JD'S MAN STORIES

So it wasn’t in the papers or anything, but I’m back to being single again; which seems to be the state that most of my friends prefer me to occupy. They’re not smug (although they’re all in long-term relationships), it’s more that they enjoy the hilarity that is the smorgasbord of anecdotes the dating scene affords me.
Seriously, I’m cursed or something, it’s as if God herself has chosen me to be baptized in a fire of crazy fucking bitches. They roam the earth hunting in taffeta or tweed or whatever’s in season. This is not paranoia or even dramatic excess – here’s a little story from two weekends ago.

I was drinking with a friend in a bar recently when an attractive slightly younger brunette taps me on the shoulder: “Excuse me, aren’t you Jonathan?”

My name is Roger.

Turning around to face her, there was no register whatsoever, and I’m crap with names, but really good with faces. With a past like mine, I’ve had to develop a pornographic memory to dwarf that of those dudes in the passport booths at Dublin airport. There’s an athletic crack squad of bloodhounds if ever you’ve seen one – it’s so comforting to know they’re our last line of defense. So anyway, this girl, I’ve never seen her before so it’s ok.

“Yeah, I’m Roger… uh… I’m sorry…?”

“Oh, that’s ok, Jessica – you kept borrowing our wheelbarrow.”

WTF? I mean she knew I didn’t recognize her, but rather than help me out she throws this chiken bone out like I’m supposed to know.

“Of course, NOW I remember, Jessica, with the wheelbarrow.”

Which, having no alternative, is exactly what I do, only making it more embarrassing as she sees I’m faking it.

Like, why not just give me the whole history instead? Pride fucking with you as Marcellus Wallace said. Because like the rest of us insecure feeble fools she’s hoping to get that flash of recognition that we all crave when we accost some complete stranger and say, excuse me, don’t I know you? We need to be memorable, I guess.

So eventually it turns out that she was the neighbor of a cousin. However, by the time I figure this out my friend’s leaving and this whole awkwardness has made me a little indifferent, so I make my excuses and start to leave… until she stops and asks if I was sure I didn’t want a drink?

You’d have to be as smart as a window-licker not to figure out what that meant, so, being newly single I shook off my coat and grabbed us a couple of shots.

She seems nice enough except for the fact that she keeps trailing off her sentences and going glassy eyed. A few downers later I start to wonder if she’s all there. Even worse, I start to wonder if I ever borrowed a wheelbarrow in the first place.

As I nervously rack my brains she slips it under the door, casual as you like, this fucking bomb of a statement: “I’m sorry if I seem distracted, I have these sest az imme…”

At first my mind, dulled only slightly with booze, refuted what had happened. It blew it out of the water and then was spurred on with the thrill of possibility. The human mind devours the absurd: “I’m sorry, I actually can’t say anything until you just repeat what you just said.”

“I said, I’m sorry if I seem distracted, I have these sex toys in me.”

Let me explain something to those who may be reading this in California where according to my mate Todd, “People just fuck each other in the elevators for kicks, like, all the time!!!” Todd’s a moron, but I appreciate his sense of drama. But however idiotic his constant exaggerations about random threesomes with “babes”, we’re talking a dirty pub in Dublin here.

“Just one more time please, I’m sorry.”

And she said it again a little louder. I think someone else heard her but I was so…. can’t really think of a word, let’s say, “floored” that I couldn’t have cared less.

We’d been talking for 2 hours and all this time she’s had two metal balls rattling around in there. Now a room full of kittens wouldn’t have the curiosity I had this stage, which had actually started to manifest itself, so we went back to hers. I was a little on edge though, who goes to a bar with a dildo in their pants?

Forces were conspiring above in the clouds as we taxied to our destination.

So we get to the door and she lets me in and walks straight over to the mantelpiece and says: “Here is my boyfriend who died 5 years ago.”

Again, WTF?

I did that South Park blink thing for a second and then mumbled something inaudible, I mean, what do you say? So we talk about that for a while and I steer the conversation upstairs. As we kick off our shoes she starts saying to herself how strange it is to have a boy in her bedroom, which I dismissed as a variation of the I-don’t-normally-do-this-you-know that girls feel they have to say the first time you sleep together.

We’re in bed now and she extracts the metal balls—I’m astonished at how they clank about—and we nervously banter about the room and how messy it is. It’s actually quite acceptable to have a bathroom with a Fallujan theme these days, but this was that one step further. So she starts making excuses, she wasn’t expecting to have someone over and all that.

I say: “Yeah, sure.”

And she says: “No, it’s really weird to have a man in her room.”

Feigning disbelief I tease her saying, “Oh yeah, so how long has it been?”

“Five years.”

Kaboom!

Yeah, you might have seen it coming, but I didn’t. It was too tragic-comical, too surreal, too perfect. I just cocked my head like a confused cartoon dog. Again, what do you say? Nothing, is what. And as I went to sleep, rigid with expectation of some other crazy shit, I had to give it to her upstairs, it would make a great story… if I ever woke up.