured her a second glass of absinthe, Frankie and his waitress walked in. They were speechless at the sight of the chargers strewn about my hardwood floor and the bottle of absinthe prominently in the middle of my coffee table. I looked at them and shrugged. They shuffled into the guest room. I looked at the clock on my cable box, and was surprised to see that it was 3:30 a.m. She sipped through her second glass of absinthe, and I finished the last of my Crown Royal. I’d been drinking non-stop for seven hours.

“Let’s go to bed,” I suggested.

Death Takes a Holiday: Ubersaga Chapter II

Text message to Frankie, 11:54 p.m: “Ur my ride tomorrow morning”

The Cadillac STS shot out of the Kyoto parking lot and onto the street like the proverbial bat out of hell. It then did an abrupt U-turn in flagrant disregard of the No U-Turn sign prominently situated on the median across from the mall and headed westward well in excess of any posted speed limit. It occurred to me that nobody in the car was sober enough to be driving legally. A part of me wanted to adjure this chick to slow down, but aside from her speeding, the car was handling pretty well. We were still talking about music when out of nowhere, the car careened to a screeching halt into a parking lot.

“I need my music.” She said, as she fished out a cartridge for a 6-Disc CD changer from somewhere, and got out of the car to load it into the changer in the trunk.

Text message to Frankie, 11:59 p.m.: “I am living 40 year old virgin”

As abruptly as we had pulled over, we were off again, at least 20 miles-per-hour over the speed limit. "If You Leave" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark blared out over the stereo. As she sang along with the song, she stuck both her hands out the moon-roof and began swaying back and forth as she steered the car with her knees. We were only about halfway to my place at that point, but I honestly don’t think she was watching the road as she did this. It was, quite frankly, terrifying. She tore through a yellow light as if it were not there at all.

Text message to Frankie, 12:04 a.m.: “I may die soon.”

Text message from Frankie, 12:07 a.m.: “hang in there”

Seize the Night: Ubersaga Chapter I

The bar was just across the street from the mall, so we walked there after dinner. 8:30 is admittedly a little early, but we were going to run the same game as we did at the Pub . . . and that required a place to sit. The place wasn’t as dead as we had expected, but we were able to score a table – with four lounger-type leather chairs. The waitress was hot on the spot – and we were ready with our drink orders. I went with a greyhound (Ketel One), and Frankie ordered a Maker’s Mark and soda. Within a half-hour, the bar was full. Clearly a crowd making this the first stop for the evening. The ladies were definitely in a different league from the typical bar-fly ladies we had become accustomed to. Would our game even work on them? That remained to be seen.

Now I should be clear – I’m a pretty average looking guy – certainly no Clark Gable, or anything. Frankie is too. If we have any strength, it’s in the delivery, but we need to step up to even get a shot at that. We saw two women eyeing our spare chairs. As they approached, Frankie and I made eye-contact with each other, as the ladies were spying the chairs and neither of us. The leader of the two walked up, and put her hand on one of the spare chairs.

“Do you mind if we take these chairs?” Bingo – they were out for the chairs, and as it turned out, there with a few other women.

“Actually, we’re expecting people,” I said. Which was true, in a sense. . . . She turned her nose up at me in disgust. As she walked away, Frankie and I looked at each other again. “Let the bitch stand,” I told him. He cracked up.

We noticed a hot, tall blonde standing by the bar. Frankie rated her a 9.5, but I thought she was more of a 9. She stood about 5’10”, but was wearing heels, which took her well over 6’. She was a definite stunner. She walked away from the bar and toward the back of the place. That’s the type of chick this place drew – they were all cut from the same cloth – and it was a cloth that neither of us had ever had any experience tailoring.

I was well into my second greyhound, when I looked up at an amazon towering over our table. It was the aforementioned 9.

“Is anybody sitting here?”

“We’re actually saving it for you.” I’ve always been comfortable delivering even the lamest of openings. “I’m Jack.”

An unsolved mystery remains why She decided sit with me and Frankie. Aside from being tired of standing, that is . . . My immediate gut thought was that she was a “working girl” and we were easy marks, but that wasn’t the case at all. She had just bought a new pair of shoes at the Louis Vuitton store in the mall, and had asked the sales guy where she could go wearing them. He suggested Carpe, and she had stopped by. We talked a bit with her, and she excused herself to have a smoke. SCORE! Smoking is one of my strengths – it’s a captive audience for seven minutes – and I can always show how awesome I am over a cigarette. We left Frankie to guard the table, and we went outside to pollute our lungs. Pleasant conversation. Her ex-husband had her daughter that night, and she had stopped by Carpe Noctem en route, to flirt with dudes before she went over to his place to “fuck.” That’s what she liked to do, she said – as he was “safe,” but she liked the “scene,” and flirting. We came back in and talked with Frankie. She ordered another drink – and so did we, and we smoked again like 20 minutes later. Drink, smoke, drink. Around 10:30, she suggested that we go somewhere with a patio bar, so that we could drink and smoke at the same time. I suggested the sushi bar across the street, Kyoto Grill, because I knew they’d be starting their reverse happy hour at 11:00. Frankie called his waitress, and told her to meet us there. The 9 asked for our tab, and put down a credit card – her ex’s credit card – which she explained she was to use for “food.” We didn’t argue as she paid for our drinks.

Getting to Kyoto would have been as easy as walking across the street, but this chick insisted on driving. She had left her car – a Cadillac STS – with the valet, and when he brought it around, Frankie and I got in, with me riding shotgun . She tore out of the parking lot and barreled across the street like Mario Andretti, blowing through a stop sign on the way. When we pointed that out, she explained that “it’s private property,” so she didn’t have to obey the sign. She pulled up to the valet at Kyoto about as abruptly as she had departed the last valet, and gave him $20 to park her car up front. Frankie and I looked at each other in confusion.

The bar was crowded and there were no empty tables on the patio. There as one large eight-top with a pair of old ugly people sitting at it. Ugly as they were, they were making out like 14 year-olds. We approached them and asked if we could sit with them. They agreed, and pretty much ignored us. Frankie’s waitress showed up, and was more confused than either or us, as she was sober and had no idea what we had been up to thus far. The server came by and we ordered a bunch of happy-hour sushi – rolls mostly – and another round of drinks.

We ate and talked some more, though I was pretty drunk, so the conversation couldn’t have been very good. At one point, Frankie’s waitress leaned over at me and said “she’s real pretty, but a little crazy . . .” about my date. I had to agree, though the irony of Frankie’s waitress saying it was not lost on me.

Somehow, we ended up talking about music. Somehow, we ended up talking about the Smiths.

“Do you have any Smiths at your place?” She asked.

“Yeah. Smiths, Cure, Depeche Mode . . .” I answered.

“Do you have anything to drink at your place?” She asked.

“Well yeah, whatever you want, pretty much . . . .”

“We should get out of here, go back to your place, drink and listen to music.”

I looked over at Frankie and his waitress. “What do you guys think?” I asked them. They were game. I explained where I lived to the chick, as we left. Then it occurred to me that I lived about 20 minutes away, and she likely wouldn’t find my place, so I made an executive decision: “I’ll ride with you, and Frankie will give me a ride back to my car tomorrow.”

The Uberprologue

I broke up with my ex-girlfriend last October. I’ve never been the best at breaking things off cleanly, and for all intents and purposes, I kept on seeing the “ex” for several months afterward. My close friends knew that it wasn’t healthy for me, but there wasn’t much they could do to convince me of that. The holidays were painful – I spent Christmas and New Years without her for the first time in several years . . . went to Vegas with the ex over MLK weekend . . . and then she started seeing somebody else in March. Maybe even as early as February. I found out in March. A guy who treated her so poorly that I could count on a semi-weekly phone call from her in tears over something he’d done to hurt her. My “leave the cage door open” philosophy got to wear on me pretty harshly as time progressed. So it goes.

Frankie and the Kaiser were two guys who were there for me from the beginning of this experience. I day-drank with the Kaiser and his lady through many a Saturday, and Frankie was always available for a bite. Of our group, Frankie and I were the last two not in a long-term committed relationship. We hung out at the Pub by my house, and around St. Patrick’s Day, we decided that we were going to use the Pub as “training wheels” to hone our “game.” For most of our twenties, we had been out of the game so to speak, due to long term relationships. Neither of us felt particularly confident at the time. The Pub was a perfect place to experiment, as it is frequented by a truly diverse clientele: teachers, Goths, lawyers, eurotrash, hipsters, lesbians, Mexicans, etc. As I mentioned before, our ground rule was “there is no failure, only feedback.” For at least three nights a week for a few months there, we honed our game – played wingman for each other – good cop/bad cop, etc. We hit the most success with the “sit in a high traffic area – if possible, on the way to the ladies’ room – strive for eye contact (even if it's an inappropriate leer) and follow with a 'hello.'” We encountered rejection mostly, but sometimes success. Back to the drawing board no matter what. After all, all human action fulfils a positive intent at some level – and we had merely to show that we could be that positive intent. We got to the point where we could run certain “plays” by rote – like our “Iowa” pitch. Introduce me and Frankie to a single girl from Iowa; I’d bet on one of us pulling a number from her by the end of the night.

Frankie ended up dating one of the waitresses from the Pub for a while. It was a “be careful what you ask for” experience for him, and we really don’t hit the Pub much anymore, but that’s a story for another time. It does, however, have a little bearing on the story at hand, as you will soon note.

On Saturday, July 28, 2007 Frankie called – he said it was time for us to switch-up our game – time to take it to the next level. No more dive-bar shenanigans. It was time, he said, to go to one of the happening bars or clubs in town – one with a scene – time to take a ride around the block without the training wheels so to speak. I hesitantly agreed, as much as I hate change, and left it up to him to pick one. He chose one of the trendier new bars: Carpe Noctem. We decided to get dinner before the outing, and opted for the food court at the closest mall: I treated myself to Panda Express. Good stuff. Around 8:30 we headed to the bar.

Mauled by cougar

Vanity plate on the Cadillac STS departing my driveway this morning: "UBERMOM". Sometimes you don't think a story can get any better, and it does.