Hellish Date - 2. Chapter 2 Rose

Let me set the stage if you will. August fifteenth, 2007, the south of Louisiana, my first day of college. I decided to start my life anew and throw the old me in a refuse bin. The new myself would be extroverted, confident, make friends (not like my old ones), maybe get a girl to like me for my gentlemanly nature and my wit. Well, let’s cut ahead to me running late for my Orientation class. (For those not in the know, that is where we learn about the school, it’s history, it’s various amenities and what it offers, as well as mandatory Myers Briggs test. INFP for me). It was held in a different classroom in a different building then what I was given, so running as fast as my fat ass can I was able to make it around the time my name was called. Let’s call me B. Well catching my breath and figuring out a way to write, much less sit, in a desk that felt too small and short I missed the name of my future pain. (Yes kiddos that’s right no spoiler warnings here we are going to meet her now!) After settling in and given time to just talk or ask questions, the syllabus was short, I turned to my neighbor and noticed a nice plain yet attractive female scratching in her notebook. (Also I still denied my homosexuality at this time). So I made the first mistake of my college career and talked to her.

“Hello, I’m B, I-uh missed your name during role call.”

“Rose, my name is Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor.” (Yes, for you clever people that was not her real name, but she did have a celebrity name.

“Neat.” (Yes my excellent conversation skills still shine.)

We actually did have a decent talk that carried us over a shared break between classes were I bought a bottle of water and she a bag of chips.

During our talk about family and friends she got excited and, now I won’t say that she was choking but she was coughing with every syllable she spoke. Now I had asked if she were OK and if she needed water. Which she declined because she wanted to finish our conversation. (This should have been a hint of what was to come associated with her.) Even a concerned custodian saw how insane she appeared but, I think I was blinded by having a new friend. Mistake número dos was when we exchanged numbers before she left.

Friday night 8p.m.

I’m just finished a particularly good movement in the water closet. (Which is a polite way to say I took a big ol’ dump) I’m in the midst of adjusting my trousers when my phone rings. It’s Rose, so I answered it.

“Hey Rose.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“We exchanged numbers earlier today and I saved it in your name.” Seemed simple to me.

“Oh yeah, I forgot. I just called the first number I saw.”

“OK so what’s up?”

“I’m stuck in a corn field and am lost.”
Now, ladies and gentlemen of the court, where I live there is no corn grown, just sugarcane. In fact the closest corn field in the state is where she originally came from. Now before anyone argues that corn and sugarcane look similar to them, they really don’t. And having grown up around several fields, not a farmer(I've killed cactus, I have a black thumb), I can tell the difference between what is and isn’t sugarcane.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN CORN! WERE YOU KIDNAPPED? DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?” Great! I gotta go Liam Neeson on the first week of college.

“Well I locked myself out of my dorm room, couldn’t find the RA, so I decided to take a walk in the field across the street.” Calm as a quiet lake. (This is important.)

“OK.” My frantic nerves and heart rate settling down. “So just look for where the lights are and you should find the road and the dorm building after.”

“Thank you!”

“No problem, anything else I can do to help?” (Just a basic follow up question, no one really replies to…until now.)

“Oh yeah, I think I was bite by a snake on my ankle. It really hurts!” (The ending was said through a sob.)

“WHAT!?” (There goes the heart rate.)
OK get out of the field I’m coming to get you. Tie off the wound and be calm!” I’m mentally panicking.

I hang up wash my hands. (I’m always hygienic, doctors in the family and all.) I convinced my brother to drive me to her in case I need extra help. (I was a college commuter student.) We arrived ten minutes later to see a huddled body sitting on a parking spot sidewalk head down no sound or movement. I get out of the truck and walk up to my friend.

“Rose? Are you okay?”

Suddenly the head pops up. “Hey B, let me show you my new friend.” She then produces a frog from god knows where and starts talking excitedly about how she found it when she left the field.

“Rose! What about the snake bite?”

This question seemed to both stop her and stump her until she remembered. “Oh yeah! God it hurts!” Again said through a sob.
So I inspect the “wound”. My dear audience I ask you, you decide to take a walk, and your wearing sandals. Is any field that could be lousy with critters be a place you would walk? Because to her it was. Second thing I noticed, a cut versus a bite. One straight line, which she has, versus two holes, which she doesn’t. Thirdly, the cut wasn’t even deep enough to cause blood seepage, she had scraped her ankle against a leaf. (Sugarcane leaves are strong and waxy and can scrape exposed skin) To say that my brother and I are royally ticked, is in the right direction.
We decided that to kill time until her friend can put her up for the night, two hours time until. We go to a bar. A little about this specific bar…it’s been rebuilt more times than it should, it’s damaged every single hurricane season. It’s cheap beer, pool tables, and bad lighting so bad decisions aren’t seen until the next day. Grey walls go with the grey façade and grey ceiling. Wooden framing structures separate the pool table from the mingling area and bar top. And tonight just happens to be karaoke night, which meant that at one point a 45 plus year old lady tries to belt out the females parts in Evanescence's Bring Me to Life with unsatisfied passion for all patrons to hear. (Sadly I have seen her in five different bars at in three different cities, and she has not improved at all.) So we exit the vehicle and this is where my date officially begins. At least that’s what my brother told me before calling his girlfriend at the time and abandoning us to the bar and caterwauling of drunk people. (Sadly all of the previous content was the best part because this date literally lasted an hour and a half.)

Entering the establishment we are jostled to and fro until I can reach the bar top where I order two waters and three dollars worth of quarters for the pool table. We wade ourselves through trying to make small talk over the din of the overcrowded watering hole-in-the-wall. After 2 games and enough of her bad chattering that beating her over the head with the cue stick looked very appealing to me and several other unfortunates who were literally dragged into our conversation because they made eye contact with her mid question. The night’s insanity came to a head when a George Strait song, played on a record due to no one else singing, was played. She froze in spot then looked at me and said “This is my favorite song. It reminds me of my boyfriend.”

A boyfriend? I had long since given up not only on her, but also on the new me thought. My friends may be low: outcasts, hoods, druggies, and a cross dressing ho named Jim (Enough of a ho he can name the parts of a penis by taste) but their crazy is easily understood and brushed away. But through all our talks, about friends, family, and people in our lives not once did she bring up anything about a boyfriend.

She whips out her phone and calls him right then and there. Says two words to him and hands me the phone to talk to him.
(…really?)

After we awkwardly say hi to each other she rips the phone from my hand and runs from the building. Then runs back to me saying that she couldn’t hear him inside, runs to get refilled on water, runs to the ladies room, and back out to call her beau again. She kept this pattern up for FIFTEEN FUCKING MINUTES! I’d be impressed that her man can keep up being called that many times. So after that pinball reenactment I made an excuse involving my mother being sick, and having to buy a soup can since I couldn’t cook. (I’m the main chef in our household.) I packed us up and dropped her off at the steps to her friend’s dorm, with five minutes until she got there. I went home and relayed everything that happened to my family. And now to you fine people. But it doesn’t end there.

A week later: Sat 3a.m.

Dead to the world just the way I like to sleep…until my phone rings.

“um…huh…hi?” (I’m not a morning person or a decent person at all when I first wake up.)

“Hi this is B, right?”

“huh? Y…yeah?”

“It’s me Rose, you remember?”

“Uh,hmm?…yeah.”

“My friends and I are at my dorm and we want to go to the bar you and your brother took me to, how do we get there?”

After giving her the directions she says thank you and is about to hang up when she asks.

“They serve food right? I mean for a bar not to serve food is a travesty and you know it’s going to be all fried and greasy and then blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…”

I couldn’t help it. I fell asleep during her monologue. Apparently I snored and that’s what stopped her continuous prattle, she apologized and hung up. From then on I only had to deal with her in class.