This man was thirty years old and waiting tables for a living until his career as a DJ “took off,” which I assume meant being booked for maybe two weddings in Holiday Inn banquet rooms a month.
(He sold drugs, too, of course… I thought he was hot, of course.)
We worked together and he kept staring at me during our mutual shifts; unable to discern if it was because he wanted to passionately love me or because my incessant gazing at him made him paranoid that he had a visible booger, I decided that those odds were too favorable to not investigate. I dedicated a whole week to trying to get his attention tastefully before I inevitably resigned to making a horny fool out of myself, but he refused to budge. (If this was a sign that he hadn’t the slightest interest in me, I must have passed it while driving at night in the rain; I suffer from an astigmatism and I am occasionally so stupid that it hurts.)
I waited until he was leaving and followed him out the back door one night. “Hey,” I called out. “Here is my number. You should text me sometime.”
He laughed and patted me on the back…. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a “sure, I will help you with your chemistry homework, lil’ buddy!” pat or an “I’m going to fuck the eyebrows off your face” kind of pat; surely, they’re similar in almost undetectable ways… Either way, he texted me to invite me out for a drink later that night, but I forgot to mention in the three (incomplete) sentences we had ever spoken to each other that I was only 20 and did not even have a fake ID to maintain my lie that wasn’t really a lie — just a truth that I planned to keep unspoken. (My concern regarding the subject stemmed from once having been forced into a conversation with an older man while at a strip club — older meaning 50+ — who felt compelled to disclose to me his only rule for courting women: “They have to be old enough to go to a bar. All I do is go to bars. The fuck kind of use would I have for her otherwise?”
Though I was relieved that my age rendered me of no use to that man, who probably bothered to share that information as a way of saying “hey, little girl, seeing as you responded to my pitiful attempts at conversation, I am going to assume that you are desperately trying to suck my dick, but nope! Tough luck! Maybe next year, champ!” but now I had to wonder if this boy [man?] adhered to the same stance… I was able to keep up my façade that I never joined everyone for after work drinks because “no alcohol was strong enough to make me tolerate those idiots!” for a little while.)
After his shifts, he would often sit at a booth on his computer, wearing headphones. I thought he was working on music since he insisted that was his passion, his purpose, and waiting tables was a mere stepping stone towards his “destiny”, but one day, after buying a very nice bra, I plopped down next to him… only to find out that he was playing fuckin’ World of Warcraft, and did not take his eyes off his very intense raid (or whatever the fuck they do in that game) once to notice that my titties were put on impeccable display with the help of what I had foolishly believed was a wise investment at Victoria’s Secret that morning. I had cleavage for the first time in my goddamn life! Hello? Will you look at me? My overpriced eyes are down here, you idiot man!
A few days later, we were trying to make plans to go out and I finally had to spill the beans that I was not 21. His face fell.
“Oh, so I am ten years older than you…”
“…Yes? So?”
“Fuck.”
“It’s not that bad! I’m fuckin’ legal, at least!”
(Why did I care that much? WHY?)
“This just means I’m more experienced than you are, I guess.”
I scoffed. “‘Experienced?’ At what, drinking? Wiping your own ass? Wasting air? Causing people pain and aggravation? Fucking?”
“I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one I’m the best at,” and he winked, which was the first time I actually felt a dissonance based on our age difference… I don’t think anyone born in the 90s winks unless unintentionally due to some sort of birth defect.
We settled on going to my sister’s birthday party, free from the threat of a doorman checking IDs. He downed approximately 15 beers, and seeing as this was years before my alcoholism phase, I probably nursed a single PBR over the span of four hours to look social and “experienced.”
The party ended and we left separately, having made barely any progress at getting to know each other. Disappointed at his company and relieved to finally be free of it, I was about halfway home when he called me: “Shit, I should’ve asked earlier, but do you want to just come back to my house?”
…Seeing as I just suffered through my own sister’s birthday party solely to get some dick, I wanted what I was owed, so I turned around, met him in a parking lot, and followed him. He lived with his parents in a tiny apartment over the garage, and they were both home, so he had to sneak me in. (Don’t forget that he was 30 years old… I apparently did for a moment.) He stripped down to his man panties and we both laid in bed, and I really mean just… laid there: we did not speak, and I was so uncomfortable and antsy, rueing whatever unseeable force inspired me to opt out of the peace of my own bed and end up in this weirdo’s.
As my risk of emotionally imploding from anxiety grew every second, I finally blurted out, “Well… Aren’t we supposed to make out or something?”
“Oh? Is that what you want?”
“Oh, I don’t know… I’m ten years short of ‘experience,’ right? You tell me.”
He evidently considered himself a porn star, performing intricate moves that I thought were only for show, flipping me around into multiple positions I have never been limber or enthusiastic enough for, and started applying an aggressive “scratching the cat under its chin” motion to my pussy to get me to squirt. I did not have the time to tell him that I cannot do that… I do not think anyone can do that… I have argued to many people that it is a myth… Please, I am going to piss all over your hand… I had ONE WHOLE FUCKING PBR and A SINGLE GLASS OF WATER…
I heard him say, “Now, there we go…” and suddenly, there was an enormous puddle on his bed. I was mortified, thinking, Jesus Christ… I just pissed all over this motherfucker, but then he said, “Good girl,” and slapped me in the face with his sticky cum-covered hand, and then I was just confused. (His sticky piss-covered hand, though I knew it wasn’t worth debating at the moment after having decided to save it as a reason to text him later.)
He was too drunk to cum and fell asleep.
Now, me at 27 (would have never put forth the effort to get herself into this fucking absurd situation with this strange older man, but also) would have said, “Well, I’ve decided that you’re the best at drinking, with wasting precious air a close runner up, and with that brilliant discovery, I do believe I am going to leave now,” and made a swift exit for his bedroom door, but I felt strange, awkward; I laid in his bed in my puddle of whatever the hell exploded from my vagina for about four hours until I heard his parents leave the house, waited about ten minutes to make sure they weren’t letting their cars heat up, and did the same.
This was long before it dawned on me that just because you had sex with someone — especially bad sex where the only real sensations you experienced were anxiety, a leg cramp, having to pee, and the sting of a wet slap — does not mean that you should try to maintain any sort of relationship with them… at all. I proceeded to harass him for weeks about why he did not love me until he finally told me to fuck off, and then I continued to stare at him from my host stand because I had little else to do in my sad, menial life until I found somebody else to burden a few weeks later.
Fast forward about six months of us doing well to avoid one another entirely at work: It was his last day because he was finally moving to California to be, you know, a musician — a “DJ” — a professional server on the other side of the country. I was standing in the dish pit, sorting silverware into the bin and minding my own goddamn business as he was leaving, expecting him to brush by me without a word… When he suddenly hugged me from behind and whispered, “Well, Rose… That was really fun,” in my ear.
I stood there frozen, wide-eyed, intensely fucking confused as to what part of any of that entire debacle was “fun” for him, muttering a brain-dead “…yaaaaaaaa…” until he finally let go and went out the back door, without me following him this time. I panicked, brushing off my clothes like he had tainted them with old man germs or coke residue, my cheeks turning a flaming bright red like I had been slapped with a sticky cum-piss-squirt-whatever hand, nervously scanning around the kitchen to make sure that none of our coworkers saw… and immediately locked eyes with one of the older cooks who was laughing and slowly shaking his head.
“You did fuck Frodo, didn’t you?”
(Did I mention that he was 5’1? I probably didn’t mention that he was 5’1.)
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“…They all said you did, but I defended you, Rose… I said ‘Oh, no… Rose wouldn’t fuck Frodo… Who would fuck Frodo?’”
“…Looks like we both made a mistake, huh?”
(In editing this to be posted seven years later, I would like to note that I still work at that same restaurant, and while that fact alone is a bit dismal, it is not the point: Despite his small stature, he failed to become the next Skrillex or apparently even thrive in California, for he quickly returned to Virginia and has come in to eat multiple times. We usually act like we don’t know each other from any other stranger you encounter in your day to day life, because this is the normal behavior exhibited between two adults who once had a dreadfully embarrassing, uh, hookup, entanglement, rendez-vous… A few weeks ago, three guys came in and sat at one of our tables near the bar; one had his back turned to me, but they were all noticeably clad in tacky, lurid button-downs t-shirts, gold chains with matching earrings, pointy and shiny boots, probably fuckin’ Diesel jeans, and appeared as if they all went to the barber together before deciding to come get tacos made by white people. The two that were facing me stared at me the entire fucking time… gawking, really, and combined with the whispers and snickering and their unabashed nature, the obvious attention became lewd and uncomfortable enough to annoy me to where I was about to point them out to management, who have no tolerance for disrespect towards the women staff.
I stopped by the bar to wait for my table’s drinks and the bartender said, “Did you see that your ol’ pal’s over there? Wanna go say hi?”
He was the one with his back turned; I don’t know if one of his friends pointed out that I was hot and he felt that it was his Civic Homie Man Duty™ to warn them about my ignominious behavior from seven fucking years ago, or if the combination of a haircut plus a few drinks with the bros [in opposed to the people he normally came in with: various girlfriends and often, his grandparents] bestowed him with the courage to finally admit that he slapped me in the face with my own piss and made me sleep in it, but they continued to stare at me, gloated to the bartenders that they were the best in the entire city — and they would know, for they had bartendered themselves at some of the most respectable Richmond establishments, such as the fallen Cha Cha’s [LOL] — left them 10% tips, and sped off… in a white Mercedes G-Wagon.
…I hate this fool, y’all. I’m sorry I fucked Frodo.)
ROSE DAMIAN 