The Literary Girlfriend: Interesting…

When Danielle had said that she wanted to see a bunch of guys pee into the communal trough in the men’s bathroom, I hadn’t been wild about the idea.  It was kind of embarrassing that my girlfriend would say/do something like that in front of my friends at the football game.  At the same time, I didn’t want to seem judgmental.  After all, Danielle seemed to accept my flaws, so Kirk and I got her disguised and marched her up to the communal.  Everything had seemed fine until Danielle screamed.

I was standing a few men down pretending to take care of business when I heard her shriek.  It was loud and shrill, and I jumped (it was a good thing I wasn’t actually doing anything because there might have been some misdirection pee, and I could have been punched out).

Danielle had stepped back from the line, brushing her hands against her waist.  “Shit!” she cursed.  “Shit!  Shit!”  Danielle cursed a few more times and fled the men’s room, Kirk’s baseball cap flopping to the wet floor.  I grabbed it and ran out too.  The walkway wasn’t too crowded, so it was easy to follow Danielle as she darted past and dodged other people milling around.  I saw her duck and pull her hair back down over her shoulders.  She hid behind a column for a moment near a crowded concession area, and when I caught up to her, she was holding my windbreaker below her waist and hopping in place with gritted teeth.  She wasn’t wearing my sunglasses anymore either.  She looked like a college girl again (even though she wasn’t), but a very upset one.

“You alright?” I asked.

“I got peed on,” she exclaimed, pointing to a few wet spots on her jeans.

“You got pee splashed,” I explained.  “Most of that’s probably water.” That was a lie, but maybe it would make her feel better.  “It will fade in a minute or two.”

“It’ll still be there!” Danielle stammered.  “I have somebody else’s pee on my jeans.”

“So do I, probably,” I said.  “It happens to everybody at the communal.”

“You didn’t warn me that could happen!”

“I didn’t think of it.”  I was actually disappointed in myself.  If I had thought of the probability of pee splash, I could have avoided the whole situation.  Nobody likes getting splashed by somebody else’s urine, especially women.  I should have thought of that.  But I also knew that I wasn’t a quick thinker in high stress situations.  “That’s what you get for wanting to watch guys pee.”

Danielle was about ready to curse me out in public (I could see an “f” forming on her lips) when Kirk stepped in.

“You broke character,” Kirk said to Danielle.

“I got peed on!” Danielle said again, pointing at the spots on her jeans.  “These jeans are ruined.”

“You’ll be okay,” said Kirk, unimpressed.  “You have to have a long wet line or a wet spot larger than a nickel for you to say you got peed on.”

“I didn’t know there was pee criteria,” I said.

“Shit,” Danielle said, looking past us.  “Those guys.”

I turned and saw a couple ushers talking to a cop, and they were pointing right at me.  They looked serious.  If they had heard about a woman screaming in the men’s bathroom, they didn’t seem to think it was funny.

“Let’s go sit down,” Danielle said.  “I’ll keep low.”

We ducked behind the column, passed through a concession area, went down an escalator and then doubled back up to our original level back to our seats.  Even though none of the sections had been that crowded, we had moved quickly, so we thought there was a good chance we had lost them.

“How was it?” Linda asked as we returned to our seats.

“I got peed on,” Danielle announced loudly enough for several rows to hear.

As I sat down, I glanced back to see the cop and the two ushers moving in our direction and pointing.  I nudged Danielle.

“Shit,” Danielle said again.  “Shit.  Shit.”

“How did they find us?”  I was confused.  Danielle had switched out of her man disguise so quickly, there was no way anybody in the men’s room would recognize her.

“You followed me out,” Danielle said.  “You’re tall.  And you grabbed my baseball cap.  And you were loud.”

“Nice going, Jimmy,” Kirk said.

I could feel my face turning red.  It wasn’t my fault that Danielle had shrieked in the men’s room, but history (which gets recorded by the most vocal) would show that this incident was my fault.  I fumed, but I kept quiet.

Danielle gave Kirk a dirty look as she patted my knee.  “He was worried about me.  I’ll go talk to them.”  She stood up, put her glasses back on, stuck her chest out, and strolled up to the cops.

“Your girlfriend,” Kirk said quietly, leaning toward me.  “She’s… something else.”

“Yeah,” I said.  I still hadn’t figured out the right words to describe her.

“So…” Kirk hesitated, then asked even more quietly so Linda wouldn’t hear.  “You sleeping with her?”

“Yeah,” I said with pride.

“Damn,” Kirk muttered, not because I was getting some, but because he wasn’t, and he’d been dating Linda for a few months already.  “How long you been going out?”

“About a week.”

Kirk gave a sideways grimace toward Linda and shook his head.

“We’re living together,” I added.  “And she knows about the comic books.”

“I like her,” Kirk said.  “But I think she might make your life more interesting than you want it be.”

Both of us watched Danielle as she spoke to the cop and the ushers.  Whatever she was saying didn’t seem to be working.  The cop kept shaking his head, and the ushers kept checking her out.  Finally, Danielle nodded, shrugged, and returned with her head bowed.  The cop stood at the end of the row with his arms folded.

“Shit,” she said, with a cheese eating grin.  “I got kicked out.”

“They take their gender separation seriously here,” I said.

“They thought you were chasing me,” she said.

“Then why are you getting kicked out?” I asked.

“I told them why I went to the men’s room,” she said.  Then she giggled.  “I could have pressed charges against you.  But I don’t like it when my boyfriends go to jail.”

“That’s… happened before?” I asked.

“Prison,” she said.

“And…?”

Again, both Linda and Kirk stared at Danielle.

“I don’t think he’ll get out for a while.”

“Ex-boyfriend, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Interesting…” Kirk mumbled.

“I gotta go,” Danielle said, nodding to the cop.  “I can wait outside if you want to watch the game.”

“Somebody’s got to keep you out of trouble,” I said, standing up.

Danielle was quiet as we exited the stadium, the cop lurking a few yards behind us until we got to the parking lot.  She held my hand and made sure we brushed sides a few times.  Despite being kicked out, despite kind of being embarrassed by the scene, I felt comfortable.  Walking hand in hand with Danielle felt natural, like we were meant to be together, which seemed strange, me being this comfortable with a woman like Danielle.

“You mad?” she asked.

I hesitated before answering.  “I’m actually enjoying the moment,” I said.  “I’ve never left a football stadium not knowing what the score was.”

“Losing 13-3,” she said, then she stopped.  “Shit!  I left your Sense and Sensibility with Linda.”

“I guess you’ll have to pretend to read another book,” I said.  “Pride and Prejudice is supposed to be better, anyway.”

“Pride and Prejudice is better than Sense and Sensibility?” she said.  “I’ll remember that.”

Kirk was right.  My life had become more interesting since I had met Danielle. And despite my paranoia, most of the interesting parts had been pretty good.  The negative parts of “interesting,” like getting kicked out of a football game, didn’t seem like a big deal anymore.  Maybe I was getting over the idea of being embarrassed by Danielle’s behavior.  Maybe her “interesting” behavior wasn’t that bad after all.  If getting kicked out of a football game was as “interesting” as it got, maybe we could be okay.

Unfortunately, I was about to find out how “interesting” Danielle could really get.

*****

To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: Crazy Stuff.

And to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning, start here.