What is the meaning of life, anyway? You can go down roads that bring happiness for a while but ultimately everything loses excitement again. So what brings lasting contentment? I can really only advise my own sex on that. Lasting happiness can only come from two sources: God or girls. Since I’ve never really known the former, I’ve always relied on the latter.
Anyway, I wanted to take Janelle to the under 21 club that night. But again and again, I’d called her cell phone and had gotten no answer. Eventually, I decided to leave and go to the club alone. This was a rather risky prospect for me because I’d found that more than half the time I went to clubs alone, no girls wanted to dance with me. Naturally, this was a waste of money and self esteem. But I had very little to do that Friday night and reckoned it didn’t matter much.
Around 7:30, I drove up to the club in my battered brown LeBaron. I walked up to the club door but saw it was empty. But the sign on the door said open so I strolled in. Strangely, the lights were off and nobody was there. I was just leaving when two teen guys, a mexican and a white guy with a large silver chain, walked in.
“What’s going on?” one of them asked me.
“I don’t know. It’s empty,” I said. I was pretty sure from their expressions that they were trying to go to the club, too. Don’t ask me why but we all walked back in. It was dumb but innocent enough. We just wanted to confirm that the club was really empty and no employees were there. I called out, “Is anybody there?” No answer. We were walking out when the alarm went off.
“Shit,” we all thought simultaneously. I started to stroll back to my car to drive off but one of the teen guys said, “I’m gonna wait for the cops.”
“Okay. I’ll wait, too. We didn’t do anything wrong. We can’t get in trouble,” I said.
And so for about ten minutes, we sat outside this club chatting. Though we had nothing in common, we talked like friends. There may not be honor among criminals but there certainly is camaraderie. The alarm was blaring but cars were driving by and nobody seemed to care. I began to think the cops weren’t coming. The Mexican kid said, “Shit, I’m not waiting here till they come. It’s too cold.”
And so we started to walk off. We’d gotten about a block when we saw two cop cars, sirens blaring, come speeding up the street. We walked back to the club and I waved a cop car down as it pulled up to the club. A cop got out, looking at us inquisitively.
“We’re the ones who set off the alarm,” I told him. “The sign says open and the door was unlocked. We just walked in and the alarm went off.” I said all this with a calm sense of leadership. I was raised in an intellectual, wealthy family and had learned how to present myself.
The cop was a tall white man with short black hair. He was just slightly chubby. He looked us over smugly, stopping to glare contemptuosly at me, because I was wearing a leather jacket and a black safari hat with two metal spikes coming out the front. He was a typical pig if you ask me.
“Come over here”, he said and he led us over to the club. He asked for all of our IDs. I was the only one who had one. Another cop got out of the car and for a few minutes they sat around asking us rude questions like “Did you pry the door?”, while the black haired cop held my ID the whole time.
Eventually, the cops decided to let us go, believing our story. Before they let us go, they went in and found out when the club opened. It turned out that the club didn’t open until 8 pm, in about fifteen minutes. “You could go over and get a Subway Sandwich and wait for the club to open,” a young, especially rude cop said.
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said.
“I was just joking. You don’t have to,” the cop said contemptuously.
I obeyed his orders anyway and got a six inch vegetarian sandwich. I saw a pretty blond girl in Subway. Shyly, I introduced myself. She was a nice girl and let me share her table. It turned out that she was a college student in Montana. She’d come back to little Klamath Falls, Oregon to visit her parents. She gave me her cell phone number but she was leaving in just a couple days.
After I got done eating, I went over to the club, which was empty as hell. I played the Pacman arcade game and waited for some girls to come. The first girl I saw was a girl who’d been infatuated with me for a brief while about two years before this story. She was still in high school where I was in college now. I went up and said, “Hey.”
“Hey Sean.
“How’s it been going?,” I asked.
“Okay, I guess.” I was noticing how much her breasts had grown. “How bout you?”
“Great, great,” I replied. “I’ve been going to college and I got a four point last term. And then I’ve been doing some fiction writing.” She seemed very uninterested in all this.
“My son barfed on my shirt before I left so I had to clean it up,” she said. “It makes it more see through than it already is.” She was pretty in a slutty way with huge tits and a fat ass.
“You have a son?”
“Yeah, I was pregnant all last year. Did you think I’d just gotten fat?” I looked down at her belly, which was still a little bit chubby. I was pretty jealous that another guy had gotten her pregnant. I’d never gotten a girl pregnant, not that I’d want to marry this girl or anything. She was immature and really crass. But that didn’t matter because I was chasing ass. Besides, although we weren’t connecting in any meaningful way, she had this attitude like she wanted me to fuck her.”
“I don’t know,” I explained. “I guess I didn’t see you that much.”
She started to walk off and I was willing to let her. But she turned around and said, “Come on, let’s go play pool.”
“I really suck at it but okay,” I said.
She started out kicking my ass. But pretty soon I’d come back and was way ahead. I only had to knock the eight ball in and she had four or five balls left. All the while, I was looking for girls but none came in. And then I was having trouble hitting the eight ball in. Who knows why? I didn’t care that much. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder. It was Janelle, looking beautiful and smiling at me.
“Hey, how’s it going?,” I asked.
“Good, how are you?,” she said in a friendly way.
“Okay. Do you wanna hang out here tonight?”
“No, I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I’m 24. This is an under 21 club.”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t care,” I said.
“I don’t wanna hang out here.”
“Okay. Do you mind if I finish this game?,” I asked.
“No, go ahead.”
After I’d lost, I gratefully walked out with Janelle. The night had just taken a distinct turn for the better. I knew she wouldn’t do anything physical but I didn’t care. It was great to be around her. A beautiful girl just has this lush aura about her; she’s a mecca unto herself.
“How’d you find me?”, I asked.
“I called your house and your mom told me you were here. She said you’d rather spend the night with me than at the club. Your mom’s really honest,” she informed with a smirk that hinted that she had some damaging secret.
“Did you have a little heart to heart with her?,” I asked in a purely casual way.
“Yeah. Hey, we’ve gotta talk.” My heart sank in my stomach at these words. Usually, when a girl wanted to have a serious discussion with me, it was to reject me or tell me we were only friends.
“Okay.”
“Let’s go somewhere,” she said. We both got in her car and drove to a truck stop outside of town, “Molly’s” I think it’s called. We both had tea and nothing else. We chatted for a couple minutes and then, jokingly, I said, “Okay, let’s get down to business.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay, you like me, don’t you? I know you like me. Your mom told me you like me.” I’d never told my mom anything about Janelle but since I liked her, I didn’t say anything. Then came the bombshell. “Is it true that you’re a virgin and you’ve never had a girlfriend?” My mom had told her things that only a mom would know. Now, don’t get the wrong impression. I’d had lots of romantic interludes but a girlfriend is something else.
“Yeah,” I said bluntly.
“Okay. I usually just don’t hang around with guys because they’re not content just to be friends but they don’t want to marry me. You know I have a kid so that’s out of the way. I gave you a chance because you’ve already shown two things that I really want in a man. You asked me out after you’d known me for a whole year, something a guy’s never done before. Plus, I’d already said ‘no’ once before. That shows perseverance. And you gave me flowers, which was all I ever wanted. You hadn’t even done anything wrong but you gave me flowers.” I was a bit taken aback. This wasn’t the carefully worded rejection speech I’d been expecting.
“I can do that. I can marry you but…I want a kid.” I got the words out.
“I want ten,” she said with a smile. I smiled back. “And I want a man who has a personal relationship with Jesus.” “I’m happy to have a personal relationship with Jesus if I can have a personal relationship with you,” I thought to myself but I said, “I can do that. I’ll start praying.”
“I could teach you about Jesus but that’s not biblical. Women aren’t supposed to teach men about god.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I can do this.” You see, Janelle was a recovering drug addict and former stripper who needed God in her life. She needed conservative values and something to believe in and I was willing to play along.
“This is such a trip,” she said.
“Yeah, this is awesome. Here, give me a hug.” And we hugged each other closely for a long moment and everything was all right. Then I paid the bill and left a tip before we drove off. The relationship fell apart within days.