When my friend Ari calls and tells me to save the date, I immediately ask him if he is on drugs.

“It’s for”—and then he mentions the name of a person I presume to be his son. A name I have never heard of before. A name of a person I couldn’t pick out of a lineup even if all the other people were circus folk—“bar mitzvah,” he says.

I then ask if he has fallen and hit his head.

“Becca and I would really like you to be there.”

I say, “I thought we were friends.”

And then I hang up.

Becca and Ari are crazy to think I would go to the bar mitzvah but not deranged enough to think I would go to the actual ceremony at the synagogue.  No, it is understood if I would show up at all it would be at the evening party. And so, date saved, I make my way down to the cavernous event place warehouse where this ordeal would take place.

In the parking lot I run into Becca’s cousin. His name escapes me. You know how you have people on the outside edges of your life with whom you only have one topic of conversation? This was true of Becca’s cousin.  Every time I ran into him, which was almost never, I felt compelled to talk about the time we went sailing together. He nods his head and it is clear we both want to be elsewhere and talk about other things with other people. So I run into him and his wife. I don’t know her name either. It is painful but short-lived and I am soon in the warehouse where I am treated to the wonderful smell of burning meat.

Food trucks.

I have to hand it to Ari and Becca. Food trucks were a nice touch.

The thing I like to do when I go to these things is immediately make my presence known to the hosts. Yes. I am here. I won’t be staying long. The beauty is I have spent the better part of my life setting the bar so low that anything I actually end up doing is viewed as nothing short of a miracle.

It’s a beautiful thing.

So I am making my way through the room, nodding my head and waving to people I don’t like, when I run into this woman.

This woman, I am going to call her Mandy Greenberg for now, is a friend of Becca and Ari’s. I know her from back in the day. I’ve known her for a long time but probably run into her only a little bit more than I run into Becca’s cousin. Which is to say, really almost never.

Mandy Greenberg.

Very smart. Very attractive. Very funny. Maybe even funnier than me.

She starts with a “What, you don’t say hello?”

Then I go into my Eddie Haskell “Well you looked so young what with your pigtails, I thought you were somebody’s kid,” blah blah blah. Standard married woman meaningless flirtation 101. And then, virtually on autopilot, I make some disparaging remark about her husband and how it makes me sick that he is punching above his weight. Blah blah blah.

But then she says, “I guess you didn’t hear.”

Which isn’t in the script.

So now I turn off autopilot and struggle for some real words and conversation instead of eating a smoked meat sandwich at the food truck and telling Becca and Ari I am 30 minutes from heading to the door.

I give her some version of “I’m sorry to hear that,” and she does some version of “Well, what are you going to do,” and I do my bit about how I never understood how any relationships can last and how I almost once went on a third date and then she says it is a little awkward because Mitch, that is her ex-husband, is here, and I say, “Yeah that really sucks,” and she says, “Yeah,” and I say, “Well I guess I’ll see you out there,” although I don’t really know what out there really means and she says, “Yeah okay,” and then I don’t say I think the pigtails look cute. Instead, I slink away with a half-wave looking for Ari, Becca, or smoked meat but not necessarily in that order.

Now I am going to say something which you won’t believe. I should tell you I am likely to say it again at some point later in this story.  What I am going to say is that at no point do I say to myself “Well will you look at that—Mandy Goldberg is now single.”

See, I knew you wouldn’t believe me.

Ari and Becca are thrilled to see me. Becca is nearly in tears.

Set the bar low. That’s what I say.

Fuck, I should have asked Becca’s cousin for the name of the bar mitzvah boy.

I think it starts with a J.

But I don't risk it.

Instead, I say, “The kid looks great.”

They say yeah.

I don’t say “I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.”

I do say, “I just ran into Mandy Goldberg.”

They both say it is so sad.

I don't say she looks kinda cute in her pigtails.

The night is not a complete waste of time. There are ping pong tables. I spot one of, I want to say Jonah’s, friends 11 points and hustle him for $20. He is handing me the bill when Mandy Goldberg appears, a drink in each hand.

“Hustling kids out of their bar mitzvah money?” She asks, handing me what appears to be an appletini.

“Doing them a favour,” I reply, taking a sip of the green concoction. “Would have probably spent it on drugs and pornography.”

“Isn’t that what you are going to spend it on?” joked Mandy Greenberg.

“The Canadian nights are long and cold,” I replied.

“For you even in the summer.”

“For me especially in the summer.”

That was the thing with Mandy Greenberg. I don’t think we ever had an actual conversation. Just this back and forth.

Mandy Greenberg did good banter.

“Can you catch me up on the last twenty years in two minutes?” I ask.

“I can, unless you also want to hear about the sex.”

“I absolutely want to hear about the sex.”

“So I am going to need an extra 20 seconds.”

“Ah, so it’s like that.”

“Yes, it’s like that.”

“Okay, so maybe we should get another drink. Maybe something not as green this time.”

So Mandy Greenberg and I get another drink. She gives me the brief synopsis—sans sex. We split a smoked meat sandwich and stand in the back making fun of the speeches.

It isn’t the worst time I have ever had in the world.

Then she sees someone she knows and we part ways. And again, me with the half wave.

I know, I know.

You are saying there is just no fucking way I’m not thinking about it.

But I’m telling you:

It doesn’t even cross my mind.

I go back to the ping pong table and give the kid his $20 back. I have enough drugs and pornography. I hide behind a column to avoid Becca’s cousin again.

The band is playing Shout.

Hey hey hey hey.

I go look for Becca and Ari so I can say goodbye.

I find them talking to a couple. The woman, who is not Indian, is wearing a sari. Becca beckons me over but I don’t. Am pretty sure I would say something rude to the non-Indian woman wearing a sari.

Standing next to Ari and Becca is also a non-Indian woman. But she is wearing a non-Indian dress. And she is having an animated conversation with Mandy Greenberg.

The woman, as best as I can understand, is from Alberta. And it seems that Mandy Greenberg is planning a hiking trip to Banff, Alberta.

And this is when I decide to say, “I’m going hiking in Banff too.”

Now, to be clear, I was not going hiking in Banff. I had no plans to go hiking in Banff. I had no desire to go hiking in Banff. But here I was, saying I was going to go hiking in Banff.

At this point, Ari, who had artfully detached himself from the non-Indian woman wearing a sari, decides to blurt out, “You don’t hike.”

Not sure how many of you have seen Glengarry Glen Ross. One of my favorite movies. There is a famous Al Pacino scene where his character is reaming out the character played by Kevin Spacey. He uses a lot of very colorful language. And one of the best lines is “You don’t open your mouth until you know what the shot is.”

For months after the bar mitzvah, it is how I greeted Ari. To his credit, he took it like a man. But that was later. 

Now, I turn to him, give him the proverbial death stare, and say, “Of course I do. I just got back from repelling in Zion National Park in Utah.”

Which was true, if ‘just got back’ and ‘ten years ago’ are considered to be almost the same thing.

The woman from Alberta is very excited. “I know the best hikes.” She is almost shrieking.

Mandy Greenberg is also very excited.

I pretend to be very excited.

Then the woman from Alberta says, "I can email them to you.”

Now it’s not clear who she is saying this to so I say, “Great, email them to me and then”—I tilt my head towards Mandy—“I will send them to Mandy.”

Both the woman from Alberta, who I have never met before, and Mandy Greenberg seem to be okay with this absolutely ridiculous plan. I give the woman from Alberta my email address. Right in front of Mandy Greenberg. Who could very very easily say, “Hey, take my email address too.”

But she doesn’t.

I say goodbye to the woman from Alberta. I say goodbye to Mandy Greenberg. I say goodbye to Becca and Ari. I even say goodbye to the non-Indian woman wearing a sari. And then I float to the parking lot.

I drive home and, for the first time in the evening, say to myself, “Will you look at that, Mandy Greenberg is single and she wants me to email her about, hey hey hey hey, hiking trails in Banff.”

I get home and call Lewberg. Lewberg went to university with Mandy Greenberg. Lewberg does not find her as charming as I do. He also is not a big fan of banter.

Lewberg picks up on the first ring and I say, “Guess who I just saw at the Becca and Ari bar mitzvah.”

And Lewberg says, “Mandy Greenberg.”

And I say, “How the fuck do you know that?”

And Lewberg says, “Who else could it be? You’re not calling me to tell me you talked about sailing with Becca’s cousin.”

“Yeah. Mandy Greenberg. Mandy fucking Greenberg.”

“How did she look?”

“Better than Becca’s cousin.”

 Lewberg says, “Nice.”

And then Lewberg says something which reminds me why men are men and women are women and we aren’t meant to understand each other. How when men hear “Email me about hiking trails,” it never occurs to us that women just want to get information about hiking trails. Lewberg says something which reminds me why I stopped saying to myself “will you look at that.” Lewberg says something which reminds me why it just wasn’t prudent to sing out “hey hey hey hey.” Even if it did make you want to shout.

Lewberg says, “Was she there with her new boyfriend?”

And then I hang up.

The end.