Guy’s Night Out (part 1)

One of the cool things about Joyce is that she can be my girlfriend and I can still have time to go out with my buddies. She’s got her things to do some nights of the week (her charities, her crafting, a regular bridge game…), and so I get to do mine. I’ve never had a girlfriend who wanted us to spend all our time together.  I don’t think I’d like a having one like that.

I had no plans for last Saturday night, and thought I might just kick back and watch TV (I’ve been binge watching some 90s Canadian TV series about a mountie and a Chicago cop that can be hilarious…Allan lent me the DVDs), but I got a text late in the afternoon from Dave (he plays left-center for the Parrots) saying that Sloppy Joe had broken up with his girlfriend and was seriously down. Maybe we could meet up and hit Rocco’s and maybe some other place too.

Dave’s an outfielder. Y’all should know by now that means he was fixin to end the evening at a strip club and make Sloppy Joe forget his troubles that way.

I hadn’t had a real guy’s night out for a few weeks, so I texted back, sure, I’d go along. I like Sloppy Joe a lot, and you gotta go out and get a buddy drunk when he’s depressed over a breakup. I was starving so I said we should meet up at the Dog Haus at 10:30. It’s still getting pretty cold at night, even now that it’s spring, so I put on hoodie and a one of our jean jackets over my blue tshirt.

My experience with Mrs. LaSalle and absinthe a couple weeks ago taught me that it’s smarter to Uber if you’re planning to drink. I didn’t want Keaton to end up with the keys to the shitbox again. So that’s how I got myself to Old Town. The guys were there when I arrived – Sloppy Joe plus Dave and the Parrot’s other centerfielder, David.

I know, super confusing: two centerfield positions in softball and one’s played by a Dave and one by a David. And they get real pissed off if you mix them up lol.

Actually it should be pretty easy to keep them straight. They look nothing like each other. One is tall and thin and dark, the other is shorter and stockier and blond. In case you remember what I wrote about their girlfriends at the Labor Day cookout, Dave is tall and has the petite girlfriend that’s still got his balls in a metal vise. David is the shorter one and has been engaged to a massage therapist ever since I met him. They still haven’t set a date. Dave’s my age; David’s more like Keaton’s age.

Both Dave and David are cool guys, decent softball players…and, like I keep saying, are addicted to strip clubs. (I still don’t get what it is with outfielders and strip clubs, but it’s been that way since my college team.)

I’ve told y’all a little more about Sloppy Joe: he’s 29, 6’2” and 275, brown eyes, hair and beard he gets food stuck in a lot.  He’s the kind of dude who always has one tail of his jersey sticking out of his pants. He plays 1^st and is awesome at catching double play balls from Keaton. He also can hit the ball harder than any other guy on the team. That’s when he’s not swinging and missing, which he does a lot.

Sloppy Joe is one of those guys you think would have trouble getting a girlfriend, but he always seems to have one…and they’re all super hot. I can’t remember how many girlfriends he’s had since I started playing for the Parrots, but it’s got to be at least four. So I wasn’t sure why he was so upset about breaking up with the latest one one, a 5’11” half-Asian half-Native American model/actress (she says) who calls herself Astarte Anaconda. (I didn’t know her name until Saturday night, when Sloppy Joe kept repeating it over and over again. If you ask me, it sounds like a hooker name, not a model one.)

I got my usual bacon-wrapped Cowboy hot dog, chili cheese tater tots and a beer and sat down, and, dang, Sloppy Joe was being freakin pathetic. He’d been telling Dave and David about the breakup and he almost had tears in his eyes. (To be fair, I didn’t know how many beers he had in him already.) He seemed way too upset for a dude who has no trouble getting girlfriends. So I asked:

“Did she dump you for someone else?”

“Yeah.”

“Bet he had more money,” said Dave.

“I don’t know.” Sloppy Joe makes enough money to afford a Porsche.

“Better looking?,” asked David.

“I don’t think so.”

“So what was it?,” I asked.

He clearly didn’t want to answer and put several chili cheese tater tots in his mouth at once. He washed them down with a big gulp of beer.

“C’mon man,” I said. “You can’t tell us half the story like that. We’re your buddies.”

“Ok…I’ll tell you. She said she was dumping me for a guy with a bigger dick.”

He took a big bite of his hot dog.

“Ouch,” I said.

“Definitely not cool,” said Dave at the same time.

“What a fuckin…” Let’s just say David said “bitch”.

Ok…so let me make this clear to all the women out there. Men do not want to hear about their dicks. (At least straight guys…it may be different for gay guys.) And we sure as fuck don’t want to hear about other dudes’ dicks. One night I picked up a chick who complained a little too much about not being able to get a boyfriend. But she was a 7½ , I was drunk and it was getting late. So we get back to her place, and – I’m not kidding – the bitch took out a ruler to measure my johnson. No wonder she couldn’t get a boyfriend. The really weird part is that she thought what she was doing was all funny and cool.

So what that Astarte Anaconda bitch said to Sloppy Joe was a super foul ball.

And I still say it’s a whore name.

So I got Sloppy Joe another order of chili cheese tater tots and another beer. He looked like he needed both. (Ok, I had half the tater tots myself lol.)

So we ate up and headed down the street to Rocco’s. Not too much was happening there, which meant David and Dave started talking about the strip club earlier than usual. I wasn’t in the mood for one (if I want a lap dance I still have the number of a hot lap dancer in my phone…and she’ll hang out with me for free), and David and Dave were clearly thinking that Sloppy Joe would be a downer at the strip club.

So I got stuck with him.