Place #7: Merlin's Rest part 1

I put on my dress. I looked into the mirror and thought, “To tuck away the girls or not to tuck away the girls?”

This particular outing was not only one of my Twelve, but was also a first date. I hate first dates. I never know what to do with myself. On the one hand I do enjoy having a practical reason to put on a dress (I never wear dresses), but on the other hand I can’t help but stand in front of the mirror and say, “You’re trying too hard. This is sort of pointless. It’s nothing but trickery. You’re not actually this cute, you know. You might as well go make-up less and in sweats, see if you can charm your way into his pants like plenty of scrappy, poorly dressed, un-kept men do all the time with us. You’re charming enough… reach for the sweats… I dare you….” But alas! I grabbed my mini cardigan sweater (another article of clothing I never thought I’d own, let alone wear) and put it on over my dress. I pulled on my black tights and strapped on some really old heels.

I chopped off five inches of my hair only three days before. My hair was nice and soft and bouncy now, so that was making me feel pretty good. I dyed it, too, so it was also pleasantly (note sarcasm) spongy and bright, and strongly resembling a discount rack Halloween wig. Regardless, I was still feeling pretty good about the cut (I would just have to wash vigorously and put in extra conditioner to tone down the wig appearance) so I followed through with the ridiculous process of straightening my hair with a round brush layer by layer, and then going through each of those layers again with a curling iron. That doesn’t make sense to you? There’s madness to the natural state of my hair and it has to be tamed in ungodly ways. I had to prove the potential of my hair, I guess, to my date. So I went the full ten yards with the doll-up process. Well, almost. I went easy on the make-up. I ran out of time.

Nerves. Nerves. Anxiety attacks galore! Oh, Jess. Why do you do this to yourself?

I do it because in the long run it’s good for me. I have to face my fears. I have to face the risk of rejection. I have to face the awkwardness. I have to figure out how to re-define and unearth my social graces. I need to figure out how to still love myself even when all of these things fail. I’m often traumatized by the failure of my social awkwardness; it sends me running back into my hermit hole utterly repulsed with my inability to amalgamate with other homo sapiens. I feel abnormal. Handicapped. I envy normal people.

But tonight was going to be different, I told myself. I was wearing a sort-of pretty dress that made the top half of me look awesome (if I do say so myself), my hair was bouncy and cute and curly, and I was feeling relatively confident. I decided to go early so that I could have time to scribble some notes in my blog notebook before my contender arrived.

Parking. I’m not sure if I’m borderline dyslexic or have some sort of reading comprehension handicap, but I never understand parking signs. Hmm. Allow me to elaborate: I’m never 100% sure they’re saying what I think they’re saying, and the anxiety of getting towed seems to override my judgment and ability to translate the very language to which I speak. According to a website Merlin’s Rest was supposed to have accessible side street parking. But when I arrived, every side street was marked with signs that read: “15 minute parking; Mon-Sat; 9am to 9pm”. Okay. So mark me if I’m wrong, Reader, but isn’t this saying you can only park for fifteen minutes between the times of 9am and 9pm, Mondays through Saturdays? So, to get good side street parking you have to park after 9 o’ clock at night. What? This can’t be right, I tell myself, especially because there are cars parked on the street. Have they been here longer than fifteen minutes? Who the hell parks in this part of town for only fifteen minutes? It’s not like it’s next to a quickie mart or something. So. After I drove up and down the street seventy times over-analyzing the damn sign, I finally pulled into a nearby residential parking lot and parked in a spot that had no sign at all. I got out of my car, locked it, and hoped I would still find it there when my evening was through.

My pathetic, old sandal heels clicked and clopped up the sidewalk to Merlin’s. Two men clad in black leather, thick, un-kept facial hair and black boots sat in front of the pub smoking cigarettes that smelled like nothing I had ever smelled. The billowing cloud of burning tobacco wafted toward me, directed by a particular wind, and the scent was foreign but delightful. I almost stopped to ask them what brand they were smoking, but my nerves were rushing me through the wooden doors faster than I had particularly wanted.

First mission: scope for a good spot. A leather, gold push-pinned upholstered booth? A wooden dinner table? For two? Or a bar stool. The restaurant side was my to my left, the bar side to my right. I went right and prompted my clippity clopping feet to head for the bathroom. When I was out of the loo, I was going to opt for a bar stool.