lovebirds

02/03/11.  trolley stop, dayton.  sitting at the slightly chilly door-end of the bar, a couple feet away from the ID-checker on his stool.  reddish scruff, otherwise nondescript, often up and about tending to other self-appointed duties like reporting on the condition of the fire in the pit on the patio.  he faces the door armed only with his cell phone.  I'm facing the other way, angled down the bar and slightly away from it toward the stage off to the right.  there's often music at the trolley, open mic on a thursday like this.  open mic is a brilliant ploy, really, because the tables next to the stage are crowded with friends of the performers -- the otherwise sparse patrons studiously ignore the stage.  there's a regular who gets to strum his guitar in exchange for running the sound system...and tonight he commits the unforgiveable (and inexplicable) sin of singing johnny cash with hipster irony.  seriously?  I could make an argument for warranted snark re:  folsom prison -- johnny's brief spell in a cell (for what, painkillers?) took on a stunt-like aspect when he started selling the experience.  but not 'walk the line,' complete with a stupid eyebrow pinch for every song he ripped off.  alternating with him was a younger kid who sat down to do his acoustic number and who sang everything in a SNL-vintage adam sandler voice.  without apparent irony.

two stools down from me:  a first date.  she epitomizes puerto rican -- mayan-jet hair but more frizzy than silky and skin a sort of tawny ash that trends toward a european shade of mestizo.  attitude-jutting jaw, squat upturned nose, deepset blank eyes.  sleek grey knit tube over lacy fishnets, and a black puffy jacket with fake mink collar.  he looks like a west side story extra.  crinkly white shirt billows off his bony frame over more snugly fitting jeans -- dancing clothes.  indistinctly jittery, as if he might leap off the stool and break into a finger-pointing getdown at any moment.  skinny-hungry lupine face to match.  toothy.  wide earnest-intense eyes that narrate a completely separate conversation.  beard charcoaled on his olive (kalamata undertones) skin, with pencil sharpness but not so narrow.  it straps down an impressive forest of hair the stands somewhere between kramer and ghostbusting egon.

what I notice first is the lean.  though he's not much taller than she is, his torso is inclined at a good 30 degrees, such that his face looms well into her airspace.  she's open-jacknifed away at a corresponding angle, so much so that her purchase on the stool looks tenuous.  he's also inched them down the bar in this fashion, so that his budweiser is now an afterthought behind his shoulder and hers is parked next to his elbow.  I'm assuming that she's likewise shrinking from his enthusiastic narration of nursing-school struggles, heroically affirmed in motivational posterspeak:  "I never give up on my goals, you know?"  so when he asks for directions to the restroom (I imagine her eyes are drawn like mine to the constantly flashing scoreboard marquee indicating in rainbow pixels:  'bathrooms upstairs'), I half expect her to bolt.  but then a funny thing happens.  after securing a cup of water and retrieving her beer, she spends half a minute inspecting her reflection in the mirror behind the bar.  primps her lips.  smooths her skirt.  reactivates the demurring pose when she sees his urban sneakers bouncing down the stairs.  and when he climbs back onto the stool, he immediately claps a hand to her thigh and compliments her fishnets.  she deflects, but warmly.  he tugs at his shirt to prompt a similar 'do you like this?  I like it' exchange about his sartorial taste...and the conversation veers sharply into how they dressed for the date, not just a general discussion of style.  and while I wandered off to different vistas in the midst of this choreographed-to-steer-the-conversation-ever-toward-me, softer words were apparently exchanged ...when I turned back they were tangled up in an awkward and incongruously fierce make-out session.  the ice thus broken, his disregard for personal space is more comfortably accommodated, and smiles all around that his scraggly plume has thus won validation -- he reveals that he considered taking it higher, but is glad to know that it's sufficiently stacked.  though it seems time for your-place-or-mine negotiations, they slink off to a darker corner behind the jukebox instead.