A Story About the Boy

A story about the boy I wanted to marry....(second edition)

My friend, Shane, and I, decided to go to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. It was probably late 87 because I'm pretty sure I was still staying with my mom before I got my own apt. I recall this because she commented on my attire before I left to go to Shane's house.

Me and my big 80s hair, complete with the dark red mousse I used on my bangs at the time, oh, was it so cool. I was wearing a grey sleeveless dress, a black slouch belt that was alligator skin-like, and a black oversized cardigan sweater, of course with the sleeves scrunched up to my elbows. Such a get-up would not be complete without 3" pointy toed spike pumps.

But the shoes weren't the finishing touch on the outfit. Oh no. That would be the black hose with the seams up the back. The hose were what drew the less than approving attention of my mother. Even Shane's mom did one of those motherly sighs when he told her to come look. "You look like a street walker," she told me, knowing full-well that he and I would take it as a compliment.

I must say we looked good. He was dressed stylishly, as usual, with a blazer, pleated pants, a thin leather tie, and deck shoes. Shane probably was hands down one of the best looking men I've ever personally known.

We got into his little two-seater sports car, the kind of car is escaping me right now. A Datsun 240Z, perhaps. Off to Ft. Wayne we went. Because we were so terribly cool, we listened to Elvis Costello on the way there.

We walked in, and the hostess asked how many. We said 2. It probably looked like a date, which was fine with me, even though it wasn't. He was my best friend at the time, and it was strictly platonic.

"Would the bar be all right with you?" she asked us.

He shot me a look as if to say, "Don't screw this up with your good girl bullshit." He often suggested that I not be such a pussy.

So into the bar we went. "I'll be right back to take your drink orders," the waitress told us after flinging a couple menus in front of us.

"So you want to try it?" he asked me. It was more that he was telling me that we were going to order drinks, and that I could deal with it.

Every fiber of my being was screaming, "Oh hell, we're going to go to jail. We are going to get in trouble. My parents will find out. No good is going to come out of ordering margaritas."

We were, after all, 18 and 19 at the time.

Like a pro, he ordered a huge pitcher of margaritas. And we drank it. While my experience with alcohol at the time was fairly limited, including puking on a dog named Ralph at my graduation party, I never once thought to question the fact that one could get a little bit buzzed from a half a pitcher of margaritas.

We pulled it off without a hitch. No one asked to see our I.D., and I suppose since we were seated in the bar, no one thought twice.

We were probably a mile down the road from leaving the restaurant when he informed me that he was buzzed. My freak out over that was small considering my lips were numb and my face was starting to slide off my head. We made it back to his house in one piece, and I stuck around waiting for my lips to return to normal.

But didn't we do that more than once, was the next question I posed to myself.

Yes, we certainly did. Flashback to an evening in the winter not long after that. I know it was cold because Shane was wearing a trenchcoat. This time, Sandy drove. We went to the same restaurant, he and I sharing the pitcher of margaritas, and Sandy passing on doing anything illegal.

It's the ride home that I recall the most. I was sitting in the front seat, and Shane kept putting his feet on the console in the Dodge Omni, and on me. It was getting annoyed because he was getting dirt on my Salvation Army coat very similiar to his trenchcoat. It was an army green color with a paisley lining. I thought I'd hit paydirt when I found that coat for $5. I smacked him a few times, but it didn't stop him. It only encouraged him.

I then proceeded to try to tie his shoestrings together. My manual dexterity was lacking a wee bit due to the margaritas, and he caught me. I reached back and grabbed the scarf he was wearing...another hot 80s fashion accessory.

I don't know how it happened exactly, but I was pulled into the backseat. The scene in my head plays out much like something from a horror movie where someone is suddenly sucked into some sort of vortex. I was in the front seat, and suddenly, there I was in the back with him.
I had him by the scarf. He had me by the hair. And we proceeded to fight. It wasn't so unusual for he and I to get a little physical in that aspect. We'd fought before, but it was typically in a playful sort of way. (I guess unless alcohol was involved, but there's another story there about me ending up falling into a bathtub.)

We rolled around the backseat, the Omni swerving on the road with our movements, and I imagine it looked a bit like a cartoon fight. A bunch of dust flying with arms and legs protruding from the cloud every so often. At least from Sandy's prospective in the front seat.
It ended fast when I screamed out some obscenity and held my nose.

"You broke my nose," I told him.

Again, his response was something to the effect of to stop being such a baby or a pussy. I pulled my hand away from face, and blood streamed down my face, and all over the coat I was trying to protect from his dirty shoes in the first place.

I was livid. I wiped my hand on his trenchcoat, muttering some more obscenties, while from the front seat Sandy ranted about never taking us anywhere again.

And being prepared, and probably the only time in his life, he reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out paper towel from the bathroom at Bandido's. I've no clue what prompted him to take a stack, but likely it had something to do with cleaning his car.

The rest of the way home, I pinched my nose in effort to stop the bleeding. Every once in a while, he asked to take a peek at my swollen nose, and tell me whether or not it was still bleeding. The only other exchange consisted of me calling him something that sounded like "athhole" through my wad of paper towel, and him returning the love by calling me a bitch, and us smacking each other.