A redheaded Norwegian tilting at windmills
One thing I could not figure out while a Norwegian was nesting in my breasts and my fat face was smiling in the Korean restaurant wall mirror, was why two sober guys not dressed to party would not only be dining at three in the morning but would also be beckoning us over to join them. But maybe that’s just what people who live in San Francisco do. They invite intoxicated strangers to join them for udon and fish while they render a slapstick parody of Don Quixote: Don flexes pecs one at a time and rubs one nipple through his polo shirt, and then Sancho laughs but not from any paunch because he has none.
Once seated, trips to the women’s bathroom become a rotating swing shift between my date and me. I hear my words trail alongside my relaxed gait, “Five times!” in response to voices asking who is sober enough to take us home.
Hours earlier outside the Boom Boom Room where the Norwegian and I drank and started to touch each other, a leather-skinned nomad standing outside generously shared first his joint and then his John Deere hat after I hugged him. I inhaled five times. Bill Clinton said he never inhaled. The nomad found me later in the thick of the club to accept back his hat and to slake my lips with his. He gave me a ripped index card on which was scrawled “Mike” and a phone number.
As Don and San slurp the last of the noodles, the Norwegian holds my hips firmly in his lap. “Mike” falls from my thong to the floor. Don puffs out his chest and asks the Norwegian how it feels to find that I have another man’s number. I stand and float to the bathroom.
If there were a toilet seat cover placing contest, I would win. I think this and think how I’ve thought this before. With a quick grab, sweep up and tug down, I rip the tissue out of the wall fixture, yank the folds out, tear out the perforated middle in three swift motions, and let it billow onto the seat. Stop-watches would click once it lay correctly on the seat. I would get tens across the board.
When I reemerge, Don and San announce that we shall give them a ride back to their place in my car. They will drive for us since neither I nor the Wegian can.
My car coats the streets with our unbridled giggles. I am in love with San Francisco like never before. I reach out the back seat window to touch her as Don takes turns that make me slightly recall my mortality. Embalmed with quietude, she folds under and over us, kneading us into colors and smells of her past and present. She’s dirty, and we’re dirty with her. I want to kiss her and kiss her deep. If only I could feel my lips!
Once inside their living room, Sancho brushes a 7 iron over a shag rug, Don pops in the movie Swingers where I have never seen Vince Vaughn so young and thin, and plastic cups labeled with pharmaceutical brand names fill with water. I sip out of PROZAC.
The Wegian wedges himself into my space on the couch so that we are conjoined at the hip. He mumbles to my breasts that he doesn’t like these guys, that they are assholes. I like them and don’t care for him anymore, but I eventually say he’s right in hopes that his head will seek oxygen elsewhere. After a few minutes of suffocation, I stand up and limp outside onto the back patio to be alone with my PROZAC. Finding myself walled in by fences on all sides, I drift upward to recline in the big dipper. It is minutes of cold and peace when the Wegian pulls me down to nest and maybe roost. His smile aches.
Back on the couch, I say I feel sober and so we should leave. Don escorts me toward the front door with his hand around my lower back. Don would take me on a private escapade, but I reach for my coat instead.
Using my uncanny sense of direction, we backtrack out of Andy Worhal halls, down an Alice in Wonderland hole of iron stairs, and through coffee-sipping Carnaval security guards to my car. It is 6am. I am not sober. A forty-five minute drive separates me from my empty apartment where I can lick my wounds in peace. “I am sober,” I whisper to myself. As we pull away, the Norwegian covers my right hand with his left as a gesture to promise not only sexual pleasure but also protection, from those monsters under my childhood bed most likely. To think, the entire night I defended that his hair was strawberry blonde when everyone – even he himself – told me it was red. In the deafening encroaching daylight, his red hair danced like hell.
“Do you want to come up?” he asked. I leaned over and gave him two light kisses, a few strands of my hair getting in the way.
“We’ll do something again next weekend.” My smile said otherwise.
Tags: big dipper, Boom Boom Room, Carnaval, date, dating, Don Quixote, Ishtar, Modern, nomad, Norwegian, prozac, San Francisco, Sancho, Swingers
