No Take-Backs

April 7, 2004

I wonder why today feels like Friday?

I just reread this story before posting it and I couldn't follow it at all. Maybe you'll have better luck.

I met the charming and delightful Allison for a few drinks last night. And, as usual, I spilled way too many secrets. "Okay," I finally said, "enough blah blah blah about me me me. You owe me a secret or two."

"Maybe after another drink," she said.

"Bar tender! Get this girl another drink."

She told me a few, but I can't repeat them. After all, they're secrets. But here's a funny story that I shared with Allison. Not mine, a waiter told it to me the other night:

This waiter was worried because he'd recently buzzed his hair off, and he wasn't happy with how it came out. "I don't have the face for it. Everyone started asking me where I was from," he said. "It's 'cause of this big-ass nose of mine."

Anyway, that has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that he kept rubbing his head and tugging at the hair that was beginnng to grow back.

He got married a few months ago and he told me how he and his new wife played the game of "Celebrity Hall Pass." They named one person who, if the opportunity arose, they would be allowed to sleep with, guilt free. It was a binding stipulation, however, that this selection was not allowed to change. That is, if the waiter happened to run into Penelope Cruz in the park one day, and she wasn’t his orifinal choice, she was stricktly hands off. (As if it would be up to him, anyway. But that’s the game.)

The waiter's wife went first and said her fantasy fuck was Owen Wilson. Okay, kinda quirky, but he seems popular with the ladies, so no big surprise.

Allison interrupted me to interject her own fantasy guy: "Beck," she said.

“Really?”

“Beck,” she repeated, definitivley. "Or else Jude Law."

"Okay, now you’re making sense. Back to the story..."

The waiter's choice was Claire Danes. Not the number one choice of most guys I know, but I get it. She’s cute.”

"Boring," said Allison.

Anyway, only a few months after the waiter and his wife had had this conversation, the two of them were invited to a dinner party. It was at the apartment of a friend of a friend of the wife's. And guess who's party it was? Yup. Claire Danes.

"Man," the waiter told me, "That was an awkward dinner."

I asked him if Claire Danes was single.

"Yup."

"And? Were you guys flirting at all? I mean it was your one chance. No take backs."

"Nope. No flirting. In fact, I think she hated me."

I asked Allison if that wasn't a funny story and Allison said she was sure that Claire Danes knew the situation.

"You think so?"

"Of course! You just know that the waiter's wife told her friend the story, and then the friend told Claire Danes. Absolutely."

"Hmm. Maybe you're right. I hadn’t thought of that."

"She totally knew."