Andy & Alex

Andy
Last night I had the pleasure of meeting Andy for the first time. It's amazing that we made this happen since we are both Libras and are decision-making challenged. I really enjoyed our talk, in spite of the fact that I kept yawning since I was still recovering from Monday night's Drammy awards and karaoke till 2 a.m. It wasn't you, Andy, I swear!

One of many topics we covered was the subject of bad dates. I was telling Andy about a bad date when his cell phone rang and he rushed off to be the hero for a friend who was stranded and needed a ride home. Thankfully, I can tell my story here in its entirety, and if you leave in the middle of it I won't even know.

Alex
I met Alex at Silverado last summer. I should preface this story by saying that sometimes when I go to Silverado I am looking for love. And sometimes I am looking to mock people. This particular evening my impulse to mock was strong.

Alex sat down at my table and smiled. He had a gorgeous smile and beautiful brown eyes. He had an amazing body, from what I could see, and I soon found out he was a former stripper. Around his neck he wore gold chains and wore several rings that looked to be quite expensive.

"Wow. Look at you and your bling," I said as my mockery meter shot off the scale.

He began telling me all about his rings and all about himself. Well, not ALL about himself. As it turns out, I had much to learn about Alex, and most of it was learned too late. We talked for a while, and he convinced me to go with him to another club called Aura. I agreed it could be fun, and we headed off on our adventure. After Aura, we headed to Panorama and spent some time up in the DJ's booth. It was really interesting to stand on the platform almost directly over the dance floor. Alex then asked me if he could spend the night.

There had to be a catch. He's hot. He's fun. He's nice.

There wasn't a catch. There were about a dozen catches, but, again, no sign of them until it was too late. The next morning we woke up in my bed, (I'm skipping details just to frustrate you) and he opened his backpack. He pulled out pictures of his girlfriend and began telling me how much he loved her. How sweet. Turns out she's married, but he knows they will be together someday. He has, after all, known her for three weeks and the connection they share is amazing.

Next he pulled out a huge plastic bag filled with pens. "I collect pens," he said as he began pulling them out to show me. "Check out the jump on this one," he boasted as he clicked the ballpoint pen open and shut. "See it?" he asked.

"Um, yeah," I muttered. "Wait. Are you joking?"

He wasn't. He had a passion for pens and especially, it appeared, pens that had a nice "jump" when you clicked them. Alex's muscular arms and broad shoulders were beautiful as he clicked his pen, but I was beginning to wonder if that was enough to compensate for his quirky pen fetish.

"My ex-boyfriend turned into Eminem one time when we were making love," he stated suddenly as he lovingly placed his high-performance pen back into the bag.

"Huh? What do you mean he turned into Eminem?"

"We were making love and his face and body became that of Eminem. He was Eminem," Alex replied.

"Wow. That is really amazing," I answered. "So, did I turn into anyone last night?" I asked, hoping that I had the power to turn into The Rock. THAT would really be something to brag about. Sadly, I was informed by Alex that I didn't turn into anybody.

Alex then got his cute little butt out of my bed and took a shower, but not before drinking every bit of alcohol in our fridge. He was chugging a beer when Juju came into the kitchen and whispered to me, "Wow! Who is the hot guy?"

I smiled and replied, "Oh, just wait. I have so much to tell you."

Alex said hello to Juju and began telling her how much he loved Shirley MacLaine and how her books personally spoke to him. His shower wasn't long enough for me to fully brief Juju, but she would soon learn plenty about him firsthand. After his shower, he found a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream in the fridge and read the label to Juju. "This has 17% alcohol in it," he told her.

"Alex, I need to take you home now," I said abruptly. I explained to him that Juju and I had a play rehearsal that afternoon and needed to get ready. "Oh, can I come to your rehearsal and watch you," he asked. I told him that, regrettably, our rehearsals were not open to the public. I bit my tongue to avoid saying, "maybe you can just go home and play with your pens."

I drove him home, and Juju rode in the backseat stifling laughter. She was not very successful. At one point she pretended I had said something incredibly funny (I hadn't) just so she could release her pent up hysterical laughter. He told me how much he loved motorcycles, and I pretended to know what he was talking about. Then we passed a pizza place, and Alex told us he worked there for awhile after he was a stripper. He was fired from the pizza place for being drunk on the job. Of course he was.

As we pulled onto his street, Alex looked at me and said something really sweet. Actually, he rapped it...

"There's a certain mystique when I speak,
That you notice that it's order unique,
Cause you know it's me, my poetry's deep,
And I'm still matic the way I flow to this beat..."

I hated to interrupt, but I had to ask. "Is that Eminem?" Why, yes. Yes, it was.

Alex hopped out of the car asking to see me again, and Juju sat in the backseat shaking from her repressed guffaws. He gave me his number and ran inside to call his girlfriend.

I still see Alex from time to time at Silverado. He always gives me his phone number because, strangely, I seem to keep losing it. Once I tried to tell him I didn't have a pen to jot down his number. You can imagine why that excuse didn't work.

"Check out the jump on this one," he said as he wrote down his number.