Woman, Are You Trying To Get Me Killed?

I've written before about my love for waitresses. They are generally young and attractive and they bring food. That's like three-forths of my perfect woman. This evening, my unrequited love for waitresses nearly got me in trouble.

I met up with the Spousal Unit and the Cub and a couple that she knew along with their year old twins at a sportsbar near our house. They had already ordered before I arrived and I was looking at the menu trying to figure out what I wanted.

The waitress asked me, "Do you work downtown?"

I felt the others' eyes on me (ok, maybe not the babies'), particularly the SU.

"Uh...Yeah."

"You look familiar. I thought I knew you from somewhere."

I guess this is the part of the story where I tell you she was in her early 20's, very attractive, and had a nose ring, which is only surpassed by the tongue piercing as the universal sign for sexual freakiness. In other words, she was the last person on Earth that I wanted to recognize me when I was out with my wife.

She left with my order. I explained to the others that maybe she had seen me walking downtown or that she recognized me from my magazine column. Or maybe from that time I guest-hosted Sabado Gigante on Univision.

I didn't know her. Or did I? She started to seem familiar but maybe that was just my mind playing tricks on me. One thing for sure though, it wasn't from this place. I had only been to this place twice before and the first time she was young enough to have been a brownie scout.

I changed the conversation.

She returned and approached me again.

"You go to Mojo's, right?"

Mojo's is a piano bar about two blocks from the office building where I work. Before you start making assumptions, I don't hang out at piano bars. In fact, I think that if Dante had ever been to a piano bar, he would have added another circle in Hell. I had been there three times. The night it opened, (incidently this was the time I was "recognized" from doing stand-up), the night when we celebrated a bunch of people passing the bar exam, and one pre-Cub night when a group of people went bar hopping. In short, it's not like I was a regular.

Anyway, I replied that I had been there, mentioning that I was there opening night and explaining that the owner was a client of the law firm, more for the SU's benefit than hers. But I now remembered her.

The question in my mind was what did I say to her?

I admit being a flirt, although in my defense my entry in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says "Mostly harmless." It was entirely likely that I may have flirted, told a joke or two, or otherwise applied my considerable charm. In any event, this situtation was getting uncomfortable. Why would she push this issue when I'm clearly out with my wife and literally was bouncing my daughter on my lap?

I like my "other" women to be discreet.

She then said, "I remember that you like your Martinis with lots of olives."

Ok, this was the most dangerous comment she made because it was completely wrong: 1) I'm not much of a drinker, 2) in the rare occasion that I do drink I don't drink martinis and 3) everyone knows that martinis are the "Official Drink of Men who Cheat on their Wives."

So the SU now suspects that I have this secret martini-drinking life that I'm living behind her back. I'm trying to communicate with this waitress through the Force, yelling in my mind to "Shut up before you cost me half of my material possessions!" The SU would take the XBox 360 in the divorce out of spite alone.

Plus, she was unpredictable so far, and I know how I can get. I feared she would turn to the SU and say:

"He told me all about your tour of duty in Iraq. I just want you to know that that I appreciate what the troops are doing over there."

So anyway, if anyone sees me with visible bruises, you'll know why.