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September 23rd, 2007
08:14 pm - Last night's "date"
When I was a teenager, a "date" was a park, booze and weed, and possibly fumbling sex in the backseat of the car. Then came young adulthood, and a "date" was a club, booze and the drug du jour, and fumbling sex in the alley behind the club. Now that I'm an adult, a date is dinner and an hour or two of sophisticated entertainment that will provide a subject of conversation and a buffer between me and the expectant near-stranger sitting across from me. And the possibility of not-so-fumbling sex later is now considered a privilege, not an expectation.
Fifteen years makes far more of a difference than many people would like to admit.
The young man sitting across from me couldn't have been more than twenty-one years old, barely an adult in the eyes of the law, still a boy in the eyes of someone my age. It was entirely Red's fault that he was even at the table with me. She'd known a friend of a friend, cute and new in town, and somehow I'd found myself agreeing to a date that was set up mostly through text messages. Red had a way of doing that. You'd think I would have learned my lesson in the last couple of years - she's also the reason why I have a shaved head and a Doberman. Nevertheless, I'd still been expecting her newly-acquired friend to be a businessman from out of town, one of those odd, out-of-place people that Red manages to pick up like a dog picks up burrs. Imagine my surprise.
Jos. A. Banks, meet Abercromie Fitch. Have a good time, try not to get arrested. Wonderful.
He was cute, but the boy didn't seem to have much brain behind the pretty eyes. The conversation so far had been... uncomfortable, to say the least. We did manage to cover the basics: have you always lived in Kansas? Yes. Were you enjoying the city? Oh, sure, the people are so friendly. (Liar.) Where'd you meet Red? Oh, a friend of a friend, and if he'd really met her the same way I had, he'd been cruising the club at the time, either rolling or drunk. Or maybe that was just me. My ability to discern one white chick from the next starts to erode in direct proportion to how many drinks I've had, and Red's easy to recognize, nice to strange gay men, and above all, safe. But if he didn't want to admit that he'd found himself hanging onto one of the few non-lesbian women who weren't trying to turn him out right there on the dance floor, then I certainly wasn't going to say it.
I watched him frown at the menu. He held it low enough that I could crane my neck slightly and see the part of the menu that he was staring at so intently, and if I had to watch him bite his lip one more time... I hated this kind of crap; my own menu had been folded for some time now, and my stomach was dangerously close to complaining audibly. Finally I decided that I'd had enough of it. I raised my head and managed to catch the eye of our waiter, who nodded and came to our table.
"You gentlemen decided what you want to order?" the peppy waiter asked, whipping out his pen.
"I'll have the ribeye, and he'll have the strip," I said firmly, "both with the house salad and a baked potato."
"And how would you gentlemen like your steaks?"
"Medium." We both turned to look at my so-called date, and I narrowed my eyes meaningfully.
He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a meek, "Rare, please."
The waiter whisked off with the menus, promising to be right back with our drinks. He looked at me silently, one little hand drifting up to push back the dark hair, tucking it behind his ear. "I usually order for myself," he said finally.
"Mmmhm." And if I'd let him, I'd still be waiting for another hour to eat while he drooled over the steaks and tried to decide between the cheap dinners. I was hungry. Maybe he'd be impressed with the macho act and I'd still have the privilege of that not-so-fumbling sex later on, but by this point, I was starting to really not care either way.
"Maybe we should split the check."
I blinked, snapped my attention away from the painting that hung just over his left shoulder, and huffed. "We're not splitting the check," I growled. "It's a fucking steak, not a diamond ring." I watched him turn his face away, that lock of black hair falling again, and I sighed, feeling disgruntled and old and ridiculous. "Yeah," I said, trying for a soft tone that would soothe his nerves, and probably not succeeding. "All right, so this wasn't the best idea Red's ever had. No harm, no foul. How about we just relax, eat our dinner, and I'll take you home. We won't have to worry about this anymore, and you'll still be able to go out tonight. We can do that, right?"
"Right," he answered, but it sounded grudging.
I have to say, the boy could eat. I wouldn't have thought a skinny Asian twink could keep up with me, but damned if he didn't clear his plate. The way he attacked the steak, you'd have thought he hadn't eaten in a week. That thought made me pause, and wonder if he really didn't eat enough. Still, the food seemed to make him feel better, because he finally lost his nervousness and started talking to me, even if I didn't know who Gock Toe was and my understanding of video games is close to zilch. He continued to chatter as I paid the bill and got him into my car, made comments about the scenery as I drove, and only fell silent when I pulled up to the curb in front of his apartment building.
"Are you really not going to ask to come up with me?" he asked, his hand going up to fool with his hair again.
He was pretty. He had a really soft voice, and, once he'd loosened up a bit, he had a soft manner to go with it. Gentle. Polite. A nice change from loud boys and gruff men. But I was a grown-ass man and he was a little boy who couldn't even order his own dinner. "No," I said.
"It's funny, I was afraid I was going to blow it, so I'm blowing it anyway," he said, in that slow way that people have when they're thinking hard about something even as they're talking about it. Jumping on his choice of words to make a lewd joke struck me as being stupid, and while I knew the honest thing to do would be to take at least half the responsibility for a miserable date, I just... really didn't want to. So I didn't answer him.
"If you're not going to ask me out again, will you at least ask me for a kiss goodnight?" Even in the light from the dash, his face was shadowed, but I could still see him tilt his head and run his fingers through his hair. I knew he was trying to be cute, trying to be sexy, in that stupid way that young men have when they're still convinced that a head-tilt and a lip-lick will get them anything they want, before they grow up and aren't that cute anymore. It was working, too.
No. Grown man, silly little boy. Bad idea.
"Just one?" He was moving, and somehow I wasn't, and I ended up with my arms full of cute twink. "One kiss?" he asked, breathing the words against my chin, and despite the fact that I didn't really like kissing, especially not men with such small mouths, I'd tilted my head forward and closed my eyes. He either wasn't very good at it, or wasn't very bold, because the most he managed to do was lick my mouth a bit. Finally I just put my hand into his hair, moved his head to the position I wanted it in, and kissed him properly.
"Come up with me?" he gasped when I let him up for air.
Fuck it; he was of age.
"Yeah," I told him.
Damn it, Red's going to gloat.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/mood/lierre/classics/sad.gif) bored
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