Stories I'd Tell in Bars

by Jen Lancaster

  At least I didn’t barf in a snowbank. Progress!

  Reflecting on our evening the next day, my foot wrapped in an ace bandage and propped on a pillow, I told Fletch, “This is why we can’t go to nice places.”

  Still, the super-cool Smiths weren’t scared off. They seemed intrigued by us! Over dinner, we discovered that they’d already made half a dozen pals in our area and we slowly came around to the idea of being friendly with other adults in our own zip code, maybe even the ones who’d procreated.

  Everything was perfect.

  Almost.

  Another downside of having the worst house in the neighborhood is that everyone’s place is nicer than ours on the inside, too. When we entered Casa Smith and saw rugs that had never been besmirched by a pit bull with a delicate bladder and no sense of shame, or couches upon which no feline claws were ever sharpened, we were mortified by the damage our pets had wrought. Team Well-Trained Golden Lab was looking pretty good. We always found ways to party at their place instead.

  Six months into our relationship, Angie asked, “Are you ever going to invite us over?” We couldn’t put off the inevitable; if we wanted to stay friends, we had to reciprocate.

  We spent weeks getting the homestead in shape. We didn’t just vacuum or dust or steam carpets, oh, no. We literally repainted, stripping wallpaper in the laundry room. [Not just due to the Smiths – the upgrades were needed.] We turned our boring beige living room into a showplace with Confederate Red walls and fresh white trim. Fletch painstakingly removed the old finish from the fireplace, taking hours to clear each tiny, detailed portion of the dentil molding, armed with nothing but an awl, a heat gun, and a Serial podcast. I painted the wood paneling surrounding the hearth the color of green that copper turns when it’s oxidized.

  Finally, we had a room worthy enough to host our new friends.

  The plan was to invite them here for appetizers, then we’d go to a nice restaurant in town. Having spent so much time cleaning, I couldn’t manage cooking, too. They arrived, and with the lights turned down, the air cinnamon-scented, my signature cheeseboard loaded and staged, our horrible dogs stashed away in various bedrooms, we almost looked like had our shit together.

  Close enough for me.

  We took an Uber to the restaurant. Conversation flowed as easily as the wine. I compared us to the other diners, most of them the kind of aged preppies that Lisa Birnbach once detailed; Fletch and I were keeping pace.

  We were witty. We were urbane. We were the best version of ourselves.

  We were bound to screw it up.

  When the tequila shots arrived after dinner, the night began to devolve. I forgot to be Best Behavior Jen, morphing instead into my natural state of Hold My Beer Jen.

  I dropped the illusion of being someone who was above sharing a Fudgesicle with a dog. I was just myself, for better or worse. On the other side of the table, Fletch turned into G.I. Joe with a soupçon of redneck, white trash, hee-haw-hoedown thrown in for good measure. He spoke of grunts and weapons and his glory days, monitoring cups of whiz for ‘Merica.

  Meanwhile, I was spouting off about my deep and abiding love for classic hip-hop when our young waiter passed by our table. “Wait, are you talking about Rick Ross?” he asked, incredulous. “Here? In the back dining room, where nothing interesting happens ever?”

  I offered up a line from Ross’s Hustlin’, detailing how I cut my lines wide and fat and deep. Everyone in the room was impressed with my sick flow, especially the older gal with the walker and the oxygen tank.

  Oh, yes. MC RSVP, right here.

  At this point, I demanded he take my iPad and play all the Tupac in my music library, “Before something bad happens.” He complied and Angie and I were soon shouting the lyrics to California Love.

  I made her rap.

  I made the VP Mergers and Acquisitions rap.

  In the meantime, Fletch had dragged Brad to the bar and was forcing shots of whiskey down his throat. That’s the thing with Fletch and me; we don’t rise to other people’s levels. We bring them down to ours. The restaurant cleared out quickly after that.

  Soon, the four of us found ourselves in the backseat of our waiter’s mom’s minivan. Let me just say that again – our waiter’s mom picked us up in her minivan. I have no idea how this came to pass, or why no one else in the party thought Uber to be the preferable alternative.

  We went to the waiter’s house to drop off his mother, and then he commenced driving us home. Fletch and I tag-teamed, both insisting we head to the Smith’s house, knowing that if we went back to our place, we couldn’t maintain the elegant façade we’d created earlier. We feared we might accidentally show them where our anxious dog Hambone had shredded the carpet all the way down to the subfloor and eaten through part of the wall, all, “Check this shit out!”

  [We wanted them in our life, but we didn’t want them to know how we lived.]

  I grilled our server with questions and I learned that he’d gradated college with honors, but couldn’t find a professional job. That’s why he was temporarily living at home and serving. He explained wasn’t thrilled about this turn of events, but what can you do?

  I was suddenly and profoundly aware of how hard a road the Millennials had and I was sorry.

  “So...” the waiter began as we cruised west. “Anyone want weed?”

  Why his question shocked me, I’m not sure. Maybe getting high with his patrons was his way of making do. I knew on many levels that the world had changed since 1986, particularly when it came to marijuana. Were I in college now, smoking pot would be the new normal. As usage becomes more and more decriminalized, students consider weed an attractive alternative to drinking to excess. Hell, the Denver Post appointed a Cannabis Editor to the paper. We’re living in new times, in high times, if you will.

  I had to make a choice. At that point, two roads diverged in the yellow woods [metaphorically.] Between the woods and the frozen lake, the darkest night of the year, I… I took the road less traveled by.

  Unlike the rest of those losers in the van, I just said yes to drugs.

  Fletch cracked up at my decision. “This is my wife, Snoop Dog,” he announced to no one in particular. I ignored him. If he chose not to be cool, to be hip, to be au courant, that was on him.

  With the kind of enthusiasm only a person full of wine, cheese, and far too much Patron can exhibit, I grabbed the damp joint and inhaled, filling my lungs with the vaguely familiar flavors of wet dog fur and black tea leaves and charbroiled ass. I’m sure I looked incredibly in the know, terribly young and urbane and trendy… for the entire two-tenths of a second it took before I erupted in a massive coughing fit.

  “Chicks cannot hold they smoke, that’s what it is,” Fletch said, quoting Michael Anthony Hall’s iconic Breakfast Club line.

  “Shut up,” was the snappiest retort I could muster.

  I’d heard the hybrids now are much stronger than the ditch-weed we used to have, but honestly, I didn’t feel it. I tried again. Nope, unremarkable.

  The universe didn’t open and no great truths were revealed. I felt even more sorry for college kids today. I wish they could have been around in my time, when frats hosted keg parties for the whole campus and no one worried about landing a job after graduation. Halloween costumes made everyone happy, not angry. Sure, we had less stuff to watch on TV back then, but we were so busy speaking to each other face to face that we didn’t notice.

  At this point, we’d arrived at the Smith’s home and Angie opened more wine because that’s what we needed. Argo eyed us warily from his crate, all, “What’s with the kid with the apron?”

  I took a few more hits, feeling nothing. I figured I was too old and too tubby for pot to have any effect, but I was so pleased with myself for having a sense of adventure!

  Our waiter left rather abruptly after he singed off his bangs, trying to light another joint on the six-burner Viking range. Years ago when Fletch smoked Marlboro Lights, he’d done the same thing.
That happened on Thanksgiving when everyone was upstairs in the TV room, playing Wii Bowling. Fletch tried to be all nonchalant when he entered the room, hoping we were too involved in the game to notice, but the whiff of burnt hair and the missing eyebrow were hard to miss.

  We wished our waiter well and bade him a goodnight, the smell of carcinogens lingering in his wake, like so many yet to be fulfilled dreams.

  Eventually, Angie drifted off to bed and Brad and Argo had to walk both of us home again because we are the kind of people you can’t take anywhere, any time.

  At least he didn’t call a guy to do it.

  Fletch immediately crashed on the couch while I tended to our dogs, reflecting on the evening. At least we didn’t set our faces on fire; I reveled in that small victory.

  I thought back to me at eighteen, tossing my cookies in that snowbank outside of the anonymous apartment party. I’d come a long way since then. Older and wiser, beholden to no preconceived notions. I’d given the Smiths a glimpse of who I was behind the façade and they didn’t find me wanting.

  I mean, no, I still wasn’t about to let them go poking around the TV room upstairs, yet I was quietly content in having made a decent impression. While smoking didn’t reveal a new universe, it helped me see I was happy in my little corner of the world.

  “P.S.,” I said to myself, “today’s weed is lamesauce.”

  At least that’s what I though until I woke up at 6:00 a.m. on the bathroom floor, my skirt up around my waist and my underpants at my ankles, having passed out while sitting on the toilet.

  Let’s milk that, shall we?

  I passed out while sitting on the toilet.

  Once I came to my senses, I threw up wine and cheese and brisket and Patron, which was far more unpleasant than ice cream and peach liqueur and potpourri. I laid back on the cool tile, realizing that every part of me ached in some way, from head to toe and especially my lungs, which felt like I’d been inhaling mustard gas. I shan’t elaborate on how I smelled.

  I was way too old for this shit.

  I showered and tended to the dogs again and then crawled back into bed until mid-afternoon.

  “Hey, Woody Harrelson, how was your night? Enjoy yourself?” Fletch smirked when I finally made an appearance in the great room. He looked none the worse for wear. He was camped out in front of This Old House, Libby on his lap and Loki at his side. “Do I need to get us tickets for Coachella now? Want to watch Pineapple Express? Wanna make a road trip to Burning Man? Are we moving to Colorado? Shall we subscribe to High Times first, then get you that medical marijuana card, or vice-versa?”

  My response was obvious.

  I just said no.

  FLETCH’S LAST WORD:

  There were no tequila shots for the men, because clear liquor is for people who have no soul. Brad and I were drinking all the Japanese whiskey. I know whiskey, but I didn’t even know Japanese whiskey was a thing. For the uninitiated, it is a thing, and it is excellent.

  We all got busy after that. I think Jen had a new book coming out. We didn’t see Brad and Angie for a while. It was maybe six months later until we met up for dinner again. I suggested we order a couple of bottles of wine for the table. Angie said she wasn’t drinking. Jen joked, “What, are you knocked up or something?”

  Not a joke.

  Lost another set of couple-friends to the dark side.

  Maybe having a baby was part of their five-year plan and we didn’t know. They seem like planners. But it’s possible they looked at us and saw the way their lives would roll out if they decided to not have children and we scared them straight.

  Good job.

  Eight

  Fountain Of Youth

  “After forty, a woman has to choose between losing her figure or her face. My advice is to keep your face and stay sitting down.”

  - Barbara Cartland

  “If free I take! If free I take! Aiiiieeeee!”

  Fletch heard the screaming long before I reached his office. When I arrived, he leveled his gaze at me over his dual monitors. “I see you’ve finally completed your descent into insanity.”

  “No! I’m getting a new face!” I sang, while dancing all around the room.

  When he frowned at me, deep furrows formed on his forehead. “Do you need a new face?”

  “Um, duh.”

  I explained how my nurse esthetician Maureen had just called because her plastic surgery office/med spa was having an open house. She sought a demonstration model and I’d previously volunteered. The deal was, I could have any injection I wanted, as much as I needed, all of it free of charge, and the only stipulation was that people attending the open house could watch. I asked her if I could leave my pants on, to which she replied, “Why would you take them off?”

  I was so freaking in.

  “Kid in a candy store!” I squealed. “I’m going to have everything I ever wanted, all at once! Completely on the house!”

  “You don’t accept free stuff,” he replied, which was true. In the ten years of receiving propositions due to my social media platform, I’d almost never taken anything gratis, less because I had so much integrity, and more because no one ever offered me anything I wanted.

  “No, I always said if I was going to be beholden, it’d be for Botox or British cars, not some stupid t-shirt or a discount vacuum cleaner. Now, half of my dreams are coming true! If free, I take! Woo!”

  Dryly, he replied, “You’re happy about this.”

  “Yes, because… she’s doing you, too!”

  Fletch’s initial shock and dismay registered all over his face, exactly why he needed injections, too. While he was not thrilled to have been drafted, I knew he was bothered by the bags under his eyes. I prepared to give him the hard sell. As it turns out, I didn’t have to persuade him that much. I mean, who wouldn’t dip their foot [read: face] in the fountain of youth, given the chance?

  If free, we take.

  A few weeks later, Fletch and I were watching television and he ran across a listing that sparked a memory.

  “Did I ever tell you about our exchange student?” I asked.

  “Yeah, four thousand times,” he replied, eyes not leaving the guide. “He’s where you got your mantra ‘If free, I take.’”

  After being with the same person for more than two decades, we’ve developed a conversational shorthand. We can communicate entire ideas/reference adventures with but a single word or phrase. That means Fletch was already well-versed in our former exchange student’s philosophy of gladly accepting anything offered – from cubes of cheese in the grocery store to brochures passed out on the street – provided it was at no cost.

  The upside to our instant understanding is that we dominate every team in Catch Phrase. The downside is that it’s rare for either of us to share a new story. In that respect, I don’t dread the onset of senility or dementia because we’ll feel like newlyweds!

  I said, “He’s been on my mind because of the if free business, and I just had an epiphany when I saw Sixteen Candles come up on the guide.”

  Fletch held up a hand. “We are not watching Sixteen Candles again. Talk about your four thousand times.”

  “That’s okay.” Although I’d have gladly accepted the opportunity to sigh over Jake Ryan for the four thousand and first time, I wasn’t suggesting it. This is a subtle [but crucial] difference that every woman of a certain age will understand.

  I continued, “I realized yet another reason why Sixteen Candles is still one of my favorites. The exchange student in it, Long Duk Dong? That grandma and grandpa ‘make-a work-a washing machine?’ You know that totally happened at my house? My dad used to go on and on about how the lawn never looked better than when we had our exchange student. I suspect my parents took advantage of the free labor.”

  Fletch made a noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh. A snortle, perhaps? “You’re just now figuring that out?”

  “I mean, he didn’t have to do more than my brother and I did, but he was definit
ely put to work,” I replied.

  “How long was he with you guys? A semester?”

  “No, three years.”

  “Three years?”

  I shrugged. “He was really good at cutting the lawn. He made it look plaid the way he cross-hatched. That’s not the funny part, though.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, it’s plenty funny,” Fletch replied. He patted my knee for emphasis.

  “No, the funny part is when his parents came from Japan for his high school graduation. They spoke almost no English, but they were cute as could be. Occasionally, his mom would come up with a word and she’d get all excited. I remember we were driving somewhere and she saw an RV. She poked me and yelped, ‘Camping car!’”

  “Cool story, bro.” He began to tab through the channels again. Some nights, we’ll lose an entire half hour to the cable guide. Him trying to settle on a show is like me with soda at the gas station – when faced with too many choices, a decision is impossible.

  “My point was, we had a houseful for three days as my Noni and Grampa were there, too. I’m talking seventy-two hours of no English from his parents, save for ‘camping car.’ Our poor exchange student and his brother had to spend the whole time interpreting.”

  The few moments the guys weren’t in the room, we did a lot of smiling, nodding, and pointing, which was less awkward than it sounds. Really, the family was darling.

  I continued, “We’re trying to get ready to go to the ceremony and the scene is like something out of a John Hughes film. The dad literally has three cameras around his neck and he’s making us pose all over the front yard. If I tried to write this up as fiction now, people would come after me with pitchforks for perpetrating unkind stereotypes, but it happened. Anyway, I’m wearing spiked heels for the first time and I keep shrieking because I’m sinking in the lawn and getting stuck. I thought I was going to strike oil or something.”