Silver Tongued Devil

Sex, no. Just, I hope, a funny story of a guy nearly getting laid.

*

Back in my salad days, when I was young and green, I liked to party and herein lies the story, as they say. I was single, about 22 and very footloose. I was living in St. Louis, Missouri at the time, a veteran and working at Lambert Field, the St. Louis airport. The war had been over for a few years but some of us had not settled down as yet. I did have a commercial pilots license with an instructors ticket as well a multi-engine ticket. The world, as I knew it then, was constructed as a place in which to play. And I did.

Oh, during the week, I observed the CAA ruling of eight hours between "throttle and bottle", or no drinking at least eight hours before a flight. That was simple survival. Come Friday and Saturday nights, though, look out. There were several bars near the field where airport personnel were welcome and hung out. Of course, they each had a few women who were regulars, sorta flyer groupies I guess you could call them.

How did I know this? Well, certainly I frequented these something less than first class establishments regularly on the weekends. Where better to go than a place where my peers went, where tales could be exchanged and always a hopeful chance of getting lucky.

It didn't take long to get to know the regulars, both flight personnel and groupies. Some of the groupies were outright lushes and others were not. A few were pretty, some were good looking and, you guessed it. The immutable law of averages dictated that the majority were not. One notable was Mabel, a divorcee, about 24 years old.

She was a nice lady, when it came to that. It was just that she was beyond plain, on the negative side of the equation. She had a nice voice and was well spoken, well educated. Several times, when nothing else was going on, she and I had conversed, just killing time. I had never seen her drink much. Oh, she usually had a drink in front of her, but I noticed that she never really drank that much. Of course, given her "handicap" she bought most of her own drinks as few of the men ever bought her any.

Now we're getting to the main part of the story. I had worked up a terrible sorry for myself because I didn't have a girlfriend, regular, or otherwise, and hadn't had for a while. I sat at this one bar and watched some of my friends walk out the door with a stewardess on each arm while I drank alone. Friends danced with some of the girls and I drank alone, not from choice. I couldn't seem to talk any of the girls to go out with me. It was getting to me.

One Friday evening, I walked in, sat down and had a few drinks at a table. About three drinks later, Mabel came in. She looked around, spotted me and came over. When she asked if she could join me, I said yes and bought her a drink. We talked and drank. Don't ask me about what, I don't know. We just talked. Time passed and we were still together. It got close to closing time and we were drunk beyond reason. Well, sensible reason anyway.

The old saying about the fact that there are no homely women at closing time never had more meaning than right then. For whatever reason, I started trying to talk her into letting me go home with her. She was partly willing but there was a small problem. That problem was in the form of a small six year old daughter at home. A neighboring teen was babysitting her. Mabel didn't want her daughter to come in, in the morning and find a strange man in bed with mommy.

Damn. Then I thought of an idea. Hell, I didn't say it was good idea, it was actually a whiskey idea. Don't tell me that you haven't had one or three of those one time or another. I've got a couple of friends that actually got married while operating under the influence of that kind of thinking. Not one of their stellar moments, so's to speak. Anyway, I thought out my plan. I rolled it out and kicked the tires, as they say.

I asked her what color her bedroom was painted. She answered that it was a light green. Ah. Did she have any paint left over? It turns out she did. Ah, again. Now comes the truly brilliant part. I said that if we go home together, we could get the paint out, along with a brush and put them alongside the bed so they would be handy. Should her daughter wake up early, before I left, Mabel could paint me green and stand me in the corner where I would blend in with the walls and her daughter wouldn't notice me if she came in the bedroom.

Yup, that was my scheme. In retrospect, it was sadly lacking a few minor details, but it seemed to make semi-perfect sense at the time.

I awoke early, I think, the next morning. It was quiet and the sun was barely up, creating some light in the room. Slowly I looked around carefully. with head-pounding care I looked some more. I didn't know whether my head would fall off or just explode. Where the Hell was I, anyway? I was still partially dressed. There was another lump in the bed. I slowly pulled the corner of the blanket back and saw Mabel. I didn't pull the blanket off any further as I sure didn't want to see the rest of Mabel. She was dead to the world. Alive, of course, but dead drunk, still. How the Hell did we get here? I don't remember leaving the bar, let alone driving to her house, letting the babysitter go home and getting into bed together. We must have gotten that far and passed out.

Slowly, carefully, I raised up, then gently swung my feet over the edge of the bed, sitting upright. Dear God, my head. One foot touched something cold. I looked down. There was a closed partial can of light green paint and an old paint brush. That sight was indelibly etched into my mind as some of my memory came back.

Very quietly, I dressed and left the house. I found my car parked outside at the curb. I painstakingly checked it for dents, scratches or dings. What more proof could you want that God protects drunks and fools? I had qualified fully for both categories. Somehow we had gotten there without a mishap. I looked at the skyline to pick out some landmarks to pinpoint my location. Okay, I got an idea about where I was in the city now, and carefully drove to my place to collapse again.

Yes, I certainly swore off drinking. Well, at least not that much and not in that bar. The only good point I could find in the whole mess, looking back at it, was a newfound realization that I had quite a persuasive power. It did me in good stead, a couple of years later when I met a pretty Irish girl and persuaded her to marry me. She was pure Irish and could never quite understand my aversion to light green. I never told her why.