At 10:45 pm EST tonight, I got a text:
U watch the debate? Palin is so dumb. But she gives me a boner.
Crazy world we have on our hands these days.
To be fair, however, the man that sent me that text is something of an extreme case. He's a womanizer lunatic. I can't help but absolutely adore him. And he's someone about whom I wrote one of my favorite emails ever.
It all happened about a year ago. I was doing my back and forth between China and the USA thing. I landed in Beijing. I walked in on some drama. I loved the story. And I wrote it and sent it. To a girl. Hoping to impress her.
Names changed to protect the guilty...
--
The doorhandle was broken and the lock had
been changed when I got back to the Beijing apartment the other night. Robbie came to the door in a brand new white bathrobe and hotel slippers
and told me the broken door was one of the objects and people least
damaged by Michael's most recent dive into total insanity.
I'd heard some grumblings over email from Robbie while back in
the USA, and even Michael himself had a bit to say about a relapse a few
of the times we talked on Skype, but it's hard to tell what's serious
and what's dramatized when you're that far away.
I walked in, put my stuff down, the cat cruised up to say hi,
and Robbie and I started exchanging stories. We were meeting Jerry for
dinner, and we had a few minutes to kill.
Michael walked out of
the shower. He was originally a part of the dinner plan; he was
certainly part of the on the road from the airport text message
planning; but it's pretty par for the course to lose him to a girl last
minute. What surprised me was to which girl we'd lost him. It was THE
ex-girlfriend. The one with whom he used to live. The one with the
car he'd steal and drive off on drunken infidelity binges. The only
one with whom the sex felt real. The one that threw knives at him.
The one he loved.
He was gonna make it work. He'd realized how crazy it'd been
for him to run from something so intense (run to the refuge of our
apartment and a free place to stay for the past 5 months). He'd
changed. Again. But it was for real this time.
Jerry called. Robbie and I went off to have dinner. The food
was great. We discussed Jerry's plan to get clippers and other
agricultural simple machines manufactured and shipped to Mendocino
County medical marijuana farms. We paid the bill, walked home, and
continued the discussion.
Robbie paused as we were sitting down in the living room and announced that, if it was ok with everyone, he'd be telling The
Westin Story. Groovy, said Jerry...
Last
night Michael and the girlfriend had had another big fight. Things were
not happy. Echoes of the last time they'd gotten back together.
Echoes of the time before that. Echoes of every time they were ever
together.
So Michael did what's natural and called the last girl with whom
he'd started to get "serious." It had taken her about 3 weeks to sleep
with him, and during those three weeks, homeboy was a saint. He'd been
giving me the rundown daily over email and Skype in fact. All was so
perfect. She was smart, cute, fun to talk to. Damn. His days of
crazy girls were over. But the problem was that she did eventually
sleep with him, and that was pretty much the end of that. Or was it?
The old gf had been back for a while. Things obviously weren't right
there. The nice girl still liked him. Or was willing to see him at
least. He was to meet her for dinner in an hour.
On with the cologne, in with the earrings, and out the door he went.
Problem
was it was raining, and problem was there were no cabs anywhere. There
was, however, a woman with a big umbrella that looked as though she
might be willing to share. When Michael got under there, he found out she
was Japanese, in town on business, and going just about exactly where
he was going. Sweet. He'd pay for her cab ride to thank her for the
umbrella.
They got to her stop. They said goodbye. And she invited him up. Up to her room in the
Westin.
He
did not call the nice girl. He did not call the old girlfriend. He
did, however, wake up early the next morning, leave the Japanese
businesswoman sleeping peacefully, go for a swim in the
Westin
pool, pack a bathrobe and a pair of slippers into his backpack, eat a
beautiful breakfast, charge it to her room, and come home.
Robbie wrapped the robe tighter around his shoulders and flashed the embroidered seal. The
Westin.
That was last night?, Jerry and I confirmed. Last night, said Robbie, Unbelievable, eh?
The door opened. Michael. And, yep, you guessed it, the old girlfriend. They went straight to his room.
We giggled.
The crashes, bangs, and screams began. We listened, concerned for a moment. But all was well: screams of pleasure.
We laughed. And laughed.
And, doubled over and shaking my head in disbelief, I noticed the embroidery on Robbie's slippers. The
Westin...
--
The fake names belong originally to rock stars. I chose them purposefully. They're not obvious, but, if you know me, and you know the story, you can figure it out. If you get all three on your first try, you win a prize.
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