February 25, 2020

12-Pack

Sometimes this is a story about San Francisco. Sometimes it is a story about my old friend George. Sometimes it is the story of old girlfriends, and sometimes, more often than not, it is just the story about an expired condom.

I was visiting my friend—I have tried to get into the habit of only using first names but he has a pretty distinctive first name so I will use his Starbucks name—George—in San Francisco. He is a transplanted Canadian who moved west to work at a company in Silicon Valley. He had a small one-bedroom in a great location in Pacific Heights. My first night there he had arranged to go to a party—if I remember correctly, I think it was actually a Jewish singles party. We were going with his girlfriend at the time, Andrea, and her best friend, Leah. We picked Leah up in George's orange Honda Civic, still bearing Nova Scotia plates, in front of her apartment in Noe Valley. She was a very short but quite striking woman dressed in a flowered dress and Birkenstocks. She was from Cleveland originally. I think Shaker Heights. There was something about her voice which was both soothing and transfixing. At another time she would have been a Haight-Ashbury flower child but, as she was a left-leaning, bomb-banning, never-kissed-a-Republican, volunteer-at-soup-kitchen, hiking, cycling-for-transportation type of woman who I had previously only seen in novels and film, in truth, she was a garden variety denizen of San Francisco but a veritable novelty for me.

Her first question was not about the car I drove but the type of volunteering I did.

We spent the party making fun of others and creating and sharing inside jokes. To this day I don’t really understand what she saw in me. Especially since I don't believe that opposites attract.

George and Andrea found less to entertain themselves and suggested we relocate to a bar they knew in the Mission. They seemed very engrossed in conversation so Leah and I decided to leave them to their own devices at the bar. She then invited me back to her place for tea.

When I tell this story I pantomime air quotations when I say the word tea. With a slight theatrical flourish. As in, nudge nudge wink wink. But here I am writing the story, with quotations well within my purview, and I write tea just as you see it.

Because, you know, it just seems a little puerile.

I should probably say a few things at this point. The first is I don’t have to take off my socks in order count the number of times I have ‘picked up’ a woman. This was not a pickup in the real sense of the word but all things considered, a woman I had known for less than an hour. Now, as it turned out, it was a woman I would date and have a long-distance relationship with for a year, so it certainly could not qualify as a one-night stand.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

The second thing I should have made clear is I almost have sex in this story. Probably should have mentioned it earlier. In journalistic terms, I buried the lede. Would have given some of you time to stop reading and turn your attention to less stomach-churning activities. My friend Larry, for example, would have appreciated the heads-up.

There is not a lot of sex in my stories. Not, I hasten to add, for lack of trying. But this story gets close.

So, so close.

You have to be of a certain age to understand my description of Leah’s apartment: it looked like it belonged to Rhoda Morgenstern. Beaded doorway. Incense smelling. Chatchkas and knick-knacks. I looked for cameras.

She may have made tea. Either way, we started up on her green fake corduroy living room couch which she must have found discarded on the street (turns out, yes, found on the street). A couch I would ordinarily not even sit on fully clothed.

But, like I said, there isn’t a lot of sex in my stories.

The phone then rang.

Couple of things. It gives you some indication of the year. It was a regular house phone and not a cell phone. When I tell the story I try to paint a picture of a couple on a couch in the throes of passion interrupted by a phone that just wouldn’t stop ringing.

And that is very well how it might have happened.

Then again, she may have picked it up on the first ring.

Whichever version is true, the voice on the other end was Andrea. In tears. George, in his infinite wisdom, had decided to break up with her at the bar.

Leah and I stopped doing the little we were doing and we ordered a taxi so Leah could console her friend and I could return to George’s apartment and beat him to death.

“I’m here for one fucking week!”

George was contrite and apologetic. “Take my car. Take my apartment,” he said.

I didn’t know if I had lost my chance with Leah. But I spoke to her the next day. Even though George was a fucking piece of shit, she agreed to meet me at his apartment the next day.

But when she arrived, we both realized we were prophylactic-free. I rushed out and found a convenience/liquor store on the corner which sold what I needed.

I bought a 12 pack.

Back in the apartment we resumed our activities from the night before and I produced my newly acquired purchase.

“12 pack?” she said with a smile.

“It’s all they had,” I lied as I fumbled with the wrapper.

“Hand me the box,” she commanded. I did as I was told. She examined the box. “These expired three years ago,” she said.

I looked at the box. She was right. And the moment had passed.

So we went out for Chinese food instead. On the way out, I threw out the expired condoms in the waste paper basket in the bathroom.

I go back to Toronto and about a week later I get a 3:00 am phone call from George. He was upset. Apparently he had gotten back with Andrea. And now he was worried she might be pregnant.

“Jesus, what happened?” I asked.

“Fucking defective condoms!”

And then the story came out. George, although I had told him of the expired condoms, decided he wasn't going to let 11 perfectly good condoms go to waste and had retrieved them from his waste paper basket and used one for his evening of make-up sex with Andrea.

“But I told you they were defective,” I said.

“Those are suggested dates. I drink milk a week after the expiry date.”

“Expired milk doesn’t get you pregnant,” I said.

Then I hung up.

The end.