As I wrote yesterday, I spent several days in the LA area with some friends from St. Louis, playing poker at the Commerce Casino. But I left out part of the story, and although this sounds like an old Penthouse Forum letter, I swear it’s true, though the names have been changed.
On the flight out, one of the guys — let’s call him Jack, a good-looking guy in his thirties — sat in the front row of the plane, and started flirting with one of the flight attendants (pseudonym: Jenny, an attractive blonde around the same age). At some point, Jenny gave Jack her cell phone number, said she had a 24-hour layover in LA, and invited him to meet her at the hotel the crew always stays in near the airport. All of this was confirmed by another friend we’ll call Andy, who was sitting next to Jack in the bulkhead seats.
Being an unmarried human male, Jack eagerly accepted Jenny’s invitation. When we landed, he took the ride to Commerce with us, but the hotel rooms weren’t ready yet, and he really wanted to take a shower before going to meet her. He texted her, and she suggested he shower in her room. This is what’s known as a Guarantee Of Future Excitement. But Jack didn’t want to show up there unkempt, so he sweet-talked the woman at the front desk of the hotel into letting him in to the first room that was ready (this guy is good). A half-hour later, he was showered, shaved, dressed, and ready to go.
He took an $80 cab ride back to Jenny’s airport hotel while the three of us still at Commerce were sure we wouldn’t see Jack until the next day, when her layover (ahem!) ended. To our surprise, he re-appeared about five hours later. He filled us in on the details — that I won’t share with you — and explained that after fun-time was over, he realized she was a little crazy (his words), so he had no interest in hanging around. Instead, he cabbed it back to Commerce (another $80 cab ride).
When I told my wife this story, she said it sounded like I was jealous. I admitted that I was, but not in the way she meant it. I explained that, since we’ve been married 34 years, I would never think of even trying such a thing. The sad thing is that there was no point in my life, even as a young single guy, when I was that smooth with any woman. Ever. It’s not like those days are long behind me, it’s that they never existed in the first place!
So what was I was jealous of? After returning to Commerce, Jack sat down in a Pot Limit Omaha game and proceeded to win $5,000 in about three hours. Does this man know how to start a road trip?
P.S. Fortunately for Jack, Jenny was not working the return flight we took home.