Your Princess is in Another Castle (3 page)

A Tuesday night, the place isn’t particularly crowded.  This is to my advantage.  I won’t have to struggle
to hear Sonya talk over any overbearing voices.  A ponytailed hostess sees me enter.  “Hello, would you like a table?” she asks.  Her nametag, which lacks the creative adornments of Sabrina’s, identifies her as Brittany.  “Not yet.  I’m waiting for someone,” I say.  There was a pause between the two sentences, although I’m not sure if it was pride at the fact, or that I’m simply not used to saying it.  “All right, whenever you’re ready,” says Brittany, who has no identifiable reaction.        

I take a seat in the waiting area.  Fortunate
ly, I have the bench to myself.  It’s the 11
th
hour, and I don’t know if I want Sonya to come in right now or not come in at all.  There is such a thing as over-rehearsing, so I tried to limit myself as to how much conversation planning I’d be doing, but if she were to walk in this very second, I’m not sure if I could think of anything coherent to say to her.  I don’t know how to flirt.  I don’t know how to be interesting.  Guy or girl, I’m sure everyone else in here will be wondering what a girl like her is doing with a guy like me when they see her.  No.  I don’t need to be like this.  Let them wonder.  Let a guy remark to his girlfriend that we’re mismatched, and she’ll counter that maybe I just treat Sonya like a princess.  I would.  I will. 

She’ll be here in ten
minutes, give or take.  Maybe she’ll actually be easy to talk to.  Maybe she has a nerdy father who exposed her to a lot of my world when she was young.  Maybe she’s tired of overconfident jerks that only want to sleep with her, and will find my nervousness cute.  Maybe she’ll actually be relieved when I don’t try and make a move on her.  I just hope she won’t be giving me some kind of Zen test which I would pass because I won’t try to have sex with her, and the reward is for her to actually offer sex.

No, I just need to focus on dinner right now.
  I should go to the restroom.  Then come out and see Sonya waiting and give her a hello wave and see how eager she is to wave back.  I’d avoid the sudden panic I might feel when she walks in and sees me sitting like this.  Restroom, that’s a good idea.  Yeah. 

It is much cleaner than the one in my dorm lobby.  It
also lacks a condom machine.  Sex again, bad line of thinking.  I run cold water over my hands longer than needed and blow dry excessively.  I look at myself in the mirror and imagine Sonya standing next to me holding my hand.  I imagine walking into The Vault with her.  Would Sonya get jealous if she felt Sabrina was talking with me too enthusiastically?  Would she give me a good-natured chiding about how I’m not allowed to go there anymore unless she accompanies me?

I open the restroom door with the gusto of Mega Man leaping into a boss room.  But I don’t see Sonya in the waiting area.  She’s not at the
bar either, or sitting alone at one of the tables.  I return to the bench and wait.  She should be here by now.  She’s on her way.  She’ll be here.               

I exchange a glance
with Brittany, though I’m trying to avoid doing so.  I wonder if she’s wondering if I’m going to be stood up.  I wonder if she’s wondering if I deserve to be stood up.  Should I apologize to her for lying about meeting someone?  It’s 8:05 now, time enough to start worrying.  She could be running late, though experience says she’s just not coming.  It’s like what happened with Molly all over again.  No.  This is worse than what happened with Molly.  With Molly there was simply rejection.  No false hope, no initial sense of having succeeded.  There was purity in her rejection. 

Molly had broken up with her boyfriend, or he had broken
up with her.  I wasn’t entirely sure who ended it.  I assumed it was Molly, as I was having difficulty envisioning such a scenario that would allow for a guy to willingly leave a girl like Molly.  There’s a tremendous population disparity between the number of nerdy guys and girls out there.  I remember being in kindergarten and being taught the alphabet with the help of the Letter People, who were humanoid letters.  Consonants were male. Vowels were female.  That equaled out to there being 21 males and 5 females.  21 male nerds for every 5 female nerds seems about right.  And while certainly Molly must have some flaws, as no one is perfect, how could they outweigh her desire to attend midnight releases of comic-based films in costume and a willingness to keep around a VCR just so she can watch Star Wars and see Han fire first?       

Logically
, it made no sense for Molly’s boyfriend to have broken up with her.  But Molly had been distraught, that’s how I learned of the breakup.  A guy, not un-Harry Potter-like, had entered The Vault with a bouquet of flowers for Molly, and she mentioned the breakup while they were talking.  Ostensibly, the flowers were to cheer her up, although it was obvious he was simply making a preemptive strike against Molly’s cabal of other suitors.  The Vault has a clientele approximately 95% male, around 90% of which are single and interested in Molly.  I was no different.  I counted myself among the numbers of the Friends of Molly
fraternity. 

And when Molly became single, we all thought our time had come.  O
rdinarily, it would be proper protocol to give Molly some time to grieve and move on, lest you become the discarded rebound guy.  But given the specifics of the situation, the sheer number of salivating comic book geeks already sketching out designs of costumes they hoped Molly would wear when they took her to Comic-Con, quick action was necessary.  Flower Boy was already making his move.  I decided to make mine before it was too late.

The next day, after the sweaty kid crushing on Hermione had left the store (he did ultimately buy the poster) I had resolved to ask Molly out.  Grabbing a few comics at random from the discount bi
ns, I approached the counter.

“Hey
, Molly,” I said.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Not much.  How are you?”

“Just call me Ms. Fantastic.”  Molly count
ed out my selections.  “What have we here?  Stocking up on X-Men?  Oh look, there’s Psylocke.  Tits, ass, legs, purple hair, part Asian, what more could you want?”

I looked down and
saw Betsy Braddock adorning one of the covers.  But was this Molly’s usual sparring sarcasm, or a denouncement of the entire male species?  I was tempted to abort the entire operation then and there.  But that day I displayed out of character courage and pressed on.  “Actually, I don’t really need these.  I just wanted an excuse to come up and talk to you.  Would you like to go out sometime?”

Molly looked at me the way a
vet would at a cherished pet that was about to be put down.  “Oh.  Well, you know my boyfriend Scott and I broke up recently.  And the way I’m feeling right now, I’d probably just bring you back to my house to poison you and bury you in the crawl space.  So I wouldn’t be very good company right now.  I’ve been giving all my guy friends a pretty hard time, too.  Maybe some other time.”

Sc
ott.  Molly’s boyfriend was actually named Scott.  I considered the possibility he was the same Scott that Jessica was engaged to.  It would have made sense.  Jessica’s Scott was not above such behavior.  Molly could have found out Scott was engaged to another woman and then broken up with him.  It would have explained why she was so upset.  Perhaps Molly possessed the Solomon-like wisdom to leave and not take back a guy who cheated on her.  I could give Jessica a manila envelope filled with photos of Scott cheating on her with her two best friends and her reaction would only be to become angry with me for making her aware of the situation and to blame her girlfriends for seducing her pure-hearted fiancé and then deciding that with them it was only about sex, whereas she and Scott actually
made love
, with her solution being to give Scott sex whenever and wherever he wanted, so he wouldn’t have a need to get it from someone else. 

But
they were not the same Scott.  I remembered Molly had once mentioned her boyfriend studied graphic design, and Jessica’s Scott had never studied anything.  That actually made things worse, as if there was a Scott Squadron out there, banded together from remote galaxies systematically involving themselves with any woman I became or could become interested in.  Scott the bad boy.  Scott the jock.  Scott the graphic designer.  A perfect, unique Scott would exist for all different types of women, dispatched to a specific girl all in a grand scheme of targeted cockblocking.

“I understand,” I told Molly.  After that I started avoiding the store, not so much for my benefit but for hers.  I didn’t want her to have to be continually exposed to s
omeone she rejected and always put into an uncomfortable situation.  It was best for both of us that way.

It’s 8:30 now. 
Painful flashbacks do pass the time.  I know Sonya isn’t coming.  I’m tempted for a moment to wait and leave when Brittany is out of sight, but think better of it.  With her hosting experience Brittany could spot a guy who’s about to be stood up the moment he walks in the door.  She never wondered if, only when, I’d be stood up. With one look at me she had seen everything. Sonya, Molly, Jessica, perhaps all the way back to prom night.  It was probably to her credit that she kept from laughing at me when I walked in thinking I’d actually be having someone join me.

I get into my car and push the seat
back, closing my eyes and wondering whether I should call Jessica.  But I couldn’t tell her the truth.  She’d want to talk to about it, or even worse, she’d want to come over and talk.  And it would probably help me to see her.  But that isn’t what I want, to have to be helped. 

The vibration of my phone wakes me up.  I groggily check my alarm clock and see that it’s 12:33am.  I feel bad for making Jessica wait, and wonder if she’s so eager for a report it’s actually keeping her awake, or if she would have been up anyway.  I flip open my phone and look at her text:
Well? She asleep in your arms or you still going at it? ; )

I
turn over and stare at the other side of my bed as if the answer needed to be confirmed.  I want to just not respond and turn off my phone.  But Jessica is my friend and she deserves an answer.  And I need her to know that I can have a successful date, be a partner in a relationship.  I start to type a response and stop.  I can imagine Jessica chastising me for instantly responding to her text if she thought I was still with Sonya, that I should excuse myself to the restroom before I respond.  I head to the sink and wash my hands before I finish typing:
Still out having coffee. Go either way for needing condom.   Will call you tomorrow
.

It won’t
be hard to tell Jessica that I went on a few dates with Sonya and that things were going well until she dumped me, saying she was getting back together with her ex-boyfriend.  Jessica will believe that.  She’s taken Scott back more than once.

Seth pays the cost of admission, my terms for agreeing to come.  He’d call it a cover charge.  Perhaps not a regular here, but he traverses a path that leads to bars and clubs, sometimes a patron, other times a performer.  He could tell you which night is college night at which bar, where to go and where to avoid for good music.  Seth is my guide for tonight.  With purple hair worn short and spiky and a t-shirt boasting the name of a local band (he seldom wears anything else), he looks like what I envision someone who belongs here might look like.  Sticking close to him makes me
with
him, so mess with me and you mess with him, and since he’s well liked you’ll leave me alone.  The door attendant compliments him on his show from last night, and I know I’m in good hands.                                 

I give a backwards glance at Chr
is as he pays for himself.  He seems at home, wearing the same awed smile on his face he wore while he watched the credits of Batman Begins on opening night.  Tonight he wears a red t-shirt with the emblem of the Flash, although I’ve always considered the lightning bolt safe in regards to semiotic apparel, if for no other reason than it is much less recognizable to the layperson than the bat-symbol or Superman’s S.  Supporting your superheroes is fine when you’re heading to The Vault, but there’s a risk in wearing something like that to a place like this.  I double check my fleece shirt to see that it remains long-sleeved with a solid dark blue color.  I advertise no bands or comic characters, I draw no attention.  I will not be noticed. 

Tonight is about coming out so that I can put to rest
the accusation that I never go out.  Tonight is about appeasing my friends who despite my best efforts to mask my emotions have deduced that something is rotten in my state of well-being.  A week has gone by since I was stood up by my supposed date Sonya.  Thus far she has neglected to respond to my email asking for an explanation.  I hadn’t mentioned the date to Chris or Seth as a preemptive measure to avoid having to explain why things went wrong as they ultimately did.  They sensed something amiss anyway, but at least I’m spared telling the tale.  It’s hard enough continually lying to Jessica.        

“Watch yourself.  This place can be a little rough,” says Chris as I go through the turnstile. 

“I’ll be careful,” I say.  “I know enough not to tug on the bartender’s sleeve and ask
Can I have one of those?
like I’m an ignorant farmboy looking for trouble.”

“I’m surprised you know that much,” says Seth.

Sight and sound hit me at once.  The music is loud.  Loud enough that I wouldn’t enjoy it even if it were a song I liked from a band I recognized.  It is very dark.  A half-dozen or so women move about the club taking orders and delivering drinks.  They all wear bumblebee costumes complete with rear-end stingers and bobbly headbands.  Nearly (or perhaps completely, I’m reluctant to inspect too closely) nude women dance on stages.  Smoke fills the room giving it the appearance of a foggy 1888 Whitechapel alleyway.  Not full, not empty, the faces I can make out are all focused on women and not on me as Seth leads us to an empty table near the largest stage.  I cough from the smoke and hope no one noticed.

“Screw crushing your enemies.  This is what’s best
in life right here,” says Seth as he lights a cigarette.  “Tobacco, women, soon to be booze.  Now if they just had a craps table there’d be no limit to my decadence this evening.”

“Welcome to the Honeybee Inn,” says Chris.  “Now this place opened after
Final Fantasy VII came stateside, so I like to think that’s no coincidence.  But don’t worry. This place is just what it looks like, none of that shady stuff going on in the back like in the game.  At least I don’t think so.”

“You guys come here often?” I ask.

“A few times,” they reply in unison.

One of the busy little bees approaches our table.  “Hello gentlemen, and welcome to the Honeybee Inn.  What can I start you off with tonight?”
she buzzes.  She is tall and slender, with an aura of genuine friendliness.

“No need to be so formal, Stephanie.  We’re a casual bunch,” says Seth.

“Hey, Seth!  Heard you played a good show last night at Liquid.”

“Always do.  Now, my friends and I shall be drinking tonight.  That is t
o say I will and he will,” says Seth as he gestures at Chris.  “My other friend is a real killjoy, to use an expression that ceased being used after nineteen sixty-nine, so he won’t be.  So we’ll need two beers.  And whatever the teetotaler gets I’ve got covered to.”

“What’ll you have honey?” Stephanie asks, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“I’ll just have a Coke.”

“You got it.  Be right back.”  Stephanie leaves without writing anything down.  While our order was lacking in complexity, I wonder just how many other orders she’s managing right now.

“Friend from school,” says Seth.  “Good voice.  Could use some work on her piano skills, though.” 

“She’s cute,” says Chris.

“Boyfriend.  Bass player,” says Seth.

“You know everybody who sings or plays an instrument?” I ask.

“You’d be amazed who you can meet just by going
out and meeting them, say at a show by one of your buddies,” says Seth.

“Give the man some credit.  He is here,” says Chris.

“That’s true.  You are here.  That’s step one.  Step two is finding the dancer you think is the hottest and paying her twenty-five dollars in exchange for a lap dance set to a song that preferably doesn’t suck.”

“Don’t rush the man,” says Chris.
  “Let’s let him see who all is dancing tonight.  He’s more likely to actually go through with it if he spots someone he really likes.”

“Also true,” says Seth.

“Oh, that reminds me.  Sabrina asked about you the other day,” says Chris dismissively, as if he were relaying the hello given to me by someone from high school I never liked and hadn’t seen in five years. 

“Sabrina from
The Vault?” I ask.

“Yeah, t
hat one.  Why, how many different Sabrinas do you know?”

“She’s a little cutie,” says Seth, eyeing the dancer on stage making it unclear if he’s referring to Sabrina.

“If I point out a hot redhead and say she calls to mind Mary Jane,” says Chris before I can respond, “is it really necessary for me to add
by which I mean Mary Jane Watson-Parker, wife of Peter Parker
?  Wouldn’t that just be implied, unless there was an actual Mary Jane who was part of our social circle?  Now, if you are in fact juggling two or more Sabrinas, that’d be awesome.  Are you?”  

“No.  You’re right
.  There’s just the one Sabrina,” I say.

“All right then.  No need to voice questions you already know the answer to,” say
s Chris, as if he were a forum moderator scolding a user for having not read the read before posting thread.

“Okay.  So
, what did she ask you about me?”

“She asked me what your
name was.  Said you talked a few days ago, hasn’t seen you since.  Wanted to know if you were coming back.  Asked about your situation.” 

“My situation?  What’d you tell her?”

“Well, I told her your name.  Now, you certainly have a situation.  But as to what that situation is and how to put it into words for someone who doesn’t really know you, well, that’s not very easy.  So I just told her that you’re unattached.”

“What do you mean it’s not very easy?”

“For starters,” says Seth having decided to join in, “when you got rejected by Molly you avoided going into The Vault for several weeks, even though it’s one of your favorite haunts.  That’s not typical behavior.”     

“What’s typical then?”
I ask.

“Not severely altering your day-to-
day habits over being turned down,” says Seth.

“But Sabrina
actually likes him, so that won’t be a factor this time,” says Chris.

“You think she likes me?  Like, like-likes me?”

“Like-likes?” asks Seth.  “Dude, unless you’re talking about the Zelda enemy, you stop saying like-like after you turn twelve years old.” 

“What’s a like-like?” I ask.

“Yeah, what’s a like-like?” asks Chris.

“Those blob things
that take away your shield if you get stuck in them.  That’s their official name,” says Seth.

“Oh, you mean the pancakes,” says Chris.  “That’s what me and my brother
s called them.  In the original game they looked like a stack of pancakes.”

“They do resemble a short stack,” I say.

“I suppose that they do,” says Seth.

“I could go for some flapjacks right now,” I say.  “They serve food here?”

“Some nights they have pizza, but it’s about as pricey as ballgame food and not very good,” says Seth.

“A
nyway,” says Chris, visibly annoyed by the use of a sports-related analogy, “Sabrina like-likes you, so why don’t you make like Link and lose your shield inside of her?”

“You really think she’s into me?” I ask.     

“Uh, yeah, that’d be why she asked me if you had a girlfriend.”

“Unless she wants to fix you up with Molly, which would be kinda funny,” says Seth.

“I don’t think so,” says Chris.  “I don’t think they spend their free time giving each other pedicures and talking about boys.”

“Why not?
” asks Seth.  “It’d be very erotic if they did.  A threesome with them both, think about that.” 

“Just don’t be stingy and not give the girls
a two guy experience in return,” says Stephanie.  She hands out our drinks, passing me my unbelievably small Coke last, as if to call attention to it.

“Oh now darlin’ you know I’d love to do that for you,
” says Seth, “but you see I don’t do trio shows with anyone other than the frontman of a group.  So no bass players, sorry.”

“Selfish as always,” Stephanie
says taking some bills from Seth.  He refuses change.  “Maybe not so selfish then,” she says as she rubs the top of his head.  “You boys have fun tonight.  Call me over when you need another.” 

Stephanie leaves as Seth and Chris begin their beers.  I take a baby sip of my
Coke, mindful to ration it out for the long term.  I can’t help but marvel at Seth’s ability to have such an easy back and forth with Stephanie, although he’s always been one who walks the line between being a geek and being popular with women.   

“She’s cute,” says Seth.

“Stephanie?” asks Chris.

“No. Sabrina.  Stephanie also
.  But I was talking about Sabrina.  Let’s get back on track here.  Sabrina.  She’s a nice girl, and a cutie.  Kinda looks like Kitty Pryde, I think.” 

“Definitely,” I say.  “I’ve actually thought that before myself.”

“Yes,” says Chris.  “But only when she’s drawn by John Byrne.  And only then,” he says with the authority of a king ordering a scribe to carve a law into a stone tablet.  “But what you said before Seth, about Sabrina and Molly at the same time, that’s a no man, just no.  That’s like putting Hayden in Jedi.”

“Hayden in
Jedi?” asks Seth.

“How’s that like putting Hayden in
Jedi?” I ask.

“It’s like putting Hayden in
Jedi because both involve poisoning already good things.  Look at the ending of Return of the Jedi.  The real ending.  Everyone’s partying on Endor.  You got your droids dancing with the Ewoks.  You got your Han and Leia finally together.  Luke looks out and sees the Force ghosts of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and his father.  Now in the original ending, Anakin’s ghost looks just like Vader unmasked.  Sebastian Shaw plays the unmasked Vader and the redeemed ghost of Anakin Skywalker.  And everything’s fine.  Luke’s happy.  We’re happy.  Everyone’s happy except for George Lucas.

“
So somehow George gets the misguided idea to make the original trilogy mesh better with the prequels so he goes ahead and replaces Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christensen at the end of Jedi.  So now we’ve got a smiling Hayden Christensen Force ghost to end the Star Wars saga for us.  Now, you might be thinking so what, I’ve still got the poor quality laser-disc transfer of the original versions on DVD.  But let me ask you this: can you honestly say that even when you watch the laser-disc transfer of Jedi that you can watch that scene and be completely detached from Hayden’s presence in it?  No, you can’t.  Because once you’ve seen Hayden in Jedi, he stays in Jedi.

“Same thing goes with a threesome.  Suppose you start seriously dating Sabrina.  And let’s say she’s actually up for the idea of bringing another girl into bed with you.  Not Molly, but someone.”

“Why not Molly?” asks Seth.

“Because
they don’t get along.  Sabrina’s the daughter of the owner.  Last time we were playing Magic, he mentioned he was a little reluctant to hire his daughter to work at the store.  For one thing it might cause friction between them if there are any problems.  But he also mentioned that Sabrina used to be friends with Molly and they had a falling out.  I don’t know the details.  But I do know that they’re not going to be doing any threeways together.