Journeys of Jack Tripper

Sometimes you wake up and someone has drawn all over you. This is usually due to you passing out and so-called "friends" taking advantage of you. That's never happened to me.

Sometimes, though, you wake up with things written on you and you're entirely aware of how they got there. Sometimes it's a girl's phone number, and you scrape to find a pen and paper so it doesn't wash off or smear, but inevitably it does, and you never call her.

And then there's the times when you experience things that need to be captured for posterity, and there's no paper or bar napkin to be found. These are the nights when you find things like "bloviate" and "3am they were making out in the pool" written on your palm or forearm, and you thank yourself for your clever clerical skills.

Last night was one of those nights.

I headed over to the LA Hangout to meet some friends for another show by Tampa's best local band, Basic Rock Outfit. (Here's a YouTube link to my favorite song of theirs, Tidal Wave.)

Upon walking up to the Hangout and through the crowd of Thursday-night bikers I noticed a lithe brunette with hair shorter than mine (and that's not saying much, evidence pic to come some day) and filed her away for future reference. She later joined her friends inside the club area, while I noticed another woman, a blonde, whom I'd seen at other BRO shows. While on the bar side talking to my friend Rachel, she approached bartender Jen for a drink, and I used my usual tactic of insulting women to hit on them.

"Why are you always so serious?"
"What do you mean?" she replied.

The following hour and a half would make me regret ever uttering a word to her. I couldn't escape her rambling narratives about being from England, having a father who worked for the NSA as a mathematician, how she teaches high school French, how she takes care of her boyfriend's kid, blah blah blah blah blah. I excused myself and went over to the club side where she quickly found me.

She was all sorts of crazy. I quickly found it was time to execute Blue Collar Suicide, which I swear I've written about before but can't find any reference to on this blog. (Strangely, I found one on Mel's blog though.) Blue Collar Suicide, to explain for what feels like the tenth time, is a management procedure by which you dispose of someone you need to dispose of in a (at least at first) kind, generous manner.

The lithe brunette was dancing, and I said to the crazy blonde, "You see that girl over there? I have a crush on her."

Usually in Blue Collar Suicide you lie, saying something like "I just realized I'm gay" or "I contribute heavily to Al Qaeda support funds." In this case I was being brutally honest, but it didn't work, because the crazy blonde went over to the brunette and started talking to her.

Backfire!

As it turned out, the brunette was single, but she left before I had a chance to talk to her, and the blonde ended up coaxing my phone number out of me, which is unfortunate insofar as I gave her my real number, and I have a feeling I'm going to regret that whenever I finally find my phone, which I think is in my car somewhere.

And "What a bad idea" is still in black ink on my right palm.