Just for fun

The 2:00AM dialogue:

The lights were somewhat low, but almost golden, and flickering above the sawdust floor in a downtown bar. We sat at an old wide-planked table, which was round, with a plastic tray of peanuts that were spilled on a single sheet of paper towels. The emptied shells were scattered at the feet of our barstools. The deep mahogany walls matched the country-western theme and the crowd had begun to thin..
The music was somewhat loud and it was not my taste, but at the time, the music was less important. The rest of the bars near Canal Street looked nothing like this one. The girls were friendly here. At least one of them was.

To define the girl, I would say she was soft. She was much shorter than me with gentle eyes and light tanned skin. Her body was how I would prefer it to be. She was healthy in figure and busty. She had her own style, which was good. She was smart, which was also good. She was not afraid to speak her mind or laugh out loud. She was not timid with her opinion or intimidated by anyone else’s.

As the hours crept into morning, our conversation began to pick up speed.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” she said.
“Do what,” I asked.
“Submit to someone,” she told me.

“I’ve always wanted to be swept off my feet. I want to feel my knees buckle. You know? I want to feel my breath shake when my man walks into the room and it’s almost like I have no choice but to give myself to him; it’s like I can’t help it.”
She explained, “I want to be taken in every sense of the word and not have to make any decisions. I want someone that knows what he wants and when he looks at me, he looks wild. I want him to look hungry and I’m the only meal in the world that can feed him.”

We were speaking for hours and somehow came into the age old questions about the opposite sex.
“Men wanna know what we want, but if we tell them, they back off—and I don’t get that. I don’t get that at all,” she explained.

“But to hell with that.” she said. “I want to be looked at.”
I want to be noticed. I want a guy to look at me the way an animal looks at its prey. I want him to be like a carnivore,” she told me.
“I don’t want to be directed or asked. I don’t want to be teased or talked into anything. I just want it all to happen.”

“How far would you let him go,” I asked.

“See, that’s the thing,” she answered.
“The guy I want would already know how far to take it. He would know my boundaries, and at the same time, he’d know there aren’t any.”

“Boundaries?”
“Why limit myself,” she responded.
“If I’m in, I want to be in all the way.”

I laughed, “Or at least you’d want him to be in all the way.”

“Very funny,” she said. “I was talking about being dominated . . . Besides, there’s no such thing as being halfway submissive.”

Her stool was on the 3 o’clock side of the round table and I was sitting at 6 o’clock. As she moved the strands of hair away from her right eye and tucked them behind her ear, I began to see her differently. I began to enjoy her as she explained, “If men are supposed to be predatory, then I want a predator. I want a guy who knows how to get what he wants.”

“That’s fair enough,” I supposed.
“Why, is something wrong with that?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s good to know what you want.”

“I know I want to be wanted,” she said.
Then she flashed her eyes as if to tease me.
“I want to be wanted the way a vampire wants the neck of his woman. I want to be like a drug and have a man need me. Know what I mean?”

She sipped from the thin red straw that poked from the top of her glass. I watched as the amber colored liquor disappeared from the ice. This was as if she finished more than just her drink; it was as though she finished her statement, and the last sip was an exclamation point, as if to say, “I’m ready for what I want and I want it now!”

“What about you,” she asked. “What do you want?”
“Me?”
“No, the other guy I’ve been stirring my drink with. Yes you!”

“I want a girl that’s not gonna look at another girl and complain, ‘She’s wearing white after Labor Day.’ I want a girl who doesn’t cry if she accidentally wore suede in the rain. She can dance in the middle of anywhere and she’s not afraid to stand alone.
I want a girl that knows how to laugh. She can order food and eat it. She looks beautiful in anything and she doesn’t need to hide behind her makeup. I want a girl who is not afraid to be taken, but she’s also not afraid to take me. She wants to try new things and she doesn’t care how anyone else feels about it.”

She asked me, “Do you like to try new things?”
“I’ll try anything twice,” I answered.
“Twice?”
“I might have done it wrong the first time.”

She laughed, “I never heard it put that way before.”
“That’s because we never met before.”

I asked her, “do you wanna know what I hate the most?”
“What’s that?”
“I hate the bullshit rules that go along with dating or meeting someone new.”
“What bullshit rules?”

“Like this for example; let’s say you give me your number, I hate that I have to figure out how long I should wait before I call you.”
“Wait a minute,” she giggled.
“Is this your way of asking me for my number without taking a risk?”

“Not at all. I’m just saying that when a girl gives a guy her number, there’s an entire process he has to go through before he calls. If he calls the next day, he’s too needy. And if he takes too long, he’s playing games. I want a girl that I can call and she won’t spend hours on the phone analyzing me with her friends.”

She leaned into the table and we grew closer. I noticed the soft brown color in her eyes and the delicate curl of her lips as they met the corners of her mouth. I had a clear view down the top of her open-collared shirt, which looked promising.

“I hate the excuses,” she added
“What excuses?”
“The stupid excuses men come up with when they don’t call back. That’s not right,” she said.
“A girl needs closure!”
“Closure, huh? Isn’t that just a better way of saying having the last word?”
She defended herself quickly. “No!”
But then she smiled, “Well, maybe it is.”

“Since we’re talking about what we hate,” I added, “I hate the formalities. I hate the things girls are ‘supposed’ to say like, ‘I’ve never done this before,’ or how they play the victim when they already know the details. I hate when they come back home with a guy and say something like, ‘I thought you just wanted to talk or hang out?”

The girl and I went back and forth and the bar was nearly empty. Eventually, our hands, which were on the table, began to slowly entwine. We physically grew closer and as we drew in, she began to go deeper in question

“So if I ask you a something, will you give me an honest answer.”
“Depends on the question,” I said.

She propped up, looking into my eyes to see if my words could be trusted. Then she came back to re-engage with her rapid-fire questions
“Are you a romantic?”
“I can be.”

“Have you ever faked romance?”
“I don’t think you can fake romance, at least not real romance, anyway.”

“Have you ever led a girl on?”
“Probably ….have you ever led a guy on?”
“Probably,” she laughed,

She asked, “Have you ever lied for sex?”
“Yes.”
“Cheated for sex?”
“Yes.”
“Paid for sex?”
“Yes… but I think everyone pays for it in one way or another.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she explained. “I mean have you ever actually paid money for sex?”
I answered, “Yes.”
“But why? It’s not like your ugly or can’t get a girl.”
“Thanks, but that’s not what I paid for.”

“What do you mean? I thought you just said you’ve paid for sex.”
“Yeah, but I never really thought of it as paying for sex.”
“Oh really, then what did you think you were paying her for?”
I smiled. “To be left alone afterwards.”

I explained, “It amazes me how sex is a billion dollar industry and women believe men when they say, ‘I’ve never paid for it.’ Statistically, it’s almost impossible. In some way, shape, or form, every guy pays for sex”
She granted, “At least you’re honest.”
“Like it or not,” I told her. “I call it like it is.”

Moving closer, she kissed me. Our first kiss felt as if we had kissed before. There was a connection between us. There was nothing awkward or strange about the way our lips pressed together.
We kissed at the table, and then moved outside. We kissed in the doorway of the bar and on the street as I hailed a cab.
She gave me her number and asked, “So…you are gonna call me, right?”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said.
But I never did.

I waited a week, only to find out she gave me the wrong number in the first place.

These are the games people play.
And in some cases . . .

I loved every minute of it