Recently, my sister and I were reminiscing about our wild party days when we were younger, when we would go out until 5 in the morning and hide in my car around the corner from the house, waiting for our mother to go to the worked. so that we wouldn’t go in while she had breakfast in her nightgown. Inevitably, our conversation turned to drunken nights at a bar in Bellmore we used to frequent called The Band Box Tavern.
Now The Band Box was a special place for my sister and I…we had been regulars on Sunday afternoons since we were little kids (literally, not figuratively). My dad, like so many others, played softball on Sunday mornings, and the experience wasn’t complete without a trip to the bar afterward: beer for the men, Shirley Temples with extra cherries for the boys. I know times have changed drastically and today taking a child to a bar will prompt a visit from Child Protective Services, but back in the 1970s and early 80s, it was commonplace and we certainly weren’t the only kids running like rags
One Sunday, when I was about 9 years old and my dad wasn’t in pain, he gave me a few bucks to put in the jukebox (the kind that spins 45’s-eek! I’m old!). I was, and still am, a huge Blondie fan, and my favorite song at the time was Rapture (you know, Fab Five Freddie and the man from Mars, eating cars, bars and guitars…) Well, anyway , I was old enough to like the music and to put the money in the machine and find the songs I wanted to play, but I wasn’t old enough to realize that once I entered the code to play Rapture, it would considerable delay before the song actually played. When the music didn’t start right away, I thought I had done something wrong, so I dialed the number again. It still didn’t ring, so I figured the jukebox was broken and dialed Rapture’s number for the third time…and for the fourth time. When Rapture played for the seventh time in a row, the whole bar was giving me dirty looks (remember this was before the remote and you couldn’t “skip” songs), and the bartender finally unplugged the jukebox.
It was a kind of homecoming when we returned to The Band Box as sponsors, and quickly re-established our status as regulars. During one of these fuzzy nights, another regular, whose name completely escapes me, so I’m going to call him Bear, invited me to join him the next day in Atlantic City. Bear looked like an overweight, aging Magnum PI, complete with a half-unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, revealing a thick gold chain and tangles of coarse chest hair. I guess he was in his 30s or 30s, with thick curly hair and a Hell’s Angels mustache. I found it physically repulsive, so of course I agreed to go (insert shoot me in the eye emoticon here).
He picked me up the next morning at 7am, and in my sleepy, hungover, teary-eyed state, I wanted nothing more than to cancel the trip and stay in bed. But he was outside, honking his horn, and he had already paid for my bus ticket the night before. I told Bear I’d go with him to AC, but I also told him I was broke…in fact, I think I had less than $10 in my wallet. Bear had agreed to pay me, so I felt compelled to get up and leave. I haven’t showered or even changed my clothes since the night before, so I can only imagine how he looked at me when I ran into his car. We drove to The Band Box, where the bus we were taking left from.
When I got on the bus, it was as if I had stepped onto the set of the movie Cocoon. If you don’t remember, that was the movie with all the old men swimming in the pool with alien eggs and regaining their youth by extracting the life force from the alien embryos. In other words, she could have been the great-granddaughter of 75% of the group we were traveling with. Bear seemed to know everyone on the bus; I assume because of her affiliation with the local K of C, Rotary club or VFW. I tried to run away at this point and called my sister to come get me, but she just laughed and told me to sleep in the messy bed she had made.
I followed your advice. I dozed off during the 4 1/2 hour drive to Jersey, and even when I wasn’t sleeping, I pretended to. Like a fly on the wall, I listened to the conversations of those around me as they congratulated Bear on his beautiful young girlfriend and asked him how long he and I had been dating. His boastful response about how this was our first date almost made my ears bleed and my stomach convulse. I was moaning silently in my head and coming up with a plan to sabotage whatever notion Bear had that he was going to kiss me in the next 8 hours.
Turns out being a boring, whiny, smelly girl was all she needed to do.
I stood next to Bear as he played Black Jack, yawning unpleasantly and making sure no part of my body touched his. I could smell stale cigarette smoke in my hair from the night before and the sour odor of alcohol across my skin, and I gave thanks and praise for my disgust… I hoped it would act like garlic for a vampire. Bear had given me $20 so he could eat while we were there, and we went to a restaurant in the casino. He ordered steak, baked potato, salad…everything works. He had already spent some of my $20 on drinks, because, since he wasn’t gambling, he wasn’t entitled to free drinks at the casino. So, he didn’t have enough money to buy a decent meal, so I settled for a sandwich and fries. I complained loudly about my food (and honestly, it was really terrible), while enviously watching Bear eat his shrimp cocktail. I was tired, hungry, in company I didn’t want to be in, and I didn’t hesitate to let Bear know how miserable I felt. When we got back on the bus to leave, he not only didn’t speak to me, but he didn’t even sit next to me on the way home.
Moral of the story: The most painless way to get out of a bad date is to be worse.
