Picture a nice but somewhat desperate drink on Christmas Eve to dull the sting of holiday expectations…
Here I sit, sipping on the first of what will be four grapefruit injected flutes of champagne. It is so refreshing and of course goes straight to my head. So the flirting I absolutely blame on the champagne. In strolls a somewhat scruffy gent with cute broken-in jeans and skater shoes. He has a nice smile and breaks out in several pretty adorable happy dances while playing pool.
So I start to smile and swoon and cheers his success with my now empty second champagne flute. He chats with Stacy outside while smoking(strike 1) and charms her. She says he’s witty and personable. As an aside, he tells her he’s a libertarian and votes committedly for Ross Perrot. What do I know of this…or care? Oh but that answer will come soon enough! By the beginning of the third flute, the dude starts to leave and introduces himself before he does. His name is Terrance. Odd name. Still a bit curious. He leaves. No love loss.
Stacy and new friend Kat (hate that name by the way) prod me to run after him and give him the number I wrote down on a slip of paper mid-drink #1. I say no but apparently not aggressively enough. Kat grabs the piece of paper and dashes out the door, running the man down and giving him my number.
Oh well, I think, what could be the worst thing…let’s have another drink. I’m feeling buzzed and altogether forgetting about Christmas, which is a good thing at this point. Contented… Shit! Terrance returns, not 5 minutes after the number exchange. I’m instantly leery as he plops right down beside me. He does not present any interesting conversation or ask any questions. Just sits there. I get an uncomfortable feeling immediately (strike 2). Stacy and Kat try to break the awkwardness that Terrance clearly is not picking up on by asking him questions about himself. As he answers them, he puts his hand on my knee…what the fuck!! (strike 3, 4 and 5). The hand is swiftly taken off of the knee and I squeeze closer to the wall to create some distance. Trapped. The more this guy talks, the more I’m turned off.
Apparently a Libertarian such as Terrance hates people who “don’t matter,” abhors all holidays and has no interest in being any bit a part of society. As he continues to cross personal space boundaries, I begin to tell him gradually that we don’t really have a lot in common and that I am no longer interested in pursuing a dating-type path. Terrance then turns the corner fully and picks up strikes 6-10. He starts to become a bully, berrating me with questions about “what exactly don’t we have in common?!” And “how do YOU know we wouldn’t be compatible?!” Pretty sure he called me a liar (while talking about myself…whom he knows NOTHING about) and continued to dig himself into an ass-type of hole.
Finally, after a total of about 15 minutes since he sat down, I am thouroughly exhausted and look him straight in the face…”I’m done.” He hiccups back more insults that would surely not protect his ego the way he had hoped and just stares at me. I stare back and repeat the statement. Stacy and Kat, who admit later that they had no idea what to do to help the situation, sit slack jawed across from us. Terrance gets up and casually announces that he will be hanging out with his friends and that “oh, by the way, I do care about what matters.” “Good,” I say nicely, not entirely sure of what he means but no longer caring in the least. I leave the bar shortly after utterly spent and shocked.
And to make it worse, I realize that trying to forget Christmas may have somehow summoned the libertarian Christmas-hater. At home I play the only Christmas CD I have while staring at my potted plant strung with lights and more ornaments that it can hold with a new appreciation.