By R. CHASE
Bachelor Behavior
Re-entering the world of the bachelor is a lot like standing in front of a cold pool on a hot summer day. You can either ease yourself in gradually, or you can just jump in.
But a man over forty shouldn’t be leaping into a cold pool on a hot day, unless he wants to die of a heart attack.
I thought I’d ease back into the single life, assessing what I wanted out of a relationship and determining how to achieve those goals. I’d find a woman I liked and really get to know her.
But the Universe always has other plans.
Why is it that the nights you’re least interested in going out the most interesting things tend to happen? It’s the mockery of happenstance.
Buddy Drinksalot, dragged me out of my solitude and Halo IV marathon by plying me with free sake and sushi in Lexington at Tachibana. I had a splitting headache, which the wine didn’t help with, but he insisted on driving back and hitting the dance scene in Germantown.
As we turned the corner to the smoking patio outside the Zanzabar I ran into Bootsie, literally colliding with her. She was a freshly minted twenty-three year old who’d been “under my management” at work, so to speak, until about a month previous. She was dressed in white patent leather stiletto boots with sequined shorts so short that I could see the goose bumps on her quivering spray-tan naked thighs. It wasn’t exactly practical for January – but it worked.
She dragged me to the bar to buy me a shot.
“Do you want to take me home tonight?” she said, pounding tequila with flushed cheeks and a dirty look in her eye.
I scanned my gin-soaked brain for some reason to refuse, but the idea of seeing her in nothing but those boots was a lot better option than pining over pictures of my ex and watching “How I Met Your Mother” reruns on Netflix.
I was outside hailing a cab when I lost her briefly, but found her across the street, on Preston, using the nearest light post as a stripper pole. She had her muscular thighs wrapped tightly around the top, leaning herself backwards into oncoming traffic. At least she managed to stop a cab dead in its tracks, saving me the trouble. I peeled her off the light post and tossed her in the back of the cab while four men in front of the bar savagely booed me. “Hurry up!” I barked at the cabbie, “those guys look violent.”
“I used to be a stripper!” she said, straddling me in the back of the cab and kneeing me in the groin while the cab bounced painfully down Eastern Parkway. She gave me a sophomoric lap dance as the driver leered from the rearview. This girl was an obnoxious drunk. I ducked my head down lower so nobody would recognize me.
In my apartment the show continued. Clothes were peeled off and she stood there in the cold moonlight, wearing nothing but those white stiletto boots.
As the embrace ensued, she suddenly panicked and pushed me away, asking, “Where am I? Who are you? What are you doing?”
Sheer terror gripped me. I’d brought home some kind of psychotic lunatic who’d either murder me in my sleep or run down the street naked screaming and directing the police to my apartment. “There he is officer, the man who tried to molest me…” Some right wing judge would have me castrated me and locked away forever.
SLAP!
As I was imagining what my face would look like on the iPhone Sex Offender app she smacked me hard across the face and laughed maniacally. She thought it was funny.
Is this what kids are calling foreplay? It wasn’t an aphrodisiac.
I let it go and continued the amorous exploration. Clothes were tossed, things got hot and heavy. Suddenly she dug her fingernails into my back and flayed the skin off like a wild animal.
“OW! Damn it, woman!”
It hurt. A lot.
Rough play is fine, but shouldn’t you work up to it? Where’s the context? Where’s the excitement? You can’t just go around slapping and clawing up guys randomly and expect it to be sexy. This wasn’t an episode of Teen Wolf.
But the night, fueled by alcohol and youthful exuberance, continued on.
I took her home in the morning. We parted without a word. There was no warm embrace, no kiss, no phone number, no sign that there were two human beings who had shared anything more than a drunken naked face-slapping awkward sexual encounter. It was just a hot mess that ended with a hangover, raw shame and some nasty claw marks on my back.
Was it worth the trouble?
Absolutely.
My plan to ease slowly back into the bachelor life had most definitely been ruined. But if you stand around wondering whether to leap into the pool long enough, the pool might just leap onto you.
I’d complain, but nobody would listen. Be a man and get in the pool already.
Contact R. Chase at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.