The Goodbye Guy

I'm going to visit my family next week and I decided that it would be nice to go bar hopping in San Francisco. It's always fun to be the 'out of towner' because telling the locals that their weather is a million times better than Chicago summer weather is a great way to start a conversation. I told my sister about it and she suggested that I take her around, along with my twenty two year old cousin. Thinking that it would be a fun idea, I quickly agreed. But then I remembered that things never go very smoothly when I take a straight girl to a gay bar.

Five years ago, my friend Rachel begged me to take her to a popular gay bar in Houston called South Beach. It was her first time at a gay bar and she was just itching to cut a rug with a bunch of gay boys who she'd never have a chance with. Five long island iced teas later, I'm in some dude's Ford F-150 and naked as Michaelangelo's David. I woke up the next morning missing my shirt, my underwear, and my left shoe. Rachel left forty two angry voicemails, wondering what happened.

She had to get a ride home from one of our acquaintances who happened to be out and about that evening. Needless to say, it took a long time for me to get back on Rachel's good side.

Three years later, the same thing happened to me. This time it was a girl named Jenny, a bar called Roscoes, six Jagerbombs, and a Toyota Echo as the getaway hookup vehicle. I still woke up with less clothing than I started out with, but Jenny doesn't talk to me anymore.

We all gain wisdom as we age, and I'd like to think that I can now go out with straight girls and not play into the stereotype of gay men leaving their hags whenever they meet a halfway decent man who promises him a night full of passionate monkey sex that he probably won't remember the next morning because he drank too much Jagermeister.

I'm much wiser now. I drink vodka.