Impaired judgment
Our grandmothers knew each other
She was sitting with another woman and a man at one of those small round tables by the crowded dance floor. She had a high forehead beneath an impressive red mane, and a bold nose centering a wide mobile face whose changing expressions reflected imperial disdain for dancers jerking and twisting in a swirl of colored lights. She called to mind Ernest Hemingway’s description of Gertrude Stein as a woman who resembled a Roman emperor. Which was all right, Hemingway said, if you liked your women to resemble Roman emperors. Not what you’d call an attractive first impression.
I wasn’t even supposed to be there. A Friday-night rendezvous with the preacher’s daughter had not panned out. Sentimentally I stopped for a drink at the bar where we began our affair. It was payday. My clerical staff of three was in the bar, payday-festive with tequila shooters. In their delight at accidental meeting, they insisted on buying my drinks.
Their youthful insouciance eased my disappointment about the no-show. The fiery shots went down quickly after the first jolt, and spread loosening warmth. I noticed, and then forgot, the imperial redhead. Took avuncular enjoyment from my girls’ dancing and flirting with all comers. It pleased me how secure they were in my discretion. They knew I knew the rules: what happens on girls’ night out stays on girls’ night out.
Time gets fluid in loud bars with twirling colored lights interspersed with strobe effects. Tequila shooters enhance the effect. I lost track of its passage. Had fun watching them shed work persona in dirty dancing and surreptitious gropes. Finally humored them and danced with a woman at the next table, giddy and giggly as they were. She asked if the girls were my daughters. I was polite but didn’t dance with her again.
My ego already was bruised from a rough work week and failed rendezvous. I didn’t need reminders life was running through my fingers and youth already had fled.
I didn’t see the fight start.
One moment the floor was full of happy dancers. The next, there was a stumbling scramble away from two grappling men. The band faltered to a discordant halt. The larger of the two — big as me — tried to bear-hug his slender antagonist. I never saw the punch. But the big man staggered backward toward our table, knees gone to jelly. My girls were on the crowded floor. Without conscious thought, I lifted our small table neatly and pivoted it out of the way, drinks intact.
He plunged through the empty chairs, and down. Struggled up and plodded across the floor, head hanging like a boxer about to be called on a TKO. His slender opponent dropped into a karate stance and waited calmly. Ah: unseen speed and effectiveness of first punch explained. The muscular bouncer and a couple other guys — evidently friends of the big guy — intervened while he muttered let me at ‘im. The bouncer held him chest to chest. His friends each captured a flailing arm. In the tense quiet I heard them warn him he was over-matched.
“Take it outside,” the bouncer repeated like a mantra. “Gents, take it outside!” The big guy was bleeding profusely into a handkerchief and saying he was going to smash that runt. Not likely. I figured his nose was broken and he was lucky cartilage had not been driven into his brain.
The slender man had been sitting with a lithe, sexy blonde and the woman with an emperor’s profile. It developed the big guy had been hitting a little too hard on the blonde. Her boyfriend called him on it. The big guy grabbed him; a mistake. The sexy blonde clung to her date’s arm, whispering urgently. The woman with the profile, no longer bored, watched her companions with obvious amusement, flipping her mane of auburn hair in an antic gesture I came to know too well.
The bouncer banished the big man as troublemaker and his friends led him out. Order was restored, tables and chairs replaced. The band struck up a slow tune to soothe the crowd. My girls congratulated me on my reflexes in saving their drinks and chose new dance partners.
When I leaned back, the chunky woman with the profile was walking rapidly toward me, transfigured. Smiling, bouncy, laughing as she came. Under dance-floor lighting the sequins on her black party dress twinkled nicely. Her bright eyes seemed to reflect the twinkle. Chameleon-like, she now resembled wicked big city ladies who visited the matriarch of my clan when I was a small boy. She was surprisingly short for the seated presence she initially projected. Definitely on the chunky side. She posed, arms akimbo, head slightly to one side, not five feet away.
“Nice move with the table.” Throaty smoker’s voice like a Hollywood femme fatale on the Late Show.” My friends are leaving now,” she told me. “Since I’m driving, I’m going too.”
I gestured with my drink. “Might be a good idea to wait a bit. The big guy may be lurking in the parking lot.”
“Why thank you, but I can only stay a minute.” She turned a chair from the next table and sat, leaning forward cozily. “Hello there, you.”
“Hello yourself.”
“I really do have to go,” she said. “I know you know I was looking at you. But we have to leave and there’s no time!” Her breath was rich with Scotch.
“You seemed displeased by everything you saw,” I said.
“I did!” Her throaty chuckle was charming. “You should have seen you, when you came in.”
I licked my forefinger and sketched an invisible mark in the air. “Your point, I believe. But my girls cheered me up.”
The young blonde who had clung to her fighter came along the edge of the dance floor. She looked harried. “Can we leave now? I don’t want him to find that guy out there…”
The redhead never moved her gaze from me. “Tell him just a little longer, sweetie. I’m entitled to a minute to talk to my friend! We are not being tossed out. The other guy was.” The blonde went away. The dance ended. My girls disentangled themselves and homed in, reading her body language suspiciously. She gauged them in one of those female-on-female silent clashes.
“They look very protective of you, don’t they, darling?” she said. “Are you sleeping with any of them? All of them?”
“A woman earlier asked me if they were my daughters.”
“That bimbo you danced with!” The imperial sneer was back. “She’s a moron. If you’re not sleeping with any of them, you could be. They all are crazy about you.” She stated this with complete certitude.
The band started again. But only one of my girls accepted an invitation. My other two were suddenly intent on their drinks, studiously not-listening. Almost hovering. She leaned closer and slipped a fleshy perfumed arm around my neck with complete familiarity. Our heads almost touched.
“Tell them our grandmothers knew each other,” she breathed, “so they won’t know I’m a cheap hussy trying to pick you up in a bar.” Her choice of words was uncanny, as if she really knew the matriarch and all her warnings to me against hussies.
How could I avoid being charmed? I offered introductions but was interrupted. She swore and disengaged herself. The karate kid was marching toward the exit, blonde in tow. She stood to confront him.
“Don’t be an ass, Bobby!” Her tone froze him. Seductive one second, now a sergeant-major whip-crack; imperial indeed. “Just get your testosterone under control or you’re going to ruin the rest of her birthday party.” Tossing her hair at the blonde. He wilted. I didn’t blame him.
My secretary leaned in for a whisper. “Is she your Aquarian broad, boss?” My girls had a running joke that as the eighties unfolded I was working my way through the Zodiac. Not quite accurate, not utterly wrong.
“Leo,” the redhead hissed out of the side of her mouth. To the couple, full volume: “You kids just wait for me in the lobby.” Then she leaned a substantial hip against my shoulder. Her hand rested lightly on the top of my head. “I have excellent hearing,” she told my startled secretary. “The longer answer is I am a Leo, and I am nobody’s broad. We are just good friends.” She patted my head twice. “Such good friends.”
Just like that she won them over. In my intoxicated state, that seemed sufficient justification. I slipped my arm around her thick hips. “So where to now, old friend?”
“The birthday party continues at Capitol Grill,” she said. “There’s a jazz pianist I want you to hear. Just finish your drink with the girls. There’ll be a drink on the table when you get there...”
When I got to the Capitol Grill the drink on the table the imperial redhead had promised was bourbon rocks. Surprised me because I’d been drinking tequila shooters with my three office girls at the other bar.
Six or eight of them in a relatively short time. They’d been way ahead of me when I ran across them, and kept plying me. My face was numb, my reflexes suspect. To say nothing of my judgment.
“Satisfactory?” the redhead said, flipping her mane at the drink.
“My preference actually. How did you know?”
Crooked grin. “Your secretary told me. We’re pals now.”
Well that was interesting. The bourbon tasted clean and familiar after the tequila. Her blonde friend asked if my girls hooked up with anybody. Not that I knew of. My receptionist passed out on a toilet in the women’s restroom. My secretary came and got me. She and our clerk typist stood guard while I extricated her. Then I carried her to their car.
“Listen to you,” the redhead said. “Muscle-man!”
“Well she hardly weighs over a hundred pounds.”
“I remember those days,” she said wistfully. The blonde and the karate kid laughed. I sipped bourbon. I wasn’t drunk enough to laugh at a woman lamenting weight gain. Conversation moved to the blonde’s birthday, and the jazz being played, while I wondered what I was doing there.
I drove my pickup camper to work anticipating an evening with the preacher’s daughter. When she couldn’t get away, I meant to have one drink before driving home. My girls fixed that with all those shooters — I wasn’t about to risk fifty miles in my condition, and was thinking lucky I had my camper, I could sleep it off. Then my new companions invited me to their apartment complex to continue the birthday party. The redhead was downstairs neighbor to the couple. She made some crack about “that enormous RV thing” when I followed her red Camaro home.
We convened in her place. Out came the rolling papers and marijuana. She owlishly informed me a toke or ten would prevent hangover. I declined, said I don’t do hangovers. Still true back then. She had chips and snacks anticipating Maryjane munchies, so I didn’t go hungry. They set up some kind of board game on the kitchen table, played and smoked and giggled. Not Monopoly or Scrabble, so I sat out and drank instant coffee instead of more liquor, which made them laugh.
It was pushing three a.m. In four more hours I would have been awake twenty-four. I sat in a comfortable chair in the living room, smoked my pipe and enjoyed their boisterous game. The kid said his dad was closing out inventory on a store that sold pipes and he’d get me a couple free.
His blonde went upstairs, came back in a floor-length black silk negligee. Translucent panels here and there confirmed she had a nice body. Her boyfriend snuggled her with approving sounds. The redhead good-naturedly complained their minds were no longer on the game. The blonde said well it is my birthday…The redhead woke me. I’d dozed off. Didn’t like my sense of vulnerability, but my brain was sluggish.
“Honey, why don’t you go on to bed? I’ll just finish this game and send the kids home. They’re getting too touchy-feely to concentrate!” When was it decided I was sleeping here? I said I really should go. “You’re in no shape to drive that big old RV thing.” She was right. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”
Standing, the room did a ground-swell shimmy. Her steadying hand was welcome. And here was a room full of feminine boudoir scents, wide soft bed covered in frilly lacy pillows. I collapsed gratefully.
Woke up with her untying my shoes. “Take your clothes off and go to bed right.” Then she left. My god, maybe our grandmothers did know each other. I couldn’t count the number of times the matriarch told me that.
I must have undressed. Next thing I remember is the bed shifting as she joined me under the covers. The apartment was quiet — no more stereo music, no laughter from the kitchen. She reached for my crotch, chuckled. “I cannot believe you. Why are you still wearing boxers in my bed?”
Tequila numbness had left my face. The room no longer rocked as if offshore. But my brain was slowed to somnolence. If I could peel my boxers off, maybe she’d let me go back to sleep…Hah. Clearly my judgment still was impaired.
As she commenced her arts of seduction on my body, it was as if I looked down upon us from a corner of the room. I thought I’d understood the Hugh Hefner story about being his own voyeur. This time I lived it.
My groggy brain filled with odd thoughts. My autumn-haired store manager said drunk men are poor performers as a rule. Limp under this redhead’s ministrations, John Thomas was proving the rule — a first for me. An unkind thought: Hefner would never be caught dead in bed with a woman this chubby. Maybe the blonde upstairs, now…
John Thomas finally awoke, more or less. Wobbled when he erected, like I wobbled walking into this room. I should be embarrassed, but felt too far away to apologize. This was between her and him. She climbed aboard and inserted him competently. Began to move her hips.
There was dampness down there, heat, friction — the usual array. Her green eyes darkened with intense concentration as she moved. Her soft heavy white belly spilled against mine, completely obscuring the connection. It was the most non-participatory fuck of my life. I was completely surprised by ejaculation and so was she.
She lifted up enough to verify what happened, and laughed fondly.“Oh you little dickens, you came first.” She fitted the little dickens — little dickens? — back in place and began to grind. Said just keep it there. Like that, like that…Now I was like effete Englishmen in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, holding my softening dick in place after premature ejaculation so she could attain what D.H. Lawrence called a woman’s “crisis.” Which she soon did, and seemed completely satisfied.
She dismounted and pulled the covers up. “Now we can sleep,” she murmured. I was almost under before she finished the words. Slept like the dead until a repetitive sound penetrated my brain and woke me.
Strange room, strange bed, stranger beside me in the dark. A stranger snoring like a lumberjack. Never heard a woman snore like that — I was almost in awe. It went on and on. I got up to pee, feeling wide awake. My watch told me in the bathroom I’d slept four hours.
She still was sawing logs. I so did not need to try to sleep with that racket. When my wife snored — nothing like this — I could pet her awake enough to shift and be quiet. She did the same for me. No way I’d do that for this stranger. I took my clothes, dressed in the living room and left. Last thing I heard when I closed the door was snores.
If I thought that was the end of it, I was wrong.
