On Thursday, Hannah dragged me out to a bar with her. It’s local, and not too bad honestly. Unfortunately, I got to spend the first two hours listening to how much of “a shit” her ex-husband is. I sat and listed as she told me she feels like her life is in ruins because of his departure, how she’s been set back ten years on her life plan because of it, that it’s a really good thing that they didn’t manage to get pregnant even though they had been trying for almost a year before they split, and I got to buy her drinks. She “claimed” we were there to get me a girl, though I really didn’t fancy the kind of girl you met in bars. Not that there weren’t perfectly wonderful people in bars, I mean, for that night, I was the kind of guy who hangs around in bars looking for women, and I’ve been assured that I’m “a good guy”. So I really shouldn’t have been judging, and to be honest, I wasn’t, but one thing about the kind of girl that hangs around in bars, is that most of them smoke and that is one thing I just won’t budge on. No smokers are going to kiss me. Until now this hadn’t been a problem, as the only girl I had kissed so far had been Lani during a debate trip while we played Truth or Dare in the back of the bus on the way home. I had a huge crush on her at the time, so it was both thrilling and terrifying. I’m pretty sure one of the girls knew this, because every time it was my turn to be dared, Lani was always the subject of my dares. It ended with some length of time spent “French” kissing her in the back of the bus. It was my first time and not hers, and I was terrified that I was horrible.

I’m pretty sure I was saved by the fact that it was a short length of time. At least I didn’t “just sit there like I was asleep” as one of her many boyfriends had done for the week or two she dated him. Later on while studying for finals in the library with her and a mutual friend, the subject had come up, and she had said I was fine, but that was two years later, and I’m sure she didn’t even remember. In any event, no girls in high school had thought me worth their time. Granted I participated in many of the geekier pursuits, and I was a stick thin guy, though fortunately my various outdoor activities did keep me from being stereotypically pasty. I often thought it was a crime that our school had never had a Sadie Hawkins dance. But then, I probably would have been ignored anyhow. Or if I’d have been asked, I would have been asked by one of my friends who didn’t want me to feel bad, but didn’t really want to date me.

In any case, Hannah was pretty well gone by the time she actually turned to the task of trying to find a girl for me. She said she was sorry for spending all that time talking about herself and her problems when we were supposed to be finding a girl for me and I knew she meant “this is the way you get me, deal,” and didn’t really care about finding a girl tonight, so I said it wasn’t a problem. One of the problems with going to the bar with Hannah is that she’s cute, and therefore looks younger than her age, and it looked like we were going out the way I was buying her drinks and she was talking intently to me over them. I’ve heard that guys who are taken are supposed to be more attractive for some reason, and if it had been Kim (though the age difference was more noticeable) I might have actually suspected that motive, but I don’t think Hannah was thinking like that. By the time she actually tried to find me a girl, she was barely thinking at all. She made some half-hearted attempts to pick a girl, but I shot them all down from my stool. If she’d been sober, she probably would have put up more of a fight, but she wasn’t and let me get away with my cowardice.

At about midnight, I insisted that we needed to get going so we could manage work the next day. I paid my eighty dollar bar tab (three beers were mine, the rest was hers) and went to the restroom before we left. It was a typical two urinal bar restroom, with the odd short urinal. I’ve never understood why bars include these, since they don’t cater to children. But they at least had the dividing wall making neighbor or no neighbor almost a non-issue. Since she was in no way capable of driving, I drove her home in her car and walked the fourty-five minutes back to my place. It was getting windy and cold, but there really wasn’t another solution, and I wouldn’t feel right leaving her to some cabbie in her state. I got home around one and took a shower because I knew I wouldn’t want to do so in the morning, and went to bed.

Hannah looked rough the next morning, her brown hair was up, (which I find much sexier) in a hasty looking bun, and the light makeup she normally wore was absent. I guessed she had woken up a bit late and just hurried out the door. Cute girls can manage this quite well. She make have looked rough, but she thanked me for a good time the night before (and honestly, there are worse ways to spend a Thursday night than in the company of a cute drunk girl, even if she is complaining) and promised that the next time we went out, she would pick up the tab. Since I don’t drink too much, I knew this wasn’t the same as me picking up hers, but thanked her and told her I enjoyed it and I was more than willing to pay for a cute girl to get drunk and forget her troubles. She smiled and went to her office to avoid the harsh light and noise of the lab.

We all have offices in addition to our lab desks, but so much more work can be done in the lab, that virtually none of us use our offices (or cubical in my case) to do any work. I checked my mail and remembered my order from Tuesday. I figured it was about time for it to show up at my door. I entered my tracking number into Google, and saw it was scheduled for delivery. When I mentioned this to Hannah as we walked to the cafeteria to pick up lunch, she insisted that she come over after work to see what the clothes looked like on me. I wasn’t totally comfortable with this, but in the end I agreed, because it would be nice to actually have a real opinion on it. I’m a fairly neat guy, so I wasn’t worried about my apartment being messy, and I didn’t have any porn to hide, though I don’t think Hannah would have minded too much. Besides, how often do cute girls invite themselves over to my apartment? In its history, I think the number is two, though Matt insists that a couple of other girls did everything but ask. He’s an asshole with women though, so I didn’t put much stock into his opinion.

At about 5:30 (Hannah and I had both gotten in around nine-thirty, and with a working lunch had to stay later than my general 4:30 to 5:00) we headed over to my apartment. She’d never been and she’d forgotten her jacket in her rush out the door. I tried to offer my hoodie, but she declined, so I tried to walk fast to get her there quicker, but she just wasn’t keeping up. In the end, the three blocks went by fast enough and we stopped by the leasing office to pick up the package before heading to my building and up the stairs.

My apartment is on the third floor and is what I referred to as the “Bachelor Pad” floorplan, though I think it had a much more interesting name in the leasing office sales material. Something pretentious like The Weststock or Charleston, which was humorous considering it is a basic and rather unimaginative one bedroom with a kitchen and living room/dining area. The laundry facilities are in the basement, and the kitchen has a half sized stove and dish washer. Hannah peered interestedly around the place when we got in, and commented on the fact that it was pretty clean. The morning’s cereal bowl was in the sink, but otherwise things were quite tidy.

She started opening the bag and quickly pulled out the clothes and pulled the jeans and shirts out first.

“Try these on first. And don’t tuck in the shirt,” she instructed.

“Why wouldn’t I tuck it in, it looks messy un-tucked?” I asked.

“Because that’s the style. Now go try it on.”

I felt a little like my mother was dressing me, but my mother would have never told me to untuck my shirt. I also felt a little excited that she seemed to be taking so much interest in me. I even momentarily thought about what it would be like if she were my girlfriend, but I dismissed it as quickly as I could. The last thing I needed was to start thinking of her in a sexual way. The pants and shirts fit pretty well, and though I felt fairly goofy when the shirts weren’t tucked in, I did like them, and she said I looked “totally hot.” I knew she said it in the same way my mother always called me her “handsome young man,” but I still appreciated it. I mentioned that the pants were a little loose around the waist, and she handed me the belt. It didn’t look quite like the one I thought she had ordered, and I mentioned this. She agreed, but said it seemed like a nice enough belt, and it hadn’t cost any more, so I should just try it on.

When I took the belt into the room, I noticed the the belt just seemed right. I’m not quite sure how to describe it. It seemed maybe more real than everything else in the room. I’m not sure I know what happened next. I put on the belt and came to show her. I had fought the urge to tuck in my shirt. When I stepped into the room, I swear I saw a little copy of her, standing on her shoulder whispering into her ear. It was like a cartoon with the angel and demon, except there was only one, and I can only assume this was the demon, because it was trying to get her to go to the bar and have a drink. While I don’t think drinking in and of itself is bad, I have trouble with the idea of an angel advocating a drink at a local bar. Maybe some wine and bread, but not Sex on the Beach at O’Kelly’s. She seemed to have a slightly spacey look on her face when I came out, and seemed a little startled when she saw me. When I looked back at her shoulder, her copy was gone, and I figured I…, well I didn’t know what to think and still don’t. But I decided to ignore it.

Then she said, “You look so good it would be criminal to cage up the sexiness. Let’s get you out into the world and in front of all those women who need a good man.” I must have had a slightly stunned expression on my face, because she said, “What? Is the prospect of women that daunting to you?” Of course the answer was yes, but I pretended it wasn’t and let her drag me to the bar.

When we got to the bar, I swear I saw little people standing on the shoulders of about a quarter of the people in the bar. In the bar I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but most of the time their appearance preceeded a drink order pretty closely. Either my brain decided to stop playing tricks on me, or they knew I could see them, because every time I would look back again, they would be gone. I would also swear the room was darker and there was an almost tangible shadow covering the ceiling. It was ridiculous, but I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’ve never hallucinated or seen things. Heck, I had trouble seeing images in clouds when I was a kid. I didn’t really see them again, though at times I thought I saw motion out of the corner of my eye, or when I looked up at someone briefly. Sometimes I imagined I saw unusual lumps in the backs of people’s clothes, but they were too small to be the things I had seen, and were almost definitely just folds of fabric.

Of course this meant I was totally distracted and Hannah noticed. She asked me what was wrong and kept insisting that if I didn’t stop looking so afraid, no woman would ever talk to me.

“You weren’t like this last night,” she pointed out, “Why are you acting so weird today?”

“It’s nothing. I just had a weird feeling and it’s shaken me a bit,” that was as close to the truth as I was willing to get.

“Well, let’s get some liquid courage into you, and you’ll calm down.”

She ordered two Long Island’s and started giving me girl advice. Act confident even when you aren’t. Don’t think a long time about decisions or questions, answer quickly and confidently and don’t second guess your self aloud or in your head after you did. Aloud made sense, but I asked what the harm in questioning in my head was. She said that most men weren’t composed enough to keep that thought from flashing across their faces and as tonight had proven, I was like most other men in this regard. An apparently a girl is much more likely to be looking at your face than anything else. She also warned against looking at a girls chest too much. A glance or two, especially from further off is fine, even flattering, but when you’re talking to her, you should be talking to her, not here chest. I can understand that and said so. I also said that if a girl is showing a lot of cleavage, it’s like my eyes are magnetically attracted. She said I was a grown up and I could control myself as she finished her first Long Island and ordered another.

I had basically forgotten my own and tasted it. It actually was pretty good. I’d never had one before, and I knew there was a lot of alcohol in it, but it was surprisingly easy to drink. I stayed away from hard liquor mostly because I didn’t like the taste of the alcohol itself. Before I could stop myself, I asked her “Don’t you like Sex on the Beach?” I was about to stammer and apologized for the unintentional double entendre when I remembered her comment about being confident and decided not to. She gave me a look I think my mother would describe as coy, laughed a bit.

“I actually was thinking how much I’d like some when we were in your apartment,” she must have seen my face do acrobatics to try and stay level, “Hey, if you’re going to make the sexually suggestive comments, you have to handle the aftermath Francis,” she had totally misinterpreted my look and I was glad. If she’d been thinking about ordering Sex on the Beach at a bar in the apartment, then what, was I reading her mind? I’d never been able to do that before. That was of course an understatement. As a human, no one had been able to do that. Oh those “psychics” pretended to, but there is a world of difference between pretending to and being able to. But, it was a more comfortable thought than the two alternatives I had come up with. Either I was starting to have a psychotic break, or I really was seeing little people standing on shoulders and it meant something bad. The psychotic break seemed the most likely, though I highly doubt that people having psychotic breaks think about the fact that they might be having a break. If they did, I don’t see how they would allow themselves to go off the deep end.

But if I was having a psychotic break, then how could I be right about what she was thinking. True I’d seen her order a couple on Thursday, and I know she’s drinking a lot right now, so I might have invented what I—Oh this was a ridiculous line of thought. Little people don’t stand on shoulders and whisper in ears. I refocused on Hannah, who between continuing to talk about do’s and don’ts of meeting girls and ordering a Sex on the Beach to go with her half finished Long Island, didn’t notice my mental absence.

“We’re going to get you some practice,” was the statement that really startled me back into things.

“Huh?”

“You are going to go up to a girl and buy her a drink and talk to her for at least 5 minutes if she agrees,” she was too sober to be talked out of it, so I looked glum as she picked out a girl. “Her, her friend is off with another guy, she’s low on her drink, “ she pointed to an average looking girl I had noticed at the bar chain smoking Marlboro Reds.

“She’s a smoker, you know I won’t go out with a smoker,” I protested this rather more strongly than I had intended.

“You’re not dating her, you’re practicing chatting her up. You’ll be less nervous because you don’t care if you screw up. I mean, you’ll be nervous anyhow because I’m making you do something you’ve probably never done before, so adding in a girl you are actually interested in, well that’s too much right now.”

She had a point and as I knew she wasn’t going to be dissuaded, I thought I’d just go over and do my thing and return after five minutes of awkward conversation. I walked over to her, and as I got closer, I heard a my voice in my ear say

“You’ve got to be kidding me, she’s going to laugh at you. No girl in their right mind is interested in you,” there was a sneer to the voice and I whipped my head to the left to see who it was talking in my ear as my chest started to quiver with nervousness, and I felt the sweat beginning to form on my palms and scalp. I swear I saw a little copy of me, as well as I could see from that close a distance and out of the edge of my normal vision, and he looked as shocked to see me staring at him, as I’m sure I looked upon seeing him. But he was gone pretty quickly, almost like he was sucked down my collar and I was left wondering if I’d really seen him or imagined him, and by the time I got to the girl at the bar, I was sure I’d imagined it.

“Can I buy you a refill?’ I asked, all of a sudden realizing that my “On Hannah” trip to the bar was going to end up costing me anyhow. The girl, who I quickly learned was Jen, took a pause from her cigarette, looked me up and down and nodded. I asked what she was having, flagged a barkeep and ordered her a second. In a moment of spiteful inspiration, I asked the keeper to put it on the tab for my table. He nodded and walked away. We talked for a couple of minutes. Apparently she was recently out of a relationship with someone who sounded frighteningly like Matt and was just here because her friend Ashley hadn’t wanted to go out alone, but she was damned if she was going to spend the whole evening at her shoulder if Ashley wanted to spend all her time fawning of every guy she met, hoping one wouldn’t mind that she had a three year old son from a previous boyfriend. I was about to make my excuses, when there was a slight lull in the conversation and I swear I heard her voice speaking softly.

“He’s cute enough, you could really use some fun in the sack tonight. If you grab his dick now, he’s not going to walk away, and you can lead him by his dick all the way home and he’ll screw your brains out. It beats sitting here waiting for Ashley to get lucky while you just get drunk and lonely and go home to your empty bed. Besides, he looks like he might be a pretty good lay.”

Before anything could happen, I excused myself quickly, thanked her for the conversation and headed back to Hannah, ten minutes having passed. As I left, I swear I heard “You’re just too slow. If you want to have some fun tonight, you’re going to have to take matters into your own hands. You’re not that attractive, and you smoke like a chimney, so no guy is going to ask you home himself, but if you take the lead, guys will do anything for an easy lay,” but the bar noise was picking up as I walked back across the room, and by the time I reached the table, I was convinced it was my imagination spazzing out or something.

As I didn’t really want to do that again, even though it had gone fairly well, and I needed to go the kind of bathroom I prefer to do at home, I told Hannah I really wasn’t feeling that well all of a sudden, and that I was going to head home. I apologized, and she tried to get me to stay, but eventually said she should probably go home too. She was probably not quite sober, but I just wanted to get out of there bad enough that I didn’t bother with telling her to wait and sober up, or to offer to drive her home again. So I came home, read a couple of chapters of the fourth Harry Potter and sat in front of the TV, not really watching anything for an hour. I changed into a pair of sweatpants and a T-Shirt as soon as I got home and started feeling better right away. It almost felt like a weight fell off my shoulders when I undressed and I started feeling better. I tossed all the new clothes in my hamper. Even though I’d only worn the shirt and pants for a couple of hours, they had been bar hours and they reeked of smoke. The belt I hung up on the nail in my closest I used for that purpose and noticed that it seemed to stand out a little more than the other belts. Like it was more 3-dimensional. Like those weird 3D posters at the mall look more 3D than the rest of the world because you’re seeing real depth in something 2D. But almost as soon as I had finished, I shook off that feeling and moved into a stupor that only happens in front of the television when there is nothing you care about on. After an hour or so of various History Channel and Discovery Channel segments, I brushed my teeth and went to bed.