wrecked

"Would she like the Amber Bock, you think?" Harris yelled across the bar. The bartender looked me up and down. I flexed. He had a shaved head, heavy mustache, thick tattooed arms, and said in a soft, high voice, "Nope, no way. I'll make her something she'll like." He clunked down a fruity Southern Comfort drink in front of me and I pretended to like it. I would have rather had the beer. We filled up the jukebox and bobbed around the pool table under faded Saint Patrick's Day streamers. I took a carefully measured shot and sent the cue ball flying out the doorway. The bartender bent down and scooped it into his hand before it hit the pair of policemen beside him, who looked at me and then followed an angry woman into the back alley. "When you retell that story, make sure to mention how you hit the cop in the leg and had to have the bartender save you." "Will do." Note to readers: edit the previous accordingly.

As the tavern filled up with nervous prom-goers with fake IDs and glassy-eyed regulars huddling protectively on their favorite stools, we ran out of quarters and gave up our pool sticks to sit around playing with coasters. He said, "I saw [my high school boyfriend and Harris's ex-bandmate's] mom on Molokai, she gave me his cell phone number." We sent him an obnoxious picture message. Back at my place for checkers and cards, Harris talked for a few hours about various substances he enjoyed, and at 5am I tried to sleep while he maintained a death grip around my ribs. I pried him off periodically, jammed the pillow over my head, then finally gave up and made breakfast.

And that was the Bakersfield nightlife. The rest of the weekend was spent around the pool with Gavin (curse those college kids with their coolers in the kiddie pool), shopping for a couch (unsuccessful but good for free coffee samples), baking cookies (using pound-plus slabs of TJ's chocolate), and visiting health food stores (picking up 5-HTP as recommended). This morning Harris crushed me goodbye, promised to come back in 6 months when his visa was up, and threatened to carry me off if I was still a love pariah. That is somewhat sooner than 10 years, I calculated on my fingers. Ack.