R.V. Roush
�You wanna tap that ass, don�t ya?�
For a middle-aged white guy, he listens to too much gangster rap.
Our respective reputations make conversation easy. Shared assumptions about women in tight sweaters, unspoken cues when our beers are empty, all that guy bonding crap. The guys in my work crew think I�m a dog, and bar floozies hate me for using them. I�ve been called an immature, misogynistic pig, and I consider myself lucky to have met such an articulate woman in the Valley. Fortunately, I�m too old to be trained to somebody else�s view of social acceptability, which keeps me in the game. Crude pickup styles like Tom�s, aside from demeaning the ladies man tradition, let me win the game now and then.
We�re in Friday Lounge, a sports bar not known for the refinement of its clientele. But it�s a good place for talking shit in after work. The guys in question are Arnold Kleindoorf, who runs security at Design Space Semiconductor, Corp., Tom Steward, my chief competitor for the short supply of Silicon Valley ladies, Johnny Watkins, a biomechanics and cybernetics consultant, and Jack Landeck, my best friend who hates his life, or more specifically, hates his wife, though he won�t come right out and admit it.
�What ass would that be, Tom?� I finally ask, insinuating that the bar is full of asses, not the least of which is him.
Though everybody at the table understands Tom�s reference (the woman�s ass is too freaky to be ignored), Tom and I have a history, so I don�t make things easy on him.
Every woman�s a spinner if you�re strong enough, got enough axle, but I take Tom�s point.
Most hard-working chippers don�t have the fashion sense to conspicuously flaunt their incomes in the fancy places, so we cruise sports bars for connections. You won�t find any feigned sophisticates, failed Hollywood glitterati, or ex-dot.com paper millionaires here�those guys are all prowling the upscale Santa Clara clubs; they like their air thick with pretension, not cheap perfume. But no matter the club, you can always find pulsating beats, a carnival atmosphere of collagen-injected pouts, and silicon-enhanced tits, and who doesn�t like a carnival every now and then? You�ll find guys posturing, using offensive pickup lines, pretending interest. The pathetic desperation to hook up is the same at upscale and downwind venues. If gold-diggers in a sports bar mistake any of us for mate bait, that�s their problem.
If Tom understood my insinuation about him being an ass, he doesn�t go for the throat. I have a habit of giving people too much credit for having intelligence, but that�s usually a misplaced assumption with these guys, and it might come back and bite me in the ass. Just this morning I was impressed with a job applicant�s intelligence during a gang interview. Most of the interview, I ogled qualifications that weren�t on her r�sum�her pixie-cut blonde hair, lithe arms, and smooth cheeks whose planes seemed to plump when she turned her head to emphasize points, or grinned, or held a steady gaze. She had an interesting, multidimensional, lightly fuzzed face. Her name was Jo Dills, and she wore an unquestionably tasteful blue pastel blouse with a deep teardrop keyhole and dangling neck tie strings that tickled her cleavage when she leaned forward to challenge us with a point about her areas of expertise. Tamra, a thin, bitter woman from Human Resources whose negativity I�d inspired on several dates, seemed to admire Jo, too.
Jo�s strength, she�d explained, was in synthesizing electronic technologies, pairing circuits in layers in computer simulations just to see what would happen. While introducing herself, Jo reported a rehearsed litany of interests, including the fact that CAD software encouraged her creativity. She�d once combined microchannel matched memory protocol architecture on a circuit with monolithic microwave arch � and I�d stopped listening, having already made up my mind that I wanted her on my team.
Happy hour at the Friday Lounge is from 6:30 p.m. till 8 p.m. (time being measured in hyper Cali units), and we�ve been taking advantage of the special pricing�our table�s crowded with empties. The pricing isn�t paying off, because the Lounge is nearly empty. Most folks work late to beat the next guy to the hyperspace market. From our booth, I get a clear shot of the long edge of the bar. One guy at the bar is wearing a gauche gold and green checked shirt. Two women are further along, immersed in private conversation, one petite. There�s a couple on the dance floor. I watch the woman. She doesn�t smile as she dances, but that�s not a sure indication of her mood. Then I watch her feet. She�s counting steps. I can�t deal with poor mechanics, or women who can�t smile and count at the same time. Maybe I�m being too hard on her. Maybe she�s bad at faking smiles, a shortcoming I�d ignore in moments of explosive ejaculatory ecstasy. I contemplate how I might approach her, if I were interested, and then how Tom Steward might approach her.
Tom has run thousands of these and worse past me, and I�ve always given him my blessings to use them. Everybody knows how sarcastic I am, but Tom uses the lines, anyway, and nobody feels sorry for him when he�s got his hangdog on.
The ceiling lights are covered in red globes with a chipped texture like somebody�s thrown dabs of cooked oatmeal on plastic kick balls. Light is absorbed in the short fibers of red carpeting and reflected from the brown wood round tables that speckle the floor. In one corner, wooden-backed chairs with black cushioned seats are upturned on customer overflow tables, their legs standing like toothpicks stuck in cheese chunks on a food tray.
Arny and Johnny are having a private conversation at their edge of the table next to the wall, and Jack, sitting in a chair pulled up to the outside edge of the booth�s table, has no option but to show peripheral interest in the conversation between me and Tom.
� 2004 R.V. Roush