Chapter 10 - Jennifer

There are only two places in the book where one chapter takes place right after the other. This is the second

[Link to Chapter 1 (Beginning of Book)]

[Link to Chapter 9 (Previous Chapter)]

It’s funny what sticks. The flag, and not the girl holding it.

If you’d told me the thing I’d remember most about Jennifer was that she did color guard for one year, not what she was actually like, I’d have laughed. Especially since she was the girl I lost my virginity to.

“So it was a random Friday that I found my seventeen-year-old self driving nearly 45 minutes across Houston to the bad part of town, to pick up this girl I’d never met. For our first date,” I say, addressing our table of four.

Dave and Busters is a dump, painted with a veneer of suburban chic. The loud, sticky game machines are the expensive, interactive type, and there’s laser tag and bowling. Plus three restaurant-bars spaced around the building for the adults to get their drink on while their kids play. It’s the modern evolution of Chuck-e-Cheese. Thankfully with no mice or robots.

“We went to a smoky pool hall. Dim lights, cigarette haze, grizzled men nursing beers, Jennifer able to light up her own cigarette without having to duck outside every twenty minutes.” Phil makes a gagging sound. I elbow him gently. The two ladies sitting across from us are giggling at our antics.

It was a surprisingly romantic first date for two people who had so little in common. We were both terrible at pool, so finishing a single game took forever. It gave us something to laugh at. Laughing together goes a long way.

“Most of our dates were dinner and a movie. Typical teen stuff. But one time, I got creative. We hit a country dance hall that served terrible steak dinners. Where I was reminded, painfully, that I absolutely cannot dance, look silly when I try, and trying harder just makes it worse.”

Krissy laughs at my recounting, because women love it when I talk about times when I looked stupid for some reason. Plus, she’s two drinks in already. Joanna, the other mom, gives me a polite smile. She’s been nursing the same glass of wine for an hour, which makes me considerably less funny. As far as I can tell, it’s not that she doesn’t like to get her drink on. I think she and her husband are having money troubles, and having a Cheer kid is a big expense.

Phil’s having a great time because for the first time in a long time, women are saying words to him without yelling, and the topic of those words is not how big of a dumb, inept failure he is.