Unhooked

A snippet from my late childhood, which is my early adulthood depending to whom you speak. I anticipate a chuckle or two so make sure your dental work is well fastened.

Names and places have been changed to protect the people who will surely receive foot to ass therapy and mild public embarrassment from the following. I am me, occasionally called myself, or Mr. Super-Handsome, my accomplice will be known simply as Ernie.

The setting: The nightclub district of my University town. Semi seedy, semi student ghetto, semi ghetto ghetto, but all ghetto fa-bu-lous.

The stage: Late evening, soon after bar closing and boozer banishment. That twilight hour when men are men and women are on the defensive. The late night air has fallen in a time of year far too cold for the stylishly showy clothes worn by young men and women who exhibit feats of ludicrous bravery fueled by and influenced by their favorite liquid might.

At the bars, in our early twenties, on the occasions when our friends had decided their time was better spent on homework, prayer and knitting, Ernie and I operated as a dynamic duo par bar excellence.

We weren’t so much that hero and sidekick type of partnership, Batman and Robin, beefcake and wingman, we were more like Simon and Garfunkel, an even exercise in harmony with strengths and domains for each. If you need to talk guitar you go to Simon, if you require information on bouffant hair you talk to Garfunkel. I’m not going to venture the answer as to whom was who, though I took the turkey in the hair category, but suffice to say, we each had our strengths in the strategically lit nightclub milieu.

For instance, Ernie was the pitchman. More valuable than perhaps any other social grace, including grace itself, is the courage or the blind ignorance it takes to walk up to strange women and ask to be, on one level or another, instantly and unforgivingly evaluated. He was the confidence man, sending in the pitch to be struck, evasively bunted, or callously fouled out. So long as they swung, the con man had done his job well.

Myself, I always preferred the more carefully achieved mysterious-guy soft-sell. That basically consists of trying to allure your intended victim through non-verbal communication and hints of longing. It is about as effective as the pitcher holding the ball in the air, waiting for the batter to come to the mound and swing, and basically amounts to a young man who gets little action.

My own forte, after the first stage was taken care of, was in the delivery. Once Ernie had the hook in and a ball in play, I was great at that endearing small talk and semi-witty banter. I could convince our prey that they were talking to thoughtful and sensitive, albeit slightly goofy wolves in sheep masks.

In all modesty, when the situation dictated I also had my moments on the dance floor.

Our record on the scene was something to behold, and if there were an award for best duo or group in a nightclub-prowling role, well, frankly we’d be sweeping the popcorn of the floor of the award show theater.

No, this is a story of a different kind of conquest. It’s about the things you don’t expect to find and how in the face of those things you think you wanted you find out more about yourself, and how you tend to be a far larger coward than you ever thought possible.

On this particular evening, Ernie and I were on our way home, astounded that yet again we had come up lame in the tiger-trapping department. We were crossing a street on the way to my apartment that bordered the edge of the red-light prostitute district, on the edge of the nightclub district, bordering the student ghetto, not too far off the state of enlightenment but just beyond thunderdome. As we both rejoined the sidewalk, a young lady passed us in the opposing direction. The stink of the hunt was still on us, our toxic strength had yet to dissipate completely. We were still in that place, with crosshairs and beer goggles taped over our eyes. I could feel the smile rise on Ernie’s face as he slipped into his role.

At a half step passed us, what passed for a barely audible pitch escaped his lips like a nervous bidder at a cattle auction.

“You’re going the wrong way, you should be coming with us.”

I barely had the chance to let out a tiny snicker before the girl swung herself around. In that split second I was expecting an entirely warranted feminist retort to be lashed into my partner’s Cheshire face, as I’m sure he was expecting it to, having built up an admirable immunity to them, but strangely she didn’t say anything. Without missing a beat or saying a word she had in fact spun around and begun following us. She was following us to my house… from a ten-word pitch? Ernie, my new favorite genius, had apparently stumbled upon the hallowed password, or perhaps had unknowingly mastered hypnosis, or… wait a second…

Holy sh… she’s a hooker! Ernie you… you’ve just hired a hooker and are taking her to my house!

At twenty years old I was already a fairly worldly young man. I had seen a great deal and had seen a great more things done. I was mature enough… Okay, mature is the wrong word… I knew enough about prostitution to know that Julia Roberts was maybe not the most accurate ambassador for the trade, and that my bed linens were about to earn a significant grudge against me.

In terms of my own prowess and sexual seasoning, I had been in the game enough times to feel knowledgeable, even capable as a performer, but in no way was I ready to perform at the professional level. Ernie on the other hand, was ready to be drafted to the big leagues.

How can I put this without being disrespectful? I can’t, so here comes a lack of respect. You know how the double standard exists in which a woman who has a lot of sex is called a slut while a man is called, manly? Let me just say that in his younger years, my boy Ernie took a stab at leveling that standard for the sluts of both genders. Though the quality may have been occasionally suspect, he achieved a quantity by which all others were judged. Ladies and gentlemen, beyond slut and stud Ernie proudly stood. Ernie was a slud, and frankly a respectable one. Had he kept up with the level of production he set ten years ago, he would have now visited the inside of more women than Tampax and the XX chromosome.

Needless to say at this point, but Ernie’s disposition at the non-verbal knowledge of our new companion of the night could have been described as… optimistic.

“What are we gonna do? She’s still following us.”
“I’ll think of something.”
“Think of what? My building is right ahead.”
“Well, how about a group rate?”

Ernie, God bless him, was the kind of individual that at times had trouble recognizing the subjective nature of individual likes and dislikes. In retrospect, it may have been hard for him to imagine that though I like entertaining ‘the ladies’, I would be apprehensive of this lady for hire’s naked rental parts on my bed, or frankly within a flea’s jumping distance of it. It’s funny how a heart can be in the right place even when it’s got the directions totally wrong. He really believed he was about to do me a favor.

As we reached the lobby doors of my apartment building, I was subtly jumping out of my skin. Ernie had a look on his face like a charming super-villain on Christmas morning.

“You’ve got to get rid of her! She can’t come upstairs! My roommate’ll kill me! She’ll do something funky to my sheets… she’ll do something funky to me… her pimp will know where I live… It’s against the law! Get rid of her! Make her go! Make her go!” The under my breath ravings must have sounded like Yosemite Sam’s incoherent swear streams at Bugs Bunny.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.” He sounded like a Mafia hitman moonlighting as a used car salesman. I went up ahead to prepare, well really to pray.

I must have hit the elevator button seven times in the four-story ride. I bounded through my apartment to my roommate’s bedroom, even today I’m not sure if I was providing a warning or seeking advice.

Another incoherent stream bust forth.

“Man, I don’t know… Ernie… hooker… group rate… I don’t know. They’re coming, I can’t stop it…”

Calmer than I had ever seen him, my normally high-strung roommate slowly woke and turned over. Without a question or a heightened tone he told me to back out of his room and close his door. I obediently did so, I guess I was highly suggestive at that time.

As I came back out into the living room, Ernie was entering through the front door. My heart stopped as I prepared myself for HER to follow, bringing all of the Pandora’s Box kind of consequences that that questionable boxes seem to hold. Oh man, oh man, I was actually thinking of something charming to say, like in a twisted version of our barroom duo routine.

“Hi, I’m Patrick, but you can call me John.” Oh boy, this was going to suck.

As blood flow quickly returned to my brain I realized that Ernie was alone. His head hung a little bit lower than usual, especially for this point of the evening, and he was massaging his jaw the way guys in the movies do when they get socked in the mouth. He was alone, thank God, he was alone.

Oh man, what did he do now, order some kind of orgy combo deal?

“No, she hit me.”

“’You’re going the wrong way,’ you get away with, what could you have possibly said to get hit?”

As it turns out, it wasn’t so much what Ernie said that killed the mood and broke the deal. Well actually, it was exactly what he said.

“What did you say?”

“I said ‘Can we get a deal for the two of us?’”

I can picture it to this day, even though I was never actually there to see it, the words being delivered from his confident grin. I can see her sultry bedroom eyes rising slightly at the realization of what he’s proposing.

“What do you mean, a deal?”

“You know, how much will it cost?”

That was about when she cranked him in the chin.

As it turns out, she was not a professional, apparently just open to suggestion.

As we both learned, girls can be offended by sleazy propositions even if they’re not offended by sleazy propositions. Far less important to a woman than what is proposed to her is what is supposed about her. The sleazy parts are imposed later.

It should be mentioned in epilogue that while I’ve merely grown older, Ernie has grown up. He is a hero everyday to his daughter, to his wife, and to the people he protects who probably rarely say ‘thank you’ and couldn’t say it enough.

The amoral of the story as close as I can figure: Be careful what you wish for…

You just might get some.

Keep it real, Ernie.

Hughes.