I woke up the following morning in puzzled daze, with a pounding headache, a dry mouth and a mysterious, thunderous feeling of discomfort one can only describe as a hangover. The beer from the night before was still haunting me, even in daylight. I rubbed my eyes and allowed them to adjust to the deathly glow of the sun that shone in through my window- I scanned my bedroom for LilyPad, the Great Sheepdog and in doing so, I noticed that the right side of my bed had been slept in. I shuddered as I slowly pieced together the night before and remembered that grotesque homeless looking fellow. I rolled my eyes and hung my head in shame.
Stick me in a leopard print coffin and plant me in the damn garden! I thought, shaking my head. That ghastly troll? The homeless ogre? It cannot be!
Had I gone mad? Had I but lost my mind? It was too gruesome, too unspeakable! The only comfort I had was the knowledge that I hadn’t slept with that dispossessed gutterpup! I thought back to my dreary childhood, the time I spent in Catholic Boarding School, where the Intimidating Italian Nuns beat the bible into me with an oak switch on a daily basis. It was so brutal, so traumatic! The Sisters of Mercy had showed no mercy! I thought of all the times I’d been forced to sit in a murky cobweb filled cloak closet, clutching a rosary and repeating methodically to myself, “Repent! Repent! Repent!” But alas! All they had really beaten into me was that if it wasn’t sex, it didn’t count!
Catholic girls are fantastic experts in DENIAL! We jump through flaming crowns of thorns to keep our numbers low! We recycle a lot, that sort of thing. And of course, confessing one sexual partner will absolve you of two, we’ve got it all figured out! I could continue on with my life, confident that my official count was low and that I had nothing [new] to confess to Father Cecilius, as he pretended to listen while dreaming of the new alter boy. It wasn’t hard for me to understand how all those bibles had ended up in hotel rooms.
I had decided that God must certainly amend the bible the way American leaders amended the constitution every so often and I had settled on the amount of sexual partners that were appropriate for a twenty five year old girl in 2010- a one night stand with a homeless looking vampire simply was not in the cards.
After comforting myself with these thoughts, I went about my day as though nothing had happened-because according to the Sisters of Mercy, nothing *had* happened. That was MY logic . . . except he started sending me all these spooky messages as though making out with a drunken pirate wench were the be all and end all of everything! I didn’t know what the big deal was, but I was getting irked at all these beyond nutty messages:
“I’m sorry things went so far last night, we were both tired and tipsy and I hope maybe we can talk while sober, even if it’s just as friends. Honestly my favorite part was singing Singing In the Rain in the rain with you while holding your hand. Am I still invited to your birthday party?”
That was all. No signature, no beginning.
I laughed haughtily! I threw my head back and closed my eyes, watching the multicolored stars dancing on the backs of my eyelids. I cackled and grinned a superior, thoroughly amused grin! What a sap! The Sisters of Mercy would not banish me to the ghastly cloak closet for one thing that had taken place on the night before! Not one single thing! This was a homeless maniac! Sharp as a dagger was my laughter!
I could not understand why the devil he thought it was such a big deal, but the messages kept rolling in. I was bothered! Later on it would all make sense to me, why he seemed to think the night had been so monumental, so gravely important. In time, I would learn to fear the awful bounder, but for the moment, I sent the goon a Facebook request . . . to show him no hard feelings.
Next I knew, I was sucked into his web of dive bars, drowning in the Jacuzzi of Doom.
