Seeing as I’ve been happily dating The Brit for over 2 years now, I seldom get a taste of what dating is like these days. And thank sweet jesus for that, as I recently went out with one of my girlfriends, who is also a fellow surgical resident, and discovered just how bad it can be. And by "bad", I mean "funny."
Dr. Downtown and I went to a local bar to catch up over a couple of drinks. We’d been there for about an hour when she got up from the tiny couch we’d elbowed everyone else off of to go use the bathroom. Little did I know how vulnerable I’d be without a wingwoman to shield me from the advances of the barely post-pubescent...
Before Dr. Downtown’s seat could even cool off, a young thing, just barely legal I later found out, promptly sat down beside me. And proceeded to ignore me while he made a deliberate show of the fact that he was perfectly happy to just peruse the cocktail menu, thank you very much. He swung it around, examining the back and front several times, with all the dramatic skill of a high school thespian in his starring role. Then he leaned back in what I still considered very much to be Dr. Downtown’s seat, and almost succeeded in looking surprised to find me sitting there beside him.
“Oh, hey,” he said nonchalantly. “Anything good on this thing?” He pointed to the drink menu.
“You mean you’re actually planning to order one of those?” I asked, quite sincerely. He’d picked up the girlie menu of fruity cocktails, among which were the raspberry mojito and pomegranate martini that Dr. Downtown and I had ordered. Dainty drinks I didn’t think any man intending to hit on a woman would actually order in front of said woman.
“Well, I don’t know about all this other stuff, but the gimlet looks like my style,” he smirked.
I nodded, about to tell him that my drinking buddy was due back any moment and that he should probably move when he said…
“Yeah, so I’m here with ‘my boys.’ We live in Palo Alto, do you know where that is?”
This time I did the smirking. First of all, because I hadn’t had a conversation in which anyone had seriously referred to their posse as ‘my boys’ since I was in high school. And second of all, because he was clearly making an unsubtle attempt to be subtle about the fact that he was in some way affiliated with this reputable academic institution, which is the only reason anyone his age would ever live in Palo Alto. He misread my smirk for an invitation to tell me more.
“Yeah, so, you know what it’s like then. It’s like fuckin’ suburbia. It sucks. So you know what I mean when I say that, since we don’t come up to SanFran too often, when we do, we gotta make it count.”
Oh?? And how, exactly, was this kid, who probably doesn’t even shave yet, planning on ‘making it count?’
Just as I was about to find out, Dr. Downtown came back. She examined the Abercrombie and Fitch shirt tucked into the pants that were occupying her seat and then looked over at me. At which point I pointed out to him that he should probably move. He gave her the seat back and repositioned himself on the armrest of our sofa. Just as he was about to squirt yet another smarmy remark out from betwixt his lips, one of his ‘boys’ came over to join him. Some whispers were exchanged.
“Hey, I’ll be right back. I owe ‘my boys’ a round.” And he was off.
I filled Dr. Downtown in on his efforts to make this SF trip count. By the time he came back, with a gimlet in his hands, she was up to speed. And since he apparently wasn’t going away any time soon, we figured we might as well make it count.
“So, I take it you’re in undergrad in Palo Alto?” I said, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of saying the name of his highly esteemed school.
“No, I’m in law school. First year.” He tried to say it as if the sheer vocalization of it didn’t give him a stiffy, but it did. You could tell. He was quite pleased with himself.
Dr. Downtown and I exchanged glances at the shameless attempt to impress us. As women who seldom tell strangers what we actually do, for reasons I’ve already disclosed, this was entertaining. And cute. And destined for failure. But he kept going, and without prompting I might add.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s cool and all, being a lawyer. But it’s not like lives will rest in my hands or anything. It’s not like I’m holding a heart in my hands…”
Considering I’d quite literally been out on a procurement call with the transplant team earlier that day, and I had, in no uncertain terms, actually held a heart during the operation, it almost seemed like we had to tell him what we did for a living. If for no other reason than to shut him up and move him out of the way so we could flag down our cocktail waitress for another drink.
Dr. Downtown looked sideways at me for the go ahead, which I gave her. “Yeah, we know about the whole ‘lives in our hands’ type of job,” she said.
“Oh yeah? Why, what do you two do?”
“We’re surgeons,” she said.
His head jerked back in surprise. He almost spilled his gimlet. The one he’d put so much effort into effortlessly choosing from the menu. “Nuh uhhh!! You two are surgeons???”
Nodding, I almost felt bad about how easy it was to knock him down a few notches, not to mention nearly off the side of the couch.
“Like Grey’s Anatomy types??” he said, still baffled.
Oh, jeez, here we go again. Yeah…exactly like on Grey’s Anatomy.
-La Cubana Gringa
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment