THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-OTHER MAN II: Tasting Kentucky, Payback as a Blogging Bitch, and Other Crazy Things

ACT I:
"DUDE. SHE TASTES LIKE KENTUCKY."

If this doesn't make your blog, I'm going to kick you in the fucking balls.

- Mister Chops

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Hairdressers can be quite entertaining.

Especially in gangs of four, when they've all had way too much to drink, when you're the only relatively sober guy at the bar.

Quite entertaining. And rather good kissers, too. Even if they taste like Kentucky, smell like generic body spray, and manhandle your junk like a plumber working over a rusted valve.

* * * *

Mister Chops? The guy behind the bar?

Chops was molested by three of the four women, forced to bare his shoulder and chest tattoos for all the world to see, to strip down to his A-frame tee for tips and wages, forced to be told that, well, even married women to get off every once and a while, forced to witness flashes of ass tats and tits and...

Me? Lucky ol' me?

I went four-for-four on the night. And all four claimed that there was no way in hell I could be a librarian, that librarians can't kiss like that, that they'd all like to share me for a few minutes, to spank me, to do very naughty things to me in bar bathrooms and on books and...

* * * *

One woman, a recent divorcée, ended up getting a little too excited. I guess I stirred up some biochemical response, caused quite a bit of, er, moisture build-up, which ended up seeping through the back of her jeans and onto my hand...

Hell. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to give a woman an orgasm, fully-clothed and without any sort of intention, in front of a live studio audience, with just a kiss and a few well-placed flicks of the tongue, a squeeze of a breast and stroke of the ass and...

I even earned a round of applause.

Hairdressers aren't the only ones who are good kissers.

* * * *

Actually, I went five-for-five if you count the blonde undergrad who'd witnessed the whole thing as her party entered the downstairs pub.

She followed me out to my truck and, right on High Street in Uptown Oxford, told me, exactly, just what she'd like to do to me.

Sounded like she had some fun things in mind.

Too bad she was 3,000 sheets to the wind and barely able to stand up straight.

She had to settle for, well, pushing me into my pick-up and shoving what felt like four inches of sorority girl down my throat. Tasted like Jägermeister and fifth-year desperation, like she hadn't had the guts to just walk up to a random guy and kiss him in years.

But still - not bad. For a 22-year-old from Dayton. She'd probably be a nice person to hang out with sometime - if she's ever sober.

But not as fun to make out with as the four 30-40ish hairdressers.

* * * *

I don't do drunk women.

Make out? Sure. But sex?

Honestly, it's not only dangerous; it's also boring and pointless.

Sure, I sometimes falter on that guiding principle. But, well, while I can no longer remember the number of women, total, that I've been involved with, I can count the number of drunken mistakes on my fingers.

Less than 10. And I'm proud of that. More important, I'm just glad I survived them.

I may fuck up, but, well, I prefer to fuck up almost completely sober. Blindfolds and cigarettes may provide the illusion of safety, but the firing squad will still pull their triggers the same, either way. Best to just face one's fate, sexual or otherwise, with both eyes square on the assassin.

* * * *

Who says Happy Hours aren't fun anymore?

Happy was me Thursday. But, by Saturday...

ACT II:
"YOU KNOW, I'M NOT AS DENSE AS YOU THINK..."

I knew exactly what I was doing.

Knew from the moment I paid for her late-night slice of pizza at Brunos. Knew as I suggested that, at 23 and 29, respectively, we were much too old, as working professionals, to be out past last call.

And, yep, I had a good idea what she was thinking when her heel snapped and she fell into me, commenting on the fact that I seem to have bulked up a bit since she last saw me. And I knew, exactly, what I was doing when she told me that she wanted to go back to my apartment, to just chill and catch up, as if we'd ever been friends.

And I knew she was married, too, married to a man who once got off on slipping an ex-girlfriend of his Special K during his Local U. undergrad days, married to a man whose ex-girlfriend ...

... ended up having a rather quick, torrid fling with a certain local blogger to get over the fact that, yeah, her best friend 4eva had been screwing her drug-slipping boyfriend for most of their relationship.

And I even had this lurking feeling I was being used to get back at that ex-fling of mine, for some unknown reason. Maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the fact that my ex-fling dared to fall in love with this amazing man who doesn't slip her ketamine as an aphrodisiac, for leaving her best friend 4eva (and Mr. Big Man and yours truly, for that matter) behind.

* * * *

As I lay in bed Saturday morning, staring at the ceiling and listening to the sound of some not-so-random woman singing bad pop music in my shower, I tried to make myself feel guilty, tried to find it in my soul, somewhere, to reprimand myself.

But I couldn't.

That best friend 4eva had just spent the night with a guy she'd once called the ugliest guy in Oxford, while her beloved cokehead of a hubby, the former Mr. Big Man on Campus, was spending the weekend drinking and clubbing back in the city Carl Sandburg once called the City of Big Shoulders.

* * * *

I knew why, exactly, she'd come back to Oxford Fucking Ohio - she wanted revenge on Mr. Big Man, a notoriously unfaithful guy who, from what she told me, spent more time groping interns than he did groping her. I knew from the first lie that she wasn't interested in planned giving to my library, knew she really didn't want my help researching something for work at 4 in the morning.

And, yes, I figured out quickly that she wasn't offering to rub my shoulders because I looked stressed, that she wasn't capable of sincere compassion. And, yes, I knew exactly what I was doing when she leaned against that door jamb and brought her knee up to her nose, when she insisted on demonstrating how flexible she'd become thanks to her yoga instructor.

I wasn't anywhere near drunk, yet, somehow, I tripped. Fell right up against her, catching that flexible thigh to mysteriously restore my balance. And when I smiled and raised my eyebrow, I lied and feigned innocence, just so she'd make the first move.

And she did. Even broke one of my favorite belts.

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, Sandburg wrote, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

Well, Mr. Sandburg. Some of us farm boys may be dense, may have no fucking clue how to flirt or date nice girls or even behave like rational adults, but those painted women from The City of Big Shoulders are sometimes easy to lure away from beneath those lamps.

Some of us were just born with big shoulders. It's a curse.

* * * *

Spite is a curious bedfellow.

When I'd left the bar scene behind Friday night, I was annoyed, angry.

A female friend of mine, well past intoxicated, was literally throwing herself at a male friend of mine, whispering all sorts of drunken things into his ear. The female friend has been in a bad way for months, since she went through a nasty break-up with a guy. And the male friend, recently relocated back to Oxford, seemed to be deep in the kind of buzzed enlightenment that comes with having to choose between getting laid and being a good friend.

And, no, it wasn't jealousy. Not even close.

It was memories, memories of some of my own experiences with the self-destructive chaos that fuels all drunken hook-ups and one-night stands, the sort of forewarned regret and friendship - altering choices that, in general, rarely lead to anything productive.

Just hate to see people having to wade through shit. It's really, really painful for me to watch.

I used to be good at those sorts of things, a virtual maestro of drunken hook-ups, seductive womanizing and manwhoredom. But as I've gotten older...

And I thought about "Tonya," too, about how that friends - and - lovers choice had ended. Two weeks earlier, she'd FedExed me my lucky ring - I told her to ship the thing back if she felt that we couldn't salvage the friendship out of the clusterfuck it'd become. When I opened the parcel, my heart imploded; it was the first time in months that I'd been forced to admit that, yes, I had been falling hard for her when things went sour.

And I thought about other drama, too, with other former lovers and flings and girlfriends...

My cell vibrated in my pocket, snapped me out of my deep brooding and self-reflection.

DUDE! Hey! It's me, went the voicemail. You're not going to believe this, but _____ just tried to kiss me. Apparently Mrs. Perfect is down in fucking Oxford and he really thinks I'm going to get back together with him! Seriously. Fuck em! And watch out, dude. She reads your web site, so if you go home with anybody, that bitch is gonna tell everybody up here in Chi-Town.

I laughed. As if I was planning to go home with anybody.

And then, less than five minutes later, I'm standing at the door of my pickup, turning the key in the lock.

I feel a pair of woman's hands on my back, the sound of that high-pitched, stereotypical sorority alum voice, that Heeyyy Jay-sin!!! Loong Tiiime no seeeee!

Some women are as transparent as Waterford Crystal.

* * * *

Yes, spite is indeed a curious bedfellow. But, then again, so is fate. Makes for one hell of an orgy.

And, trust me, there are now quite a few folks up in the City of Big Shoulders who now know who I hooked up with last night.

Tell your husband I said hello.

I'm dense, but I'm not naive. I read your mind, hon.

You figured that you could get back at your husband by going home with the one guy he hates, that you could play me like a fiddle because, well, you'd been reading about my problems and relationship woes, and that you could just waltz right in, use me, and gloat.

And too bad you were singing in the shower. You would've realized that I rarely, if ever, walk into an ambush - I called your former best friend 4eva and told her everything.

She's now in a healthy relationship, doesn't care about who you, your hubby, or even I fuck. But she did think it was funny that you really thought you were getting away with anything.

And, actually, I'm not that easy to seduce. Bit of an urban legend, actually. Think you had it backwards, there, hon.

Can't really play the guy who just served you with the rule book.

* * * *

Oh, and by the way...

No worries about returning the tee shirt. Looked great on you as you went through security at the Cincinnati airport this morning.

It belonged to your former BFF. Butt-ugly thing, that shirt. She always looked horrible in yellow.

I am curious about one thing, however.

How did your husband react when he read Librarians Do It By the Book printed across your chest when he picked you up at O'Hare this morning?

Just curious.

And thanks for reaffirming my enduring belief that, no matter how physically attractive, sex with dumb women is just about as exciting as staring at my bedroom ceiling, waiting for somebody else to finish...

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