Most people around here seem to have the strong urge to sort the protagonists into the "good" and the "evil" group. Stories featuring villains being suitably punished and the heroes being rewarded get the best ratings. For the authors, including me, it´s tempting to help the reader by painting things in black and white. Not this time though.
Special thanks to sbrooks103x for his editing help. Any remaining errors are due to me messing about afterwards.
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So I was sitting in this bar. You know, one of the bars you just "have" to be at. One of those places where the truly beautiful and successful people are supposed to meet. Yeah, there were some of those present. Although a minority, they dominated the place in a relaxed way, floating around, hugging other cool people, being at ease with themselves. They seemed to know everyone, be best friends with everyone, to just love everyone. Well, not everyone obviously, but all of the other cool people at least. And then there were the other ones, the nobodies. The mildly attractive or at least not repulsive ones. They were gathered in small, static groups and weren´t flitting around like the well-connected truly beautiful ones were. And then there was the sad rest. The unfortunate ones that tried to cling to their seats in order not to have to mingle with anyone. Being desperate not to be noticed because they imagined everybody saw immediately that they didn´t truly belong here, that everyone saw their true insecurity. Their fears were unjustified, nobody noticed them anyway. They were just the obstacles other, more confident people could float around. They just made the place appear less empty.
Yeah, I was one of those. No, not the beautiful ones. Not even one of the invisible, mediocre group. I was one of those truly not belonging in here.
I had captured a seat at the bar and was busy trying not to embarrass myself and to look like I was having a good time. The problem was that in truth I had nothing to do apart from being insecure. Absolutely nothing, which was terrifying. You don´t sit in such a location and just do nothing. It would have been embarrassing if anyone noticed me doing nothing, which luckily wasn´t the case. A few friends had mentioned that they wanted to meet me here and like a lamb I had come, not being aware this was one of "those" bars and to make things worse, my friends hadn´t even shown up yet. So I desperately clung to the drink in my left hand and watched the crowd, trying to look like a sophisticated observer. Like a knowing man, keeping himself in the background. Not like the shy guy I truly was, afraid of being exposed.
I really wished I had the looks, the confidence or the charm to be one of THEM. The ones everyone wants to be like. Take this guy for example. Well over two meters tall, blonde, tanned, muscled like the Hulk, with teeth white enough to blind you temporarily. And he damn made sure everyone in here saw every single one of them all the time, including the molars. While I really liked the comic heroes he resembled, I already hated him. Mainly because I was unable to find even the slightest flaw on him. I mean, usually you can always console yourself with finding flaws. Yeah, sure, she´s beautiful, but you can already see she´s a selfish bitch. Sure, he´s muscled, but look at his teeth. Ok, he´s a hunk, but he looks dumb as a leaf of bread and his hair is already receding.
The real problem were the truly flawless people, like this guy. He was the total dream boat and he even seemed witty and nice. Asshole. Why couldn´t the genetic lottery be a little fairer, a little more even in the distribution of assets.
And let´s not even talk about the bombshell at his side. Every centerfold would curl up in shame and change jobs if she saw this woman. No, not a pretty girl. This was no girl at all. She was quite tall and built like an Amazon warrior. No, this was no pretty girl by all means. This was a gorgeous, beautiful goddess. And she hung at his lips like he was God´s gift to humankind. Damn. I really hated him. Hated them both. Shit, where were my friends? I still felt totally out of place in there, like I simply wasn´t qualified to be even in the same room with those people. I mean, look at that butt alone. What woman could righteously own and display such a butt in public? This butt alone was enough to drive lesser men insane, without ever having the remotest chance to touch it and surviving the experience. And she made things worse by wearing this ridiculously short pair of tight hot pants. Have I mentioned that life is unfair? I probably have. I looked around and saw that virtually everyone was looking at them, not just the commoners, but also the hip people. These two were the clear winners of the human genome lottery and I asked myself how life would feel to be one of them. Or at least if you were near one of them.
And then it got worse. Mr. Universe turned around and scanned the crowd. All nonexistent guys like me withered under the glance of the in-people. I felt the urge to disappear like a cockroach when the light is switched on. Surely he would immediately notice that I was uncomfortable around here. That I was totally alone. That nobody talked to me. That nobody noticed me. That I didn´t belong in here. Damn, and he would be right.
Now he looked me directly into the eyes, scanned my body with his light blue eyes and began to smile. Bastard. I felt like I was doing something illegal by being present here, by soiling this hip location with my nerdy, uncool presence. He tapped the Amazon goddess on her shoulder and the situation got worse immediately. He pointed in my direction and although I desperately wanted, I was unable to look away. God, was she beautiful. Breathtaking.
She looked at me, at him, at me again, and frowned. I had to agree with her. I would have frowned upon seeing me in here as well if I were her. Luckily she looked away from me soon and started talking to her god-like companion, shaking her head. They even seemed to get into some sort of mild argument, which surprised me a little. Olympian gods weren´t supposed to argue, were they? They were just supposed to watch the antics of us mortals with a contemptuous smile. The observation that their life was less than perfect, gave me a small, but definite feeling of satisfaction. But that feeling didn´t go as far as leading me to drop my dream of trading their life against mine.
I forced my gaze away from the model-couple and pretended to study the bottles behind the barkeep again. I thought that made me inconspicuous until my damn friends would finally deem to grace the place with their long-overdue appearance and we could just escape to a more suitable location.
"Excuse me." Wow, what a nice, female voice. It was indeed so nice that I decided to give her the seat she was surely asking for before I had even turned around.
Shit. It was her. I felt my blood drain from the upper body parts and my ability to speak fleeing the scene.
"Ummm," was the exceedingly eloquent result.
"My name is Tina."
"Ahh."
"And you are."
"Ahh, sure. You can have it." Now she looked confused.
"The seat. You can have it."
"What seat? I was asking for your name."
"What?"
"Your name. You surely have one, don´t you?"
"Thomas. Ahh. You see... Tom. Everybody just calls me Tom. Yeah, Tom." I was still a bit confused by her presence.
"Okay Tom. We´re making progress here, I can feel it. You even managed to remember AND vocalize your name." She was giggling a little and it was surprisingly cute. It gave her a definite non-threatening quality. She seemed to be almost - well, human. Charming, even. Stop this, I thought. Don´t turn this into a ridiculous cliché by falling in love or something like it.
"You see, Tom, we have some kind of problem." A deep and very manly male voice suddenly broke my trance-like state. Her companion had joined us, unnoticed by me. Hell, everything around me had happened unnoticed while she was talking to me. "I´m Ralph, Tina´s husband. You see, I love her very much. And she just had her 25th birthday." Why was he telling me all of that, I briefly wondered. "And you certainly know how hard it is to find the right present for your woman." Lacking the experience of a real long-term relationship, I had not much personal knowledge about this, but I wisely kept my mouth shut. "Well, I kind of failed at the task. I bought her - no, let´s just skip this. It was a ridiculous present. Aaaand, well, she was a little miffed."
"Pissed."
"What?"
"I was pissed, Ralph. Mightily pissed."
"Yeah, okay. Pissed. She was pissed, mightily so. So I kind of made her a promise. She would get any present she wanted if I could make it happen. Well, financially, legally and so on, you know?"
"Hmm, okay." That was my only contribution to the discussion so far and I desperately hoped I managed to conceal my growing confusion. I mean, why was this stranger telling me about his failure to choose the right birthday present? Why was she looking at me in an almost expectant way? Hell, was this even reality I currently was in? It sure didn´t seem so, none of this made even remotely sense. I expected someone to shout "CUT!" any time, exposing me as a prank show victim.
"And that´s where you come into play," he said.
"What?" Could this evening get any stranger? Where were my buddies when I needed them? I was desperately looking for some kind of exit strategy now. I had finally found the flaw I had been looking for, these people were clearly lunatics.
"I chose my present. Sex with another man, just once." I wasn´t drinking when she casually said that. Luckily. I would have evenly distributed my drink over the whole place otherwise. I was still coughing when she calmly continued. "Ralph had to agree, obviously. This was a wish clearly within the limitations he had defined."
'Defined limitations', I thought? This woman was no brainless bimbo. But it was sure weird to talk like that about opening a marriage to extramarital sex.
