Of course, I do tell the guys about Peggy, though not exactly as a boast. If not for the greater significance attached to it, then I probably wouldn’t have mentioned fucking her to anyone at all. Yet, in light of what it confirms about our theories, theories which have now become a group effort, then it would appear I am obligated to relay this information. Confirmation bias is obviously alive and well regarding this process, however, no matter who is appraising the situation — the three of us trying this are convinced it’s working, while the holdouts, such as Pete, insist that none of our results prove anything.
“Okay, but what happened with that Ann chick?” he asks, on an early evening where we’re sitting around discussing recent events, before heading out to act upon our findings.
“Eh, she called a couple times, and then just kinda fell off,” I admit with a shrug.
“So see, that’s what I’m saying. You didn’t get any further with that Ann than I did with her friend or he did with the other friend,” Pete nods over at Dylan, “you guys are, like, cracking yourselves up with this shit, and that’s about as far as it’s going. Girls are seeing right through it.”
“I don’t know, man,” Dylan counters, “it sure seems to me like they’re a whole lot more interested in us all of the sudden. And it’s ten times easier to make things happen when they are, like it’s just falling in our lap most nights.”
“Yeah, I mean, like this Peggy,” I add, “now, granted, I’m sure she’s basically just some middle aged barslut. But still, I don’t think that’s a coincidence, you know: this is the first time, in this town, that I banged some chick on the same night I met her. It just so happened, what, two weeks after we bought these things?”
“But see, that’s just it, like you said, she’s a middle aged barslut, and probably would have slept with you anyway,” Pete insists, “but nobody would have ever banged those younger, hot chicks we met, and still nobody is banging the younger, hot chicks. You know? So see you guys are pissing yourselves laughing over this shit, ooh, we’re pretending to be married, hee hee, but it’s not actually going anywhere.”
Well, these things in my mind plot on a scale, they aren’t simple either/or propositions. To state that nothing worked with Ann because I failed to nail her is the same as stating that eventually getting her digits was the same as those guys not getting the other two girls’ digits. Clearly, sleeping with these chicks is the end goal, but any result less than that does not indicate the entire project was stupid. And the more data we feed into this experiment, the more it moves beyond mere happenstance, tainted by the small sample size.
It’s also interesting to note that Pete’s Pez dispensers are never trotted back out or for that matter ever mentioned again. Still, it’s possible he’s getting into our heads to some extent anyway, or else we’re psyching our own selves out for other reasons. Because following such a blazing hot start to this wedding ring escapade, things do begin to cool off on this front.
Seeking to make something happen with that eager, forthright Belinda chick, who was maybe a hotter version of the Peggy prototype, I dip into Midget’s Bar alone one night. And she’s here, but pays scant attention to me this time, even when I will later take the reins myself and swing by the bar for a quick hello. Another night, Dylan and I are over at Triads — cracking ourselves up, yes, by clinking the rings on our bottles again — and bump into that Mary girl, she of the stylish top hat, and half the duo who’d given us a ride home recently. Yet she’s just kind of blinking at us, saying little, not so much nonplussed but more like someone attempting to locate a memory.
“Do you remember anything about that night?” I eventually ask her, as Dylan and I stand, grinning, beers in hands, before her bar stool.
Spun around in it to speak with us, she blinks a few more times and concludes, “all I really remember is…something about blowjobs…? You guys were maybe asking for blowjobs?”
Part of the problem, I think, is that we have maybe become too forthright, and are attempting to force the action — whereas before, we were just hanging back. Who can blame us for wanting some undeniable results, though, a certified, no doubt about it gold medal finish, when we are this close to victory? We need to get back to our breezy, effortless vibe, I fear, and the more you ponder this the less loose you become.
And yet these concerns don’t restrict us from continuing to press for triumphs. During our initial major foray out on the town, after Phil arrives at the new apartment, he and Joe and Dylan and I find ourselves twiddling our thumbs over in the beloved Edgecrest area, near the end of our not quite as exciting as hoped bar hopping run. Therefore, even though we have Brooke’s number, decide to just pop in on her, unannounced, slightly shy of two a.m. Our thinking here is that if the lights are all on, then this probably indicates she and hopefully Jolene and/or some other chick friend have recently arrived home from the bar, too, and we might find them in a frisky, uninhibited moods. Whereas to call in advance might open ourselves up for being shot down.
Well, we do indeed find Brooke home, with every downstairs light blazing, and even though it’s just her versus us four relative (or in one case actual) strangers, she lets us inside her cozy abode. The presence of a large dog ironically named Shorty surely has something to do with this comfort level. Brooke’s in a smiling, gregarious mood, even though only slightly drunk, yet this isn’t exactly a resounding success.
For one thing, with every person added to your team, it becomes trickier and trickier to pull off these stunts. And this doesn’t necessarily have to do with someone blowing your cover, nothing that dramatic, only that with more bodies also comes a greater number of unanticipated x factors. We have no idea how well Phil Laswell will fit in with all this outrageousness, for example. Awhile back, one girl I had just started dating, upon meeting Phil for the first time, said to me in an aside, “let me guess…intense metal guy, right?” laughing as she did so.
He’s actually a really nice fellow, for the most part, but yes: definitely intense. In his standard issue uniform of all black entire, most days. Regarding this day, and their own initial introduction, Brooke gets a little agitated with him because, in taking a shine to Shorty right away, and petting the dog with encouraging, high pitched pep talks thrown into the mix, the mutt becomes extremely energized by this burst of attention, and begins streaking all through the house at warp speed, up and down the stairs even. Brooke’s pleasant about the situation and everything, but though smiling throughout, as Shorty refuses to simmer down, she does caution that the neighbors probably don’t appreciate this so much and we should try to calm him. Shorty, that is, though possibly Phil as well.
Then there’s the Joe factor. Though he’s perpetuating this wedding ring stunt the same as us and is therefore mostly simpatico, at times I do wonder what’s going through his head. He’s more of a loose, wobbly cannon. I don’t quite enjoy the same telepathy with him as Dylan or even the seldom seen Aaron, where we’re almost always on identical pages without any need to even declare which ones those are. An example of one curiosity is that although Joe’s quite agile with the bullshit lines dispensed to the ladies, he’s not always the nimblest at picking up your bullshit lines with the ladies, often seems disposed to accepting these at face value. Like the other night at Triads, where he and I were standing with Jolene, having just learned her name.
“Oh wow!” I marveled with a chuckle, “That’s wild! It just so happens that the last five girls I’ve been involved with, their names all started with a J!”
Though Jolene fortunately did not observe this, Joe recoiled with a disbelieving grimace, eyebrows furrowed, forehead drawn together, as though he intended to blow the whistle on this. Then looked around as though to see whether Dylan or perhaps Jeff or someone else might care to call bullshit on my statement. A relatively minor exchange, but still, it’s crucial to have wingmen who are picking up on or at least quietly cruising along with these matters.
Even so, this all pales next to the latest head scratching — or should we say, bandage applying — twist. After roughly half an hour here, determining that Brooke is unlikely to do any of us tonight, and there’s nobody else here, we have announced our plans to leave, as first I and then Joe dipped outside to once again warm up our respective vehicles. I have just reentered the apartment, and he’s maybe two minutes behind me, flushed for reasons that are mostly not due to the weather.
“I just popped your neighbor in the mouth,” he calmly announces.
“Huh?” Brooke replies, rightly horrified and stupefied all at once, her jaw hitting the carpeted floor. She’s been emptying her dishwasher while chatting with us, and stands in the kitchen doorway, hands that were drying a plate now frozen.
“Oh yeah,” Joe nods, taking a visible pride in his handiwork, “I went out there and I see this dude bending one of my windshield wipers, so I’m thinking, what the fuck, right? Then I see him hurry back into the next apartment over. So I walk over and kick his front door. He opens it up and I’m like, excuse me, motherfucker, what do you think you’re doing? And he’s like, hey man, sorry but I just got home and you’re in my spot. I didn’t know whose truck this was. That’s when I took a step forward and decked him.”
After a long pause from every corner of the room, I attempt a diversion tactic by asking, “so what happened then?” Anything, really, to steer this discussion somewhere even slightly less awkward.
“He fell on his ass,” Joe chortles, “and then got up and slammed the door shut.”
“Which apartment did you say it was?” Brooke questions, though more the response of somebody who already knows the answer, yet is hoping she might have it wrong.
“Next door,” Joe explains, tipping his head in that direction.
Without ever coming right out and declaring that we are doing so, even just to one another, Dylan and I will subsequently leave Joe out of any future Brooke related adventures. Not that there are a ton. The next significant development won’t occur with her until over a month later, when, out on the town early with some other friends yet quite bored, Dylan and I call her up saying we’d like to see her new apartment.
When she cheerfully agrees to this, the two of us execute a secret, silent exit. Yet after arriving at her plush, much more spacious pad on the west side, where once again her beloved r & b classics are emanating from a living room stereo — in this instance a Barry White greatest hits mix — all that happens is that she rustles up some okay looking neighbor girl, who is game enough despite a major head cold, to play euchre for the next couple hours. And then we bolt.
Feeling that we’ve dedicated plenty to this experiment with nothing to show for it, I decide to take matters into my own hands and send Brooke an email the next morning, asking her out to dinner. Although perhaps predictably, the response received is not quite the optimal outcome. The most vital section of which reads:
As far as your equation goes, you seem to have left one factor out, that you are still a married man. Ask me again when the divorce is final and we’ll go out and celebrate. Until then I am available for kicking your ass at cards any day!
Though unsuccessful regarding its stated purpose, this email does nonetheless work, in a sense, because this represents another data point in our ongoing scientific studies. We need to arrive at some definitive answers. And nearly concealed within also, I see a tiny room for optimism, despite the immediate putdown. Assuming I can come up with some plausible story for no longer being “married,” a little bit down the road, then Brooke appears to hint that she might be interested.
Yet it seems best to leave this alone for the time being, or otherwise risk raising her suspicions. When I relate this development to Dylan, it’s true that he appears possibly not at all happy that I’ve taken this step. I will admit I have no idea what the correct protocol in this situation is, and maybe he feels that I’ve blown the whole thing for both of us, or that he had a better shot than me and I should have stepped aside. She did after all choose him for her euchre partner the night before, so maybe this is the case.
It doesn’t matter a whole lot, however, because by this point, he and I have already moved on to our next bold experiment, in this massive prop based game: we’ve decided to become cowboys.
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