One More Year: The Romantic Path of Ana Lee (The Path Less Taken Series Book 1)

by SJ Cavaletti

  A preppy guy at the far end of the group caught my eye. He looked really friendly, younger than most of the other guys who were all around forty, this one seemed to be in his mid-twenties. He was cute and quite innocent looking but clearly confident as he waved me over to come sit with him. Next to him, sitting on a lap was Angel. Not ideal, but when requested at a Club, it’s a pretty good idea to say hello.

  In the sea of men there was nowhere to sit but on his lap. His legs were wiry, almost bony as he was a smallish guy. He was easy on the eyes with deep brown eyes, an outgoing smile and big, white teeth. He beamed from ear to ear.

  “Hello darlin’,” he said, “I’m Rick.”

  “Ana. Pleased to meet you,” I said.

  “Oh I do love a spot of manners,” he said, possibly trying to put on an English accent.

  “Was that an English accent you were trying to do?” I asked, giggling.

  “Yeah… I’m terrible at that one, can do a Scottish one a bit better.”

  He started to imitate a leprechaun and it made me laugh. He was really sweet and we started to talk about how he had family from Scotland and loved to visit. The subject of travel was always a good one for me as I could talk about escapism til the cows came home.

  I had been sitting on Rick’s lap for about ten minutes, just thinking about how to segue into the idea of actually dancing and spending some money. Suddenly, his friend turned toward us and slapped Rick on the shoulder.

  “Dude, I’m going in that little private room over there,” he pointed to the Champagne Room, “Wanna come?”

  Angel looked at me with that blank and completely illegible look.

  Rick just went for it like a kid in a candy shop.

  “Yeah, let’s do it,” he said.

  It was a good start for my fortunes but I SO hated being associated with Angel in any way, even if I stood to make a few hundred bucks. Working with Angel was like being a vegetarian cashier at McDonald’s… you don’t eat meat but you still come home smelling of beef. It’s just unpleasant.

  Rick was pretty polite, though it was a tough half hour as I knew it would be. I started to dance, knowing that I would have to work for this money. Very few young guys were willing to pay for a chat so I got on my feet and put on some sassy cat eyes. A nice, cheeky smile. He seemed to enjoy himself until about the 15 minute mark when I noticed his eyes kept looking behind me to where Angel and her punter were seated. I could tell that he was trying not to look but couldn’t help himself. Soon, curiosity got the best of me, too.

  I turned around and put my ass on his lap, leaned back and arched my back. I looked across the aisle and there was Angel, facing me, with her empty stare she looked right into my eyes. Her motion was very consistent and deliberate, not at all like the usual circular motion of thong on man crotch gyration. Nope, this was up and down. Up and down. Up and down.

  Her thong appeared to be in place. Then I realized. My God. The dude was doing her up the ass. It was quiet and almost unnoticeable, her face remained stony throughout so that if we had not been captives within full view of the spectacle, we may not have never turned our heads. She was a fucking pro.

  Disgusted, I turned around and put my breasts over Rick’s face and stared at the wall, hoping to replace the image of her ass fuck prostitution with something else, anything else. But before I could do that, Rick gestured my ear down toward him.

  He whispered, “Do I have to pay extra for that?”

  Shit. I knew he was innocent enough. I didn’t and actually still don’t judge men for their primordial testosterone flow and commensurate sex drive. But this was the precise reason I didn’t want to come in here with Angel. Rick would leave an unhappy customer. It was base rate fallacy at its finest.

  Math geek explains: Rick had said he’d been to a decent amount of clubs in SF (he told me this information as he said he liked Brick Road best). Rick has been a strip club customer enough times to have enough base rate (general) information to know that strippers don’t usually fuck up the ass at work. YET, base rate fallacy is Rick seeing one specific case (Angel being a nasty bum fucker) and ignoring all of his former knowledge to focus on this one specific case and pretend it’s the norm.

  “No, sorry Rick,” I said, “There’s no price for fucking me up the ass I’m afraid. I only do that for free and for fun. And usually I’d like to know your last name first, too.”

  At least he laughed. But he looked slightly disappointed.

  It all left a bad taste in my mouth and an imprint on my mind that I was somehow unable to shake all night. I was desperate to make some money. I drank a bunch of tequila and even sniffled a bit of blow but I couldn’t stop feeling the vertigo of the up and down, up and down of Angel in the Champagne Room.

  And I knew what the real problem was. It was being associated with that. It was the thought of Carlos somehow finding out that I was in there when that all went down. I had this strange, scared feeling that he would find out and think I was like that, too and not love me anymore. God, being in love is like the humane slaughter of one’s confidence.

  I went home with little more than the taking from the Champagne Room episode and started to feel nervous about paying the bills for the first time in years.

  Everyone Needs It

  That evening, when I got home, slightly high and needing a drink, I grabbed a bottle of Jim Beam that Teddy had left at my house several months ago. It reminded me how long it had been since I had had friends over, since I had truly socialized with my mates. I had been dating Carlos for about a month and since I met him, I had kind of dropped my social life apart from the one night I ditched out early after seeing Vin.

  I knew from watching others that this kind of behavior was considered normal. Perhaps this was yet another reason why I didn’t really engage in romantic relationships. I remember a math teacher of mine using this very concept to teach us about probability, expected value and utility theory. Studies on this subject (and I’ll summarize dramatically here) have shown that your average person will have roughly 100 friends. This number is divided into progressively smaller groups including people we see once per month, often called a “sympathy” group and people that we see once per week, often called an “inner clique.” The inner clique consists of about four to six people.

  Studies have widely shown that the sympathy group is decimated by relationships and that the inner clique, made of family and friends, usually loses two people. That’s between about 30-50% drop in support network due to romantic partnership.

  I remember being dramatically impacted by this lesson. It came in my last year of high school. This was a time when I only felt I had my sister to confide in. ONE PERSON. It didn’t take a genius to know that half a person couldn’t be very supportive in a time of need. The worst part of the lesson was that the teacher asked us to do our own calculations in our workbook; estimating our wide circle and working in concentrically to see how a love might impact our lives. It was a hurtful day. With a really small and estranged family and being decidedly Facebook-phobic there wasn’t much to scratch in there. A teenage recluse like me didn’t really like to discover just how fragile her support network was.

  Things were different now. I had worked up to the averages of society. My inner clique: Jamie, Angelo, Teddy, Angelica and my sister Rebecca were solid. They might not give me the advice I wanted, but they would die trying. My bigger group of “sympathizers” were largely party and drug buddies, but hey, this was a massive improvement on high school. And finally, as demented as it was, the Club provided that ever larger group one could label as “friends”: customers, management, bartenders… even my regular cabbies would probably turn up to my funeral.

  To an average person, this might be the saddest thing ever read. But it was my life. It was impossible to ignore how much dancing had improved it.

  I sat down in my living room with my whisky on the rocks and texted Angelo.

  ME: Hey dude you around?

  Angelo tex
ted back almost immediately.

  ANGELO: Yup. Hanging with D Forest.

  D Forest was a homeless singer that was regularly propped up outside the Club. Angelo and I often stopped to chat with him before hailing a cab. He was a beautiful soul who played guitar and could sing like Otis Redding. He composed his own songs and would often stop us to ask what we thought. Many evenings I would take wrap up some dinner for him from the Club, or give him some money. Angelo and I had such a soft spot for him.

  ME: Say hi to D. Wanna come over when you’re done?

  ANGELO: K. Be there in 20

  It felt like an eternity, waiting for Angelo to arrive. I was extremely jittery from the coke, which Angelica had told me was pure but at the time I thought it was bullshit. Maybe she was right. I should have known better than to do that on a school night when I wouldn’t be flying high with a bunch of other snowbirds. I slugged some more JB.

  Deep in my thoughts, the buzzer went sooner than I expected and it made me jump. Moments later, Angelo was at the door and the first thing he said was, “Darling. Is that a sun-dried tomato?”

  He pointed to my nose. I rubbed it. It had a crusty red booger.

  “Ugh,” I said, “Sorry about that.”

  “Oh baby girl… I’ve seen worse,” he said, “I wondered why you called me tonight. You’ve been doing whiffy… on a school night?”

  I asked him for a cigarette and we sat down next to the window.

  “I thought you weren’t going to smoke anymore… it’s been a good few weeks since I’ve seen you with a stick,” he said.

  “Yeah… guess I just need a fag tonight,” I laughed at my double entendre.

  He pulled a cigarette out of its packet and gave it to me.

  “EVERYONE needs a fag every now and again,” he said smiling slyly and lit my cigarette, “It’s two in the morning… do you know where your children are?

  I loved his wacky sense of humour.

  “So….” I said, “I kinda called you over here because I could use a talk.”

  “Mmmmhmmm,” he replied.

  “It’s just… this guy that I told you about. It’s messing with my head,” I said.

  “That’s normal,” he said.

  “I know it is for most people but, and this is going to sound really patronizing but things don’t usually throw off my logic. I am just… different. The way I think… it’s like, you know… I’m really calculating and even my crazy decisions always made sense in some way. I’ve used this to, you know, protect myself.”

  “Honey… you’ve just never been in love. You’ve never used your heart to decide anything. Look, our brains are all different. We all have more or less horsepower, different experiences, all sorts of pasts stored up in the back of our minds- yours is a good one which is why you decided to rely on yours. I, on the other hand, have always relied on my looks,” he pretended to throw his hair back and I chuckled.

  He continued, “Now, you’re making decisions with your heart. Hearts aren’t as complicated as brains. And, they’re what we share as humans. One common thing… hearts. Oh and souls, of course.”

  My immediate reaction was to contradict him. We don’t think with our hearts and I knew this from taking Anatomy 101. But the truth is, I wanted to believe this. Since meeting Angelo, and pretty much all the rest of these Californians, I was drawn to this way of thinking. This desire for the decision-making heart and soul. The heart and soul that had enormous hands and could move mountains; the heart that could utter actual words and conquer all.

  I remembered Carlos’ words and said them out loud to Angelo, “When the heart speaks the mind is silent.”

  “Exactly,” he said, “You ain’t usin’ your noggin, sister. You feel out of place because you’ve been around for twenty some years and have never really done it before. Let the thaw begin. Congratulations. You’re human.”

  “Oh wonderful. From cold-blooded reptile to mammal… I feel like I’ve graduated,” I jested.

  “So what’s the problem then?” he asked, “With the guy… Carlos, right?”

  “Yeah… well, first off, he has a pretty unusual situation. So, he’s like twenty some years older than I am… so I wasn’t that surprised that he had some kids. He has FOUR.”

  Angelo’s eyebrows shot up. Then he said, “Wow. Catholic?”

  “I dunno,” I said, “Twins probably had something to do with the quantity. But that part is kind of normal and tolerable. Well, maybe. There’s something else. He kind of lives with his ex-wife.”

  I waited for a big gasp but it didn’t come.

  “I mean, he doesn’t stay in the same bedroom… but I mean, he lives with his ex-wife for God’s sake.”

  Still no huge reaction from Angelo. He pondered and waited for me to say more. I didn’t.

  “They decided to do that so the kids could grow up with a family unit,” I came to Carlos’ defense.

  “Is that all?”

  “What do you mean is that all,” I said, “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Well it doesn’t seem enough for a mind fuck, Ana,” he replied, “I mean, it actually makes him sound really cool to me. It shows he loves his kids, doesn’t run from his commitments and doesn’t hold grudges. So far he’s coming up roses in my book.”

  Speaking to Angelo always offered a new perspective. Being about 15 years older than most of his friends, he was the sage. The turtle. We joked about his long earlobes which were supposed to be a sign of wisdom but his response to this information about Carlos was no laughing matter. He spoke from experience, having already discovered that life is not perfect. And moreover, imperfections can be strengths as much as weakness. I wouldn’t have called Angelo an optimist but his version of realism drew a lot of sunny skies and rainbows.

  “I did think of it that way myself, Angelo… but when I spoke to Jamie and Angelica tonight and they really put doubts in my head.”

  “Ego. It gets the better of us all. They’re worried about how it would look to other people. God forbid we’re not seen as the number one person in the situation! Look, you will have to share Carlos’ priority list with 5 other people. Most people don’t really want that. They want to be the MOST important person in the relationship. Even more important than their partner. Especially with kids involved you’re already feeling like that will never happen.”

  “Given my past I have a lot of empathy for the situation though, Angelo. I mean, I come from a pretty broken home.”

  “Indeed. So from that point of view you’re a good match for Carlos’ situation. But you still have ego. And since this is your first time being in love, you’re probably scared. This situation isn’t in the dictionary. You can’t just look it up and make sense of it; there’s no instruction manual. You don’t just have to keep Carlos happy like some carefree whippersnapper; you have to win over the kids and ex, too. It’s a lot of pressure. That’s what you’re feeling.”

  I shook my head. He was so right.

  “But, baby girl, just take it one day at a time and stop thinking about the end result.”

  Right again. I thought about the end result in almost every life circumstance. I lived my life looking at p values and probability theory in order to move forward with even the most mundane decisions. I still remember the day when I thought I would be offered cocaine. I ran statistical analysis of my chances of dying, getting arrested, having fun, and of course null hypothesis- nothing happening at all. In the end, my risk was well managed so I went for it and had a really great night out.

  “I don’t think I’m built like that,” I said, “I’m just too analytical. It’s one of the many reasons I’ve always felt I wouldn’t be able to get married. I mean, really, what ARE the chances of staying with the same person my whole life? And I’m not talking divorce stats. I mean what are the chances of me actually liking it, being with the same person for the rest of my life? Or of something more sinister like them dying young and having to re-marry? Or me making a change they cannot handle?”
>
  “Huh???… Ana, you really need to let go a bit more or you’ll never experience some of the greatest things about being human. You can’t just go through life calculating your odds of survival. That’s not living. What’s the saying? A true adventure only begins when something goes wrong?”

  “Well, ‘mere survival’ got me this far,” I said.

  “What are you so afraid of? A broken heart? You won’t even need a Band-Aid. It sucks. It seriously, seriously sucks to have your heart broken but it sucks more to be lonely. A girl like you, honey? You’ll have a lot of chances to try again if this doesn’t work with Carlos. Haven’t you calculated that? What are your chances of being alive if Carlos hurts your feelings? I’m pretty sure that’s 100%.”

  “Man,” I said, “You are truly testament to the fact that not all useful information is found in books. I’m just scared. And not just of being hurt. I want this so badly… this feeling of matching with someone and that feeling of belonging. It’s addictive. And it’s starting to ruin my life already.”

  “How so?”

  I told Angelo about my last shifts at the Club. How I wasn’t able to make money. How I wasn’t able to tolerate the unruly gentlemen or being associated with Angel. I knew it wasn’t just because my mind was elsewhere but also because I started to worry about Carlos’ perception of me.

  “So,” I said, “I’m just not going to be able to keep making money. I’ve got to get my head around this or I’ll lose my hut.”

  “You think that he doesn’t like you being a stripper? Has he said that?”

  “No… I avoid the subject.”

  “But…so… he hasn’t actually asked you about work or told you to stop dancing?”

  I shook my head ‘no.’

  “Wow. He’s not intervening in any way but you still feel guilty? That’s not a problem with Carlos, that’s a problem with you. Tells me that somehow you’ve not accepted who you are. If you don’t love yourself baby it’s going to be hard to let someone else love you.”