Jason was getting frustrated. The embroidered jacket was chafing, the
bar scotch he’d ordered was watery, and he was sweating in the rubber
pants. What the hell he thought, I may as well enjoy my drinking, if I
can’t enjoy the bloody party. He poured his drink into an abandoned
margarita, and caught the bartender’s eye. “Double shot of Macallan,
neat,” he ordered. The bartender, a bored-looking gorilla in a nun’s
habit, said, “Top shelf is four bucks a shot,” waited for his reaction,
and when he said nothing, turned to pour.
Jason had come to the Hallowe’en party alone, as a last resort, knowing
full well he would most likely remain alone. He looked around the
party, noting the many couples that had formed since the masquerade
dance had begun. It looked like yet another lonely night out of years
of lonely nights.
Earlier, things had looked promising as several attractive women had
shown interest in his flashy costume. But right on cue, his insecurity
had caused him to stammer, to blurt meaningless and silly things, and
one by one, they had disappeared into the crowd, only to be glimpsed
later hanging on the arm of another, apparently more confident man, or
in some cases, woman.
It was hard to tell, with some of the costumes.
Shit, why couldn’t I have been born gay, he thought. At least, there
seem to be a lot more men here than women with a fetishistic bent.
His hopes rose again when a young woman in an outrageous blonde wig and
1920’s flapper dress walked up to him with two glasses of champaign.
She looked like a gangster’s moll from a movie.
“Hoy they-uh,” she said. He grinned. She even had the accent down pat.
“Hey, baby doll,” he said in his best imitation of Al Capone.
She frowned slightly then brightened. “Oi loik ya cawstume, where’d ja
foind it?”
Once again, he tried to concentrate on what he would say. She was a
knockout, he just _had_ to get it right this time. For the seventeenth
time tonight, he heard a friends advice in his mind. “Just be
yourself. People can sense when you’re putting on an act.” He tried
to relax.
He dropped the “gangster” accent and smiled in what he hoped was a
winning manner. “Well, I rented the jacket, hat and shoes, but I
already had the rubber pants. Where did you find that outrageous wig?”
Thirty seconds later, he stood morosely wiping champaign from his
jacket, amazed to discover that not only had her accent been real, but
the wig was not a wig, and her head was as empty as her glass was now.
She was not The Woman.
‘The Woman’ was a sort of fantasy he’d entertained since puberty. He
sat down at the cash bar, and thought back to his high school days, to
his first and only great love.
When he was about sixteen, and noticing girls in a big way, he’d made a
pass at the sexiest red-headed girl in school, Mandy. This was a bold
step for him, since he’d always had trouble talking to girls. It was
discouraging, actually, for his swim-team body and cute looks tended to
attract quite a few potential dates and even bed-mates. The problem
was that Jason Stewart was not just a jock. He was smart, and he knew
it, and he just couldn’t relate to 99% of the girls at school, despite
the urging of his percolating hormones. To be sure, there were a few
smart girls at his school, but they dressed like bag-ladies, and their
…End of the part1. To be continued..
