Jenn

 So Jenn is wandering through the kitchen, looking for God knows what, just banging around the way women are wont to do, God knows why.

 And I'm sitting at the kitchen table, you know, legs crossed but not in a feminine way, elbows outthrust in a manly way, reading the paper, digesting the News Of The Day, preparing it in a way that Jenn can understand when, in my dignified, but not pompous manner, I shall share it with her.  But, you know, I'm a little bit hungry too. What the hell is she doing in there anyway?

 "Where's them vittles woman?"

 Is not what I ask, not in this modern age, what I ask is, "May I help you in the kitchen dear?"  Of course I'm betting that she will refuse my request because of a few incidents in the past where afterwards things were perhaps not tidy enough.  They looked perfectly fine to me, but you know how women are.

 So it's a win-win.  I've expended no energy, and I've booked a little credit on my account.  "I offered to help."  Maybe I can cash it in later.

  

Like that night when I've finished my ninth beer and I just know that the tenth one will put me exactly where I want to be, and as I am raising my finger to the barmaid I feel Jenn tugging at my sleeve.

 "I'd like to go home now." 

 Geez what an inopportune time, my tenth, the keystone beer, the apogee of the evening, is only a wave of the finger away. 

 Now why the hell should she want to go home?  The bar is full.  Her man is brilliantly holding forth with tales of his triumphs, bold bawdy stories with rapier like digs of wit here and there.  Everybody is clearly enthralled.  She has to be bathing in Ken's reflected glory.  Oh how swell to be Ken's girl the other girls must be thinking.

 If there were any, which strangely enough there aren't.  Just four or five guys who appear to have been doing shots for the last hour.  Well surely they will tell their girls later and those girls will then think how lucky it is to be Ken's girl.  And that will be like a reflection of a reflection which everybody knows is twice as strong.  But still she is tugging so it's time to cash in the win-win credit, to shove those big fat table-setting, sauce-stirring, chips to the center of the table.

 "I offered to help with dinner Dear," I calmly refute her request.

 "What?" she replies in a totally unwarranted sharp manner.  Maybe she doesn’t realize how big and fat those chips are.  I will have to make it clearer.

 I put my arm around her and whisper confidentially, "Earlier this evening I offered to help with dinner and you know dear I would have been glad to do it, but you refused me, and so maybe you wouldn't mind if I had one more quick one, and then we could think about going."  Reasonable request.  Reasonable people would have to agree.

 "What?"  A little sharper now.  Who would've thought that little Jenn would have the strength to slam my hand to the bar, just missing, I might add, my quarter-full pint of Mad Hatter's pale India ale?

 "Huh," I reply judiciously, playing for time and noticing that the barmaid is at the far end of the bar pulling off the caps of PBRs for some newly-arrived pool players.  She won't even be in the vicinity for another couple minutes.  So we have time to talk this out, a couple minutes to get things straight.

 "Huh?" she asks, returning the ball to my court.  The barmaid has begun collecting the money for the PBRs.

 “You know what I’m thinking Jenn, is that what we’ll do is, I’ll just have this tenth beer, it’s a nice round even number, don’t you think?  And then we can go straight home.” 

 “That’s your eleventh beer that you’re finishing right now,” she says with such intensity, that I think that maybe she could be right.  But that’s a remote possibility because I always watch my intake carefully, and I’m pretty sure it’s just been nine.

 Well anyway the important thing is that one more beer, tenth or twelfth whatever, is the beer that is necessary to reach the acme of the evening.  If you think about it I’ve already had nine pints at four bucks apiece and that comes to 36 bucks so it would really be foolish not to spend four lousy bucks more to put a shining cap on the investment.  See how well I can do the math, nothing wrong with me. 

 But this argument is a little too complex, a little too numerically oriented for Jenn in the state she’s in to understand.  So I kind of do a shorthand on the whole thing, quick so Jen can see that I have this thing under control, and just agree and go along with the program.  “I’ll just have one more,” I say with impeccable logic.

 Which seems to go right over Jenn’s head, and she even ups the ante as she replies, “Call me a cab.”

 Perhaps I could deflect this whole thing with humor, and you know I have that rapier wit thing going so I might as well use it.

 “You’re a cab.”  Okay a very corny retort, but it’s all in the delivery.  I give her that sly look that says, I know it’s corny, and so that means I’m being ironic, and could a guy who’s drunk, who has had more than the carefully calculated, and well-monitored intake that would necessitate his precipitous departure be capable of this?  Not likely. 

 And I don’t lay it on heavy, not in a mean way that says, don’t you feel foolish, having witnessed the fine display of legerdemain that your man has just displayed, that you suggested, in a rather arch way I might add, that he forego the crowning beer of the night?

 Legerdemain, such a fine word, I really should share it with Jenn, let her know what a fine command of the language her man has, work it cleverly into the conversation.

 “Some legerdemain, huh?” I say.

 Not only is it a fine word, but due to its polysyllabic nature, it would be hard for one who has had too many to pronounce without slurring, which okay, maybe I do a little bit, but if I do I am being ironic.

 But then it occurs to me that I really don’t know what the word means.  I was thinking it meant kind of like fancy footwork, like tap dancing, only with words, clearly agile and not the least bit encumbered in mind or body.  But then after that only slightly slurred pronouncement, a little sour taste hits my tongue, and it occurs to me that it could also mean bullshit.

 “I am not a cab.”  She says, pronouncing each word slowly and precisely.  Has my irony, like all of my finely carefully crafted arguments for one more beer, flown right over her pretty little head? 

 Okay this will take a little time to explain to her.  Meanwhile the barmaid has completed her transaction with the pool players and is now moving in her maddening meandering way to our end of the bar.  Decisively I down the remaining quarter of my Mad Hatter.  While I am explaining my little ironic joke to Jenn I will surely be able to unobtrusively raise my finger to the barmaid, and the whole thing will be a fait accompli.  I will have a full beer, and we couldn’t possibly leave until I finished it.

 “What I meant dear was-“ I commence my explanation, but she quickly cuts me off. 

 “I know what you meant Dear.  I get the lame joke Dear, but maybe your timing is a little off dear.  You know how you sometimes lose track of time dear,” she begins.  Dear me, all those dears, I know where this is going, the unfortunate tuna salad incident.