For the record? Wearing Chucks with no socks makes your feet stink like bags of disgusting.
However. For all the ridiculous perpetuated in a romance novel, I still longed for the fantasy. The fairy tale. The wonderful give and take that occurred when two became one. So I went out on dates, met guys in bars, picked them up occasionally, and had the mostly bland, occasionally inventive, sex of the single-girl encounters. Orgasms, whether by my own hand or someone else’s, could never be discounted. So when my mother wore me down every few months about being the only one of my siblings who wasn’t married, I relented and let her set me up on blind dates.
My type and my mother’s type were as different as tuna fish and a curling iron. I liked a bad boy, and had enjoyed some a time or two. I preferred them a bit rough, tough looking. Messy hair? Yes, please. Artistic? Yes, please—musician, painter, performance artist, what have you.
My mother’s type was everyone’s type: good provider, steady, accomplished, smart, sociable at parties, and enough sperm to breed Catholic guilt into the next generation several times over.
And in this latest surge of motherly influence, no doubt spawned by the birth of her third grandchild and her wild desire to have a baker’s dozen, lately she had been setting up dates for me like it was going out of style. In the last two weeks alone I’d been out with Harry Thomson, Tommy Dickerson, and now Richard Harrison. A financial planner, a tax lawyer, and now a CPA. Same guy, same pants, same brain. Tom, Dick, and Harry? Oh hell, no . . .
“So I said to the guy, if you want to roll over all of this into a 401(k) I’ll do that, but you’d miss out on the more attractive shelter over here! So what I proposed was—”
“Dick? Can I call you Dick?”
“Actually, I’d prefer Richard, but—”
“Dick, I’m going to stop you right here. This was a mistake.”
He looked crestfallen. “Darn it all, I knew we should have ordered the chicken fingers. This berretta cheese is a little too exotic for my taste too. Let me see if I can get our waitress and—”
He held up his hand for some help with his “berretta,” and I slapped mine on the table.
“It’s not the cheese, it’s not the restaurant, it’s not even you, Dick. It’s me. I should never have let my mother talk me into this.”
“Your mother is terrific. Great assets.”
“No more asset talk. I want to be romanced; I want to be swept away—I want something special, rare, passionate, out of the ordinary!” I replied, my voice rising as I got worked up. I leaned across the table. “I want someone who will sweep everything off the table, throw me across it, and ravage me to within an inch of my life. Can you do that, Dick?” I slammed down the rest of my Scotch, meeting his eyes in challenge.
“Passionate? Out of the ordinary?” He gulped, pulling at his tie. Then a strange look came over his face. “You mean like, in the butt?” he whispered with an exaggerated wink.
Oh. My. God.
“How we doing over here?” a cheerful voice asked, and I looked up into the face of our waitress.
“Dick needs some chicken fingers.” I sighed, taking a twenty out of my purse and setting it on the table next to my empty glass. I pushed back from the table, went around to his side, and patted him on the shoulder. “Sorry this didn’t work out.” The relief was so very evident on his face it was almost comical. He started to stand, and I waved him off as I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door.
Another one bites the dust. Or chicken finger, in this case.
As I shut the front door to my home, the silence was palpable. My shoes rang out dully against polished concrete, the lights low and a bit lonely. I peeled off my jacket, snickering once more when I thought of Dick’s face when I took it off. Tattoos were commonplace in this day and age, but there’s nothing like neck ink on a girl to make a guy in a suit blink. I shouldn’t snicker; he didn’t deserve total annihilation like that. Not over appetizers. I tamped the snicker down as I passed by the wall photo of my mom on my way to kitchen. “Sorry, Ma, but come on. Berretta?”
I may have snickered once more. Just the one.
Contemplating the effects tomorrow morning of having one more bump of Scotch tonight, and deciding the hell with it, I splashed a little more into a glass and leaned back against the counter. Polished concrete, like the floor. My home had an industrial feel to it: clean, uncluttered, orderly. Steel, chrome, blacks, and shades of—you know.