Is This Real Life.

I am telling you.  This kind of shit only happens to me.

And if it happens to the rest of you, f-ing TELL me about it so I don't feel like a lunatic?

So my friend Tina and I were happy hour-ing after work last week at the Fairmount Wine and Martini Bar in Cleveland Heights.  Really great place, close to work, just overall good, right?  So we get there around 4:30 and the bar is pretty empty.  I know what you're thinking.  Alexandra, a bar is no place to meet people.  Listen, I am not a dumbass, I know.  "Join a club!  Volunteer!  Go to church!  THOSE are places you'll meet people."  Listen, shut up.  I know.  (a) I have joined French clubs (where there are senior citizens); (b) I DO volunteer, at the Cleve Rape Crisis Center, which let me tell you, is a HUB for unsketchy straight men [but listen, it's important to me, I'm not going to fucking volunteer at peewee football or some manly bullshit, come on]; (c) only scary Catholic guys go to church alone, and absolutely not.  So shut up.  I am going to a bar, mainly because I will be there, with my girlfriends, drinking -- and dating my girlfriends.

So Tina and I are engaged in good, woman-to-woman conversation, and there is this really cute guy sitting two seats down from me.  Probably mid-thirties, J. Crew pullover, dress pants, good shoes.  Obviously not sole indicators (see what I did there with the shoe thing?), but we'll take it as a good sign.  Tina leans over to me and whispers, "Alexandra, he hasn't stopped looking at you."  "Definitely not," I whine, "I don't even believe you."  She proceeds to hit me like six times and yell at me to be more confident (OKAY.), and she then invokes universal girl code of you-should-talk-to-him by jumping out of her seat and snapping, "I'm going to the bathroom." [For like TWENTY MINUTES.]  Cool, I'll just sit here reading my Cleveland Scene and slurp the ice at the bottom of my Tom Collins and pretend to be SUPER engrossed in my Facebook app.  If she's pulling the I'm-throwing-you-in-the-water-to-force-you-to-swim bathroom trip, I'm pulling the can't-be-torn-away-from-social-media, plus-I-have-a-paper-magazine-backup-distraction trip.  Even though the ultimate goal was to talk to this guy, I refused to say anything first and subsequently was insanely anxious, cuing my insanely dominant avoidance behavior.  [This is not my first time to the rodeo.]

So this guy finds this textbook way to wiggle his way into the two-sentence conversation between the bartender and me.

(Like, literally, it went like this:

Bartender: "Do you want another Tom Collins?"

Me: "I don't know, it's a weeknight, I probably shouldn't" [who am I kidding, I'll be having like four]

Bartender: "So is that a yes?"

Guy sitting next to me: "Come on, you totally should!"

Me: "Okay.")

So he proceeds to introduce himself and tell me his life story and have like his 6th Christmas Ale.  [Tina is still in the bathroom, Tina, I was about to run in there and DRAG your ass out here.]  He is really cute, and he smells good (triple word score), and he owns his own business and he has a dog and owns a house up the street and la la la.  So far so good.  I mentioned something about a story I'd heard on NPR.

Him: "Wait, you like NPR?!"

Me: "Yeah?" (Dude, I will NPR you out of the water.)

Him: "NO WAY, I, like, love you."

Me: "Haha?"

Him: "Wait, do you, like, know the name of those car guys?"

Me: "Click and Clack?"

Him: "Okay, seriously, I, like, love you. I really like smart girls. Like, some people don't. But I do."

Me: "That's good." (Dude, I will smart you out of the water. Also, that's convincing.)

For the most part, he is trying to be really adorable and leaning over and whispering to me and I'm like kind of uncomfortable but kind of pumped?  That combination of sentiments sounds like the premise of some sort of forthcoming sexual assault, but let me assure you that this is not that kind of story.  Although a different kind of horrifying, mainly in a letdown of faith in humanity sort of way. 

So Tina finally comes back and joins the conversation and she keeps elbowing me and making eyes at me and I kind of want to kill her but I kind of want to do a happy dance at the same time.  You know.  So she asks him for an abbreviated version of his self story [since she was in the bathroom for a fucking month]:

Him (on his like billionth drink, and progressively less sober): "So yeah, I live up the street, I have a dog, I own my own business (blah blah blah), I'm married."

Okay what.

[Crickets]

[The sound of traffic at Cedar and Fairmount]

[Snow falling]

Cool.  Oh look, this is a really interesting page of Scene Magazine.  Oh look, somebody posted a cat picture on Facebook.  Oh look, I need another drink.  A few minutes later, Tina goes to the bathroom again (Tina, I swear to God).  And I turn to what's-his-face.  [I know his name, but I'm leaving it out of this.  I'm not that mean.]  And I say, "Listen, I didn't realize you were married."  And he's like, "Wait, I didn't say I was married.  I USED to be married."  Okay?  [Crickets.]  So Tina's back, and we are trying to figure this situation out, because it's brutal out there people, this kind of shit has to be cleared up.  Ain't nobody got time for playing games with married men.  And this guy is progressively more unsober.  And he can't remember our names.  At this point, we've introduced ourselves / provided name reminders like four times.  It's getting awkward, and we're getting irritated, because we're both pretty convinced that this guy said he was married.  And he's trying to make out with me at the bar, and it's like 3% cute, 97% unacceptable, because we are in a classy establishment, at like five o'clock, on a weeknight, and we're still not clear on whether or not you're betrothed?  I mean, I let him, like, a little bit (duh), and then, all done.  Not going for homewrecker, people.  Also, I'd like to come back to this bar again.

So Tina, after having decided from the word Go that this guy was going to be on MY team (thanks Tina), presses the issue one last time: "So you said you're divorced, right?"  Him: "Yeah, I mean, how shitty, to be this young and divorced."  She says some kind things about how it happens, and how nobody ever sets out for it to happen, etc., and -- wait for it -- this guy STARTS CRYING.  Like, legit, in the middle of the bar, standing with his arm around me, his eyes well up and he just starts SOBBING.  Well, this is all exceedingly uncomfortable.  Like, is this real life.  Tina and I look at each other.  Dude.  Get your shit together.  There is this silence that lasts for, oh, three years, and he grabs his coat and just walks out.  Like, out the back door.  There is honest to Jesus nothing to do at this point but look at each other and just laugh.  I mean, it's either that, or join him and start crying.

After about two minutes (WHILE we are talking/snorting laughter about what the fuck just happened), he comes BACK into the bar and over to us and continues some absurd ranting, and just for fun, we ask him, and he still cannot remember our names.  (This, after Tina took the liberty of programming my number into his phone -- thanks Tina -- and Alexandra is only the FIRST alphabetical contact name in everyone's goddamn phone, so he'll be reminded of this pleasant encounter every time he opens his phone book, delightful.)

I finally cannot take another second of this mess, so we leave and obviously proceed straight to the bakery next door for coffee and macarons.  I'd like to go ahead and put out there that regardless of what kind of daily catastrophe my life might deliver, I have it together marginally more than crying-in-a-bar guy.  But don't worry -- he likes smart girls...really!  Well this smart girl and her smart friend are not impressed; bored, amused, and abhorred, yes.  Yikes, gentlemen. Yikes.  Valiently hoping you redeem yourselves, for all our sakes.