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Meanwhile, back in Innanet Dating Land....
My wicked, nimble digits had clicked their way into the life of a Colorado Springs mishap. I couldn’t help it. Her photo portrayed this really cute and shapely brunette (my Achilles heel: brunettes... or... well, women) and in a cosmic display of certain destiny, she wrote back. Letters led to long-distance phone calls and an eventual coordination of schedules. I should have known better than to entertain the idea of dating a girl that lives an hour away, but at the same time the concept had its merits.
Shanon called me the night before and told me she forgot that friends of hers from Germany were visiting, but that I was welcome to join them. How can you forget you have visitors from Germany? When I indicated on the phone that the following weekend might be better to try to meet instead, she said, “Well, I may be going to Florida next weekend.”
“You ‘may be’? Why don’t you know?”
“Well, I’m not sure what the guy expects from me in return for the trip. You know? But still… it’s like free tickets to Florida.”
Warning.
I tried declining to make the trip, as I was still recovering from mononucleosis, and any activity more than an hour was taxing. She urged me on, saying she'd show me "a really good time."
When I arrived at 2 p.m. they were finishing their second round of Bloody Marys. She didn’t look quite as arousing as her photo, but then, they rarely do. There were two girls and three guys sitting around the dining room table and I was having difficulty identifying which one was Shanon. I said hello to the room, and in a moment Shanon stood up and introduced herself. (I was relieved that I didn’t have to pick her out of the crowd, but troubled that it was an issue.) While the guests introduced themselves, Shanon drifted into the kitchen and offered me a drink, casually draping a napkin over a bong that stood at the end of the counter, her girlfriend discreetly sweeping up a scattering of marijuana seeds from the table. All but one fellow introduced himself, so I took the initiative, "Hi, I'm Brian. I didn't catch your name."
"Rob."
"Are you one of the visitors from Germany?"
"No."
"Oh. Umm... So... how do YOU know Shanon?"
He said nothing and Shanon interrupted with a singular laugh saying, "Oh, Rob's my ex. We met on Match, too!"
Rob didn't find it amusing. I postulated, "Well, that's cool. So you guys are still friends?"
"Yeah," Rob growled, "'Friends'."
Shanon began to laugh, bray almost, recounting how she got home at 4:30 that morning from dancing the night away. In fact, she was partying so strong that her visiting friends decided to leave her at the bar dancing with two guys, take a cab back to her place and wake her roommate just so they could get in and go to bed. The lot of them started drinking again upon waking at 8:30.
A dark-complected, brown-eyed child wandered about the living with a drooling watering can, seeking plants to drown. He paid me no mind. In fact, he ignored everyone in the room. Something told me he was the mature one of the group, so I asked his name. He ignored me. "Oh," Shanon said, "That's Dante."
"Who's Dante?"
"I am," he said without looking at me.
"Heh. OK, Dante. I mean, who's little boy are you." He looked at Shanon for a second and then went back to watering. Shanon interrupted his work to introduce me as Uncle Brian. I felt a little ill.
"Didn't I mention I have a son," she asked.
"Umm, no. No. Yeah -- no. I would have recalled that."
"He's from my first marriage. That guy was a real asshole."
"First marriage? How many times--"
"Oh, just twice."
She was between 25-26 years old.
No one had eaten that day and Shanon promised to lead us to a restaurant. It didn’t seem to be a priority for her though, as she instead directed us to the geological marvel, the Garden of the Gods, Dante in tow. Shanon had seen fit to bribe Dante with large amounts of cola earlier that day, and the caffeine had now taken possession of his mind and body. He twitched and kicked about in his car seat while chattering incessantly about the magnificent magnetic space rocks that keep us all from floating into the sun. When we freed him from the vehicle, we spent the next couple hours chasing him around the Garden, pulling him off of rocks and away from belaying climbers. His mother nonchalantly blamed it on the caffeine, accepting no responsibility for giving him the stuff in the first place. She was quite a sight in heels and dress slacks, climbing the rocks behind him with a burning cigarette dangling from her lips. I didn’t realize she smoked.
Shanon’s friends – now dwindled to two, Abbey and Joe, and me – were ready to fall over from hunger. We pleaded with her to reign the boy in so we could leave. She eventually led us to Manitou Springs, essentially an even more redneck suburb of the already ultra-conservative Colorado Springs, to a bar where literally everybody knew her name, first stopping off to see her mother so she could get some spending money.
Warning.
Her mother is a chain-smoking shop owner with a mouth like a sailor and a sense of humor to match.
By this time you may be wondering why I’m still on this date. So was I. It was certainly no longer a matter of manners. She had separated me from my wheels, and I was quite at her mercy, much as I was at the mercy of the bar menu. We were in luck, for the yellowed, tattered menu boasted “Manitou Springs Best Burger”. If it was the best when the menu was printed in 1993, I was sure it’d be even better by 2003. We impatiently ordered a round of meat, then drinks for the wait. From the bar Shanon brought Dante a pile of maraschino cherries for dinner and promised him some of her fries when the adults’ dinners came. He began pouring sugar packets into his glass of water to make it fit for his consumption.
“Dante, don’t.”
He sipped the drink, shook his head disdainfully, looked at his mother then me, raised an eyebrow and emptied another packet into the water.
“Dante, don’t,” she repeated, dragged off her cigarette and rolled her eyes away.
He sipped again and repeated the process until the water was sucrose saturated. She sighed in a “Well what can you do” fashion and went back to smoking and drinking.
This was no environment for a child, or for myself. I was tired, hungry, and the Epstein-Barr virus (mono) had my head in a vise. I wanted to go home, but Denver seemed a lifetime away from that smoky, noisy pit. I leaned over and mentioned to her that I needed to head back to my truck as I had plans to see a friend’s band that night.
“Oh, OK,” she said, then ordered Jaigermeister shots for Abbey and herself. More friends joined the table. She accepted a pitcher of beer from a flirtatious man at the bar. She began to loosen up, and suggested another night of dancing, picking up her cell phone and procuring a babysitter for her son for later.
Shanon and Abbey began to drink like true champions: red wine, Jaiger, vodka and cranberry, beer, peppermint schnapps. I was ill just watching them. The daylight slowly disappeared outside and the drinks kept coming, all to the soundtrack of Dante running around the bar, wailing like a fire engine while intermittently flailing his arms about and beating himself on top of the head with his hands. Out of boredom I wandered over to the jukebox where a new acquaintance, Daryl, joined me. He pumped some money into the machine and selected Blondie’s “Tide is High”, then proceeded to pick crappy pop song after crappy pop song. Daryl was cautiously gay, and I applauded his courage for living in the Springs. He corrected me, stating he was there on a date with one of Shanon’s bar friends, and prayed to get back to Denver safely.
I sat back down next to Shanon and asked yet again to be taken to my truck. She agreed, but the waitress brought another round. A tear may have welled in my eye. She sang along to Blondie on the jukebox, “I’m not the type of girl, who gives up just like that…”
What? The “type” of girl? You stupid bitch, it’s “I’m not the kind of girl!" She had gotten the lyrics wrong. I’d had enough. We were a poor match, with obviously differing values, and I was not going to spend another minute in that bar when I could be home doing something more stimulating like clipping my toe nails or watching the impression patterns of my popcorn ceiling. I stood up and announced to the table that I needed to be driven to my truck. She chugged her vodka and cranberry and within 15 minutes had joined me outside to transport me back. It had taken two and a half hours to pry her from her drinks.
Finally, back at my truck, she told me what a wonderful time she had and how interesting I was and that we should do it again real soon... as soon as she gets back from Florida, that is. She leaned in for a kiss. While I found her to be an atrocious mother, an obnoxious, inattentive date, and not nearly as attractive as the photo she'd posted, I honestly did quickly consider giving her a long, slow kiss. After all, I might still be contagious with mono.
Instead, I gave her the stranger hug where you only touch shoulders and arc your back and hips away as though there's a three foot flame coming up from the ground inbetween you.
“Call me?” she suggested.
"Mm." Call you the World's Worst Mother, you loon....
