RainFree

thefrenemy:I Will Meet You Sober

I don’t want to meet you when I’ve been drinking.

If I meet you when I am drinking I will kiss you too soon. I will nod at you across the bar because you are attractive and I will end up judging the fucking book by the fucking cover. I will be shallow and hormone-soaked because it’s 2am 4 drinks in. You will buy me a gin and make me laugh, you will refer to some movie I love and didn’t think anybody else watched. I will silently smile at my friends across the bar like “can I pick them or what?” as if you are the deer head I have mounted on Gaston’s wall.  We will sit in some dark corner talking about the best burger place in town, the jobs we have and hate, the towns we grew up in. I will confuse my newfound excitement with a moment to act with my mouth. Again, I blame this mostly on hormones. Your nice hair, your strong hands, a good solid laugh will make me leap at your face like some sort of confused bug on a windshield. I will act the same way I did in high school when I drank three Budweisers and felt like I was Brigitte Bardot in a Northface. I will be a mess. The ridiculous black dress I am wearing will smell like beer and we will kiss in front of two roommates and a homeless man and I will give you my number. I will eat a grilled cheese sandwich I burnt in the pan after we are done and there will be nothing special about the night we met. I will be surprised you called, I will go with you to another better-lit bar on Wednesday at 830 in case we hate each other and need to bolt. Our story will be as boring as those stupid match.com commercials that make me question the nature of human connections. We will become exclusive because we realize we’ve run out of options. 

I’d rather kiss you when it’s a Thursday night and you are standing awkwardly outside my door after our first awkward Thai food date. I am holding a box of leftovers. We hug three times before we realize that we’d like to shove our mouths against each other and maybe we’d use tongue but I don’t know the etiquette for that. If it’s not outside my door, it’s a couch with cold pizza and Arrested Development DVDs. I invited you over under the pretense we would kiss but if I kiss to Gob Bluth I could live with that. If I am feeling cinematic and cheesy as fuck we could be under a streetlight but I will never be cliche enough to wish we were in the rain. If I am drunk on three beers but met you sober, that’s fair too. It’s only because I want a little bit of courage to feel…I want to say vulnerable but I haven’t ever cried to Taylor Swift so…not so sassy-pants and cynical. Maybe a little vulnerable, but you didn’t hear that from me.

Basically, I just don’t want to be in this bar. I don’t want to sit underneath a dartboard with the smell of skunked drinks and 46 types of cologne, some Mellencampy music in the background. It’s not even fair for us, I love everybody when I am drunk. I love the girl with the shoes on the bathroom line I am standing in. I love the friends I am texting, the guy who picks a good song on the jukebox, my own reflection. It is only natural I love you, too. I am horny teenager when drunk. I am not a pretty picture.

I’d rather meet you at the supermarket, even though I look terrible in Whole Foods lighting and I wear my Ipod so I’m basically unapproachable. Meeting you on a subway is a sweet thought but rather unrealistic because I think anybody who smiles at me on a subway wants to grope me. Let’s just promise right now to meet on a line at a bagel shop, okay? If I am hungover, so be it because you’ll see that a lot. It is also acceptable for you to be a friend of a friend, a coworker of a roommate, a little obscure connection that makes us say “I can’t believe we never met till now!” and it’ll one of those dinner party stories to tell. I’d rather you know the sober me before you meet the drunk me because they are different beings, I think. The sober me won’t ever give you hugs like I do when I’m three drinks in, so I don’t want you to think you met “cute little affectionate girl” when really it’s “cold hearted Youtube expert.” I don’t want you to meet my little white lies, the bands I say I like but haven’t listened to or the books I say I’ve read but only have read half of. I want you to meet my Wednesday morning disdain, my diagonal doctor’s office smirk. I want you to like those things.

These days, drunk kisses are expected, the new form of normal dates. I think they are wonderful and appropriate when they are single-servings: the guy who is so gorgeous but can’t read, the friend who you just really like at the moment, the lead singer of the band you saw and didn’t really dig but he’s with the band.They are not for somebody you want to have brunch with. They are not for somebody you want to show your high school yearbook to, not for somebody you could love. When I go to get a drink I want to meet people I don’t tell my real name to. I want to meet people who tell me stories of going to Thailand for a summer, I want to meet people who tell me the best place to get cheap throw pillows in the city. I want to meet people I hand my number off to and never remember, I want to talk to my friends about how we should quit our jobs and live in Europe. I want to bum cigarettes off strangers and nod about how these kinds of margaritas knock us off our feet. I want to split taxis and buy rounds for friends and get toilet paper stuck to my feet. I want my life to stay the same. I do not want to meet you here. You. Special, lovely, life-shattering you. I want to meet you sober.