The Best First Date I've Had In Years

Yeah, so, we were both pretty drunk when we met. And, yeah, her ex-boyfriend showed up in the middle of it all. Twice.

Still, we took off together to Neil's car to sing and smoke pot and, as Kelli says, "just play with each other".

We both love the Beatles and the Rolling Stones I discovered. The same songs even, sung thousands of times by each of us individually. Yet now, after five or six cocktails and a shot called a "red-headed slut" for me, and six beers and two nights of recent ex-boyfriend drama for her, both of us were relegated to stutter-stepping the lyrics to "Wild Horses" on a drunken weeknight.

We sat, her in the front seat, me in the back, laughing and touching hands, harmonizing and burning bowl after bowl.

Sharing in that loud, blustery, overly-sincere way that some people acquire when as wasted as we were that night. I'm telling you: I felt like Henry Chinaski in some chapter of "Women". Any chapter. Pick one. And that was just the first time we met.

Now, here I am the morning after our first date.

After the twenty-two year old willowy, blue-eyed blonde piano/guitar/saxophone player and teacher came, singing and humming and dancing her way through the 16th Street BART station.

We headed to my house for some changes to the evening's plans and some lovely smoke that Kelli brought over.

Both of us giddy and excited through the pot haze, bouncing around like sugared-up six year olds, we flipped through the Guardian and surfed SFStation, looking for an exciting live gig.

She played my pocket trumpet and tried the wooden flute that my Dad gave me a couple of Christmases ago.

Right then and there, I was ready to profess undying and eternal love for this woman.

That long, long blonde hair, her wistful bedroom eyes, her crooked and coy smile, whiskey-tinged voice and sweet-smelling peaches and cream skin-- jackpot, any way you slice it.

I couldn't help following her every move. And smiling. Smiling like an idiot as she fired my Colt .45 capgun, waving it around in front of her face and hungrily sniffing the whisps of trailing gunpowder smoke.

We laughed and shared a few awkward silences. A few seductive glances too. I carefully filled the gaps with a smattering of new music I figured she hadn't heard yet. She responded with sincere interest and a few more slow groans on my nickel-plated horn.

Then, we were out the door.

She continued to sing and hum; we skipped and ran, pretending the crosswalk countdown was a timer on a giant bomb that was about to explode RIGHT BEHIND US again and again.

We got money, hopped a cab to the Marina, got tickets off of Craigslist for face value from a fellow Burner, then headed out for an aerobic night of bouncing, dancing, jumping, grinding.

Our original plan of dinner and a movie got scrapped in favor of the live spectacle of Ozomotli, who happened to be filming their upcoming DVD that night at the Fillmore.

We walked right in, got our handstamps, climbed the stairs, checked out the merchandise and dancefloor, then headed upstairs to the lounge.

Kelli bought us both drinks and we chilled for a while. We talked more and more about music and I tried to warn her that she might want to take her time with the double shot of Crown Royal in front of her.

She slammed it. Of course.

Both of us spent the next five minutes or so in a mildly frantic state: her trying to keep the Crown down and me running back and forth, bringing her tiny paper cups of water from the free jug across the room.

But then, just like that, it was all good again. We were feeling our drinks, our jokes were getting looser, more crude and just plain sillier. Her heightened sexual energy toward me was continuing to grow, warming my already flushed face and every other part of my body.

We danced and flirted and kissed with no regard for anyone or anything at all.

We drank beers, and smelled and touched each others' bodies, blowing cool air down each others' backs and necks, grabbing each other and laughing and dancing on. I leaned in again and again, blowing cool beery breathe between her lovely breasts, down the front of her wifebeater, as she giggled and cooed in my ear.

Both of us were talking and smiling our drunken asses off. Neither one able to hear the words coming from the other's mouth over the wailing horns and flashing lights of the Ozomotli show. It just didn't matter. We knew what we were saying and doing to each other.

Right then and there, amid the trumpet and conga solos, I watched her and said to myself, "I could love this woman... if I ever get the chance." And just then, she looked playfully over her shoulder, her hips undulating in sexual rhythms, and gave me the sign to lean in and kiss her. And I did.

And if that were it-- if that was the whole date-- it would already have been legendary in my narrow library of dating experiences. But that wasn't it. We went back to my house to kill some time before her friend could come get her. We layed in my bed and talked and kissed some more.

All the elements were there; both of our defenses already worn down a little. It could have been another cheap and easy transaction; great, yet forgettable. It could have been simple and crude. But it wasn't. I wouldn't let it be. Instead it was sincere and silly, hot and delicate. Fragile and excitingly new.

And it went on and on like that for a while, kinda like the best LSD I'd ever eaten, unfolding like a blossom, dripping with the sweetest scent I've ever smelled. The drooping fleshy petals bleeding psychedelic, pulsing colors up the curving walls of my room and across my bed, where we lay naked together, laughing and touching.

With Kelli right there next to me, I was already thinking about when I would get to see her again.