Life, they say, is what happens to you while you are making other plans. That's what happened to Barbara and I last Friday night when we were planning a quiet night at home.
We were headed home after a nice dinner at a local steakhouse. I had the New York Strip and Barbara had a rack of ribs. If you knew her, you'd raise an eyebrow at that. She's five-foot-three, and while she's not as willowy as she once was, she has stayed trim and well-toned through the years.
But her eyes have always been bigger than her stomach. Or in her words, "If a little is good, more is better." So we toted the better half of the rack of ribs home with us in a little foil-lined bag that rode on the seat between us. More would be better for lunch tomorrow.
This is what passed for a night out for us in recent years. Time was when we danced and drank and partied with the best of them. Matter of fact, I met her in a little bar shooting pool, a passion we shared but had not indulged for far too long. That night, we drank too much, danced too close and couldn't even wait to get back to my house to make love for the first time.
Now, ten years later, car payments, a mortgage and two demanding careers left us content to enjoy a fine dinner and head home by ten to curl up on the couch or in bed with an HBO movie. We didn't find it dull or boring, but we had definitely settled into a routine that included little beyond ourselves and our home. It seemed our wild days were just memories that we sometimes conjured as fantasies during lovemaking.
So, it caught me by surprise when she saw the sign outside a dance club advertising "Live Music," and said, "Let's see who's playing."
It shouldn't have surprised me, she has always been the impetuous one, but it had been a while since I'd seen that side of her. I, on the other hand, usually had to be dragged kicking and screaming into adventures that I never regretted.
"Come on, it'll be fun," she said. "It's been so long since we've gone out. We need to have a little fun."
"I don't know," I said. "It's getting late and I don't know if I really feel like dancing right now."
"Please," she said, scooting across the seat. She laid her right hand on my thigh and pushed herself up to lightly flick my ear with her tongue and whispered, "Remember, Key West."
Damn, she was persuasive. I didn't feel so tired anymore and spun the car around in the next driveway and headed back toward The Roadhouse Café.
Key West was a Christmas present to ourselves the year before we got married. It was the benchmark vacation against which all others were measured - and they always fell short - and the benchmark for personal debauchery. It was a week of sex and drugs and rock-and-roll that reached its pinnacle at Hog's Breath on New Years Eve. Barbara drank too much, danced topless in the teeming crowd and climbed one of the towers next to the stage to dance alone five feet above the floor. When one of the bouncers climbed up to get her down, she tried to dissuade him by throwing her arms around his neck and french-kissing him while her nearly-naked body writhed against him. He obviously enjoyed delaying the inevitable for a few moments, and when he finally made her climb down the disappointed crowd booed .
We finally left at 3 a.m. and filled the rest of the time before our 6:30 a.m. flight with nearly non-stop sex. We climbed on the plane exhausted, hung over and bleary-eyed. Even if we could turn the clock back, I don't think we could wring as much hedonistic delight out of another vacation.
My attitude was definitely better when I pulled the car into the club's parking lot. There were plenty of spaces. Ten may have been late for me these days, but the club crowd was just waking up.
The place was still half-empty when we walked in and the band hadn't yet taken the stage. A jukebox pumped out rock tunes, but the small parquet dance floor in front of the stage was empty, as were most of the tables that surrounded it. But the bar was full. All but a couple of the stools at the long wooden bar were filled with men who seemed to take their drinking seriously. A clot of men and women huddled around the pinball and video game machines. But there was no pool table. Damn.
The crowd was young, by that I mean, at least ten years younger than we were. And the men outnumbered the women two-to-one. It was early yet, I thought.
Heads turned and eyes followed our every step as we made our way to a small table near the dance floor. Were we the only strangers in a bar full of regulars? Or was it because I was a jacket-and-tie in a room full of Tommy jeans and pullovers? Or was it Barbara?
She may have been ten years older than everyone in the place, but she doesn't look her age. Sometimes she still gets asked for ID. She is trim and firm and sexy, but even more, she has a young attitude. Tonight it radiated from her. Her eyes had a glint of excitement that flashed in anticipation of having some fun. There was nothing old about her.
If that wasn't enough, she was the classiest woman in the place. She had worn her new black leather suit to dinner. She loved the soft, buttery feel of leather on her skin. It made her feel as sexy as she looked. When she bought the suit, she got two skirts, one longer and more modest, more business-like, the other shorter and sexier. She had worn the short one tonight and it exposed her shapely tan legs whose curves were accentuated by high-heeled pumps.
The skirt was as tight as it was short. It fit her like a second skin. Between the skirt and the heels, she had to walk in short mincing steps that showed off her tight, round bottom in a way that was surely both delight and torment for every guy in the place.
It was definitely Barbara they were watching.
Nonetheless, when we got to the table I pulled off my tie and folded it into my jacket pocket and hung the sports coat over the back of my chair. That's better. I may still be button down, but I won't feel quite so out of place.
When I looked up again, I saw Barbara headed for the bar to get a couple of drinks. That was Barbara. She didn't stand on chivalry. She was a modern woman, a feminist, if you will. She had a good job, worked hard and was proud of it. She paid for dinners as often as I did. She wanted to be an equal partner, and that suited me fine. I enjoyed her spirit and her independence. I didn't even mind that she had never worn her wedding ring since the ceremony.
She said that men treated married women different at work, that they never took them seriously. She didn't want to be patronized or dismissed because she was married. She wasn't someone's wife, she was who she was, bright, articulate, aggressive and hardworking. That's how she wanted to be judged.
I wasn't sure I agreed with all that but I did know it changed the way men treated her outside work. She attracted them like honey draws bees. And that suited her, too. She liked getting attention and enjoyed the effect she had on men, especially when they would get all flustered and tongue-tied when they were trying to impress her. I remember her laughing about one guy who saw her as he was getting out of his car at a convenience store. He tried to be suave but dropped his keys and bumped his head on the car door when he bent over to pick them up. His sheepish smile and nervous greeting fell short of his intentions. She said it was cute.
Attention is what she was getting at the bar. As she raised her left leg to climb onto an open stool between two groups of guys, her little skirt rode up and exposed a long expanse of her right thigh. The guy next to her didn't miss the show. And when she leaned over the bar to order, the bartender saw only the flash of cleavage her low-cut linen blouse revealed. He never even saw her flashing emerald green eyes.
While he got the drinks, Barbara talked with the guys at the bar and soon was laughing at their jokes and chatting animatedly. Even after she got the drinks, she lingered a bit to finish her conversation, then sauntered back to our table with several sets of eyes glued to her every step.
"They say the band is pretty good," she said handing me a tumbler of bourbon and taking a sip of her scotch. "They do a lot of stuff from the '70s and '80s. The guy on keyboards is supposed to be very good and they do a lot of Billy Joel stuff."
She was delighted at that. She's a big Billy Joel fan. We would know soon. The band was getting ready to start.
