don’t give your number to bouncers

Once upon a time, on a birthday far away from today, I gave my number to a bouncer. Now most women know there are certain men to avoid in the game and labyrinth of dating. They include: musicians, bouncers, bartenders, professional athletes, cops, djs and the military. I don’t heed or pay any attention to any of those rules because I like breaking rules. I don’t prescribe to the bible of dating, the hasty generalizations of love and labor, the he’s just not into you bullshit. But maybe, maybe I should. I actually think I might have dated all the no-no’s minus the professional athlete but the night is young- there is still time.

So back to this bouncer, I gave this bouncer my number. I remember thinking he was smart. I remember thinking I was sad over my most recent disaster of a relationship. I remember thinking he wouldn’t call. He did. He did the next day. Which is not the typical bad boy style of course. So when he left the number on my answering machine, before everyone held a technical device on their person, I called him, called him back. Just to hear a restaurant on the other end asking me if I wanted to make a reservation. So this might have been the sign. Who calls you and leaves you a wrong number? Probably not a soulmate. Probably not.

But he called again and it was an oversight of an area code, the 408. So we began the dance of dating. Not so successfully at the beginning but something about my move across the country away from him, but most importantly away from the only life I’d known in CA, made him seem like the one. The one. So there were talks of important things like figuring out where to live, graduate school, the m word, and the ring. He told me when he looked at me you thought of the m word. I had no clue what the m word meant but as it got stuck in his throat he said marriage. I think he was drunk when he first said it. Woo I feel special.

This love affair, this love affair promptly ended when I got into graduate school and he didn’t. This wouldn’t be the first time my ambitions-educational and otherwise-got in the way of love. There wouldn’t be a layover where we both would land. I was sad but then I knew, knew there was something about this bouncer, this bouncer just didn’t seem right, his eyes didn’t stay too still, he never really made me the most important part of his life. So with time, I realized this love affair was a young one, a young one that would have never gotten me through the gray hair and the grandchildren. So I continued on my quest for the soulmate. My true soulmate.

When he told me he was getting married on a myspace message before facebook got popular. I thought wow- seriously- this is how we tell people about big life decisions. Is this where we tell people of our marriages, our divorces, our diseases, our cancer, or hey I got laid last night? I wondered why he told me. Why I needed to know? The funny thing is he thought I had beaten him to marriage. Beat him to marriage- like there is a race I am part of no one told me that the first who lands a ring, a date, a venue, a caterer and a marriage wins. Game of life on fast forward, on speed dial. Sure, right. How about who gets divorced first- it that part of the game too?

So years later when I looked down at my phone and saw that 408 with a text message, it wasn’t entirely a surprise. Writing me things about memories shared between us. Some were really faint for me. He married the next person he dated, I didn’t. I’m in Boston and thought of you or I’m in Healdsburg or I don’t know. I guess the topper is when he wrote, wrote me once and said I’m in the city without my wife, I want a drink, one drink and nothing else. Nothing else. I’m sure. I would rather sit with you, me, and your wife in a overheated sterile white room with no alcoholic freedom in sight with a strange beeping noise that won’t stop then every sit next to you again alone. Alone again. Now the greatest part of all this is he isn’t my husband, he isn’t my problem, and his wandering eyes aren’t inherited as mine.

Now I am left with annoying messages from someone I wish I could say fuck off to. But I don’t respond. Moral of this story to add to the trials and tribulations of dating and the interactions between the opposite sexes- is if you give a bouncer your number, he might just might call you, and if he does he might never stop. Ever. If it’s a risk you are willing to take, good luck. Good luck. If I had one thing to say, I would ask him to lose my number. Actually, I’ll say it now, please lose my number.