We did The Squire in Chatham last night. It’s a pub and it feels like a pub. But not a pub where serfs take digs at kings. It’s usually alive with the thrum and pump of upper-middle-class trim and daddy’s money and daddy issues and sugar daddies and bitter mommies and all those with those futures. I like that. 

            I had eight beers and three of what are called Mind Erasers. I’m sure they are tasty but then I was drinking for speed. I saw a girl from my stats class. She’s got these casually athletic legs which drive me to the brink and there is sex in her eyes which are always quick to smile, but it’s a genuine smile and I don’t see the hints of latent sociopathy that dapple the untroubled irises of so many of the well-to-dos in attendance. I am so sure I could have her, but maybe she’s just a friendly person. Later I DM’d her on instagram.

                        Me: Hey

                        Her: yello

            But by then I was dry heaving on some dark back road.

            I woke to a neat splotch of vomit. I thought Max had drunk and drove but those dark back roads are windy and I recall no careening. Also, I started thinking about her and cried.

            Also last night, I ran into a friend of a friend, Sarah. I grab her arm and she displays alarm. She insists she is not who she is. I tell her I’m friends with Izzy and she crooks an eyebrow, a pregant pause.

Then I tell her, “I am Gucci Flip Flops.”

She bursts and grabs her nearby friend, Elena.

“THIS IS GUCCI FLIP FLOPS!”

They shriek in concert and I wish to have them both.

            Sarah is New England bourgeoisie. Her college degree as much planned as the pregnancy or the pickets. She’s got a great ass and blonde hair and a winning smile and good fashion sense. She’s got small breasts which I like and this sort of Italian-Roman nose that’s dynamite on her. I’ve got no clue what she’s like, but her TikTok holds tidbits of spin class and also there is a black and white shot of her bare back in an outdoor shower.

            I am quick to fantasize about our dinner date. My game is Italian: pasta, wine, coffee, cake.

In the Uber back to hers we are silent.

            “You liked dinner?”

            She nods, just for me.

            Our hands touch while I pretend to look outside. I guess I really am looking out, but my mind is on my hand which is tingling from her hand and I’m thanking our Lord for the concept of light and more specifically its absence from the backseat, because I am pitching a tent in my navy slacks, my favorite slacks that I always wear on first dates. I wish for her not to see this because I don’t want to seem young, and I suspect that her great grandfather was a Puritan, you know, the kind that hanged “witches.”

            Also in the car, I fantasize. Yes, this is a fantasy within a fantasy. I fantasize that my thunderous erection splits the seams of her subconscious to land squarely into tomorrow’s tea time with Elena. Anything to help the cause.

            My move at hers is one of those early 2000s rom com that sucks so perfectly. Good acting, decent budget, with some witty jokes and some corny jokes. But the characters are grotesque and mangled versions of ideas of dreams of people. They play games, make gestures, they fall out and recouple. The subtext is poison. Yes you guessed it: How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. But really, it is not bad art is it? Well, you’ve got to be bad sometimes.

            And this, this is the moment. Right when we prop up in bed. A nudge with a leg or a hip. Our bodies are saying hello. Isn’t that glorious? When you touch legs and then press. Like a shy little first-time-footsie-er. A schoolgirl crush, eh? I hope you’ve experienced this, dear reader. The subtext is clear, in fact some cheeky intruder has daubed the word hump on her wall in 500 point Montseratt. But there is no sweeter nectar than uncertainty. And why ruin a good thing with language.

            Once we kiss, our hands and hips begin to flow like the dancing of a dozen divorcees having a spiritual moment while listening to some vaguely middle-eastern flute music, encouraged by an old pro named Gita with grey curly hair and somehow a salt and pepper goatee. And Gita says things like, “there are no rules, just feel it, feel anything!”

And afterwards we are cuddling. Cuddling is greater in some ways. You know this, I hope. We will cuddle and watch the crummy film and we will talk in slow sentences with words many seconds apart. It is not really conversation. We are stupefied, and our words are worth nought. The plot of the movie is vapor and we’re so tired and so satisfied that the corny jokes are like fresh daisies and cool juice and I’ll remember this moment so fondly because we laughed with no pretense. We fall asleep.

-

But what happened is that when I told them I was Gucci Flip Flops, they laughed, then left.

And what really happened is that when I took her to dinner, when I took Hannah to dinner, our first real date, I had to pretend to know what oxtail sugo was and I didn’t ask the waiter about padano which was in half the pasta dishes and is just basically fucking parmesan. I picked the wine at random and sure, I knew about crème brûlée, but the Merlot made me crass, then the coffee skittish. I don’t have a car, so she drove us back.

And what’s really sad is that none of that mattered to her, but I let it do me in, didn’t I?