Recently, my sister and I were reminiscing about our wild holidays when we were younger, when we would stay out until 5 a.m. and hide in my car around the corner of the house, waiting for our mom to leave. off to work. So we don’t go in while she was eating breakfast in her nightgown. Inevitably, our conversation turned to drunken nights at a bar in Bellmore we used to frequent called The Band Box Tavern.
Now, The Band Box was a special place for my sister and I … we had been regulars on Sunday afternoons since we were little kids (literally, not figuratively). My dad, like many others, played softball on Sunday mornings, and the experience wasn’t complete without a visit to the bar afterward: beer for the men, Shirley Temples with extra cherries for the boys. I know times have changed drastically and today taking a child to a bar will trigger a visit from Child Protective Services, but in the 1970s and early 80s, it was commonplace and we certainly weren’t the only kids. running like ragamuffins.
One Sunday when I was about 9 years old and my dad wasn’t in pain, he gave me a few dollars to put on the Jukebox (the kind that spins 45 weeks! I’m old!). I was, and still am, a huge Blondie fan, and my favorite song at the time was Rapture (you know, Fab Five Freddie and the man from Mars, eating cars, bars and guitars …) Well, anyway , I was old enough to like music and old enough to put the money in the machine and find the songs I wanted to play, but I was not experienced enough to realize that once I dialed the code to play Rapture, there would be a considerable delay. before the song actually plays. When the music didn’t start right away, I thought I had done something wrong, so I dialed the number again. It still didn’t ring, so now I thought the jukebox was broken and dialed the Rapture number a third time, … and a fourth time. By the time Rapture played for the seventh time in a row, it was getting dirty looks from all over the bar (remember this was before the remote and you couldn’t “skip” the songs), and the bartender finally unplugged the jukebox.
It was kind of a homecoming of sorts when we returned to The Band Box as patrons, and we quickly reestablished our status as regulars. During one of these fuzzy nights, another regular, whose name escapes me completely, so I’m going to call him Bear, invited me to join him the next day to Atlantic City. Bear looked like an aged and overweight Magnum PI, complete with a semi-unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, which featured a thick gold chain and tangles of rough hair across his chest. I guess he was in his 30s and 30s, with thick, curly hair like salt and pepper and a Hell’s Angels mustache. I found it physically repulsive so of course I agreed to go (insert shoot myself in the eye emoticon here).
He picked me up the next morning at 7am, and in my watery-eyed, hangover, and sleep-deprived state, I wanted nothing more than to cancel the trip and stay in bed. But he was outside, honking, and had already paid my bus fare the night before. I had told Bear that I would go with him to AC, but I had also told him that he was broke … in fact, I think I had less than $ 10 in my wallet. Bear had agreed to pay for my trip, so I felt compelled to get up and go. I didn’t take a shower, I didn’t even change my clothes from the night before, so I can only imagine what I looked like when I bumped into his car. We drove to The Band Box, where the bus we were taking was leaving.
When I got on the bus, it was as if I had entered the set of the movie, Cocoon. If you don’t remember, that was the movie with all the old men who swim in the pool with alien eggs and regain their youth by sapping the life force of alien embryos. In other words, she could have been the great-granddaughter of 75% of the group we were traveling with. Bear seemed to know everyone on the bus; I assume from your affiliation with the local K of C, Rotary Club, or VFW. I tried to escape at this point and called my sister to come get me, but she laughed and told me to sleep in the messy bed she had made.
I followed his advice. I fell asleep during the 4½ hour drive to Jersey, and even when I wasn’t sleeping, I pretended to. Like a fly on the wall, I listened to the conversations of those around me as they congratulated Bear on his cute young girlfriend and asked how long we had been dating. His boastful response that this was our first date nearly made my ears bleed and my stomach convulsed. I was quietly moaning in my head and coming up with a plan to sabotage any idea Bear had that he was going to kiss me in the next 8 hours.
Turns out being a boring, whiny, smelly girl was all she needed to do.
I stood next to Bear as he played Black Jack, yawning unpleasantly and making sure no part of my body touched any part of his. I could smell stale cigarette smoke in my hair from the night before and the sour smell of alcohol seeping through my skin, and I thanked and praised my disgust… I hoped it would act like garlic to a vampire. Bear had given me $ 20 so I could eat while we were there, and we went to a restaurant in the casino. Ordered steak, baked potato, salad … the works. I had already spent part of my $ 20 on drinks because, since I wasn’t gambling, I didn’t have the right to free drink at the casino. So, I didn’t have enough money to buy a decent meal and settled for a sandwich and fries. I complained about my food out loud (and honestly, it was terrible actually), as I enviously watched Bear eat his shrimp cocktail. I was tired, hungry, in a company I didn’t want to be in, and I didn’t hesitate to let Bear know how miserable I was. By the time we got back on the bus to leave, not only was he not speaking to me, he was not even sitting next to me on the way home.
Moral of the story: The most painless way to get out of a bad date is to be worse.
