Shampoo 3: The Naughty Bits

On the night of the "meeting," I did two things: I brought home all the paperwork, designs, and photos of the project, and I got drunk.

Hey, I admit it--when I get nervous, I tend to drink too much. The part of my mind that should be watching my alcohol intake gets sidetracked on worrying about whatever social situation I'm in (or about to be in), and I just sort of lose track of what's going into my bloodstream.

Worse, I've found that I'm excruciatingly polite when I get trashed--specifically, I just don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by saying "not a snowball's chance in hell I'd consider sleeping with you." I mean, I wouldn't want someone to say that to me, right? As you can imagine, this has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years, and I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of Jack Daniel. Or Mr. Weller. Or Jose Cuervo, for that matter.

So you can see where this is going, right? You could see from the beginning, I'm sure...but here's how it went down.

She called me from her car phone a little after dark, and I talked her to the safer side of the parking lot by my building. I waited on the back step as she got out of her car (on the other side of a fence--I could see her car, but not her, for some reason), SET HER CAR ALARM (hey, we're talking class here, even if she was cockeyed), and waddled around the end of the fence to greet me.

Yes, kids, I was about to embark on a dinner date with the love child of Marty Feldman and Lulu from HeeHaw.

She couldn't have been any taller than five feet, had a figure that could best be described as "convex," and did indeed have crossed eyes. Her hair, too, was just as bad as it was in the photo (there was some hope in my mind that her website was OLD, or at least contained an old image).

This was a disaster.

And hey, I admit it, when faced with disaster, I drink too much. Helps me concentrate on the positives, you might say, like "at least I'm drunk!" Or, in this case, "lots of money."

I can't even tell you what she was wearing, ladies and gentlemen. I can tell you that she was pretty darn happy to see what I looked like, and before I could think of something clever to avoid going through with this, she was in the door, shaking my hand and eyeballing me like I was a giant Dove bar. She asked to see the house. This shouldn't take long, I thought, it being four whole rooms, but her attention was immediately snagged by one of the aquaria I had in the dining room. "Ooh! Aquariums!" she squeaked (yes, squeaked), "is this saltwater? I'm a diver, you know? This is really beautiful! Do you have any more?!"

Those of you who know me probably know that flattery will get you damn near anything you want, especially if that flattery is accompanied by a BAC of .08 or higher. And hell, I was stuck with this, might as well make the best of it. "I'll give her the tour," I thought, "what can that hurt?"

I had a lot of aquaria back then, obviously, somewhere around six or seven of them. We looked at the ones in the dining room, and she cooed at each individual fish and anemone and urchin in each one. We moved to the freshwater and riftlake stuff in the living room, and she oohed and ahh'd like it was fireworks. Finally, not thinking, I walked on into the bedroom, straight to a 45 gal breeder tank that I had just set up. "And this," I began, turning to face her...but she was gone. I heard a thump as her knees hit the floor, and felt her pudgy little hands on my zipper.

"Is going to be an octopus tank," I muttered to the top of her head. Dammit. At least I wasn't going to have to go OUT with her.