Charming, but single

I joined The Lawyer and friends in New Orleans for some drinking and dancing on Saturday night. Three of us dressed and primped at The Lawyer’s house before. I had forgotten how fun it was to try on outfits and pick shoes and accessories with the girls. (I’d packed four pairs of shoes, three purses and several shirt options for my night of city fun.) After some intense hair straightening and struggling to apply an almost midnight blue eyeliner (works well with my blue eyes; it is almost black and is a lot prettier than it sounds), we slipped into our heels and tucked the essentials – a digital camera, lip gloss, debit card, emergency cash – into our cute purses and headed out to find some mischief. We strolled confidently into a small bar that played host to a mix of people our age and older and swayed back and forth some to the canned blues and Al Green songs that blared over the speakers, pausing to groan when “Hurricane” by Bob Dylan came on, before skillfully commandeering an area of worn leather club chairs and couches for our crew. I fiddled with my phone, paused and wrote a text message to The Nurse. Short and sweet: “Just thought I’d say hello. Hope you’re having a good time at the wedding. Later, charming.” I ducked into the bathroom to check my look. I was wearing jeans, sandals with an ankle strap and three inches of heel and a satin camisole underneath a sheer black wrap top with flutter sleeves. The top did little to cover the camisole and I turned to check my profile and make sure the lace ties holding the top shirt closed were secure around my waist. “I like that top,” a woman powdering her face in the mirror next to me said. “Thanks … just trying to make sure it doesn’t come loose,” I said, finishing my spin. We both laughed. “That could come in handy later if you need easy access,” she joked. “Yes, at midnight it is presumptuous to think I’d take the shirt off,” I said. “But come 3 a.m., the fact that this is held together by a flimsy belt may come in handy.” We wished each other well and I glossed my lips before rejoining my friends. After a few hours of subdued drinking and some R-rated talk about the ease with which both genders can find a lay, we headed to a very crowded, nondescript bar full of people our age and younger and plastic cups of bottom shelf liquors and some very loud hip hop and pop music. This wasn’t my ideal location, but once a cool, crisp gulp of Red Stripe passed my lips and joined several glasses of pinot grigio in my system, I felt like dancing. And dance I did … around puddles of drink and broken pieces of glass on the dance floor, swigging Red Stripes like they were water and doing shots when they were placed in front of me. I shook my humps, dropped it like it was hot and generally made a fool of myself. The beauty of all of this is that I knew no one in the entire bar save my friends, meaning I could dance without being embarrassed by my less-than-stellar drunk girl dancing moves. So inspired by the dancing was I that I soon found myself trying to force my friends to dance on the small wooden stage and then on the bench of a booth we’d taken over. They laughed and egged me on, knowing I’d reached that critical time when there’s no turning back, when I simply must dance and release the stress that builds in my system. And the next thing I know, I am dancing with a very aggressive, very dorky guy on the stage. And he is kissing me and he is a terrible, forceful kisser who thrusts his tongue around my mouth with no regard to rhythm or speed or intensity or if I’m even enjoying the kiss. We move to a booth, because I am drunk, but I am not about making a spectacle of myself on the stage. And I try to talk to him – he is 29, a lawyer, originally from New York. And then he is licking my neck and swirling his tongue in my ear – attempting to give me a lobotomy with his kiss, I imagine. My friends hover by and check in with me, asking if I’m okay. And I, for some godforsaken reason, am. I miss making out with boys. And so my friends, ever supportive, took some very embarrassing pictures of me. (Thankfully they forgot that the digital camera is mine and the pictures will safely be filed in my computer’s recycle bin.) I am trying to pull myself from this boy when he asks to unzip my pants. I think not. Thankfully, my friends picked this moment to unceremoniously pluck me from his grasp and leave the bar. It is nearing 3:30 and it is time to leave. He asks when I’m coming back to the city and scribbles his personal numbers on his business card. I write down some string of numbers that I am almost certain was not my cell number, smile and stand to gather my purse and camera. And my damn shirt is untied.