<\/p>\n
It was a fantastic Saturday evening, so I decided to climb
\ndown into the Quarry House, one of the last of Silver
\nSpring’s neighborhood bars.
\nIt was located beneath a Chinese restaurant, down a flight of concrete
\nsteps.\u00a0 One window allowed a small amount
\nof natural light to seep through, but it was pretty much obscured by a large,
\ngrumbling air conditioner and a few band flyers.<\/p>\n
In the dungeon, three or four locals were drinking and She had the tables so I did her a favor and hit the bar with In a retro suit, James looked as if he’d been belched out of Like a starving man, he grabbed the second glass, sloppily “Is that what this is about?”<\/p>\n James had scheduled this Quarry House meet earlier in the “Her name’s Tabby. “What cat?”<\/p>\n “Like the cat.”<\/p>\n “What, from a show?”<\/p>\n “No, like a tabby cat.”<\/p>\n I nodded, then waited about three minutes, nursing my James leaned back, nearly toppling off the stool.\u00a0 “So she’s great.\u00a0 She has, like, 19 piercings.\u00a0 I met her through my little sister’s AOL “Woah, there, Jimmy boy. Claire’s 17.”<\/p>\n “No, no, this chick is 29.”<\/p>\n “And she’s talking to Claire?”<\/p>\n “She’s her teacher or something.\u00a0 I don’t know what the fuck stupid fuckhead “She thought…?”<\/p>\n “I was using Claire’s computer to download porn because I “I was out of the country two weeks ago.”<\/p>\n “Fuck you!\u00a0 You’re I put my hands up and forced a smile.<\/p>\n “So we chatted for about five minutes and I found out that “Because she’s Claire’s teacher.”<\/p>\n He glared at me, sipping his beer.\u00a0 I returned to my own glass and kept my eyes “So,” he continued, “we agreed to meet at the Royal Mile for “We head to her place – one of those fucking soulless new The pitcher was empty, which I think was my fault.\u00a0 I ordered another.<\/p>\n “Now we’re supposed to meet for a picnic tomorrow.\u00a0 I’m totally stoked.\u00a0 I think there is<\/em> some chemical thing between me and this bitch.”<\/p>\n “So you found a girl.”<\/p>\n “Yep.”<\/p>\n “Named after a type of cat.”<\/p>\n “Well, no, it’s Tabitha.”<\/p>\n “Right.”<\/p>\n “So what I’m thinking is that we should have, you know, a I shivered and turned on him, “What?”<\/p>\n He put his hands up in apology, “Well, I mean, Nacho…”\u00a0 he shrugged, “I mean, you know.”<\/p>\n “What do I know?”<\/p>\n “You’re not, you know, liked by women.”<\/p>\n “Women like me.”<\/p>\n James shrugged again, “Okay. “Like you have room to talk. “Oh, go ahead, I’m a bad person. I’m the naughty one.\u00a0 That’s fine, say it if it makes you feel The pitcher was empty again and James wasn’t really “Finish that pitcher,” James said, “Then we’re going up to “We’re not allowed in there…” I slurred.<\/p>\n “The gloves are off! <\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n I don’t know if the Bolivian place has a name, but it’s not Returning five months later, the place was deserted except “It seems strangely hopeless,” he said.\u00a0 “Like I’ve jinxed it.”<\/p>\n I knew the feeling well. I kept quiet and continued drinking, watching James out of “You drunk?”\u00a0 He “Yeah,” I replied grimly.<\/p>\n “Let’s go drive around the Beltway a few times!”<\/p>\n Ah, well. Maybe I had made a miscalculation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352,3],"tags":[353,179,395],"class_list":["post-2513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","category-lush","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-james","tag-lush"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2513"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2731,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513\/revisions\/2731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nreading, all of the tables clear and empty.
\nA heavily inked waitress reading a book titled Fetish<\/em> met my eye and winked.
\nShe always remembered me, probably because I always asked for a tattoo
\ntour.\u00a0 There’s nothing quite as erotic as
\nfollowing the hummingbirds and roses and hearts right down to the panty line.\u00a0 Or right up, as the case may be.<\/p>\n
\nthe other locals.\u00a0 The bartender was a
\ntough looking demon of a man who laughed too much, talked too fast and had the
\nkindest heart I’ve ever known.\u00a0 He broke
\nthe bad news:\u00a0 No Yuengling.\u00a0 Down to Heferweisen or the sub-par Snow Goose
\nporter.\u00a0 I went porter because I’m, on occasion,
\na homophobe, and ordered a pitcher and two glasses.\u00a0 Number two was for my old college buddy,
\nJames, who burst through the door as soon as the pitcher hit the bar, one of his
\nmany uncanny knacks.<\/p>\n
\nold Silver Spring, before the gentrification
\nand the yuppies and the money.\u00a0 Maybe
\nhe’d crawled out of the ashes of the decrepit Silver
\nSpring train station, featured in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train<\/em>.
\nPerhaps he was an exec at the old Canada Dry plant, now a shining art
\nnouveau office building.<\/p>\n
\npoured the porter, then drank half a glass of head in choking gulps.\u00a0 He turned to me, stared at something just
\nover my shoulder, then snapped into focus.
\n“Met a girl.”\u00a0 He said, then
\nrefilled his glass.<\/p>\n
\nday.<\/p>\n
\nLike the cat.”<\/p>\n
\nbeer.\u00a0 Finally:\u00a0 “So?”<\/p>\n
\nmessage chat thing – ”<\/p>\n
\nClaire is into.\u00a0 Anyway, we started
\nchatting because she thought I was Claire – ”<\/p>\n
\nspilled beer on mine.\u00a0 I told you that
\nstory two weeks ago.”<\/p>\n
\nalways so fucking negative!”<\/p>\n
\nshe’s right here, local.”<\/p>\n
\ndownward.<\/p>\n
\na few drinks.\u00a0 Like, right then.\u00a0 I’m there 15 minutes later, she shows up and,
\nman, she’s like alternagirl.\u00a0 I’m rock
\nhard from the start.\u00a0 I am fucking drunk
\non cock!”\u00a0 The bartender dropped a glass
\nand James tilted his head to the side, “That sounds wrong.\u00a0 Well, anyway, there she is.\u00a0 We talk and drink for a bit then she’s, like,
\nlet’s fuck!\u00a0 Not like that.\u00a0 More like we’re soul mates and don’t you feel
\nthe chemistry and I likes me a quiet boy and I know you can give me the deep
\ndicking of a life time.\u00a0 At least, that’s
\nwhat I read in her eyes.<\/p>\n
\ncondos in Wheaton
\n– and as soon as we’re in, she’s popping out of her clothes.\u00a0 She made me take every goddamn piercing in my
\nmouth and tongue it.\u00a0\u00a0 Total fetish
\nbitch.\u00a0 Wild and wooly Wheaton, baby!”<\/p>\n
\npre-dating party tonight.\u00a0 Drink
\nourselves into the ground and murder a few children or something.\u00a0 Because once I start dating, I have to stop
\nseeing you.”<\/p>\n
\nWe’ll just ask the string of cocktail waitresses and neo-pagans who have
\nentered into emotionally abusive relationships with you over the years.\u00a0 See if they agree.”<\/p>\n
\nRemember when you doped Monica and put her on a bus to Toronto as a practical joke?”<\/p>\n
\nbetter about your own empty life.”<\/p>\n
\ndrinking.\u00a0 I decided to check myself and
\norder a coke, but the bartender brought another pitcher along with it.\u00a0 I stared at it with darkness in my heart.<\/p>\n
\nthat Bolivian dance club.”<\/p>\n
\nI’ve found a girl!\u00a0 We’re
\nreturning to all the places we’ve been banned and atoning for our sins.”<\/p>\n
\nofficially a “bar.”\u00a0 It’s more an
\nunofficial hangout for a handful of local Hispanic \u00e9migr\u00e9s.\u00a0 I’m not even sure if they have a license,
\nbecause, the night we got banned, we had to do lots of talking to get them to
\nserve us beer and, then, it came from a standard refrigerator in the
\nkitchen.\u00a0 A family of four runs the place
\nand any Anglo is treated with suspicion.
\nAs James and I, in our drunken state, are less twitch and suspicious and
\nmore idiotic and psychotic, we earned their trust simply through an avalanche
\nof karaoke, arm-wrestling, homoeroticism and, finally, knife games (James has
\ntotal nerve loss in his left thumb). Earning their trust led to their greatest
\nmistake:\u00a0 Serving us beer.\u00a0 It was 13 hours into a strong drunk for us
\nand you always know when we’ve reached the plateau because we start to crave Heineken.\u00a0 It’s the come down drink for the true
\ndrunkard.\u00a0 James and I killed a case and,
\nmuch to the surprise of the patriarch, we started asking for scotch.\u00a0 That was when the Star Trek karaoke began –
\nNext Generation episodes dubbed in Spanish and folks had to stand up and get
\nthe lines right.\u00a0 James went crazy and,
\nwell, our chopper went down into a hot LZ and I can’t talk \u2018bout the hit we
\ngot.<\/p>\n
\nfor the main family.\u00a0 The patriarch
\nrecognized us and, perhaps sensing renewal in James, he served us Heineken as
\nsoon as we asked.\u00a0 I took a stool,
\nsuddenly aware that much of my body had turned to liquid, and tried to keep the
\nspin away.\u00a0 James slammed one bottle then
\nanother, comfortable now that we were out of porter country.<\/p>\n
\nFall fast, fall alone.\u00a0 There are
\nsome men who just can’t understand women or work through those crucial first
\nsteps.\u00a0 The early dating phase is a
\nhopeless mess for certain personalities.
\nIt’s not really nervousness or social ineptness.\u00a0 It’s more like exhaustion.\u00a0 A hard thing to describe to those who don’t
\nfeel it.\u00a0 When something does happen and,
\nonce again, a woman enters orbit, there’s hesitation.\u00a0 Fear.\u00a0 Even
\nresentment, sometimes.\u00a0 A reminder that
\nthe routine is, in fact, empty.<\/p>\n
\nthe corner of my eye.\u00a0 Tonight wasn’t
\ngoing to end in violence or comedy, it was going to end with the two of us
\ngoing home and wondering about our path in life, once again.\u00a0 The dark and humbling reality that seemed to
\naccompany the mind now that we were in our thirties and –<\/p>\n
\nasked.<\/p>\n