Butterscotch Woman

This will be one long post--I don't feel like there's enough here to warrant multiple posts, but I'm bored.

I've been in college off and on (mostly off) for fourteen years now, I guess. I've suffered from a pretty schizoid academic career, though, so not only am I squarely in the middle of the grade scale, I'm also not anywhere close to getting a degree in anything. This is due to my unwillingness to commit to any sort of thing that might be termed a "career," and my love of...things less practical. I've essentially taken lots of history courses and lots of math/chemistry courses, before I realized that I really do hate chemistry. I love math, but it's not terribly practical either, and I find it hard to concentrate on that stuff when I'm working here.

But back then, I was in a chemistry class. It met at night, and one of the people in the class was a woman in her mid-thirties (how close are we to that?), named Mona. Mona had a fit body but a rather rough looking face, far older than the age she presented to me. And, before I get people opining about the beauty standard, I'm only bringing this up because she was very obviously lusting after me.

No, really, that used to happen to me.

Stop it.

But I was 21 or 22, and she was kinda rough lookin' and way older than me, and I just wasn't interested. So the semester progressed, with me trying to stay away from her during breaks and lab periods, and her trying to corner me at those same times.

Finally, after a night of drinking Cuervo 1800 with a couple of guys from work, I was too tired to dodge. She sneaked up behind me as I was telling someone else the story of the evening before (which involved a woman named Ursula, and is probably more interesting than the one I'm telling you), and after getting my attention and batting her eyes a bit (do you really think that works, ladies?), she put on her pout and asked "how come you didn't invite ME to drink tequila with you?"

I wound up giving her my phone number, mainly because class was about to start and I wanted to get to my desk and get this over with, and forgot all about it.

She called me the following weekend. For some reason I had money, and had spent a chunk of it on good Franziskaner beer and a new Burroughs book. I remember I was lying on the couch with my shirt off, because it was one of the first warm afternoons of the year, and I wanted to enjoy it. The phone rang, I put down my beer and book, and answered. It was Mona.

She wanted me to come to her place and drink tequila. I didn't really want to drink tequila, but I wasn't getting out of it that easy--she had red wine as well. After a bit of...discussion...I agreed to meet her at her place.

And that's the thing, boys and girls, the secret to getting what you want out of ol' Jefe: pester me. I really am the laziest person in the world, and I try to make everyone happy. Thus, I'm too sluggish to argue long, and I'm too polite to get off the phone abruptly. This gets me into plenty of trouble, especially when you couple these traits with, oh, a six pack of dunkel weisse.

Oh, and I'm also subject to flattery, and this woman was going through a hell of a lot of effort to get me over there. And there was the whole sex thing, too--back then, even drunken sex was better than no sex at all. So I'm a slut. Sue me.

I arrived at a small house in what I'd think of as a "family neighborhood," and grabbed my green bag full of beer (with the side pocket fulla rubbers). Mona met me at the door, and I smelled problem #1: children.

I can't help it--when I smell that mixture of diapers and vomit, it's like a synesthetic piercing scream in my brain. The critters may be completely asleep somewhere, but the smell does me in every time. Ah well. I was here.

Mona's roommate was another single mom, it turned out, who also didn't do a very good job of hiding the fact she wouldn't mind plunging her hands in my hair and riding like the wind.

Which, come on, it's sort of weird to get all worked up about freakin' hair, isn't it? And it's not like I'm the only guy on the block with long hair, either, especially given these ladies ages. Long hair was cool back then--hell, mullets were in when these girls were my age. Dunno. Perhaps they were getting their own egos stroked.

Roommate took her kid and left for the evening, Mona put her tyke to bed, and we started drinking. It seems like there might have been dinner involved as well, but I certainly didn't eat much of it.

We drank the six beers I brought, and she broke out the wine. It was german in origin, which I don't particularly care for, but it was free and it was wet, and she was doing the pouring. We talked for what seemed forever, and I noticed pretty quickly what was going on.

She was trying to get me trashed, yo!

Her eyes wandered from my face to my glass, and back to my face and then to my glass--and when I'd reached the halfway point on the glass, she'd refill it. HER glass remained nearly untouched. I didn't mind. If I was going to sleep with this broad, I needed all the wine I could get.

I finished all her wine. She darted into the kitchen and came back out with...Buttershots.

I've never particularly cared for butterscotch flavoring, mostly because if you have butterscotch flavoring, you can't have chocolate flavoring. But she poured me a shot, and then another, and then she kissed me, and it wasn't bad if I closed my eyes. We brought the bottle back to the couch, and she took down my hair.

The next thing I know, I'm on the couch, under a blanket. My feet were all tangled up in my pants, because my boots were still on, and my shirt wasn't anywhere around. The room was spinning, still, and I could smell that fucking butterscotch smell mixed with the odor of children and burnt toast. I've never been so hungover in my life. I kept my eyes closed and began to work on getting my pants pulled back up without making too much noise.

After a time, I heard the telltale rustling of a diaper. I stopped dead, but I could tell it was too late. I opened my eyes to slits, which nearly killed me, and saw the little kid from the night before. His fingers and face were red, his eyes focused on my face, and he was wearing nothing but a saggy diaper. He took another couple of steps forward, and said "I want kool aid."

Now, merely thinking for me was akin to grinding bits of glass into my own brain, much less talking. And walking? Sheeyit. So I just lay there, waiting for the kid to go away.

After a bit, Mona came in. She was humming a happy little tune, and had a plate of greasy home fries and bacon for me. She plopped down on the couch next to me and dragged the kid up on her lap, still humming away.

I opened my eyes. She was looking at me like I'd invented the polio vaccine. I closed my eyes again, reached under the blanket, and jerked my pants back up.

What does one SAY in a situation like that? "Hey, uh, did we...you know..." is what I started to croak out, but looking at her face, I didn't have the heart. It didn't really matter anyway--she was in love, and she had a two year old in her lap.

I left shortly thereafter, never to return again. She gave me her phone number, and called me a couple of more times on her own, but every time I heard her voice, or thought about her face, I was overwhelmed by the remembered smell of butterscotch.

And that's why, to this day, I don't drink anything containing butterscotch.