When I was 16, Valentine’s Day was my least favorite holiday because it only reminded me of my inability to interest girls.
The reason was no mystery — you can’t get a girlfriend if you’re incapable of talking to a female. And if a girl spoke to me or even looked in my eyes, my mind froze up. I was struck dumb.
During one not-so-cold Chicago winter, I thought a found a solution, a dating shortcut — booze.
I discovered the merits of this valuable resource quite by accident one Christmas, when Jewel Foods, where I was a bag boy, hosted its Christmas party at a local restaurant. We each paid $10 for the dinner, and there was a cash bar, where the produce manager (PM) was happy to get me as many highballs as I wanted, as long as I paid for his drinks, too.
Although I can’t recall if that was the first time I was drunk, I do believe it’s the first time I experienced the aphrodisiacal effects of liquor. The PM and I sat side by side at our rectangular table, and the full-time deli clerk was sitting across from us.
She was a mature lady, between 20 and 30 years older than me, whom I thought was attractive that evening — an observation I attributed to her wearing a dress instead of the pink Jewel smock with white apron tied in front.
After one highball, I found her stunning, and after two, irresistible. It took a third highball to enable me to discern the implicit “I dare you” gleam in her eye, and the fourth to get me off my chair to take the empty one next to her.
That she did not leave immediately, I ascribe to her having a highball or two herself, and to being either desperately lonely or exceedingly polite. But two things were permanently imprinted onto memory cells from that moment of close proximity to a warm breathing female.
The first was the image of her brightly flowered and flowing red and white dress with the plunging neckline, and the second was that I was nearly overcome from what was apparently liberal drenching of Jean Nate cologne on her neck, shoulders and ears.
Yet, the power of Seagram’s 7, diluted in Canfield’s ginger ale and ice, was such that it converted my accustomed repulsion to harsh perfumes worn by my grandmother and aunts to amorous adoration. Soon, in my swoon, I was flirting with my princess of the delicatessen — complimenting her clothes, her countenance and her helmeted hair. Whispering sweet nothings into her ear.
At least, that’s what I was told I was doing by buddy Joe the next morning, as I lay head-achy, guilt-wracked and humiliated in my bed, while he gleefully recounted the ghastly details.
Though I would never have countenanced hara-kiri, quitting my job at Jewel was a very real option. But the headache finally went away, and by the time Monday rolled around, I thought I could put in my four hours stocking shelves as long as I avoided the deli aisle.
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The biggest shock was that no one cared. Except for another stock boy saying, “I heard you had a real good time,” nobody else said a word. This was a great relief.
But by the time my shift was ending, I felt curious, or maybe even a little slighted, so I purposely exited the door by way of the deli aisle.
There she was in her pink smock, her white apron, her paper hat, scooping potato salad from the supply bin to the serving tray. I kept walking, but I stared till she looked up.
She shot a look my way for perhaps a second, then back to the potato salad. No smile. No blush. No frown. An onlooker would have said she did not know who I was.
This was an important revelation to me, the miracle of alcohol being that you become someone else. It gives you a mask and a costume, with which you can cross thresholds that your other self would not dream of traversing.
The downside, of course, is that you lose a heck of a lot more than your identity.
I share this Valentine’s Day reflection on the assumption that there are readers who have had similarly humiliating experiences. Tell me, please, that I’m not the only one.
David McGrath, a former resident of Evergreen Park and Oak Forest, is an emeritus professor of English at the College of DuPage. [email protected]