After my divorce I wanted to totally break free from my previous life with my ex-husband, so I let him keep the mobile home and I moved into a little studio apartment in the basement of a house on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, only a few minutes away from my job at the steak house. It was certainly strange to be actually living on my own, as I’d always lived with someone!
I started putting in more and more time working at the steak house, and usually after work me and one or two girlfriends would either stay and sit in the cocktail lounge and have a few drinks, or go down to the Seattle waterfront and hang out at one of the bars down there.
But it was hard to watch all the frivolity in the popular “meet-up” bars and not have anyone to “meet-up” with! Yes I enjoyed my girlfriends, but at the same time I missed having a guy around. I needed to get a boyfriend – I was sure that would help.
The problem: I am actually quite shy. There were still so many insecurities that I was carrying around with me on a daily basis, especially when I got around people that I didn’t know. So – I did what I knew always helped – I drank more than I should, in the hopes that it would loosen me up and make me appear more fun than I actually knew I was.
Before you start celebrating as to how that must have helped me tremendously on the popularity front (yes, another joke), let me burst your bubble right now and tell you that it didn’t help at all. I still was unpopular, and often in my mind I was reminded of my high school days when I just didn’t seem to fit in anywhere except with the wrong crowds.
However one day a new guy started working at the steak house, and he was quite attractive. I thought we seemed to hit it off, and every once in awhile we would go together to one of the waterfront bars after work and have a few drinks. But, alas, it never went further than that. Why, I would think, was I so pathetic?
Well, as I’d mentioned in my last post Life Continued On…, the bar manager who had hired and trained me had been really kind to me, and she knew about my recent divorce. One day she called me aside and said she wanted to set me up with her brother.
I was livid and couldn’t believe she even would think of doing such a thing!
You have got to be kidding – I can get my own dates, thank you very much! (Yeah, right – if only she knew.) To me being set up on a blind date was just too humiliating – did I seem that desperate? (Uh, yeah, probably…)
Nevertheless, she let the subject drop.
Then one day a couple months later I was working the slow mid-afternoon shift in the restaurant. I went to the bar window to order cocktails for a few customers from my bar manager friend, and glanced casually at this guy sitting at the bar counter.
Hmmmmm… I thought, he’s cute!
All of a sudden I looked back at my friend, and she was grinning ear to ear. She had caught me glancing at the guy and whispered to me triumphantly, That’s my brother!
Oh, oh! I quickly grabbed the drinks and hightailed it back out to the restaurant.
A few minutes later here came my manager friend, who physically grabbed my arm and started dragging me out a side door to the parking lot. She informs me: We’re going to go see my brother’s brand new car!
WHAT!!!
I couldn’t believe it. Here was my friend literally pulling me out a side door and taking me towards her brother standing in the parking lot by a brand-spanking new black Trans Am.
As we got closer I saw her brother staring at me wondering who in the world this girl was wearing the short cow-skirt. I was dying inside.
To make matters worse, my friend then goes over to the passenger car door, opens it and pushes me into the seat! How to you like how the seats feel? she asks me.
I could not believe this was happening! As soon as I was able I made a few quick comments about how nice the car was and then got out of the car as gracefully as I could wearing my little short restaurant skirt, almost running up back towards the side door of the restaurant.
I was furious!!! Needless to say I avoided my “so-called friend” for a long time, doing everything I possibly could to not even go near her. She got the message, and didn’t approach the subject of her brother again – at least for awhile.
A few months passed… and then lo and behold I found myself in a precarious position again!
The God Of All Comfort 