Elbow Tuck

January 25, 2008

Although I've already mentioned a couple of projects that have been swirling around in a state of primordial ooze for the past year, and, unlike my corporate gigs, I haven't signed any confidentiality agreements, I still think it's best not to go into detail about these projects at the moment. There will be plenty of time for hype as things gel. That being said, I was invited to dinner last night by two brothers, Mauricio and Roger, to discuss my involvement in one of said projects. The invitation was generously extended to Deborah, too, which ensured that dinner talk didn't revolve exclusively around work.

Small talk touched on the usual points, but since Roger told me he'd been reading my blog lately, a lot of "getting to know you questions were unnecessary. After all, he'd already seen Deborah naked.

Roger asked where we lived, and when Deborah said, Bushwick, he replied, "That's where all the hip young people live."

"Yeah, I know," Deborah said, rolling her eyes. "I'm too old for the place."

He thought Deborah was being melodramatic the way a young girl might get about her 25th birthday. "How old are you?" he asked.

"I'm 38."

"What! No way." He turned to Mauricio, "Did you hear that?"

The restaurant lighting was dim. He slid the table's candle toward Deborah and made her repeat herself.

"Were you a goth when you were younger?" he asked.

"Yes," Deborah admitted. Although she wasn't running around in a long leather trench coat, sacrificing chickens, and writing Vampire poetry, her personal style did include the one essential ingredient: No sun.

"I knew it," said Roger. "That's the secret. Everyone I know who was a goth as a kid ages really well. That's what it is. No sun."

Mauricio works with a personal trainer, and he told us that his trainer claims he can always guess a woman's age, no matter how young she appears, by looking at her elbows.

"I thought you were going to say hands," said Deborah.

"No," Mauricio said, pinching his own elbow. "That little piece of skin on the tip of your elbow."

"Is that going to be the next big thing?" I said. "Elbow tucks?"

"I wouldn't be surprised."

Both Mauricio and Roger look young, too, and are good examples of Roger's theory. "It was always all about trying to be as pale as possible," said Roger. But looking young and being young are two different things, and Mauricio, in his late thirties, told us about his eighteen-year-old boyfriend — or ex-boyfriend rather—and complained how difficult it had been trying to keep up with him. “The kid would bounce back from late nights with boundless enthusiasm, while I languished in bed."

"I know what you mean," said Deborah. "Before I met Jamie, I dated quite a few young guys. Nineteen, twenty years old—" She trailed off and pointed to the glass of wine in front of her, her fourth, and said she'd be suffering for it in the morning, maybe even through the weekend.

We discussed the pros and cons of twenty-year age differences, and Maurico told me I'd done well with Deborah. "She's a little more mature; you can maybe relate to her better, but she still has the look of a young girl."

"I manifested her,” I said. “When I was single, I visualized someone youthful and mature."

"It worked," he said.

"I suppose it was kind of selfish. I mean, I probably should've been visualizing world peace."

"Oh," he said. "No one does that."

After dinner, as we walked to the subway, Deborah tried to persuade me to have "just one more." I had to be up early in the morning to move some boxes in a warehouse, and I didn't think it was a good idea. "Don't worry," she said. "I'll help you in the warehouse."

"No you won't."

"I promise."

"You're going to be in bed all day long, and you know it," I said, and talked her into calling it a night. But once we got home, she found a couple of leftover beers from our cancelled New Year’s Eve party in the back of the refrigerator, and asked if I wanted one.

"No," I said. "I'm going to bed. I have to be up early, remember?"

"It's not late," she said. "And I told you I'd help you tomorrow."

"There's no way you're getting up at seven o'clock. I guarantee it."

"Wanna bet?" she said. "How much. Fifty dollars? I'll bet you fifty dollars."

She rummaged around for a scrap of paper and a pen and wrote out an agreement: "I promise to go to the warehouse tomorrow for fifty dollars."

"What? That's no good," I said. "That says I'm paying you fifty dollars to go to the warehouse. But I'm not. I'm betting you fifty dollars that you won't go. If you do, you win, but if you don't, I win."

She rewrote the agreement, signed it, and handed it to me. I added my signature and then went to bed.

Like taking candy from a baby.