Georgetown Girls
I spend a lot of time in bars. I realize that if all the significant events of your life occur in only one place, you may have a problem. My problem is either with bars or girls’ beds.
Nonetheless I’m in a bar again, about to experience another significant life event. At the moment, though, I’m half-listening to my friend Kevin.
“Is it wrong that I don’t want to sleep with Sarah again because she’s just not that hot?” Kevin asks. We sit at the bar in the dusk of Red Olive, a martini lounge up the street from the Georgetown waterfront. The red neon above us paints the gloom scarlet.
I look over the gin and tonic hovering near my lips. “Probably not as wrong as sleeping with her in the first place.”
“I can’t help it, dude. I told you, I can’t sleep with Allison anymore. I work with her. I’ll get fucked.”
“Which isn’t the point?”
“I’m screwed, Jace.”
Talking with Kevin is like having a conversation with the TV. No matter how loud you scream the programming won’t change.
“Sarah is the one from school?” I ask.
Kevin launches on a long explanation of how, yes, Sarah is the girl he met when we were both juniors together at University of Maryland and how he never really thought she was that hot. She’s got great tits, he clarifies, but she muffin-tops, you know? and on through how I should be sorry for him because he has to fall back to his fall-back.
I don’t listen. I’m busy peering around the gloom for my future wife. I would be happy to have a fall-back to fall onto.
“I’ve got to stop fucking the same girls,” Kevin concludes.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I reply. “I’ve got some patterns I need to break out of too.”
“Like what?” Kevin’s brow furrows in concentration.
“Being at Roman’s wedding got me thinking. I sleep with Dan’s girlfriend, I keep going after my ex-disaster Rachel. They just rain on the parade and delay the incoming flights.”
“So…”
“That’s one pattern, and I think it’s caused by what I look for. I used to look for drama. Adrenalin instead of endorphins.
“Plus I don’t think I was proactive. I let the girls come to me. Particularly Dan’s girlfriend. So I want to change that. I could really go for a girl with some self-confidence, possibly a nice person who doesn’t want to play games. And looking for that kind of girl in a bar, another bad pattern. If she was here she’d just be pissed off the whole time.”
“Every girl plays games.” Kevin looks worried, as if I’m demonstrating signs of mental illness.
“A hottie with a conscience, Kevin. That’s what I’m after.”
“Exactly,” Kevin says. “That’s why we’re here. So we can find me a Georgetown girl.”
On the list of things Kevin is good at, listening comes right after walking on water.
“You’re picking your ideal girl by the school she’s attending?”
“No, dude. Jace, listen.” Kevin seems much happier now, speaking about himself. “I mean the kind of girl that hangs out in Georgetown. She should drive a Benz and wear heels and go to law school. Or maybe she works on K street.”
The big law firms and lobbying groups all lie along K street. I can just imagine the pretty, power-hungry woman without a soul that Kevin thinks he wants to meet.
“Did you specify a personality when placing your order?”
“Dude! Come on, I’m not—I have a heart, Jace. She’s got to be nice. Maybe 5’1″, C or D cups. I like blondes. You know that, Jace.”
There must be a heart below Kevin’s muscle, but at times I believe the creatine has taken control of his higher brain function. Kevin obtained a degree in finance from the University of Maryland. He also experienced crippling doubt senior year when he couldn’t decide whether he was a boob guy or an ass guy.
“Jace, check them out.”
I stare down at my glass instead of following Kevin’s gesture. “Where?” I ask.
“The two at the corner of the bar. They just walked in.”
A moment later I dart my glance across the bar like a recon patrol slipping through enemy lines. They are both beautiful in a slightly stiff way, as if still learning to move their plastic bodies. They’re alike enough they could be sisters, though one is blond, her makeup from a Revlon ad, her clothes from the latest red carpet walk. She is mainstream; she is hot; she requires no imagination; she is perfect for Kevin.
The other girl, the brunette, wears a distressed leather biker jacket. Her nose is longer, her makeup a shadow of her friend’s. I like everything about her but the frown on her face. A cloud of disinterest thicker than LA smog surrounds her. The blonde obviously dragged her here.
“Let’s go talk to them,” Kevin suggests.
Hell, maybe they’ve got hearts of gold. This is America, after all; we’re all innocent till proven otherwise.
Besides, this is what I do. I fly wingman.
#
Few do it better. I weave through the flak of female defenses, distract their blood-seeking missiles and pull my friends from fiery tailspins, all in the name of love. Yes, I’ll admit that fault, but only once. I believe in love.
I also believe Kevin can open any group of girls on the coast. He’s got a brilliant smile and a body like the cover of Men’s Health. Even lesbians give him a chance. I can’t hear Kevin’s opening line to the blonde over the Thievery Corporation playing around us, but I hear the brunette laugh.
“I didn’t want you to make the mistake of buying your own drink,” Kevin continues.
The blonde doesn’t seem to mind Kevin’s awkward start. She smiles and says “too late.” The brunette, on the other hand, looks as if she’s annoyed already. She turns and looks at me as if wondering what obnoxious thing I’m going to say.
“I was just going to introduce myself.”
“How original.”
“I’m a scholar of the classics. My name is Jace.”
The brunette glances towards her friend and coded information flies between them in the silent communication of females. Then she offers me an unexcited, “I’m Alsace.”
“I’m Shania,” the blonde says to me. Kevin asks Shania whether he can buy their next round while I look at Alsace and try to think of what to say. She has green eyes that focus over my shoulder. I love green eyes.
“I love green eyes.”
“Too bad you don’t have them.”
Points for quickness, I guess, but so much for the American justice system. To girls in bars, men are always guilty till proven innocent.
“Actually I do,” I reply, “I’m wearing brown contacts.”
It’s funny, right? It meant “Hey, I’m a nice guy. You can laugh. It’ll be neat,” but she doesn’t laugh. A hint of a smile appears before she wipes it away and says, “I’m sure girls are very impressed by your fashion sense.”
I know I’d have more luck at the supermarket. Girls get approached by so many drunk, misogynist jerks at bars that defensiveness is an evolutionary response. At the supermarket girls don’t have their guards up. Plus you can make produce jokes.
An often ignored fact in modern dating is that hard-to-get doesn’t mean worth getting. Alsace just isn’t being polite, and I think tonight she can take her attitude home with her.
It’s depressing that people who might get along end up unable to, particularly because I know (my sister’s told me) that girls go home and wail “there just aren’t any nice guys out there!” after turning down advances all night. The system’s broke.
My decision frees me to do what I do best, which is help my friends get girls. I’m the Sancho Panza of the dating game.
“A defense contractor. Working for the greater good, eh?” Alsace replies to Kevin.
“Hey, we don’t—”
“What I’d like to know,” I interrupt, “is which of you is the older sister?” I’m playing two hunches, that the girls are sisters and that, had I let Alsace talk to Kevin a moment longer, she’d have made him look like a fool. They’re both good hunches.
Alsace speaks first, “Who says we’re sisters?” which only annoys me. Some guys won’t notice if a girl lights them on fire, but I’ve got my eyes open.
“Your chins. And if Shania didn’t dye her hair, that too.”
“Fine,” Shania says, with a much friendlier tone than her sister. “I’m older.”
I glance at Kevin, “Really? See, I think you’re lying. Kevin, what do you think?”
“I don’t know, Jace…” I can tell by Kevin’s tone that he’ll act his part for a minute at least.
“Girls lie most of the time, Kevin,” I comment.
“Why switch ages, though?”
“Good point. Maybe they’re insecure.”
“I guess that’s understandable.”
That’s the best line yet and I want to high-five Kevin for it. Such a subtle suggestion that they might have things to be insecure about. Men may be far behind in the sexual arms race, but we can draw blood too.
“Fine. Here,” Alsace hands me her ID. Shania looks at her sister, then follows suit.
Shania Rees. 1984. A year younger than me. I hand her ID to Kevin.
Marissa Rees. 1982. What the hell? I look at Alsace who is really Marissa. Did she do this just to end the conversation? Is she daring me to call her out? Maybe she thinks I don’t have the guts to call her out? Does she know why she did it?
Alsace/Marissa stares coldly at me. She looks like she’s ready to box. Forget hearts of gold. Try heartless. This is a girl who’s embraced the metaphor that love is war.
I used to live that metaphor too. Let’s face it; it feels like war. The only thing that doesn’t make any sense about that metaphor is that when you win a war you don’t end up living with the enemy. In romance, even the modern version of it, the winner ends up in the same bed as the loser. Sometimes you’re not even sure which you are.
I hand Marissa’s ID back to her and say “They didn’t lie. Alsace is a year younger.”
Marissa looks victorious, as though she always knew I didn’t have the guts to call her out. Let her think that. Man-eaters like Marissa used to excite me, but I’ve been there before. Her name was Elisabetta.
#
The first full sentence Elisabetta said to me was “Are you going to come with me to the bar?”
I relied on the only thing I had, young bravado, and replied, “Are you going to buy me a drink?”
So my problems go back to sophomore year, at least. Not that I thought this while following Elisabetta’s tan body and teal bikini across the beach towards the hotel’s bar. I was twenty, on Spring Break in Cancun with Kevin and a couple of his fraternity brothers and their girlfriends. She was Italian, studying at the University of Missouri and also in Cancun for break. She had the long, wavy, dark brown shampoo-commercial hair that only appears in the natural world on Italian women. For whatever reason Elisabetta picked me to play with that week.
I liked her because she was pretty, mysterious, and demanding. For nearly four years now I’ve been in this stupid pattern. Not that it wasn’t fun at the time.
The fraternity boys couldn’t keep their eyes off her. She’d get up from my bed in our shared hotel room and walk to the bathroom with nothing but panties and an arm across her chest. She’d walk away from me in the clubs and talk to other men, and I never followed her. In retrospect, she probably thought this was my confidence that she’d come back. I just didn’t know what I’d have said if I did follow her. Everything I did that week was more wishful thinking and daring than it was real confidence.
“Are you going to take me home with you now?” she asked on our first night. We were in the middle of a sweaty dance floor in a club. I’d been wondering if I had a chance. I stammered out a “yes.”
“What makes you think you can?”
“My stunning good looks?”
“It takes more than good looks to sleep with me.”
“Luckily I’m charming and funny, too.”
What’s amazing is that it worked. What’s not amazing is that I fell for her.
In three days I fabricated from a few cocktails, some jokes, and plenty of sex an emotional connection Shakespeare would have been proud to capture in a sonnet.
Elisabetta’s imagination wasn’t as good as mine.
“Do you want to take a walk on the beach before you leave?” I asked her in the early morning the day her plane came to take her back to Missouri.
“No. I’m never going to see you again. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
“That’s depressing.”
“Si Signor. Kiss me on the lips before you leave.”
I kissed her on the lips, left her hotel room, and took the walk myself. A year and a half later Rachel Fip took Elisabetta’s place as the greatest burn to scar me. There hasn’t been anyone since Rachel. Not really, anyway. I have no trouble finding girls to date or sleep with, but I’d rather not get too involved. It’s more fun to help my buddies. Which could be a pattern of it’s own.
#
Maybe I’m here helping Kevin because it’s easier than going after a girl myself.
“I’ve always felt that way too,” Kevin says to Shania, his voice dripping with smarmy charm. “Don’t you think that’s interesting?”
Without a wingman, Kevin relies on establishing an emotional connection with women by manufacturing feelings and sympathies he probably thinks he feels. That’s why he’s friends with me; someone needs to listen when those manufactured feelings get recalled for defects.
So why am I friends with him?
Yeah, he’s always willing to go out and he drives a cool car, but really I’m just loyal. Kevin caused me to meet Elisabetta. Kevin never intentionally lets me down. That’s worth wingmanning him, right?
“How often is not a lot?” Shania asks.
“Like… maybe six times a week. But it’s not a big deal.”
Great. If there’s one thing Kevin likes to talk about more than the gym it’s himself at the gym.
“And not just weights,” Kevin continues, “cardio too. Endurance is really more important.”
“Charming, Shania. You’ve found a real renaissance man,” Marissa says.
Kevin smiles. “I really believe in being well rounded. Don’t you?” He addresses this last part to Shania, who agrees somewhat earnestly while her sister rolls her eyes.
“Babe, it’s time to move on,” Marissa says. Suddenly I realize our time with the girls is over. If Kevin hasn’t impressed Shania yet, I can’t help him. I hope he has. He’ll be grouchy and intolerable for the rest of of the night if he gets shot down.
Shania leans over and says something in Marissa’s ear. Marissa’s expression says “if you say so” as she moves away for a moment to get the bartender and pay their tab.
“We’ve got to go,” Shania says.
“Well we should go with you,” Kevin suggests.
“Maybe some other time.”
“Can I call you, then?”
“Sure,” Shania sounds as if she expects to regret her decision, but she tells Kevin her number anyway.
Marissa rejoins us.
“Leaving so soon?” I ask.
“We were having a good night until you two came over.”
I laugh out loud. “We’ve got something in common. So was I.”
A sliver of a smile sneaks onto Marissa’s face as she and her sister say goodbye to Kevin and the girls head towards the door.
#
“Dude, she’s perfect,” Kevin says as soon as the girls move away.
“Well, what’s she like?”
“You saw her.”
“I didn’t get to talk to her. What’s she actually like?”
“I don’t know, Jace, she’s cool. She’s in law school part time. Her sister’s kind of a heartless bitch, huh?”
From the laughs the girls exchange as they walk out the door, I’m not sure Marissa is the only heartless one. We’ll see if she ever answers Kevin’s calls.
–
Copyright 2008 Lee Future
Edited by Jason Ray
