Chapter 72: The Labrea Tardude

I’m tooling down the highway on the kind of winter day in which the sun is reflecting so hard off the snow you can see veins when you close your eyes. Forget California, Wisconsin is where you REALLY need sunglasses.

“DON’T MAKE ME CLOOOOOSE ONE MORE DOOOOR, I DON’T WANNA HUUUUUURT ANYMOOOOOORE” shit what are the words again? “I’M WAHHN MAAAAH BAAAAAAAHWAAAADAHWAAAAAAH, MAHDAMAAAAAAADAAADAADAAAAAAAAHHHH…” oh cool I know this part “DON’T WALK AWAAAAAY FROM…” DING my phone blinks with a message, interrupting my bastardization of 80’s hits.

Holy Hell, I cannot believe who it is.

Okay. I have to admit I’m totally tempted to turn this ‘who is it’ question into a clickbait Who Messaged Monica?? and lead you through a thirty-seven page slideshow to find out an entirely unfulfilling answer on the final page, after 453 ads placed exactly where you think you’re supposed to click the NEXT button leading you into videos that blare DO YOU NEED TO ENHANCE YOUR SEX LIFE all over the crowded Starbucks where you’re waiting for your eight dollar overrated sugar bomb latte, but unlike the SOB’s that create these nightmares of modern tech life, I have a conscience. So. Here it is, no clicks necessary.

Back in Chapter 63, you met a bevy of boneheads to whom I gave wayyy too much airtime, but let me give one concrete cranium a bit more. Unworthy of even a Dudename, albeit because the author couldn’t come up with a good working word for exactly what kind of bullshit this was, remember the guy who showed up one night at the bar with a woman whom he claimed was his Platonic Best Friend For Twelve Years? This is the guy! The night we originally met, she waxed sentimental about how perfect we were for each other, how he had been looking for someone like me, how we made an absolutely lovely couple. She was shoveling along the relationship at the rate of an exhausted mom offloading her twin three-year old boys at daycare after they raided the stash of Mountain Dew. She was claiming she wanted this for him, but it seemed a bit three-dollar bill variety disingenuous.

Oh, and this wonderful man fell hard for me. He professed his undying love and devotion…hmmm, let’s see…best thing that ever happened, most amazing woman he’s ever met, you’re not like other women, you’re The One I’ve been looking for. It all seemed like peaches and rainbows and I was saddling up my horse for the ride off into the sunset when I get a phone call from him that this “Best Friend”s partner has commenced departnership with her, and boy, he just always wondered what would it be like to hook up with his best friend? I mean, he just HAS to know. Buuuuut wait, Monica, would it be all right if, well, just suppose this Bang Your Best Friend Fantasy doesn’t work out, can he call me back and see me again? Kinda like pulling the leftover potato salad out of the fridge and giving a good sniff to see if it’s still edible before it gets pitched in the trash. What’s my expiration date, again?

Yes, THIS is the asshat who graces my voicemail on this brilliant Saturday morning, interrupting my gleeful butchering of Whitney Houston lyrics and casting a shadow over this 5000 watt day.

I listen to the message. I should be pissed, but my reactions have shifted and I instinctively snicker as I listen to his pathetic overrambling message. Is he drinking? He sounds like it, but crying out loud it’s ten AM.

In Wisconsin.

Never mind. Totally possible.

The message: “Hey, Monica, ummmm… well, it didn’t work out after all with my best friend…soooo…I’d like to see you. How about an adult beverage(who even calls it that?) tonight?”

Yes, this actually happened.

In addition to the idiocy of asking a woman to wait for you till you decide if you’d rather have what’s behind Door #2, something he doesn’t know is in my post-brief-relationship hashover with a bartender who knew him, I received a red-alert warning: “Monica, you should be glad. Guy’s a total drunk.” When a bartender in a mildly divey bar thinks you’re an alcoholic, hmmm… and, of course, this is a fantastic reminder of the kinds of guys I kept getting caught up with, the latest sticky Labrea Tar Pit to start sucking in my foot, then my leg, up to my hips, finally dragging me down to a Neanderthal demise, leaving me with my last thoughts as the tar is smothering my face thinking I could have been a T Rex slayer! (Yes, I know they didn’t exist simultaneously, so knock it off with the hate mail, nerd.) I’ve been stuck in these familiar pits a million times.

Today, I don’t get stuck.

I have been learning how to avoid this for months now, and I know exactly what to do. I ditch the Ten Dollar Prize for Second Place In A Beauty Contest Community Chest card, and instead, choose to win the whole damn game. I’m buying hotels on the blue-chip properties, and you better believe I’m collecting rent.

At the next stop, I draft a quick text message: Oh Wow! So, it didn’t work out with your best friend? And you’d like to see me? When would you like to get together? and you think you know where this is headed, and the shell of myself I was before would have been excited about this scrap of attention, would have accepted the leftover crumbs, would have been satisfied with the cold fries at the bottom of the bag, grateful for the second-place trophy. But I have been putting myself together for months now, and I’m no longer in this Dude’s league. I’m not an alcoholic, I know what I want, I have my shit together. I no longer have any interest whatsoever in this second rate, going nowhere, Dad bod, waffle deciding, flaky, pickled Dude. And I have a map! I have my navigation dialed in and can see a clear and obvious path through the tar pits this time, and I sneak around them, Ninja Monica silently stepping my way around the very pits that once terrified me, that once sapped away my life force on a daily basis. I am in charge at last, and it feels wonderful. Phoenix Monica is soaring, transformed from prey to apex predator at last.

Red flag one: second place. Red flag two: want to get together tonight, incapable of making plans. Red flag three: drunk at ten am. There are more, but even one was enough.

He almost immediatel texts back: Yes! Yes! Tonight at the bar by your house.

I easily block the move and throw the first punch:

Oh, I’m busy all weekend. How about next week sometime?

long pause.

All weekend?

Yes, sorry.

What he doesn’t know, but I do thanks to the extensive work on myself, is that alcoholics are commonly incapable of making long term plans. He texts me the next week and wants to get together, same old meet me tonight? once again, and I pull the same ninja move, requesting an actual date over and over, until he can’t keep up with the fact that his substance-addled brain can’t handle scheduling shit, and the tar pits become a dark and stinky blob in my rear view mirror. I won’t look back, I don’t miss the tar pits and have no desire to become a salt pillar, either.

And StinkyBlobdude learns a lesson in how not to treat a first- place woman.

And I will never be anything less.

But for sure I will become so much more…

And the next guy I meet in a bar…has nothing to do with dating whatsoever.