Alec Dorman #3581

Breckin Moore had taken me to a bar on the "downtown" square of our rinky dink college town that had an upstairs that functioned as a concert venue. Local talent, mostly crap, would play thinking they were going somewhere in the music business, which was, often unfortunately, their major.

"Yeah, I'm a RIM major, how did you know that?!"

They smoke packs at a time and borrow money to follow their dreams as an "artist." They wear vintage western snap button shirts and jeans holier than swiss Jesus. They wear old beat up sneakers and perfect the hairstyle that says "I spent an hour this morning making sure you'd know I don't care about my hair." Then of course there are others that really don't care about their hair. Or basic hygiene. At the bar upstairs in said two-story venue bar they wait for the show to start and drink PBR while chain smoking and nodding to whatever craptastic band is playing over the speakers.

Girls in short skirts and leggings wander and laugh aimlessly while seeming to bump into each other on purpose. They wear too much eye make up. Smokey eyes, crazy eye-liner eyes, smeared-because-I'm-already-drunk eyes.

I sat at the bar with Breckin and various PBR drinking RIM majors, I assume. I wore black and made sarcastic-eyes at everyone. Only for a split second though, because I was covering the fact that I was really trying to find people I knew. I didn't live in that city any more. But the waiting game of starting my independent life kept drawing be back to that place where everyone was waiting. Though most of them seemed to be screwing things up while they did so. Maybe I thought I was immune.

"College kids are stupid," my reluctant college freshman brother used to say.

"Guess what, you are one," I would counter.

The bar was starting to buzz with the ensuing show as three boys in vests and loose ties started their sound check. How sweet. They wanted to look mainstream. The bar was full, there were no more stools, and I stood up at my seat to check the text message that vibrated in my back pocket. I flipped it on and illuminated my face with blue smokey light.

Breckin was now completely ignoring me. Some girls near the door to downstairs were discussing something very funny with him and flailing about, lightly brushing his shoulder or arm with their spirit fingers.

"What's so interesting?" I looked up from my phone to see a guy wearing a snap button western shirt in front of me. His hair was shaggy and he had this clueless look about him even though I knew he wasn't. I had noticed him flitting from crowd to crowd around the room. He obviously knew a lot of people.

"Um. My phone." I say this deadpan, because I am actually irritated that he isn't more attractive. At a distance the black rimmed glasses had looked sexy in a nerdy, I'm-a-hipster kind of way. Now they looked like they were trying to be hipster glasses.

"Well duh!" He was unfazed. "You must have a text-ual relationship." I'd never heard of that before. And I told him so.

"Huh. I've never heard of that before. But I guess I do. I'm actually getting pretty fast with this phone texting kind of thing." I had just discovered T9-word.

I glanced over at Breckin, still basking in blonde attention. I had wanted to know where he was so he wouldn't notice what I knew would happen next.

Hipster-would-be wiped his brow.

"I'm Alec. It's nice to meet you. Would you by any chance like to get to know me... textually?"

I don't know how anyone ever got past a line like that. But the truth is that I've always been a sucker for puns.

In high school, I had a Biology teacher who used to tell a bad joke at least every other day. And a Murray Middle I used some of them to teach the "pun" as figurative language:

"You guys hear about the shootout in the Gap the other day? There were many casual-tees."

I considered it the high point of the unit.

Alec started texting me the next day and didn't stop for at least three weeks. I found out he was actually twenty-nine, divorced, and working at a fancy furniture store for eccentric rich people. I pictured him sweating, wearing a snap button vintage western shirt, and trying to force a zebra stripe mohair couch up a flight of stairs.

But that was really all there was to Alec Dorman for me. Once someone tells you they were married before, you don't really think about driving to East Nashville to have a cuddle party with them. Its not fun to cuddle a big ball of debt, repressed emotional baggage, and unfortunate fashion decisions. You draw back, extend one hand in warning, and warily say, "Uh, that's okay. I really can't right now." When the truth is they might have less emotional baggage than you.