THE BRO-MAGNET (5 page)

“See? It’s nothing like The Night.”

“It’s not?”

“No, not even remotely. We’re talking about a woman who’s
of age
, who’s old enough to know how much she’s drinking and makes a conscious decision at least until she’s almost unconscious to do so, who shows you London and France and the fact she’s not wearing any underpants” – I did tell her that part, including the rhyme which I was pretty proud of – “who practically shoves her boobs in your face, gives you a cheek squeeze, invites you back to her hotel room, throws herself at you. No, Johnny, it’s not the same thing.”

“What – you’re telling me you would have gone ahead and done her?”

“Was she cute?”

I think about Three Sheets and her extra fifteen to twenty pounds, her mussed-up hair and her bleary eyes. Still, she was cute, even with the awful purple maid of honor dress. Hell, I think all women in all their various colors and shapes and sizes are cute or pretty or gorgeous or handsome or attractive. Women: they’re a beautiful thing. But scary too. Very scary.

“Yeah,” I say, “she was cute.”

“If I wasn’t already living with Renee? Um,
yeah
, I would have done her then,” Sam says. “Cute and
she’s
throwing
herself
at
me
? Definitely.”

“And the drunk thing wouldn’t bother you?”

“Not for a second. Do you think, if the shoe was on the other foot, you were the drunk one and you came on to her, do you think
she’d
feel guilty about doing you?”

“But isn’t there a law or something?” You’d think I’d know this one but I don’t. “Isn’t it illegal to have sex with someone who’s incapacitated like that, like some form of rape?”

“Still wouldn’t bother me. She’s the one who offered.”

“Do lesbians even have rape?” I say.

“Of course we can get raped.” Sam looks at me like I’m an idiot. “If some guy – ”

“No, I mean by another girl. Do lesbians rape each other?”

Sam shrugs. “Well, it’s not something you hear about on TV every day.”

Suddenly I feel thunderstruck – not by the idea of lesbian rape but by everything else.

“You mean I could have gotten laid today?”

Sam nods.

“And I wouldn’t have even had to feel guilty about it?”

Sam nods again, doesn’t say anything but I know what she’s thinking: Asshole. I know she’s thinking that because I’m thinking it too.

I clasp my hands to my head. “I am
such
an idiot!”

“Hey, I didn’t say it.” 

We sit like that for a while. Sometimes I can’t get over how dense I can be about, well, pretty much everything. I need a non sequitur to help me get out of feeling so stupid. 

So I grab her bare foot, study the nails.

“You need me to paint your toenails for you?”

She fingers the big toe. There’s a tiny chip in the green lacquer. “Nah.” She shrugs. “I’m good.”

I let the foot go.

“So what was today’s fight about?” I ask.

“Renee says I’m insensitive to the feelings of others. Can you believe that? Me, insensitive?” She moves from outraged to insecure. “I’m not insensitive…am I?”

I study my BFF, think about her treating my home like it’s hers, commandeering the remote, drinking all my beer, forgetting things like me being Best Man at Billy and Alice’s wedding.

“You?” I say. “Insensitive? Never.”

“Damn straight.”

I wish other girls – you know, straight ones – could be like Sam. Hell, I wish I could be with other girls the way I am when I’m with Sam.

“Love sucks,” she says, curling up next to me on the couch and snuggling in close, one arm going across my midsection.

I kiss her on the top of her head lightly. Her hair smells like roses and rainwater.

“I suppose,” I say. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You want any of this food?” she says, gesturing at all those Chinese takeout cartons. “I got plenty.”

I ate a lot at the wedding but now that seems like so long ago.

“Sure.” I shrug. “I could eat.”

I find one with shrimp in it, figuring to stay away from the chicken and the beef. Outside of weddings, ballgames and hot dog stands, I’ve been trying to be a pescatarian lately. 

She leans over to the coffee table, picks up the remote.

“So,” I say, “you working tomorrow?”

“Who we got?”

“Steve Miller. His wife wants the dining room done again. Aqua this time.”

“Aqua’s a good color.” Sam wants to be a novelist but I guess that’s a difficult job to come by. So while waiting for that to happen, she takes in freelance writing and copy edit work. When that’s slow, which is almost always, she works with me. “I’m in.”

She clicks on the TV, yawns.

We watch for a bit.

“Can you believe this guy thought he could get away with that?” Sam says.

When I don’t answer, she yawns again, tears her gaze away from the screen long enough to glance over to the corner of the living room.

“So,” she says, “how long are you going to keep that tree up?”

Yes, it’s the middle of February. Yes, I still have my Christmas tree up. But hey, it makes my home look more cheerful, particularly when it’s all lit up like that, which Sam must have done herself tonight even though she always teases me about my tree.

“Until something good happens,” I finally say. “Until something good happens.”  

How does a guy become a
man’s man
?

Damned if I know. It’s not exactly like it’s something I ever aspired to be in life. I mean, sure, I’m glad that guys like me, want to spend time with me – what guy doesn’t want that? – but it’s not something I’ve ever deliberately cultivated with that intent in mind. It’s just the way things are and have always been.

But how did I get here?

How did I get to be the guy that men all gravitate toward but that women, except for lesbians, mostly shun?

As stated, I’m good looking. I know I’m the only one who’s said that here so far, but you’ll just have to trust me that independent witnesses have corroborated that fact over the years, and not all of those witnesses go by the name Big John, although he’s certainly said it many times. As shown, I can be considerate and sensitive to the reputations and sensibilities of women: witness my restraint with both Marcy Bonano
and
Three Sheets, and me putting that seat down in the bathroom (although I must confess, despite Aunt Alfresca’s training, I do not always remember about the seat). Add to all that, I’m a fairly intelligent guy.

So you would think I would fare better with the fairer sex, would you not?

All I can do, constituting my lack of any real defense, is to offer up the following. I present to you, the jury, the following exhibits, all of which could easily fall under the ominous heading of Things I’ve Done That Guys Love And Women Don’t:

Exhibit 1: The One with All the Cars
: Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, I owned a total of twenty-five cars. Not all at once and sometimes not even all by myself; a few of those cars I owned jointly with Billy Keller. See, the thing is, I couldn’t see the point in driving anything new or even remotely new. I excel at understanding what’s going on under the hood and I loved the challenge of finding the clunkiest clunker I could find – more than one of those cars was discovered in
The Penny-Saver
– and then doing the necessary work to get that baby on the road. Put in a little more work, and not only were those cars drivable but also profitable when I’d turn around and resell them. My proudest acquisition? A VW that Billy and I purchased jointly for twenty-five dollars. It’s
amazing
what a little duct tape and a few strategically placed rubber bands can do for a car!

The thing those twenty-five cars all had in common was that no matter how much work I put in, no matter how good a mechanic I was and still am, they all each would break down at least once, often at inopportune times, like say on dates.

Guys’ Verdict
: “How cool! You get to tool around town in a different car every few months. You avoid the high costs of buying new or good used, thereby having more money to spend on partying or prime tickets to ballgames. You beat the system by never having to pay high insurance or taxes on your vehicles. Coolest. Guy. Ever.”

Women’s Verdict
: “Asshole.”

Apparently, women prefer reliable transportation over variety and savings.   

Exhibit 2: The One with the Distributor Cap
: So there I am, age twenty-two, on my last clunker, clunkers being something I gave up when I went into business with Big John. I’m on my way to see the Mets play. In the car are Billy, Drew, Mike II – who we still all call Mike II even though Mike I has since moved to Maine – and one guy I’ve never met before. This new guy is a co-worker of Drew’s. Let’s call this new guy Fred.

It’s obvious from looking and listening to Fred – the way he dresses, the way he talks – that he doesn’t think much of preppies. And it’s further obvious that he thinks I’m a preppy. Ridiculous – I know, right? But the thing is, on this night, I’m kind of dressed like a preppy. Reason being, I’ve just come from a job interview. Wanting to do something to supplement my income from Big John’s, so I can afford my own place faster, I’ve applied for a nighttime job as a bartender. This means that instead of my usual game uniform of jeans, T-shirt, work boots and Mets cap, I’m wearing khaki slacks, a collared polo shirt, and my hair’s trimmed neatly and parted on the side, no baseball cap. Aunt Alfresca’s doing. She said if I wanted the job I shouldn’t apply looking like a bum on my way to the ballpark.

And for once Alfresca is right. I did get the job.

But now I’m driving my last clunker to the ballpark and I can feel Fred’s eyes boring into the back of my skull right through the headrest, and I can hear exactly what he’s thinking:
Preppy asshole
.

It’s vaguely annoying.

But it stops being vaguely annoying when my last clunker starts to overheat like crazy and I’m forced to pull over into the nearest gas station.

I hop out of the car, grab a rag I keep under the driver’s seat for just this very purpose, pop the hood, use the rag to remove the distributor cap – see, instinctively I know exactly what’s wrong with the car – and stand there laughing as filthy sludge shoots up like a winning geyser in Texas, drenching my preppy clothes and spraying so high it splatters the American flag waving over the gas station.

Sorry, Old Glory.

Now all the guys in the clunker are laughing too, even Fred, and from the open back window I hear Fred say to Billy, “Your friend is seriously cool.”

I know, right? Me, I could have told him that.

Guys’ Verdict
: “Johnny is seriously cool.”

Women’s Verdict
: “Asshole.” 

Exhibit 3: The One with the Fight
: Several months after I get the job bartending nights, it’s St. Patrick’s Day and my manager asks if I can work the day shift instead. Big John says it’s OK. By the time I finish my shift, what with customers buying me green beer and shots all day and everything, I’m pretty hammered.

That’s the condition I’m in, hammered, when I leave the bar where I work to do my own partying at another bar. Hey, you don’t shit where you eat – Aunt Alfresca’s training.

So there I am, getting even more hammered. I’m sitting by myself at the bar because even though I was supposed to hook up with Billy and Drew after my shift, I seem to have forgotten in my hammeredness just which bar I said I’d meet them at.

Or maybe I’m just hoping it’ll be easier to pick up women if it doesn’t look like I’m part of a cabal.

Anyway, as I’m sitting at the bar, just minding my own business, two big guys come in, belly up to the bar, one each on either side of me. Immediately, drunk as I am, I sense negative vibes surrounding me.

Let me interject here that this is the only instance I can recall in my life of guys not instantly liking me. The reason for their dislike will make itself manifest imminently.

Guy #1: “It’s the guy!”

Guy #2: “Yeah, you owe us two hundred bucks!”

And then Guy #2 pokes me in the shoulder.

Two things I know: 1) no guy likes being poked with a finger, and that includes naturally even-tempered me; 2) I don’t owe anyone two hundred bucks.

Oh, and one other thing I know: I’ve never laid eyes on either of these guys in my life.

But apparently they think differently because they keep going on about the money I owe them, how it’s wrong to be a mooch and a leech – like I don’t know that – all the while keeping up with a steady stream of finger pokes, trying to provoke me into a fight. It also becomes apparent that they think I’m some guy named Bob.

Me, I’m just trying to mind my own business. Me, I don’t want any trouble. Me, I keep telling them calmly that my name isn’t Bob; it’s Johnny Smith.

But they don’t believe me, they keep it up with the finger poking, so I finally whip out my wallet and show them my ID.

“See?” I say. “Can you guys read? It says Johnny Smith, doesn’t it?
Not Bob
.”

They instantly look sheepish, start backing away from me, palms up, apologetic.

Fuck that shit. They’ve been finger poking me for like an hour here. Suddenly, I
do
want trouble.

“Screw that ‘I’m sorry’ shit,” I say. “We are so fighting now.”

I don’t care that they’re big and there’s two of them to just one of me. They’ve spoiled my pleasant night.

I come out swinging – Big John’s training this time, with a healthy helping of Aunt Alfresca; the woman can box – and in the ensuing bar brawl I give as good as I get. It’s the only brawl of my life and, obviously, I could have avoided it, but what the heck.

When the fighting’s over, they introduce themselves, apologize once more, buy me a few rounds of drinks.

To this day, we still exchange holiday cards.

Guys’ Verdict
: “Only you, Johnny.”

Women’s Verdict
: “Asshole.”