Getting an Oarful
This story has to do with a long-standing crush and a large body of water.
But there is a bunch of random backup factage on this one, so bear with me.
It starts way back in high school, when I was 16. I worked at a movie theater and had a bit of an eye for this *older* (all of 20) usher, Tim. We even made out a few times, and to my hormone-flushed, youthful self, that was practically dating.
It lasted for about 5 or 6 minutes….this infatuation….and quickly fizzled out, like any other adolescent experience. But then Tim’s younger brother, Brian, got a job there too…and developed a crush on me.
Now to me, that was just gross and icky and practically incestuous on some level and there was just NO WAY. But Brian was ever hopeful, and made me nervous. Playing tonsil hockey with more than one member of the same family was just not an option for me.
So we played cat-and-mouse and I got really annoyed because Brian acted like I was just playing hard-to-get. Being 16, I had not yet perfected the ‘your-card-is-not-accepted-here’ vibe, and hence had to suffer through his suggestive remarks and overhear him telling the other ushers how he was going to ‘bag that’ before the end of summer. Ah, youth.
(And I will have you know that not only did he not ‘bag this’ by the end of summer, he never got to bag, tap, or otherwise slang my person. Ahem)
Still with me?
Good.
This is where it finally starts to get relevant. Suddenly, one day, like a bolt from the blue…enter: Dave. Dave is Brian’s best friend. Dave visits Brian at our workplace all the time. Dave makes me stare and stare and get all weak in the knees. Dave is way WAY out of my league. But boy, is he shure purty to look at.
He had those impossibly blue eyes and that perfect nose and normally I’m not like all floopy like that but damn that boy did something to me! (I was 16, please keep that in mind. Think back. Dig deep. I rest my case)
The thing is, Dave stared right back. All the time. He’d be standing there talking to Brian and we would be eye-humping each other the entire time. It was unprecedented. It went on long enough that I actually thought to myself….could it be?….that he might just be a little taken with me, too.
He’d talk and say hi and smile and stare but never more than that. I just assumed he had a girlfriend and needed to quit looking at me like that. But THEN……(cue dramatic music)……
I found out through the ridiculously-convoluted-chain-of-command you go through as an adolescent when you need to find something crucial out about a member of the opposite sex, but you can’t just, like, ASK them for cripes sakes, so you play that psychotic teenage version of ‘telephone’ and anyway this is what I found out:
1) Dave *did not* have a girlfriend
2) Dave *did* like me *that* way (which nearly made me faint with hormones)
BUT…
3) Dave could never ask me out.
Why? I bet every *guy* reading this can tell you why…….
BECAUSE BRIAN LIKED ME.
And even though nothing was ever going to happen there, the guy code would not allow Dave to pursue someone his best friend liked.
Admirable, sure. And annoying as hell.
So…..Dave and I continued to make goo goo eyes at each other for what turned out to be several years and nothing ever happened. And of course, I’d bump into him EVERYWHERE. Sometimes I would be with someone, sometimes not. But I saw him more often than seemed strictly necessary, I’ll tell you that. (Not that eye candy ever gets sour, mind you)
Annnnnnd…….scene.
Next up we morph into a time 5 years later. I’m out at a sports bar, visiting from college, and getting chatted up by a dude whilst waiting on my friends. And who (oh who) sits down next to said chatter? That’s right…..it was Dave, straight out of my past.
And we both just grinned and grinned and wanted to talk but when I asked Chatty if he would swap stools with me, he wasn’t having it and I left it at that. (It ended up that chatty not only knew the group of friends I was waiting for, we dated for quite a long time afterwards). What can I say? Dave hit the snooze on that one a long time ago. It was wild seeing him again, but……
Until I bumped into him yet again later, and this time there was no more Chatty. This time I took a really good look at him and I gotta say I did think to myself ‘Dayum’.
He was still looking good. And we talked for a really long time and caught up and he was charming and witty and self-deprecating and we agreed it was time to just do this.
So we went on a few dates and his main personality trait quickly came to the fore and sort of put a cloud over my long-standing crush……Dave was (and I’m certain still is) EXTREMELY anal retentive.
Now you know how when you’re in that initial lustful phase and you’re willing to overlook certain things….even try to tell yourself that they are endearing on some level……? I sort of fast-forwarded through that phase. It drove me nuts.
It wasn’t just that HE had to have everything JUST SO….but he had to convince ME that my world was somehow off-kilter too…which let’s face it has never been a problem for me. It would go something like this:
“Do you have enough ice in your drink?”
“Yep. It’s great”
“Are you sure it’s cold enough?”
“It’s fine, Dave, really!”
“Here…just take a few more cubes…”
And it wasn’t just ice. It was everything.
Still, after that many years, I wanted to really try to give things a go, so I was as tolerant as I could be.
Now, since we were both home visiting from college for the summer, we were both staying with our folks, and didn’t have a whole lot of ‘alone time’. So one night he completely surprised me and planned this nice romantic picnic on his parents’ speedboat out on the lake near his house. Bow-chica-bow-bow.
Now I don’t know much about boats….it had a motor thingee and was fairly good sized….I think it sat about 8 people. There was no cabin, but a bit of crawl-space in the front part. Look, all I know was she was a something-footer and a pretty decent size, ok?
So we motor on out to the middle of the lake…it’s after dark, not a cloud in the sky….he packed a basket with cheese and crackers and a nice bottle of wine. Stars were out, it was beautiful……so peaceful once we anchored and listened to the gentle lapping of the waves….
….but for some reason he felt this moment needed a soundtrack. So he turned on the radio on the boat. The motor was off, but it’s like a car in that you turn the key and the radio still plays.
So, ok, we’ll listen to music. No prob.
A bottle of wine and some sparkling conversation later (punctuated every few minutes by a SLAP! from swatting mosquitos), it was suggested that perhaps we might ‘check out the front of the boat’
Now, I was born at night, but I wasn’t born *last* night, so I was pretty certain that meant getting horizontal, since that is the only way we would fit up there. Boo-yah.
So we ventured up there, and started making out like crazy and things were progressing nicely thank you very much when after 17 SLAPs! and muttered curses Dave finally decided that he’d had enough, the mosquitos were too much, and we should just pack in the idea of sex on the boat.
Um….what? Oh, ok. Sure. No problem. I wasn’t sure who I blamed more….Dave, for his sphincter issues, or those damn mosquitos. Though I have to admit it *was* a bit of a buzzkill when after every SLAP! he would say “GOD! Aren’t they driving you CRAZY!?”
I wanted to reply “No, but you’re starting to.”
Ok ok….on to the best part…….(the second best part, if you’re wondering, is discovering that MR ANAL RETENTIVE NEAT FREAK EXTRAORDINAIRE had no qualms whatsoever about ‘watering the lake’ right over the side of the boat. If he comes with a manual, I want to read it.)
Where was I?
Oh yeah so anchor gets pulled up, Dave goes to start the boat and turns the key. I hear a ‘click’. Now, I don’t know much about boats, but I’ve heard my old POS car make that sound enough times to know what *that* means…..but still…..I wait patiently for what I know is coming…..
“Oh that’s just PERFECT.”
(all innocently) “What’s that?”
“Guess I should have left the radio off, after all. Battery’s dead.”
I wanted to laugh, I really did….but he was SO irritated, I bit it back as best I could.
What is it about laughter when it’s not altogether appropriate that makes it that much harder to control? I’ll never know.
But my face was getting red from the effort to hold the giggles back.
It didn’t help that we were in the MIDDLE OF THE LAKE. It was a big lake, too. It didn’t help that after tearing the boat apart as only an anal-retentive can, the only thing he found to assist us was…..
a single oar. Yep. Somehow HeMan was going to have to rely on nothing but the power of his own muscle (and one oar) to get us back to shore.
Either that or we could wait for daybreak since the lake was deserted apart from us. And by then…well…obviously we would have expired from mosquito bites. Or something.
I was amazingly quiet while he worked all this out. I was very helpful in the search for another oar. I was perfectly helpful when he went to the very front of the boat and instructed me to hold onto his waist from behind as he leaned over….with his one oar….and hold on I did. It wasn’t easy, either…..he had to lean way over and holding him up was work.
Still, I kept my counsel….right up until the moment he first grunted with the effort.
I don’t know what it was about that sound….maybe it was that combined with the constant monologue of displeasure he was muttering to himself…..but I finally just lost it.
Complete. Utter. Meltdown.
I didn’t just crack up….I think the proper term is ‘brayed with laughter’. I snorted, I cried, I thought I was going to pop something, I just couldn’t stop. I thought he was going to kill me (as soon as he got full use of his arms back)
But amazingly, he didn’t get mad. He didn’t even slow down. He did, however, make it worse….by saying this:
“You know…..(grunt)…..this would be a…..(grunt)….lot easier….if your muscles weren’t….(grunt)…weak from laughter….(grunt)…..”
Oh, I was in another orbit by that point. What could I do? I did my best to suck it up, but once in awhile another explosive giggle would escape.
The amazing thing was, by the time we got back to the dock, and looked at the slip that he had to somehow maneuver the boat into between two other boats (think parallel parking), he was laughing, too.
“Well, good luck parking THIS thing in THERE!” I helpfully added.
I have to give him full credit though….he somehow managed, despite our now mutual crippling laughter, to park that beast in between the two boats…using one oar. I won’t tell you how many tries it took for him to get it in there correctly…..(mainly because I don’t remember. I know it was a lot. Driftage was a factor. And yes, that sentence can be read in a totally different context. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.)
It was nice to get back on land again, and I have to thank Cap’n Dave for giving me one of the best laughs of my life.
I couldn’t date him for very long, though.
His fussiness sent me right overboard.