Drinks With Marla

The week at work was absolute hell---long hours beginning before 6:00, every minute consumed with unpleasant telephone calls with unpleasant people, watching hundreds of thousands of dollars disappear from a computer screen and thinking, wow, it doesn't seem real. I was so ready for after work drinks on Friday with Marla.

We met at a downtown bar---I should mention that neither of us spends a lot of time drinking downtown. Downtown Chicago is for business only---not for play. It was the kind of bar that tries to affect a hip image but doesn't pull it off---filled with the people who in Manhattan are known as the bridge and tunnel crowd.

Marla showed up about ten minutes late (she was decent enough to text ahead of time) and we each ordered a very stiff drink. She glanced at the crowd and said,

"...At least the place is near the station so these people won't miss their trains back to the suburbs."

We headed to her neighborhood for food and drinks at an Irish place. Irish pubs are ubiquitous in Chicago---much like Italian restaurants. There are some good ones and some bad ones but most are very, very mediocre. I ordered fish and chips with my vodka tonic and Marla asked for the shepard's pie and a bottle of tabasco sauce.

"Are you serious? Tobasco on a shepard's pie?"

"Tobasco goes great with everything!"

And I watched her smother her food with tobasco.

We went to another place in Old Town for another stiff drink, and at this point I ordered a hot tea. At 39, with years of drinking under my belt, I've learned to pace myself---I'm training for a marathon, not a sprint. Marla is the same age as I am, but I was getting the impression that her tolerance for alcohol is stronger than mine. That's unusual with girls that I date. I have a few Polish friends who can drink me under the table if push comes to shove, but for an American born guy I hold my liquor pretty well.

Marla smiled and kidded me about being a lightweight, but I reminded her that it would be a damper on the evening if she had to throw me into a cab in about half an hour. She agreed and we headed for Nick's, my regular stomping grounds.

Bethany was working, and came over to introduce herself. Marla said,

"Watch to make sure she doesn't spit in my drink. She was all over you."

"You're off there. She's got a boyfriend in a band. We've been pals for two years."

"Honey, women know. She's got a crush on you."

That was the same thing Mar had said---women know. Well, no, not in this case. Women project---if they're attracted to a man they tend to imagine other women being attracted to him as well. A broad generalization, I know, and I am certainly prepared to take heat for it and admit that it doesn't hold true in numerous cases but it does show how girls who are upbeat and friendly, like Bethany, can easily be misunderstood.

On the other hand, I realized that it does add to my value to be seen as a guy who other women are attracted to so I changed the subject. The drinks came and Marla and I started dancing at our table to the blues band that had started playing---or, rather, Marla started dancing and I sort of swayed back and forth, depending on which way the room was spinning.

Shit. I was drunk. And so was Marla. She spilled her drink, sending Bethany over with a towel. We realized it was time to leave.

Back at my place, Marla looked over the detritus on my dresser.

"Are these your tanning goggles, David?"

"No...they're.......yes...yes, they are."

She laughed.

We landed on the bed together and started making out. I was licking her left nipple when she said,

"I can hardly feel it. Bit it hard."

I did. And I made sure she felt it. My mouth worked its way south, and I went down on her for a looong time. She was delicious, in the way that some women are.

"Do you have a condom?" she asked

"I do, but the question is, do you want to see me again? When I sleep with a girl on the first date, it's usually the end. Not planned, that's just the way it works out. ..."

"Well, this is kind of our second date. We had dinner together last weekend."

She had a very good point.

We slept together twice that night. It was nice, and it was nice also to be able to sleep off my hangover. And not go into work to face a crisis. The hot weather had broken---it was cool outside and I ran eight miles with ease. Marla and I will be getting together sometime during the week.

By way of background, Marla is about my age. She grew up in southern New Jersey, but her parents moved to Chicago right before her senior year of high school. She was a cheerleader in high school, and I can picture her as a cheerleader. She's the type. She loves to travel---goes to europe every summer and has several friends on the continent with whom she stays. She has beautiful eyes and knows how to flirt. She is a very sexy woman.

And, I suppose I'll have to deal with the race issue here: Marla is black, I'm white. In terms of dating, I'm ecumenical. However, it takes some maturity to breach the black-white thing. My first college girlfriend was African American and we kind of dived naively into it without realizing just what we were getting into---there were the frat-guy types on my dorm floor their brown sugar jokes, and black guys who didn't think a sister should be dating a white boy. My black roommate went through a bit of a time with his white girlfriend, too---if he took her to a campus event for African American students, she always had to absorb snide comments from black girls. And I got the impression that her parents weren't exactly thrilled with her choice of a boyfriend.

That's the reality and anybody who says otherwise isn't really paying attention. However, the nice thing about being 39 is that I can draw on 24 years of dating experience. And there are also a lot of things that I don't really give a damn about anymore, too.