Story of Kim 5: Substory Tiffany 2

The following weekend, Edward showed up at my place with a few beers, and we sat out on the porch to discuss the "Kim Situation." He wasn't angry with me at all, he said, but was pretty pissed off at her. I feel like Edward would also like me to point out the reason he wasn't mad at me was because he expected me to do stuff like this, which I suppose I won't argue about. But I try, yo. I try real hard.

No, the reason he was angry with her was that she had apparently tried to do the same thing with his brother a few days before. This had all the hallmarks of a raging passive aggressive obsessive nutcase, I thought, and I was slightly relieved that she wasn't quite as focused on me as she might have been.

Edward was mad, though, and once we finished the beer, he suggested we drop in on a party his brother was having, in Edmond.

Now, Edmond is kind of a weird place. Everyone under 30 years old calls it a college town, and everyone over 30 calls it a bedroom community--a suburb of OKC. Both are, in fact, true, but the important thing to remember about this is that Edmond is about 20 miles away from the house I was living in. Edmond is also where Edward was living, which probably explains why he was so prone to sleeping in my tub instead of driving home.

His brother, who we'll call "Don," lived with a lovely young woman named Brooke in some apartments fairly close to the college. I was a little nervous about attending this party, because a) I hadn't been invited, b) didn't know and had never met Don, and c) Edward seemed to get more and more pissed the more beer we drank. But my strategy has always been "devil take the hindmost," and Edward was driving, so off we went.

The party was a bunch of people smoking dope and listening to Tool while doing shots and keg stands. In short, my kind of people. Edward introduced me to a couple of cool guys, then grabbed Don and dragged him off to a corner, where he began talking intently in low tones and making some rather worrisome gestures with his hands. I wandered off to find a beer, and soon found myself smoked out around the kitchen table with Brooke and a couple of her friends, most notably a girl named Tiffany.

I didn't know this Tiffany, and since the other Tiffany doesn't make another appearance in this story, you shouldn't be confused. A storyteller less intent on verisimilitude would have changed the name, but hey, I have faith in you guys.

So Tiffany was very cute, and very much a party girl, and she seemed pleased to make my acquaintance. She was actually in town for the holidays as well, from an art school in...Santa Fe, I think. We hit it off really well, and when Edward came around to check on me, there was no trace of my former nervousness to be found. Must have been the weed, man.

The party lasted til 3 or 4 in the morning, and at the end Tiffany suggested that Edward and I go with her to Denny's, or whatever all night greasepit we went to back in those days. I was happy to oblige, and made it clear on the way over there that I was in fact very interested in Tiffany, and there wouldn't be any of this friendly competition like there had been with Kim a few months ago. Maybe he knew something I didn't, or maybe he was drunk, but after an hour or so in that restaurant, he asked if she could take me home (which was 20 miles in the wrong direction, a sure litmus test of her feelings for me, especially at 5am), and when she assented, made a graceful exit.

Now, I know you guys are going to find this hard to believe, but I'm actually a pretty shy individual. While I've certainly had a few one night stands in my time, in general I'm not the type of guy to just lay one on ya the first time we meet. So Tiffany and I sat around on my bedroom floor, listened to records, and talked until well after sunrise, at which point she left and I fell asleep on the floor (in that order). She was staying with her parents, and I didn't have a phone, so we agreed to meet a couple of nights later for a few glasses of wine and some more conversation.

[The Cliff's Notes version of the above paragraph would read: "I liked her a lot, and I didn't want to do anything that would make her not like me, so I kept my hands to myself."]

On the night I was to meet her, I stopped at the liquor store and was immediately confronted with the fact that I didn't know a damn thing about wine. I'd never purchased wine for a first date, at any rate, and so I did what a lot of people do (at least, I hope they do): Bought the one with the wicker basket attached. What the hell, I thought, I need another candleholder anyway.

The evening was a success--we talked until late, again, and it turned out she'd taken almost as much acid as I had. She had lived a pretty crazy life out west, it appeared, and that was the type of girl I was looking for. I couldn't tell if she was impressed by the basket thingy, but at the end of the evening I stole a kiss goodnight. It was a very passionate kiss, and it was accompanied by an embrace that didn't linger for nearly long enough. Once she was safely out the door and pointed towards home, I probably did a little jig in the living room, but I can't say for sure.

We met again that weekend, and stayed up all night drinking more wine from baskets and talking (or rather, I listened to her talk--she seemed to have a lot of stories about Santa Fe), and when the sun came up I ventured another kiss. It occurred to me then that we'd done nothing but hang around my gnarly old house, and that girls liked to be taken out in public occasionally. It also occurred to me that one of my favorite bands was playing in Norman (boo!) the following weekend. Eventually I asked her to accompany me and a group of my friends, and she agreed. A DATE!

I spent the intervening week coordinating with friends, including Edward and, if I'm not mistaken, the lovely and talented Wayne, of Big Cliche fame. I also spent a lot of time parked at a payphone, talking to Tiffany. The weekend couldn't come fast enough.