How We Met

How We Met!

It was a typical Friday night in the West Village. Seventh Avenue South was crowded with drunks, drug addicts and drag queens and poor David was stuck inside, working. He was the butler at The Jekyll and Hyde Pub, an exclusive club for explorers, adventurers, Mid-American tourists, and intoxicated foreigners. Aris, was also stuck inside, coincidentally at the same place, though she was not well versed with the practices of the establishment, it was only her first night, and training at that! David was wearing his best mourning suit, pinstriped pants and a jacket with tails, a smelly vest and ugly tie, and spats to keep his ugly shoes dust free. With smellier gloves on hand, coke bottle glasses, a condor and canary feather duster and Dep Extreme hair gel shellacking his hair, he was ready for another night of entertaining tourists under a meager salary and Equity Special Agreement. Aris looked stunning in latte cargo pants and a Halloween Jekyll t-shirt. She had the misfortune of following the most unfortunate waiter for the night, so she was seeking ways of entertaining herself. And then it happened. Underneath the rhino head she spotted David, merely the butler at the time, yelling at a table. She always liked a man in uniform and was immediately taken in by the severe part in his hair and unruly and rebellious way he wore his spats.  David was yelling at his table, his English accent giving way to flecks of western Suffolk every here and there. After regaling them with his brilliant and infectious prose, he looked up, for what may have been a moment, but seemed like a lifetime, a foreshadowing of a not so shadowy future perhaps. He gazed across the room, and up a couple of steps, just under Dr. Brain, to the server's station, and saw her. Her hair down her back with a headband, or was it an up-do?  The memory remains hazy, almost dream like. There she was, watching him, nay, staring at him.  Smiling.  She did smile a beautiful smile that night, her teeth like pearls shimmering against the ocean bottom, or stars twinkling in the blackest night, or one of those fiber-optic light things that you get at ice-capades and wave around in the dark. David watched her watching, his eyes transfixed, his mouth slightly agape and lopsided. He cocked his head and kept staring back, not smiling, though a bit disbelieving that this lovely specimen seemed so transfixed on him. But alas, she noticed him noticing her! She was caught! Or so her face gave her away. She made a slight inaudible gasp, turned her head away, and left, off no doubt to shadow the flunkie screwing up some couple from Omaha's Explorer's platter. David looked back at his table, and without saying another word, turned and walked away, and upstairs to contemplate his next move. "She's an employee", he said to himself. It would not be so easy for her to get away. Later in the night he would start throwing his A-game at her, which at the time was basically proving to her that he wasn't gay. Success! A week later they went on their first date, a few months later they were coming home to each other every day. A few months after that they had shacked up, and a year beyond, engaged.