On the Rocks(82)

I sauntered over to where he was standing and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hi, remember me?” I asked.

He smiled an awkward smile, “Yeah, of course. How are you?” he stuttered, pretending that he actually remembered me. I couldn’t remember what he did for a living, but I knew for sure he wasn’t an actor.

“No, you don’t. You have no clue who I am. Just admit it. I won’t cry,” I said with a shrug. And while the old me might have once again let her mood be spontaneously altered by a moron, the new me was done with that.

“Excuse me?” he said, understandably confused as to why a snarky stranger was interrupting the Red Sox game for him.

“I’m sorry, I maybe should have told you that this is going to be one of the most painfully honest conversations you’ve ever had with a female in your entire life. And in keeping with that honesty, why don’t you just tell the truth and admit that you don’t remember me.”

“Okay, fine. I’m sorry, I don’t. Are you sure you don’t have me confused with someone else? I’m, um, surprised I don’t remember you,” he said with a smile, hoping that would somehow sugar-coat the fact that he found me entirely forgettable.

“Yeah, I’m sure. We met at the Red Parrot back in June. You asked if I wanted to meet up for drinks, and I said sure, and I gave you my number, but I never heard from you again, and I was wondering why that was.”

“Are you serious?” he asked. Like most guys, he didn’t know how to deal with girls who didn’t care about embarrassing themselves. Sadly for him, he was about to find out.

“You bet your highlighted hair I am,” I said as I put my hands in my back pockets and rocked onto my heels, the way Bobby did when he antagonized me. It felt nice to be the one doing the taunting for once.

“What are you talking about? My hair isn’t highlighted,” he insisted as he ran his hand through it to make sure it was still there.

“Oh please, Billy Idol would think your hair is too blond, but I’m not here to discuss your effeminate cosmetic habits.” His eyes darted nervously around the bar, looking for his friends, and I can’t say that I blamed him, but it was time for guys everywhere to own up to acting like *s when they acted like *s. I was making it my personal crusade, and I was starting with him.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he yelled, apparently done with the pretending to be nice to me part of this conversation.

“Me? Oh, no, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me. I get that usually girls act like it’s no big deal that you said you were going to call them and then disappeared, or they ignore it altogether for fear of looking crazy. The thing is, I don’t really care if you think I’m crazy. I’ve spent way too much time worrying about what guys will think of me and letting that dictate my every move, and the reality is, you should be worried about what we think of you and your entire gender, because I’m fairly certain, if my sample set is correct, that girls think you guys are all demented. So I’m liberated by not caring that you’re going to go home and tell your buddies what some psychotic chick said to you in the bar. All I care about is you telling me what I want to know, and that is why you never f*cking called me?” He said nothing, at least not out loud. I’m pretty sure if there had been a thought balloon over his head there’d have been enough expletives running through it to make George Carlin blush. I felt he needed a bit of prodding. “It’s okay. Don’t be shy. Speak up.”

“I don’t remember why. I think I went to look you up and couldn’t find you,” he said with a shrug.

“Look me up where? The yellow pages?”

“No, on Facebook. Your name’s Abby, right? I tried to find you on Facebook, and you weren’t on there. I guess after that I just moved on.”

Bobby was right. Good God, there’d be no living with him now.

“You moved on,” I said, still trying to process the fact that Bobby’s Facebook theory was true, “to someone who was on Facebook. That’s how you decide who you’re going to go out with and who you’re going to blow off? Am I getting this right?”

“Well, yeah. It’s just an easier way to talk to people, plus you can tell from the kind of pictures girls post what their personalities are like. You can see if you have mutual friends, stuff like that.”

“Oh, you can? So if I had posted pictures of myself half-naked, you’d have assumed I was a slut, or if there were pictures of me with a dozen cats crawling all over me, you’d have assumed I was crazy. Is that right?” I didn’t let him answer. “So what did my not having any pictures at all tell you? That I’m afraid of flash photography? What?”

“No, I assumed that you were super-shy or something.”

“Yeah, well, you read that wrong,” I scoffed. Maybe I used to be, to be fair, but not anymore. Shy Abby was so June.

“You’ve made that clear. I’d have thought you were less crazy if you had the cat pictures up there to be honest. Are we done here?”

“Yeah, we’re done. I’m sorry if I took up too much of your time. I’m sure you have a very hot date with a bottle of peroxide or a girl to investigate on Facebook and I wouldn’t want to keep you from that.”

“I’m sorry if my not calling you made you . . . I don’t know, nuts.”