The Boys IV

Once at the bar after a soccer game, a young woman tried to pick me up in the washroom at the pub. Having no experience with this, it is the only logical conclusion I can draw from our exchange. I’ve had a few drinks with the guys, and I’ve just left the stall and am washing my hands when she comes in. “So what are you doing here?” she asks. I assume of course, that she isn’t inquiring as to why I am in the washroom, but that she means in this pub in general, in our tiny little town, on a Monday night, when there is almost no one else around.

“Uh, I just played soccer.” I say.

“Yeah?” she says, as though this is the most interesting thing in the world. She is from Calgary, she tells me, and was just out here for a friend’s wedding, and she just decided to stay an extra day and she has to go back tomorrow. I start to recognize the Calgary part – is that a western style shirt she’s wearing? – when she puts her hand on my upper arm, standing behind me, while we look at each other in the mirror. “You’re cute.” She says. “And you’ve got those freckles...” she says. I hesitate, wondering for a second if I should explain to her that they are probably age spots.

Do I look like I play for that team? I fumbled some excuse and went back out to the pub and sat with my friends. I want to look like I play for this team. Soccer. The boys. Nothing sexual, just because I am good enough. There is no way in hell that I am about to tell the boys what happened in the washroom because the teasing would never, ever end and they would probably try send her over some sexual sounding shooter, pretending it’s from me. One of those ones with whipped cream.

I tell Steve when I get home though. He sometimes wakes up and when he asked how was it? I said “I think a girl hit on me in the pub” and he is suddenly a lot more awake, even though it is 1am. “What did she look like?” he asks. Of course. Men. Geez, I don’t know, she looked like someone who made me really uncomfortable by hitting on me because

a) I’m not gay, and
b) I’ve been married for fifteen years and I don’t tend to get hit on too often.

She was tall, taller than me. She was thin. She wore that westernish shirt. She had a pixie kind of haircut, but not as cute as Tegan and Sara’s. “She looked like someone who was lonely and desperately trying to score on her friend’s wedding weekend and there weren’t a lot of women around to choose from.” When he finds out this is all that happened, it becomes less interesting to Steve. He falls back asleep, snoring.

The next week at the pub, the boys and I are talking about how quiet it is, just like last week, and now I tell them what happened to me with the girl the week before.

“Why didn’t you tell us then?” they say, all outraged. A teasing opportunity, missed.

“Because I know what you guys would have said.”

“What?!” they say, with mock innocence.

“What did she look like?” I say.

They laugh. It’s the kind of laugh that means that’s exactly what they would have said. I may not always be the best soccer player, but at least I might have played that right. Yee haw.