The unexpected hookup…

Yeah, so - Since I run a bar, I see drunk and/or random hookups all the time. If I didn’t see at least one per night, I might start thinking something was seriously wrong in the fabric of the universe.

I’m not a one-night-stand kinda guy, in general… It’s just not the way I like to work things. The opportunities are generally there, but I’m typically lookin for love rather than a one-night-stand… I am not, however, immune to lure of a lovely woman — particularly when she’s as smart and easy going as she is gorgeous.

The story:

Last weekend, a friend — someone I’ve gotten to know over the past couple of months — joined a group of us to go spread the word about the bar, something that’s become a regular part of our promoting routine. She and I teamed up for a while, socializing with friends, acquaintances and many random strangers, evangelizing the gospel of the Sweet Cherry and just having a good time.

A little background: The bar is located in pretty small town area … The type of place where everyone knows everyone and there really isn’t more than 2 or 3 degrees of separation between anyone. Even the random strangers knew us, or of us through a friend or a cousin or whatever.

Now, anyone that knows me, for more than a day or so, will tell you that I’m a pretty social guy — People often describe me as tough and abrasive, sometimes intimidating, on the outside, but a fun-loving asshole once you get to know me… If you’re my friend, and you’re female, you’ll quickly understand that I’m gonna flirt with you one minute, treat you like my little sister the next and there’s no doubt that I’ll eventually say something to absolutely shock the shit outta you. I don’t know why I do it, but I do and it works for me. I guess when you go way over the top, it opens the door for the people around you to let loose and relax any social inhibitions they might have.

Sometimes, if you’re on the outside looking in, you might mistake my social ways as ‘game’ or ‘moves’ — so it didn’t surprise me when a few people asked me and my lovely, bar-promoting, partner if we were ‘together‘… It actually happened more than a couple times — I guess small town people tend to be a bit more small minded. They’re not used to us city-folk, er, something.

Anyway — she and I found it to be pretty funny. A couple times we played along for a minute before telling them and once toward the end of the night we just went so over the top with sarcasm and fake-love that the group just got the idea.

The night came to a close with us meeting back up with most of the rest of our promo group and going our separate ways. She’d run into a guy she was “into” and I had plans to meet some more people and continue enjoying my evening. The night ended exactly the way it was supposed to.

Fast-forward to the next Friday.

My lovely promotions assistant is covering the Friday night shift at the bar and a good group of people, mostly friends of the bar, show up to party the night away. We’re doin’ what we do — I’m socializing and shooting pool, making my occasional appearance behind the bar to pour a few and chat it up with someone. She’s pouring drinks and being likable — making most of the guys in bar drool the way a good bartender should.

In walks her “new man” — though she protests a bit when her sister announces it … He walks up to me to say hey, we chat for a while and the night proceeds nicely. Kinda.

Seems her “man” e. is a bit annoying. He spends the evening throwing down drinks and the seams of his sewn on personality start to show. To be totally honest, I didn’t notice how much of a schmuck the guy was at first, and I attributed the general disdain most of the guys had toward him to the fact that they were jealous… It wasn’t until the 4th or 5th time he tried to get me to go out to his truck to check out his $6000 stereo system that I decided he was a putz.

No problem though. Whats a bar without at least one annoying idiot to give everyone something to giggle about. Hell, once in a while, I play the part of that idiot. All in a nights work in the bar business.

At some point during the night, my bartender asks if we had an open room at the resort so she wouldn’t have to drive. She’d had a few and wanted to let loose a bit without the worries of the good old state police pullin’ her over at 3am.

Well, as it happens, we have a staff house on the property — nothing special, just some low-end rooms with clean sheets. It does come with a couple of rules — you can’t get outta control and wake any of the live-in staff up, and you have to stay alone. It’s not a flop-house for fucks sake. I explain that and she’s cool with it. Not sure if she’s as annoyed with e. as the rest of us are, or what…

We party on and a few of e.’s friends show up — really good people. They tell me they’ve not really seen him get as drunk as he is too often and that they’ll make sure he gets home ok. His annoying behavior gets easier to ignore now that he’s got some friends to keep him occupied — but he still manages to drag me out to his truck to show off his “awesome” system — doesn’t quite understand why I’m upset when he cranks it to 11; probably waking up the neighbors a half mile up the road. Then he can’t figure out how to turn it off. Fuckin’ pathetic.

I head back in the bar and it’s probably pretty obvious that I’m not a happy camper. I’m waiting for the cops to roll in to show their appreciation for e. breaking the local noise ordinance. Thank god that doesn’t happen.

Jump to closing time…

Last call goes down like it always does — tabs get paid and people get on to wherever they’re gettin’ on to… I walk the last few out, including e. and his friends, and we’re all sayin’ our goodbyes when it starts to become obvious that e. has decided he’s not going anywhere. First he says he’s waiting for his girl … after he’s informed that he need not do that, he decides he can’t leave his truck in our lot.

Crap goes as crap goes and his friends have no luck getting his ass into their car. He’s shown his hand and it’s got nothing but jealous written all over it. He’s marked his property and now he’s drunk and afraid that he’s gonna loose it to someone else unless it comes with him.

She sees this and decides she’s not havin’ it. She heads back into the bar to do her closing and clean up work and leaves me and his buddies to deal with him. We never manage to get him into their car, instead he wanders off down the road. Whatever — he’s gone, and I’m more than happy to go finish closing the bar and get a well deserved nights sleep.

Back inside, I decide that I deserve a few minutes to throw back a beer and relax. My bartender agrees — she needs to vent and I let her. Her venting turns into some interesting conversation and the development of our new house shot (to be unveiled on the 25th).

It’s hard work developing a house shot. We decide that our new house shot needs to be Jager-Bomb based with a cherry theme and proceed to do some hands on R&D. 3 or 4 design samples later, we’re pretty relaxed and the walls have been torn down. e. is a no longer the topic of conversation, but relationships are still up for discussion.

Thats when she just about blows me off my barstool … Asks me why I never really hit on her. Our conversation has taken on a whole new dimension — we’re now in the drunk and I’m gonna tell you something I’d only say after too many shots dimension.

I gotta say, I didn’t exactly know how to respond to what she was telling me. Yes, thats right, me - speechless. I mean, sure, she’s hot — fuckin’ hot — but I seriously just filed her into my just friends file and you don’t ever really hit on someone thats in that category. Some of the things that came out of her mouth left me feeling more flattered than I’ve ever felt before. The ultimate ego boost.

Thats when it happened — I’m thinkin’ I made the biggest mistake I’ve made in a while. I pulled her record out of the just friends file and put it through the shredder.

I opened up and explained why I never thought about hookin’ up with her… I guess sometimes honesty is better game than anything the worlds best playaa can come up with — this woman was not used to someone being as blunt as I was, cause the tables were suddenly turned and she acted as if I’d just told her something nobody had ever told her before. I don’t think I really told her anything all that special … Just explained to her that she was a really cool girl and I didn’t think trying to get in her jeans was the way to show her respect.

A kiss led to another and we ended up where things like this tend to end up. I don’t think I need to go into detail…

So, why was this a mistake? Well … Maybe it wasn’t a mistake. But it was a really unexpected hookup and a drunk hookup. Sometimes people say things they don’t mean when they’ve had a few too many — but usually they mean exactly what they’re sayin.

There are so many unknowns when you wake up … It’s one thing when you hookup with someone random, but when it’s someone you’ve had in your just friends file and you’ve been all good with it, it really complicates things. On the one hand you wanna play it off like it’s not a big deal — but if you do that you risk making them feel cheap and used. On the other hand you can’t really make it a big deal ’cause once you cross that line it’s hard to recover if they think it’s not a big deal. Not to mention the fact that e. had just been blown off a few hours earlier.

Ah, well — I guess I’ll have to play this one by ear. I regret letting it get to where it got, but since I can’t un-ring that bell I’ll deal with the complications and try not to let anyone get busted up too bad.

Lessons learned:

A) Don’t be that jealous guy — being that guy will make your fears a reality.
B) Don’t hook up with a friend after you’ve been drinking. It really complicates life.