Girl Walks Into a Bar (10 page)

“Steve” and I were totally hitting it off. If you are reading this and thinking, “Big deal, this happens to me every weekend,” then I commend you. I must tell you that this kind of thing rarely happened to me. He was supereasy to talk to, and he seemed funny too. And he was a biologist, which in my opinion is a pretty hot profession. To others, maybe a rock star
or actor sounds like a hot profession to date, but not to me. Not anymore. Having dated only comedians, I was ready for a nice stable scientist like Steve, who worked for a biotech company. He was successful, funny, well traveled, and fluent in Japanese. At this point, I wasn’t hiding my interest. When he told me he was fluent in Japanese, I pretended to swoon and fan myself.

We talked all night and laughed a lot. At one point, we were chatting about our favorite restaurants in the city. When I told him mine, he responded with, “I’ve never been. We should go there sometime.” It was all happening so effortlessly! At the end of the night, he got my number. I felt like this was how things happened in the movies, not in real life.

The next morning, I woke up a little giddy, reliving all the little jokes and laughs and fun flirtiness we had shared. “Hold up, Dratch,” warned my inner voice. “You’ve had these fun flirtations before. And then … nothing!” As a matter of fact, at Henry’s holiday party the previous year, I had met this cool British accountant who, no joke, had just come back from Africa, where he was building wells for orphans or something. We had talked the night away and even gotten a drink afterward. And then … nothing. I never heard from him again. So I was thinking to myself, “Remember the Brit! Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

Then a magical thing happened—Steve texted me at noon that day. He even asked me out right then for the upcoming weekend. A Friday or Saturday night. Those are the nights normal people go on dates, right? I skipped through the week. Knowing that there was even the potential of love changed my whole demeanor. Then on Thursday, I went to Trader Joe’s.

I was at the checkout at Trader Joe’s and when I reached down to pick up my bag of groceries,
SPROING!
went my back. The bag wasn’t even that heavy. Why was this my luck? Did God not want me to date?

It actually wasn’t the first time this back thing had happened. The other time was much worse. It was during a read-through of
SNL
. I had stumbled while walking back to my seat, and my back went out big-time. You know that feeling of a leg cramp? Imagine that in your back but ten times worse and lasting hours. I lay down on the floor and couldn’t move an inch. My back was totally spazzing out, and I was writhing in pain. At read-throughs, as I described, the entire staff is there—writers, actors, designers, Lorne, and the host (in this case, Johnny Knoxville). They sent for a doctor, who, upon her arrival, asked if anyone had any pain relievers—muscle relaxants, Vicodin, Percocet—anything. Picture if this had been the original cast from the 1970s. An avalanche of pills would have spilled out onto the table—ludes, pot, speedballs, red bennies, and all those other fun nicknames I learned about in seventh-grade health class. I mean, for God’s sake, Johnny Knoxville was the host! I thought surely he would have some heavy pain meds due to his
Jackass
stunts. Well, actually, he did have them, but they were back in his hotel room. There was nothing anyone could do; I just had to wait for the meds to arrive. The read-through continued as I lay under the conference table with someone else reading my parts. Every so often, Lorne would say, “Is Rachel OK down there?” No, I wasn’t. I couldn’t even respond. I was too busy squeezing the hell out of the doctor’s hand. After about two hours, I was able to get
up again. I never had a problem since then. Until now. At Trader Joe’s.

The only upside was that this time wasn’t nearly as bad as the time at
SNL
, but it was the same spot in
my back. I walked home like an old lady, shuffling one foot in front of the other. I gingerly tried lying on the floor and stretching, willing the injury to go away. I had my big date on Saturday night (I can’t write that sentence without acknowledging it sounds totally like Marcia Brady). This was the first date I was actually excited about in … well, probably forever. The few formal dates I’d actually had were always blind dates set up by one of my mother’s friends, and, well, you can write that story yourself. People would convince me to go on these dates, against my better judgment. They’d say things like “You never knoooooow!… Sometimes these things take tiiiiiime!” I didn’t
even need convincing this time and here I was, laid out like some old biddy from my mom’s aqua-aerobics class.

Friday passed with no improvement. I woke up Saturday morning and it was the same. And I was meeting this guy
tonight
. Basically, I could stand and walk OK, but sitting was hard. That’s pretty sexy, right? Anxiety started to creep in, and I began to worry that total back spaz à la
SNL
would happen during my date. I could just imagine myself sprawled out on the floor of some restaurant in the East Village, waiting for an ambulance. I talked to my friends on the phone. “How about acupuncture?” one of them said. Acupuncture. I’d never tried it before.

Ordinarily, I’d be scared of the needles, but at this point I was thinking the needles couldn’t be any worse than the pain in my back. I made a few calls to acupuncturists who were recommended, but none were available on such short notice on a Saturday. I was desperate. That’s when I turned to the acupuncturist who did NOT come recommended. Here’s a tip: Acupuncture is one of those businesses for which I can now attest
Get a reference.
Do some research. Make sure they come recommended.

My friend Chris had gotten massages at one of those Chinese storefront massage/acupuncture places that are quite common in New York. I had even met the doctor of eastern medicine there once when I accompanied Chris. He seemed like a good guy. Chris called the place for me, and they said they could see me right away. The date was six hours away, and I needed a miracle.

I discovered upon arrival that instead of the doctor I had met before, a woman would be performing my treatment. I took one look at her and thought, “Uh-uh.” I was quite convinced, and still am, that she was primarily a masseuse whom they let do a bit of acupuncture on the side when the real acupuncturist was off on Saturdays. But in I went, ignoring my gut feeling, following her back to the table. By the way, here’s another tip for you: One thing you might not want in a medical establishment is the smell of cat pee.

“I’ve never done this before. I’m kind of nervous,” I said to her.

“DON’T BE NERVOUS!” she commanded in her thick Chinese accent.

Between the language barrier and my sneaking suspicion that this woman was not a legitimate acupuncturist, the appointment unraveled from there. I honestly don’t think she even understood why I was there in the first place. I kept trying to tell her that I was there for a specific injury and that my back had pulled out, but she just responded with “OK! YOU WANT SHOULDER TOO?”

I was on the table, facedown and trying to relax, when without warning, she stuck the first needle into the back of my knee. AGHHHHH! It felt like it was hitting a nerve that it wasn’t supposed to be hitting. A painful twinge shot up my leg. She went to work with the other needles, sticking them in quick succession into the back of my other knee and the insides of both ankles. I cried out in pain as she continued, sticking needles into my lower back. The ones that went into my lower back weren’t as bad. They actually felt the way I was expecting the whole process to feel. But she kept going back to the ones in my knees and repeatedly twisting them. It was so excruciating that at one point, I started shouting, “Not the knee!
Not the knee!
” There were mere curtains separating me from the other clients getting massages. I’m sure they were wondering to themselves, “What is going on behind Curtain Number 4?” I really tried to stay calm, but my mind kept going to thoughts of Josef Mengele. I actively had to steer my brain away from that:
Think of the beach. Think of the beach. Mengele. Beach. Beach. Mengele. Beach. Mengele.

Finally, it was done. I felt exactly the same. Except now I had to direct my brain away from thinking of the knee needles lest I be overcome with nausea. But after all that, I wasn’t giving up. Chris, who is a doctor, came over and shot me up with what he described as “Motrin from outer space.” I went out on the date.

I met Steve at the restaurant. My back problem wasn’t apparent to the naked eye, but I was in a lot of pain. It’s hard to be fully present, let alone witty, charming, and energetic, when you are fighting through pain. We didn’t have the same sparkly rapport we had at the party, and a few little red flags went up for me, but I decided to keep them to myself and not tell my friends afterward in case I went out with him again and the red flags turned out to be nothing. But overall I thought it went OK. He told me he was leaving on a two-week business trip the following morning; and after that, I was going to LA for two months to do a play. There was, however, a little window of time we’d overlap back in New York before I left, and we agreed we’d see each other again.

Since I see no harm in it, I’ll share the first red flag with you now. An old, familiar, boring red flag: drinking. This guy could really put away the booze. When we moved from the bar (where he had had two drinks) to our table, I still had a nearly full glass of wine. He ordered us a bottle at the table, out of which he probably had four glasses. I’m thinking, “Maybe he’s nervous?” Then we continued on post-dinner to a new bar, where he had two more drinks plus one more for us to “share” since it was one of those trendy bars that makes crazy cocktails and he wanted to try absinthe or some shit like that. So his grand tally for the evening was nine drinks. He didn’t appear superdrunk, either, except for that sweaty red-faced bleary-eyed glow that can overtake someone who has had nine drinks. Since it was a long date (about six hours) and due to the aforementioned “maybe it’s nerves,” I thought I should still give it another go.

This particular red flag continued to wave in the air, however, when he sent me e-mails from his business trip.

First from London: “Trying to rest my liver today! Not likely to happen with these business parties!”

Then on to Tokyo: “Spending every evening in my friend’s whiskey bar!”

Cue downward-note slide whistle:
Woooooooh
. These e-mails did nothing to lower the red flag on the pole in my head. If anything, they were trading it up to a larger size.

Having dated the Three Addicts, I had a whole supply of red flags. Still, I didn’t want my potentially hair-trigger red flaggery to keep me from exploring a possibility. So when Steve returned from his business trip and asked me out for that Friday, I agreed. I spent all day in rehearsal for the play, but I still hadn’t heard from him at six that evening. I sent him a text: “Are we still on for tonight?”

I received a
text
, not a phone call, but a text that said, “I’m stuck at this work thing. Maybe I can see you when you are back from LA.”

Aaaand face plant. What the fahkity freakin’ FAHHHHCK? Is this what dating is? He asked me out for a second date just a few days prior, and he didn’t even bother to
call
me to tell me he was backing out at the very last second. And he said maybe we could meet up again
two months
from now? Just as our glowy, flirty, first encounter brought to mind scenes from a good romantic comedy, this too felt like something out of a movie. I was being stood up, movie-style!

I was crushed. And not because I thought he was
the one
—I still had those red flags. It was that this guy wasn’t a flaky, narcissistic
actor. He was a business guy from the real world who spoke several languages and had a real job and asked women out on real dates for Saturday nights and, guess what? He was just as much a flaky narcissist as any actor. So—and I shake my head cartoon-style when I say this—these kinds of guys were everywhere. This guy just happened to be wearing a button-down shirt.

I guess that meant I was now free to tell my friends about the other red flag. I could unfurl it to them and now to the world. We weren’t getting married, we weren’t even making out. So here goes.

When we were sitting at the second bar, he was telling me about Tokyo. He mentioned that in Tokyo there are restaurants that serve only horsemeat.

“Euggghhh!” I said, making a face.

“No,” said he, “it’s the most delicious meat you will ever eat in your life.”

“I don’t knoooww,” said I.

“Deeee-licious,” said he, marveling in it a bit too much.

Maybe I was being culturally biased. I’m not a vegetarian, so what’s the difference between a horse and a cow? I guess. But horses are noble beasts! Are you supposed to tell a woman you adore the taste of horsemeat on a first date? There was something a bit off about the way he was reveling in it. I could see some of the
SNL
dudes telling the same story, but there would be a dose of humor in the delivery. Instead, I got a creepy vibe. Besides, what if I had been one of those horsey girls as a child, with plastic statuettes and blue ribbons on my wall? Lucky for him, I wasn’t, but isn’t telling a girl you just
loooooove eating horsemeat one step away from saying you haven’t lived ’til you’ve eaten puppy skewers?

Then he said, “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to taste human flesh?”

I’ll let that sit for a second.

“No,” I said.

“Really? Come on, you’ve never even wondered what it would be like? Would you try it if you were given the opportunity?”

“No!” I exclaimed. There wasn’t anything cute and funny about his tone as if he were posing the question in a humorous parlor game. Rather, it seemed like he had given this topic some thought.

“Why not?” said he.

“Because I would just be wondering
who
is this person and
how
did they end up on my plate. Would you?”