Saturday Night with Monica (part 1)

I’m not sure, but I may have given y’all the impression that, since I’ve woken up in Joyce’s bed, Monica’s out of the picture.

She isn’t. We’re still having the same one dinner/Netflix/sex night a week we’ve been having for a long time, and I reckon it works. (It’d work better if I didn’t have to pay for dinner every week, but not every chick you go out with is gonna pay for dinner just because you look good sitting across from her. Not every chick you go out with is going to give you an iPhone X, either. On the other hand, when I buy Monica dinner, I usually know where I stand…and how the evening’s going to end. At the IHOP on Arroyo Parkway at 3 am with a strawberry sundae in front of me lol.)

Although I did need Monica to show up and be my girlfriend for the store Christmas party, she makes me show up and be her boyfriend at least once a month. (Those dates are in addition to our Netflix evenings. I have to pay for them.) Usually it’s not too bad, and I get it that, if you’ve got a boyfriend, it’s only fair that you can bring him to things like weddings. It totally sucks to be at weddings where you know absolutely no one but your girlfriend, but having a steady plus one is useful. And Monica owes me a few of those.

We almost never go out with other people. With one exception.

Her veganass bat shit crazy sister.

Monica’s hot. Like 9 to 9 ½ hot. I’m saying that even though she’s not a blonde. You want to see a chick who looks good in a low-cut short tight dress? Check out my girlfriend. We get told a lot that we’re a very good-looking couple. Maybe that’s why no one wants to go on double dates with us lol.

So Monica’s a 9½. If you just saw Caroline and didn’t know how messed up she is, you might say she’s a 6. She’s tall and skinny and then wears high heels so she’s like ten feet tall. She may be blonde (which y’all know I like), but she’s got super-straight hair, which I don’t like. And she’s got really big, really ugly ears. The rest is okay, if it’s your thing, but, like I said, she’s a 6 at best.

Then you spend time with her and she becomes a 4. I’ve spent a lot of time with her. So for me she’s a 2 now.

She’s also vegan, which may explain why she’s such a bitch and so skinny. But that means that when we go out, we have to go to a fuckin veganass restaurant. (Spoiler alert: this story’s gonna end up at the IHOP.)

This time – last Saturday night – dinner was at some place over on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. Vegan and West Hollywood…couldn’t get gayer than that lol. Actually there weren’t that many gay guys in the restaurant. It was a mostly people around my age sitting around thinking they’re cool because the crab cakes don’t have any crab in them.

A bunch of dumbasses, in other words.

And I had to drive from Pasadena to Burbank to West Hollywood to get to this place.

So we get there and, although Monica made us late as usual, Caroline was even later. Monica got pissed off and ordered a cocktail, but, since I was driving, I held off on getting a beer. (At least the place had a good selection of Mexican beer on the menu.  Only I couldn’t take advantage of it.) It was another of those nights where I was gonna want to get drunk but was driving.

So finally Caroline does show up in super tight jeans that would have looked good on Monica. With some dude.

Caroline never shows up with the same dude twice, and the dude always looks uncomfortable. Monica’s right when she says they’re fake boyfriends.

Saturday night’s dude showed up in a blazer, which made me uncomfortable. I’ll admit it: I’m sensitive about looking like I just got off the bus from Eastern Tennessee in restaurants where everybody is trying to show off how rich, cool or important they are. (See, in Pasadena, you never get that feeling. One more reason why I like it up here.)   I know I’m not LA cool, and I’m certainly not rich or important…and I was raised not to pretend I was. Caroline’s dude (he must have been 35) was trying to come off rich. I thought maybe he was and the diamonds in his gayass pinky ring were real. His blazer definitely looked way more expensive than anything you can get at Banana Republic.

I got a look at his watch too. I’m no expert in expensive gayass watches, but I could tell the thing cost a few thousand and maybe more.

When I wear a watch, it’s a Swatch I picked up at a mall in Virginia when we stopped there on a long bus ride back from West Virginia. Monica tells me never to wear it when we go out, so I don’t. I can always tell how late she’s making me by looking at my phone. And of course my phone now makes it look like I have money lol.

Dark hair with too much gel in it, shirt unbuttoned one button too far, too much cologne… The dude had Persian Asshole written all over him.

And said his name was Ryan when he gave my hand a limp shake. (One more thing I learned from Dad: when you shake a dude’s hand, fix him in the eye and let him know you got a grip.)

So we sit down and of course the first thing Caroline tells us is that “Ryan”’s a lawyer and she met him at her office. (She manages the office at a law firm. Like that chick on Mad Men. Only she doesn’t have the ass or the rack.) I don’t think that “Ryan” (I’m gonna stop with the quotes, y’all got the point) works at her firm…he didn’t look stupid enough to risk getting his ass fired for sexual harassment. Especially for harassing a 6.

Then we had to hear how Ryan went to Yale. Fuckin Yale and he’s dating Monica’s sister. I knew where this was going:

“Monica went to Cal State San Luis Obispo,” Caroline said, “and I forget where you went Hunter. Something from that state y’all are from, right?”

I mean, fuck (sorry Mom), Caroline knows I’m from Tennessee. And if y’all want to know how to piss a Southerner off fast, just use “y’all” as a singular.

“I went to Middle Tennessee State University. On a baseball scholarship.”

“That’s right. I keep forgetting that you used to be a baseball player. He played for the Lobsters in South Carolina or something. For a year.”

You have to know it was the Crawdads in North Carolina to get it wrong like that. And I knew she knew it anyway.

“And now he works for Old Navy.”

Y’all get the idea.

What happens next, after Caroline’s insulted me, is that Monica starts up. She doesn’t defend me or anything, but she does attack her sister. I mean mean shit like:

“Rite Aid’s finally gotten in a good brand of hair color, I see.”

or (to Ryan):

“Caroline always eats a lot. I think she thinks that the excess weight will go to her chest.”

I’m not fuckin kidding. That’s how it goes when the two of them are together.

The worst was when she asked Ryan:

“Could you take a picture of me and Hunter? I want to text it to Mom…she always says what a good looking couple we are…and that shirt makes your eyes look so blue, ooky booky.”

Again, I’m not fuckin kidding. Monica never calls me anything but Hunter or “uh” when we’re together. The ooky booky bullshit is just when we’re with Caroline. Total stupidass bullshit.

And of course the four aces Monica has up her sleeve are that me and her are real boyfriend and girlfriend and have a hot sex life. So she gets her hands all over me all night long. And feeds me shit. With her fingers. And then wipes my face with her napkin.

Which makes Caroline try to pull shit like that with her fake boyfriend. She put her hand on his while we were waiting for the main course. He pulled away. Monica kicked me under the table.

All this on one beer. I usually can drink two if I’m driving, if I know I’m gonna get enough food in my stomach. At these veganass places with their mystery food and small portions, I have to keep it to one. Especially on a Saturday night when you’re gonna be sharing the freeway with the CHP for close to an hour.

I had the crab cakes with no crab and then the tacos. I don’t need to tell y’all that you get way better tacos from the truck on Fair Oaks for less than half the price. Ok maybe you’re not sure what’s in those, either lol…but at least you know it’s meat. I ate the veganass tacos because I can swallow just about anything. But they really really sucked.

At least there was no wine. But there were four $15 cocktails (Monica had two including the one when we were waiting) and the food and my half came to over $130 by the time we were done. Without dessert. And for just total bullshitass garbage on a plate.

When we left, Caroline made sure that the valet got Ryan’s ticket before mine, and I knew why. Sure enough, the valet pulled up in a Porsche. I know that was supposed to be a putdown, but it backfired on them. I know exactly who drives Porsches: dudes who have trouble getting laid.