The next time I try to be a nice guy and volunteer for something, someone please hit me…
I just lost 2.5 hours of my life while sitting in the USS Lincoln and having a 40+ year old drunken woman alternately tell me about how her life sucks and how she wants to “keep” me… Eeeek!
Ok, this all started earlier today when Larry called the store at 10:30 and mentioned to me that some vital tax paperwork had to be down at the accountant’s office by this evening.
I told Jack, after having had several birthday parties yesterday, to go ahead and come in around noon so he could sleep it off, and I told Larry I’d drive down to Denver once Jack came in and get everything taken care of. Here’s where the volunteer thing comes in…
I asked Jack once he came in, as I always do, if he needed anything from Denver as I was making the trip anyways… He always says no, but today he did ask me to bring something back for him; a friend of his.
Now I’m not one to turn down a request and Mick, the pro skater from the board shop next door was there and asked if I’d bring back some liquor for him and his wife as it’s a lot cheaper in Denver. I agreed to both requests and after getting a shopping list and an address, off I went.
The trip down was uneventful with the exception of me forgetting that the 5pm rush hour in Denver starts at noon these days. I swung by “Applejack” liquors right off I-70, bought the items on Mick’s shopping list and headed for the accountant’s office. Once the aforementioned papers were safely in the hands of the accountant I headed over to pick up Jack’s friend and that’s when the fun started…
I got to the apartment about 5 minutes before 5 which is when I said I’d be there, knocked on the door and was greeted by a short, fat guy in his underwear who promptly closed the door again. A few moments went by before the person I was there to pick up reopened the door, bags in hand, and we proceeded to the car.
Once on the road I discover that said person is a smoker… A real smoker… We’re talking a half a pack an hour smoker, and she’s in my car which has never had a cigarette anywhere near it. She commences to light up and starts asking me about myself; what kind of hobbies I have, etc. She quickly discovers I’m the ultimate in boring because we have no frame of reference with which to communicate. She’s a television addicted waitress in a downtown bar, who is also a chain smoker, an alcoholic, and a serious motor-mouth while I’m a quiet, anti-TV intellectual who designs networks, writes software, doesn’t smoke, and only drinks stuff that comes from Scotland in $80 bottles.
Well we make it to C-470 before she starts going on about how she “needs a shot” and wants me to stop at the first liquor store I see and buy her a bottle of vodka. I’m also informed that Jack will pay me back… Well, about this time I’m figuring maybe she’ll pass out on the way up the mountain and shut the hell up and don’t really care if Jack pays me back or not.
So it’s back to “Applejack” where she picks up a half liter of cheap vodka ($6.49), I gas up the Lincoln while she ties one on in the passenger seat, and we head for the hills.
At about Idaho Springs, 30 minutes into a 2 hour drive, she’s put away about a quarter liter of cheap vodka and this is when things start to get surrealistic. She starts hitting on me something fierce between bouts of tears in regards to, whom I can only guess, is the guy in the underwear from paragraph 7, and rattling on about everything and everyone she used to do in the Vail valley.
As my speed continued to increase in a vain attempt to shorten the duration of time I was trapped with this woman, she drained the vodka bottle about a third of the way. This occurred as we were going up the east side of Vail pass and is also when she started to get very “touchy”… I *hate* being touched, especially by strange freaky women; makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. Anyways I asked her several times to desist and she finally relented but started with this whole, “I really like you, I’d like to keep you” thing and going on about how she didn’t want to go to Jack’s apartment and would rather spend the night with me.
I nearly stopped the car and dumped her on the roadside right there, but the wise words of Wolf came back to me just then… I told her I had a girlfriend in Denver who would kill me if anything like that happened.
I didn’t get the response I was hoping for as she had apparently heard this one before, so she started asking me about said girlfriend. So, I started to tell her about Wolf; the 5 foot 10 inch ex-Marine Corps Amazon who was very protective of me… I wasn’t lying; Wolf is very protective of me, is a girl, and is a friend. At least that’s how she explained it to me. 🙂
Well, this finally shut her down and the rest of the drive into Avon was fairly uneventful. I was very worried as I didn’t have Jack’s home phone number, didn’t have my shop keys so that I could get said number, and I had never been to Jack’s apartment and didn’t know where he lived. He told me earlier in the day that she knew where he lived and could take me there… I don’t think he was counting on a third of a liter of vodka. So with this, and her earlier desire to come home with me rather than go to Jack’s place, I was starting to get a little worried.
After driving around west Avon for about 20 minutes I finally spotted Jack’s jeep and pulled into the complex where this woman proceeded to walk into the wrong apartment, scaring the bejeezus out of some poor ski bum. I figured she might just be one unit off and went to the same door in the left hand building and knocked… Luckily my hunch was right and Jack opened the door where upon I handed him her, her bags, and ran back to my car.
I’m sure he’ll want to know what was wrong tomorrow at work and I’ll be sure to point out just how much he owes me for this little trip. 😉