The Dress, part 1

I woke up at exactly 9:17 A.M. the morning after the party.

I know I woke up at this time because my face was pressed up against my alarm clock and 9:17 was the first thing I saw. I remember this because it never really felt like I went to sleep. First, I was hugging my poor sickened friend Lindsay (not her real name) goodbye, then I was handing Kelly (you guessed it: also not her real name) back the necklace she had me hold most of the night, then I was trying to comb all the hair gunk off of my scalp before crawling into bed and then

then I was awake. At exactly 9:17 A.M.

"Dang," I thought to myself at exactly 9:17 A.M. "I was just getting
started. Now it's over."

==============

But before Saturday could end, it had to begin and it began with an early hour wakeup call from Kelly at eleven in the morning.
"Ace? It's Kelly?"
Kelly's statements always sound like questions.
"Did I wake you? I'm sorry if I woke you?"
Now there's two ways that I usually play this. Either I try to fake like I've been productive and ready to rock for hours, or I can gurgle my way through the conversation like the lazy, oompa-loompa I truly am. I roll the dice and fake like I had already run the mile, milked the cow, fed the chickens and plowed the field. All-in-all, I think I fooled her.
Kelly wanted to buy a new dress for a retirement party that our mutual friend's (Lindsay's) mother was having later in the evening. Kelly wanted a strong, masculine, open-minded gentleman to escort her to a chic mall in the suburbs to shop for this new dress.

Unfortunately that kind of guy wasn't available, so she woke my goofy ass up and off we went to the mall.

My assumption was that going dress shopping might be a lovely prep for when I am married and am expected to sit in the chair on the outskirts of the fitting room praying to sweet Jesus for a sign as to the proper place to land my eyes! I don't get rattled easily, I feel comfortable in my own skin and usually fool myself into thinking I belong, even in places I don't. But the fact is, there is very little for a guy to do in the dress department of a major retail store.
I'm flipping through the clearance rack.
I'm flipping through several dresses against the wall.
I wander into the pink and yellow prom dress portion of the store and then it suddenly hits me:

What the Hell am I looking for? Why am I sifting through blue prom dresses? What's the best case situation here? I mean, if someone were to see me sifting through chiffon dresses while humming a tune from 'Cabaret' well that's a clear cut case of "reputation roulette," isn't it?

So I hang the cute mid-length flower print dress back on the rack and quickly make my way to the nearest fitting room chair, hoping not to make a jackass outta myself further.

There I sat.
First with my legs crossed at the ankle...
then both feet flat on the ground...
then stretched all the way out...
It soon became clear that I was trying too hard to look relaxed in an environment where half-naked high school girls were stomping out of their dressing rooms asking mommy if their bra could be seen through the dress!

And herein lies the basic problem with this situation: I was an intruder. I did not belong here, nor was I wanted. I know I was unwanted because for every half-naked high school girl shopping for a dress, there was a mother keeping me in the corner of her eye. While Kelly was trying on dress after dress (only occasionally popping out to ask my completely amateur opinion) I was alone and trying to find a safe place to bury my stare. I couldn't look at the nearby dresses too long, because then it looked like I was fetishizing them. And I couldn't people-watch (a fun activity for me to do in most cases) because the people I would be watching just happened to be
1) hot, hot naked teenage girls.
2) their pissed off protective mothers.

Another problem arrived once Kelly exits the dressing rooms. The same protective mothers who were worrying about their precious daughter's safety and innocence (pffft) around me, now see that I was with a girl (who they obviously assumed to be my girlfriend) which only served to makes me look so much more awful and skuzzy in their minds.

Now, I'm not only a pedophile, but an adulterous one at that. Great.

The mall is so much fun, kids.



[ to be continued on Thursday, 4.06.06 ]