I mean, we do work for an IT company, so to be fair, there's not a lot of girls for Tim to pick from.
"Danny," he says, turning to face me as I sit in the passenger seat of his Prius, "You haven't been out since you broke up with Alex. This is gonna be good for both us, okay? You have to do something besides sit in the dark and play Minecraft."
I tell him I went out this weekend, to a brewery that just opened by my house.
"Yeah," Tim snorts, giving me a look, "you went with your parents."
Ok, fair.
There's no parking on Commerce, as usual, so we park about half a mile away and walk. Tim fires up his vape as we approach the Pyramid Scheme. You know, I'm actually getting kind of excited to go to this place; maybe I'll just hang out and play pinball for the next couple hours.
"Don't just sit in the corner and play pinball, like last time," he says, exhaling a cloud of fruity vapor.
I sigh.
"Come on, dude, it'll be fine. You remember what it was like being single. It was a good time. Chill out."
Inside, we find a couple of our friends from work, sitting at a table close to the bar. I ask Tim what he wants, and he demands a Soft Hearted- it's a blend of Soft Parade and Two Hearted, which I find disgusting, but he insists is the nectar of the Beer City gods.
The bartender is a crabby dude with a neck tattoo, and he always seems to be working whenever I'm here. I don't know his name, but Tim does. I'm bad with names. Fortunately, he already knows me well enough to know my drink order, so I don't have to try to talk to him. He slides me a vodka Red Bull.
As I walk back to the table, I smack myself on the forehead. Fuck, I forgot Tim's shitty drink. I turn, and wave to get Neck Tat's attention.
He looks my way. "Yeah?"
"A Soft Hearted, please."
"What?" he snaps, furrowing his brow.
I sigh, and do my best to enunciate. I forget that it's hard for people to understand me sometimes- if I've been drinking, it's way worse.
"Soft. Hearted."
"Oh. That weird thing that Tim drinks."
I nod. Neck Tat gives me the reddish-brown beer in a tall, frosted glass.
Heading back to the table, I do a scan of the bar, to figure out how the night might go. It's still pretty early, around eleven, and the bar isn't terribly full. It normally attracts the hipster crowds, but tonight there's a good mix. The music isn't too loud, and I can't feel the vibrations very easily in my bones. A group of drag queens and partygoers stands around the table next to us, and they ogle me as I walk by. I smile back and wave. I think I recognize a couple of them.
I know a couple of the guys at our table fairly well, but there are another two who I'm not too close with. I think Tim was just desperate to rally a party together so it wouldn't just be the two of us. One of my coworker acquaintances turns to me, his name's Jared.
"So is this weird for you, ever?"
"Why?"
"Just must be hard, with all the people talking around you- trying to focus on one person, it would drive me nuts."
"How is that any different than your experience?"
He shrugs. "I guess you're right."
I take a sip from my vodka.
Jared begins to roll into some canned conversation about work, something about an account we're working on, for which I'm project manager. So I figure I should at least pretend that I'm listening. Unfortunately, it's hard for me to fake it, because I normally have to be looking at someone to understand what they're saying.
In between cursory glances at Jared, I notice that there's a group of girls, three or four, eyeing us from a few feet away. I flash an obligatory smile at one, whom I make eye contact with.
Of course, that somehow gives her the signal to gesture to her girlfriends, who then make their way towards our group.
I slurp my drink.
The girls start making their introductions, and Tim is thrilled. He makes a dumb joke, and they laugh. One of the girls, a tall blonde, wearing some weird green shirt with the shoulders cut out, keeps looking at me.
While everyone else is talking, Tim leans in towards me.
Looks like you've got an admirer, he signs to me.
She's fish, I reply, rolling my eyes. You know better.
Tim grins. I know, I'm just fucking with you.
Blonde Fish must be intrigued by our conversation, because she comes closer, till she's right next to me. She smells like the inside of a Hollister store.
"Hey, that's so cool!" She says, heavily enunciating her words, drawing them out slowly.
"What?" I counter.
She gasps. "Oh, shit, you talk too? Sorry, I just assumed you were deaf. I saw you guys signing."
"I am Deaf," I reply.
Blonde Fish's brow furrows.
"But, like...if you're deaf...how can you speak? Like, how do you know what I'm saying."
Oh god. It's gonna be one of these.
I shrug. "I can read lips. And I had speech therapy when I was a kid."
She laughs, "Oh my god, that's so cool. Science is so amazing."
"I mean, that's not really science, but okay."
Blonde Fish ignores me. She leans forward until she's right next to my face, presumably to whisper something in my ear.
She pulls back. "Did you hear that?"
"No."
"Oh. Then how come you have hearing aids?"
"I can hear a little, mostly higher pitched sounds, but they're very faint. Definitely can't hear a whisper, though."
She giggles. "Oh, then maybe it's a good thing you didn't hear what I said." She winks at me.
"Uh." I swallow the rest of my drink.
"You want another?" she offers.
"Sure."
As Blonde Fish slithers away to grab us another round, I look at Tim exasperatedly.
Dude, I sign.
What?
Get her away from me. You take her home. Give her your jacket! She must be cold without her shoulder sleeves...pads...things. Did you see her shirt? I make a disgusted face.
Tim laughs. I'll make a move later. It's fucking hilarious watching you two right now though.
I throw my hands up.
I'm just going to let that go on a little longer, he signs, an over-exaggerated smirk on his face.
Blonde Fish returns. She hands me a vodka soda. I did not want a vodka soda, but I go with it. A girl is buying me a drink.
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name before," I say.
She says something that looks like Mitch, but that can't be it.
I touch Tim's shoulder, I gesture to Blonde Fish.
What's this chick's name?
"Sorry, he didn't catch that, what's your name? Oh, and uh, I'm Tim, by the way," Tim says to Blonde Fish.
She tells him her name, and he signs it to me. M-I-C-H-E-L-L-E.
"Oh, Michelle. It's nice to meet you, officially," I say. "I'm Danny."
"That's so awesome! Can you teach me to sign my name?" Michelle says excitedly.
"Well, they've got some great courses at GRCC for that," I reply.
"Oh, cool!"
I swallow as much of my drink as I can. When will this nightmare end?
The crowds have begun to thicken, and as people's voices presumably get louder, so does the music. I can feel it in my teeth, and hear a bit of the bass. It doesn't seem like any of the music I like, but I tap my fingers against my glass to the beat anyway.
"Can you hear the music?" Michelle asks.
"I can feel it, sort of. I don't really like this stuff."
"Yeah? What do you like?"
"EDM, mostly. Sometimes really heavy metal."
Michelle scrunches up her nose. "Yuck."
I shrug. "They're just loud."
By now, everyone's good and drunk. Jared has failed miserably with one girl, and sulks in the corner, lamenting his persecution by the female race. Not my fault he's a fuckboy, though.
Tim seems to be successful with a curvy Asian girl he's talking to, but he keeps glancing at Michelle's ass.
Michelle is talking at me about something, and I yearn for another vodka Red Bull. Perhaps a line of, shall we say, Colombian White. I yawn.
"Hey!" she shrieks suddenly, so loud I can feel it in my ears, "Let's do a Snap! We gotta do a Snap."
She pulls me in next to her, and I can smell her breath- someone ate Buffalo Wild Wings earlier tonight, Mango Habanero, I believe. Michelle hands Tim her phone, and he turns it to take a photo.
"Wait, wait. Danny, you should teach me a sign, we can do it for Snapchat. What's a good one?"
I give her the finger.
Michelle laughs. "Oh my god, you crack me up, no really. Teach me one!"
Jesus Christ.
I teach her a short series of signs, a couple times over until she has it down.
"What does it mean?" She asks.
"Um...'party time,' basically," I reply.
"Oh man, that's awesome! Okay, do it now," she says, gesturing for Tim to take the snap. He does, as we both sign to the camera.
"Thanks!" she says, looking down at her phone to type a caption.
Michelle turns to show it to her friend, and Tim looks at me. He smirks, and turns so that she can't see what he says to me.
"Dude," Tim says, "What did you really teach her? I didn't catch the last couple words."
"'I love anal sex.'"
He snorts into his beer.
Thankfully, Michelle is now engaged in conversation with beautiful Asian girl, so I decide to buy the guys and myself some shots. I order six Jamesons, and bring them back to the table. Tim excitedly pounds his, not caring to wait for everyone else. I sip mine tentatively, but I'm not really a whiskey kind of person, so I sort of let it slide cautiously down my throat hole.
The amount of liquor that so far flows through my friends' blood distracts them from the fact that I am inching further and further away from them, slowly. It also helps that Tim is essentially, at this point, gunning for a three-way with Michelle and her friend.
I make my way over to the pinball machines. Perhaps this night can be salvaged after all. I pick my favorite one, the AC/DC machine, and go for it.
I know I look kind of pathetic, playing an old game by myself and drinking alone.
I guess I kind of get why Tim made me leave my dark basement apartment tonight. Breaking up with Alex really sucked, and I've been feeling like shit almost constantly. Alex didn't want the burden of dating a Deaf guy, learning ASL, finding out what it means to be a part of this community. I took it pretty hard. Someone dumping me because they're not looking for a serious thing, or moving away, or just having different ideas about life, that's not so terrible. But this felt like an affront to who I am as a person, and that really hurt.
Alex made me feel bad about myself, about something I had no control over. In a last-ditch effort, towards the end, I even starting researching Cochlear Implants, something I swore I'd never consider before. Just so we could be closer, so it wouldn't be so hard for him.
I'm just ready to find someone who loves me for who I am- or who isn't going to treat me like a novelty of some sort. I know, it sounds lame, but truthfully, that can be hard sometimes.
I think about this, and I take another swig from my vodka. I try to concentrate on the game, take my mind off all the bullshit.
I'm aggressively snapping the levers and doors to the machine, getting super into the game, when I feel someone slide up beside me.
Looking up, I see it's a random guy. He's tall, with dark hair, and gorgeous, cerulean eyes.
He smiles, and to my surprise, he signs to me.
Hi! How's it going?
I give him an impressed look, and sign back. Pretty good now, I think.
He flashes me a pristine white grin.
I don't think we've met, I thought I knew all the Deafies in GR? I sign. The gay ones at least, I think to myself.
He waves his hands a little nervously.
"Whoa, sorry. You'll have to slow down, my sign isn't that great yet," he says, looking at me sheepishly.
I wave him off. "It's all good."
"I really wanted to be cool though, I saw that girl giving you a hard time." he explains.
"Thanks. "
He extends his hand to me.
"Danny," I offer.
"I'm Patrick," he says, suddenly pulling his hand back, "Oh wait..."
He fingerspells his name, screwing up the 'K' at the end.
I take his hands in mine. "No, that's 'F', 'K' is like this." I show him the proper letter.
Patrick smiles back at me. I wait a moment to take my hands from his own.
"You're not so bad, really. How did you learn?"
"Ah, just a couple semesters in college. It was forever ago, though, obviously."
I see that he's cradling a nearly-finished Oberon. I gesture towards the bottle. "Can I get you another?"
He shakes it, and turns around to look towards the other side of the room.
"How about we just go chill at the bar for awhile?" he asks, turning back to me.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I'll show you some more of my terrible ASL." He signs ASL, once again, improperly.
I laugh. "Fair enough. Lead the way."
Patrick turns to head to the bar, and following him, I gaze longingly at an ass that rivals any of the finest I've ever found on Grindr.
The Pyramid Scheme is full at this point, hipsters, millennials, businesspeople, and college kids milling around, getting to know each other, making friends, maybe even finding someone to take home for the night, maybe even finding love. I can feel the energy in the room, and the despair I felt from earlier seems to dissipate with the clouds of vape smoke in the air. As we walk by, Tim gives me a knowing smile, and raises his glass in approval.
Maybe tonight won't turn out so bad, after all.
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