Regrets? Not This Time

There was alcohol involved and women, no other force found in nature can cause more calamity, ridiculousness or regret in a young man’s life than those two things combined. I was young then, before the age of cell phones, so I am at least spared being memorialised across the internet. I have nothing more to face than the images that pass before my eyes late at night when my mind filled with memory, plays itself in reverse like an old projector.

I can’t tell you the name of the restaurant we were in or even how we came to be there together, only that it was painted yellow but in truth it may have been painted white, the yellow cast from nicotine coated chandeliers and wall sconces. After work drinks most likely as three of the five of us worked together. Natalie, thin with blonde hair, early twenties, she never admitted to making the connection but we grew up in the same town, there is a novel of regrets in those years for both of us. Jack, tall and thick through the shoulders, a couple of years older than the rest of us. I once heard the ladies in the office describe him as the sexiest man they had seen in years. Juliet, dark haired, portly, she had a smile that lit up a room and a nature that everyone loved. Myself with dark unruly hair, unshaven, average height and I like to tell myself that I was well built back then but I like to remember things in the best light.

Natalie had brought a friend, to this day I cannot remember her name, wavy, shoulder length dark hair and the bluest eyes. I fell into those eyes the second they met mine, even now I can feel them drawing me back in like deep wells set in the smoothest cheekbones. I admit that I was immediately smitten, proverbially knocked from my feet complete with clammy hands and shortness of breath. Like most young men, I choose not to remember this part, I sought to impress falling over myself with the desire to be more than I imagined myself to be and hopefully fool this wonder into believing the same.

She was far more savvy than I however and obviously more mature but maturity and intelligence have never stood in the way of a good time.

As the early fall night progressed and the alcohol began to pile up, if I could only use that as an excuse for what was to come but despite myself I cannot, my desperation and desire increased. How do I woo this creature, this amazing being that had come to grace us with our company?

In the infinite wisdom of youth a bet was the most likely solution, I may not have been drunk but I was also not suffering from wisdom, savvy or blessed with worldly knowledge.

“I’ll make you a bet,” I said, I have no memory of how the conversation devolved to this level, I may have simply blurted it out as a deep silence came over everyone there, “if I run around the parking lot in a g-string, you will too.”

I can see where this is going now, there was no bet, not even a decent ploy, a dare maybe and one not likely to be taken. It was one of those things that sounds far better before the words themselves irrevocably escape from your lips into the world.

Should this story end here, the offended parties going about their separate ways I could in fact live with the shame of it. I might have learned my lesson, maybe started wearing lifts, shaving more often, gone back to school and ended up a well dressed man of some means. I might have become experienced or learned something of the opposite sex, that most mysterious of species, however that was not to be.

I am of the mind that everyone went along with it just to see if I would actually go through with it, if nothing else, I am a man of my word.

It was a short drive to the department store to try our luck, well, my luck anyway. I have no idea what the security guard must have thought as the group of us walked in and made straight for the women's undergarments. I can’t imagine what anyone else might have been thinking either as I picked through the selection of impossibly shear fabric for something suitable.

I finally settled on a nice little number, black with gold plastic sequins, even better, it came in a set. I had seen a g-string before but never paid much attention to exactly what was there, there is not a lot. With some very serious questions of how I was going to manage this without falling out all over the place, I refused to test out the theory in the fitting room and marched directly to the cashier.

Strange and horrified as the poor woman was, she rang up my purchase and shaking her head offered me the appropriate bag. Brazenly I said it wasn’t necessary and twirling my matched set of underwear I walked out the front door straight backed and head high. Still hopeful, unrealistically so, I handed one pair to the momentary apple of my eye and hopped into the front seat of the truck for a quick change. Jack jumped in, it was his truck and kindly cranked the heat, he was shaking his head even then.

“You know she’s not going to do it,” he said.

I nodded trying desperately to fit all of myself into a bit of fabric smaller than my ankle socks, “yeah,” I said and grinned.

There was a lot of cheering in the parking lot that chill night and not all of it coming from the girls who laughed and waved from their car as I ran around in circles across dimly lit black asphalt , my arms whipping back and forth over my head. Some of it came from the wide eyed occupants of a nearby hatchback who got more of a show than they had bargained for when they decided to go shopping late on a Friday night.

I don’t know how long it takes to run around in a twenty foot circle, barefoot and bare assed two or three times but I know I ran as fast as I could and when the car door, the one with the girls was thrown open, I took the opportunity and threw myself inside. We peeled out of there as fast as we could, me hanging out the window waving my arms, and everyone of us laughing.

I would like to tell you that the alcohol drank that night was copious or that I had suffered some sort of emotional break or even that the night worked out to my best advantage, unfortunately I cannot. I had only a few drinks and a high tolerance for alcohol and much to my disappointment but of no surprise, I did not see that ravishing young woman again. I never again wore a g-string and the gold spangled number from that evening ended up in a gas station trash can.

I have regrets, many, that night is not among them and thinking of it now twenty some odd years later, it still brings a smile to my face. I do regret that there are few of those memories, of the ridiculousness of my youth that I look back on and smile about, I wish there had been more. Rarely is a life lived with vigour that does not hold stories of foolishness and hijinks or with some tales of remorse and yes with regrets. Stories to tell the grandchildren of, not that night though, that we will keep just between us to relive when it is a little chilly and I happen to wander through that very same department store and can’t help but look to see if they have any gold sequined g-strings.