The Random Dude

Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction – or at least, the two merge when you least expect it. Last night after a Rockies game my friend Heather and I stumble upon Fado, an Irish bar in Lodo. She challenges me to a contest to see which one of us can score the phone number of someone of the opposite gender first. At least a hundred people crowd the dance floor undulating to tunes from a leather clad 80s cover band. Before I push my way into the throng of dudes with Rockies T-shirts and caps and women who try just a little too hard to look good, a bachelorette party of mostly large females clad in matching black dresses with embroidered pink closures on the back detains me. The bachelorettes have printed cards of all the night’s activities and I show up at the precise moment when their schedule dictates a photo-op with a Random Dude hugging the bride to be. Last week, I’d just defined Random Dude on Urbandictionary.com after a friend of mine going through a divorce appeared in an untagged Facebook photo with an unidentified ski bum. The almost betrothed redhead, who appears to be from solid Irish peasant stock, explains to me how she was engaged to the father of one of her bridesmaids before she met her fiancee (who showed up at the end of the night in dad jeans and a polo shirt looking like Stu from The Hangover). I scratch my head for a minute contemplating the implications of this. After the photo-op, Heather and I work our way to the edge of the stage. She notes that Denver’s fashion legacy is based on “a tradition of gold miner’s prostitutes and Cowtown bling, with all the style and grace of large farm animals branded with a Bedazzler.” Heather throws down her best go-go girl moves until a woman who's as wide as she is tall requests that we vacate our dance space. The second bachelorette party moves in, and I am pushed towards the bride-to-be by the aforementioned woman. This fiancée looks strikingly like the first one in her non-strikingness. She stares blankly at my face so I turn around and butt dance with her for a couple minutes. I then force my way through the crowd that is electrified by the Duran Duran and Billy Idol covers seeking a potential phone number from any 30-something woman with big hair and Bedazzled clothing in order to win my bet. Heather makes a last ditch effort with a tall dude in a checkered shirt, explaining to him that she’s trying to win this contest by getting his phone number. She is flatly rejected and they call her “crazy.” I’m waiting outside having fulfilled my Random Dude status with two brides already and Heather pulls me in to explain to these guys that she’s not crazy, just trying to win a bet. The checkered shirt dude and his friend are as emotionally pliable as hardened, already chewed bubble gum. Heather and I reflect on how neither of us could possibly be attracted to someone without a certain light of intelligence emanating from them. Although the brainpower at Fado’s was absent, the bride presence was uncanny.

It Feels Like the First Time

We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust – Rumi

It’s almost midnight. My date and I have consumed nearly two bottles of Argentinian wine after a 5 hour dinner and as midnight strikes she yawns and announces her desire to go home. I have one more desire and contemplate how to make my move.

In late July we met in front of the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder. I first saw her at a party last year, but I didn’t really SEE her. Seeing that is, in the Avatarian sense where the Navi with their pure primitive hearts and telepathic minds recognize one another’s souls. She stood at the entryway as I approached, as if she were waiting for me. We chatted briefly and she handed me her card. A few days later we were hiking, chatting and glowing. Two weeks later, we were reminiscing about meeting at the St. Julien. It’s an odd phenomenon that when we have an experience we are not necessarily conscious of the subtle thought forms and energies that we have perceived in that moment. But in retrospect I saw the essence of this woman then– ageless, elegant, gorgeous, radiant and proud. She appeared as a brilliant meteor that fell from the Perseid showers onto the circular pavestones where valet attendants take the keys of the well- heeled clientele.

By our second date, she’d given me a printout of the 12 stages of courtship: a road map to committed love. The stages are as follows, and are relevant throughout the duration of a committed relationship:

1. Noticing - seeing what is attractive in others and being conscious of the desirable traits in a long-term partner.

2. Attraction- curiosity and desire about the physical, emotional and intellectual traits of others.

3. Flirtation - playfulness, seductiveness and social cues that send signals of interest.

4. Demonstration – of prowess in athleticism, dressing to please the other person.

5. Romance – the ability to experience, express and receive passion.

6. Individuation – in a healthy relationship, each individual feels free to be who they are without fear of disapproval or control by the other (wow, I’d love to experience this).

7. Intimacy – the “attachment” phase in which a relationship deepens in its meaning and integrity.

8. Touching- the healing physical touch that requires trust, care and judgment.

9. Foreplay – holding, fondling, kissing and sexual play that build tension and eroticism

10. Intercourse – surrender to passion; to let go and trust yourself and your partner to be vulnerable.

11. Commitment- the ability to bond or attach to another. In contrast, addiction is the failure to bond.

12. Renewal- the capacity to sustain the above dimension in an existing relationship.

“Successful couples continue courtship, continue to show the other they are a worthy partner, continue to make efforts to attract their mate, and continue to express the value they have for each other.”

I’ve studied these two sheets of paper for some weeks, contemplating the meaning within each stage. I responded by sending her the Borat version of courtship in which his cross-country trip ends in an attempt to steal Pamela Anderson from L.A.

I don’t know what this meeting of our two souls will be – but she wants to explore it slowly. A part of me wants to dive in headfirst for the exhilaration of falling in love. As I am prone to project fantasy into the future, she grounds me in the moment. Robert Johnson wrote in his book “Owning Your Own Shadow” that falling in love is a disservice to the lover because one projects their happiness upon another person. Then when the intoxication of falling in love fades to reality, there is inevitable disappointment in the other person.

It’s midnight on my futon – the wine has made us both a bit loopy. I remember being 13, visiting my first girlfriend Jannie Israel at her day camp in Ossining, N.Y. We walked out into the woods on to a large granite rock nestled in a grove of oak and maple trees. We were talking and I kept contemplating my make-out move – but I was too afraid to do it. Decades later with my radiant date I feel the same way – like an awkward adolescent about to make his first move. She sits back down when I tell her there’s one more thing I want to do. Then I say “It’s time to kiss the Prince”. I’m an asshole. I meant to say something like “This Frog needs to become a Prince by your kiss” – either way, it’s totally cheesy. Not only that, I don’t even have a real couch to host this momentous event – it’s an old black futon with bamboo printed fabric. I left all the good furniture with my former girlfriend. I lean in, make my move, and……….

The Flight Attendant

Flying the friendly skies has turned into an oxymoron the past decade or two. But today on a United puddle jumper from Denver to Sioux Falls, the flight attendant is bubbling with youthful energy – and she’s hot. It seems like graduation from Flight Attendant School ended in 1970 – thus, the preponderance of middle-aged women who’ve been in the industry far too long hiding their fatigue and displeasure behind excessive make-up; after all, serving unhappy customers peanuts and orange juice is not the glorified profession it once was Our flight attendant Lauren, a 20-something woman with an ageless 1940s movie starlet quality, is wearing a bell shaped navy blue skirt, skin-toned stockings and a staid white blouse. She emanates the button-downed sexuality that stokes male fantasies of hot school teachers and librarians. She enunciates her flight check monologue cheerily, her diction polished as if she went to a United finishing school. She struts down the aisle, touching each overhead bin deftly as if she were sorting through racks of clothing at Saks Fifth Avenue. She then straps herself in to her jump seat pulls her dark blonde hair up into a bun and sits Sphinx-like presiding over her 40 or so charges. The friendly fat guy next to me is flirting with her in the unthreatening way that only men over 250 pounds who aren’t linebackers can. He’s got big square wire rimmed glasses, a polo shirt and an accent like he should’ve been in the Coen brothers’ Fargo. He’s on a business trip that mostly involves golfing and I’m thinking to myself god bless American corporations for funding golf – a sport that costs billions of dollars in grass seed and more billions of gallons of water to maintain them, and billions of gallons of jet fuel to fly businessmen to talk about nothing consequential over excessive amounts of gin and tonics while swinging at hard white balls when they could’ve just sent a few emails while lounging around in their pajamas. My rotund seat mate is nearly pushing me into the wall of the airplane but what do I expect for a free flight? I imagine that Lauren is like Carol Merrill, that 70s era vixen who hosted Lets Make a Deal. I didn’t think women like that existed anymore. For a brief second, I imagine she comes back to my hotel, undresses, and…..then the fantasy ends. That only happens to George Clooney. My seat mate plies her with questions: since we’re sitting in the very front of the cabin she’s a captive audience. We learn that she used to work in the Badlands National Park with prairie dogs. She’s a child of nature, not a 1940s starlet. Imagining her in Carhartt overalls in braids bending over prairie dog holes calling to the little rodents is still kinda sexy but ruins my fantasy. She tells us she’s only been at the job for 7 weeks because she needed full-time work. Thus, she has to read from the manual over the PA system.

We’re about to land in Sioux Falls where I have to sit in the airport for 4 hours of torture; there’s one tiny bar that sells pre-packaged personal pizzas and a team of high tech businessmen who don’t look like they should be so low rent as to be stuck in Sioux Falls about to miss their next connection in Chicago because of an air control delay. I think I’d go insane if I had to travel for a living. A lone Hasidic Jew walks down the sterile beige colored hallway rolling his luggage over the carpet with its plaid pattern of squares that look like sprouting spring wheat. Why is a Jew stuck in the prairie of South Dakota, alone? Like me, he’s en route to somewhere in the middle of nowhere, flying the friendly skies.

The Cougrr

We’re sitting at the Root Down restaurant in the Highlands neighborhood of Denver, a converted auto shop filled with art deco kitsch. There’s an entire wall hung with hard plastic desk phones from a bygone era in various bright colors. I meet my date for the first time. She’s elegantly dressed in frilly black pants and a sleeveless black top sipping a strawberry rhubarb Caprihina. We embrace like old friends.

Since me and DanceCougrr (her Match handle) started instant messaging on Match a few days before, we realized we were mental soul mates and as she wrote, MOTs (Members of the Tribe) This elegant, zaftig Jewess, a former sub-prime loan maven, has re-invented herself in a couple of new start-up ventures. She pole dances and is fluent in several dance forms. She’d emailed me photos of her on a pole with a bodybuilder/fireman for her 50^th birthday. Her sybaritic personality was that of a self-actualized woman unafraid to grasp life by the balls and fully enjoy every moment in all of its absurd glory.

The endless patois of witticisms endowed with occasional yiddish or rap phrases turns both of our minds on. If my brain had a clitoris it was being stroked every second – before our date, she left a voicemail telling me how stimulated she was by our conversations. We acknowledge that even if we never “feel the animal” for one another, we will always be BFFs.

I order another drink, a tequila infused with poblano that tickles my throat. By the time we head to the table I feel my cranium being grasped by the alcohol and tell the Cougs that my brain function is impaired, but I continue rattling off puns and spontaneous mutations on our conversation. She’s bringing out a part of me that is unique to my NYC jewish roots. My dad and I bonded by spending endless hours one-upping each other with wit. My date is across from me, her kind brown eyes lucid and receptive. She’s a profoundly good listener. She tells me about her foiled date with a guy she calls the “Avatard,” a man who communicates with extra-terrestrials who needed a ride from DIA since his car was “in the shop.” They never met but he emailed her a pornographic photo of the Avatar’s leading couple in a compromising position.

Bathroom humor and serious inquisitions into personal histories intertwine as we wax poetically about the Gnocchi and Falafel. One wouldn’t think these two would mix well, but the food is so exquisitely prepared it’s melt-in-your mouth ecstasy. I don’t remember the last time I had a meal where I wanted to eat as slowly as possible. We bid farewell to our waitress and circumnavigate the Highlands neighborhood. The buildings are a mish-mash of cold post-modern condos mixed with cute Victorian bungalows and hideous 40s era shacks with aluminum siding. She can talk architecture. We can discuss anything under the sun. It’s kind of like a middle-aged Jewish version of Before Sunrise – an entire night of magic free of sex. We end up on a park bench across from a Spanish influenced mission. She jokes that we could go over there and assume the missionary position. We chat on the bench about my trips to India, her cruises around the world, her time in Istanbul. She’s curious and asks more questions than I can answer. Intellectually, we have a rapport established in a mere few days that’s exciting, stimulating, profound and raunchy. At midnight she appears illuminated and vibrant. I’m fading. My new single life with its 2 a.m. weekend bedtimes has caught up to me. I assure her I’m not yawning because her company is boring. Au Contraire. We trace our way back to the restaurant and in front of another post-modern rectilinear apartment building we notice the brilliant full moon. I turn my back and drop trou, momentarily exposing my cheeks, mooning the moon. The Cougs, not one to approach anything in life half-assed, turns politely, and bares all to the white orb in the sky, outdoing me for commitment to the moment.