A beautiful night

A beautiful night
By Sean Nelson

I wanted to take Janelle to the under 21 club that night. But again and
again, I'd called her cell phone, the only phone and had gotten no
answer. Eventually, I decided to leave and go to the club alone. This
was a rather risky prospect for me because I'd found that more than
half the time when I went out to clubs alone, no girls wanted to dance
with me. Naturally, this was a waste of money and self esteem.

But I had very little to do that Friday night and I reckoned it didn't
matter much.

Around 7:30, I drove up to the club in my battered old brown Chrysler.
I walked up to the club door but, much to my chagrin, saw that the
place was empty. But the sign on the door said open so I strolled
in.

Strangely, the lights were off and nobody was there. I was just leaving
when two teen guys, a mexican and a white gangster, came walking
in.

"What's going on?", one of them asked me.

"I don't know. It's empty," I said. I was pretty sure from their
expressions that they were trying to go to the club, too.

We all walked back in. Don't ask me why. It was dumb but innocent
enough. We just wanted to confirm that the club was really empty and no
employees were there. I called out, "Is anybody there?" No answer. We
were about to walk out when suddenly the alarm went off.

"Shit," we all thought simultaneously.

I started to stroll back to my car to drive off but one of the teen
guys said, "I'm gonna wait for the cops."

"Okay. I'll wait, too. We didn't do anything wrong. We can't get in
trouble," I said.

And so for about ten minutes, we sat outside this club chatting. Though
we had nothing in common, we talked like friends. There may not be
honor among crimminals but there sure is camraderie. The alarm was
blaring but cars were driving by and nobody seemed to care. I began to
think the cops weren't coming.

The Mexican kid said, "Shit, I'm not waiting here till they come. It's
too cold."

And so we all started to walk off. We'd gotten about a block when we
saw two cop cars, sirens blaring, come speeding up the street. We
walked back to the club and I waved a cop car down as it pulled up to
the club. A cop got out, looking at us inquisitively.

"We're the ones who set off the alarm," I told him. "The sign says open
and the door was unlocked. We just walked in and the alarm went off." I
said all this with a calm leadership. I was raised in an intellectual,
wealthy family and I'd learned how to present myself.

The was a tall white man with short black hair. He was just slightly
chubby. He looked us over smugly, stopping to glare contemptuosly at
me, because I was wearing a leather jacket and a black safari hat with
two metal spikes coming out the front. He was a typical pig if you ask
me.

"Come over here", he said and he led us over to the club. He asked for
all of our IDs. I was the only one who had one.

Another cop got out of the car and for a few minutes they sat around
asking us rude questions like "Did you pry the door?", the black haired
cop holding my ID the whole time.

Eventually, the cops decided to let us go, believing our story. Before
they let us go, they went in and found out when the club opened. It
turned out that the club didn't open until 8 pm, in about fifteen
minutes.

"You could go over and get a Subway Sandwich and wait for the club to
open," a young, especially rude cop said.

"That's not a bad idea," I said.

"I was just joking. You don't have to," the cop said
contemptuosly.

I obeyed his orders, though, and went over and got a six inch
vegetarian sandwich. I saw a pretty blond girl in Subway.

Shyly, I introduced myself. She was a nice girl and she let me
introduce myself and sit down across the table from her.

It turned out that she was a college student in Montana. She'd come
back to little Klamath Falls, OR to visit her parents. She gave me her
cell phone number but she was leaving in just a couple days.

After I got done eating, I went over to the club, which was empty as
hell. I played the Pacman arcade game and waited for some girls to
come.

The first girl I saw was a girl who'd been infatuated with me for a
brief while about two years before this story. She was still in high
school where I was in college now.

I went up and said, "Hey."

"Hey Sean."

"How's it been going?"

"Okay, I guess." I was noticing how much her breasts had grown. "How
about you?"

"Great, great. I've been going to college and I got a four point g.p.a.
last term. And then I've been doing some fiction writing." She seemed
very uninterested in all this.

"My son barfed on my shirt before I left so I had to clean it up. It
makes it more see through than it already is," she said. She was pretty
in a slutty way with huge tits and a fat ass.

"You have a son?"

"Yeah, I was pregnant all last year. Did you think I'd just gotten
fat?" I looked down at her belly, which was still a little bit chubby.
I was pretty jealous that another guy had gotten her pregnant. I'd
never gotten a girl pregnant. Not that I'd want to marry this girl or
anything. She was immature and really crass. But that didn't matter
because I was chasing ass. Besides, we weren't really connecting in any
meaningful way but she had this attitude like she wanted me to fuck
her.

"I don't know. I guess I didn't see you that much."

She started to walk off and I was willing to let her. But she turned
around and said, "Come on, let's go play pool."

"I really suck at it but okay," I said.

And so we played some pool, a game I'm no good at. She started out
kicking my ass. Pretty soon I'd come back and was way ahead. I only had
to knock the eight ball in and she had four or five balls left. All the
while, I was looking for girls but none came in.

And then I was having trouble hitting the eight ball in. Who knows why?
I didn't care that much.

And then somebody tapped me on the shoulder. It was Janelle, looking
beautiful and smiling at me.

"Hey, how's it going?," I said.

"Good, how are you?," she said in a friendly way.

"Okay. Do you wanna hang out here tonight?," I said.

"No, I can't," she said.

"Why not?," I said.

"I'm 24. This is an under 21 club," she said.

"I'm sure they wouldn't care."

"I don't wanna hang out here," she insisted.

"Okay. Do you mind if I finish this game?," I asked.

"No, go ahead."

And so I played the rest of the pool game, which I lost. Then,
gratefully, I
walked out with Janelle. The night had just taken a distinct turn for
the better. Janelle wouldn't do anything physical but I didn't care. It
was great to be around her. A beautiful girl just has this lush aura
about her. Girls are meccas unto themselves.

"How'd you find me?", I asked.

"I called your house and your mom told me you were here. She said you'd
rather spend the night with me than at the club. Your mom's really
honest," she informed with a smirk that hinted that she had some
damaging secret.

"Did you have a little heart to heart with her?," I asked in a purely
casual way.

"Yeah. Hey, we've gotta talk." My heart sank in my stomach at these
words. Usually, when a girl wanted to have a serious discussion with
me, it was to reject me or tell me we were only friends.

"Okay."

"Let's go somewhere." We both got in her car and then drove to a truck
stop outside of town.

We both had tea and nothing else at the truck stop.

We chatted for a couple minutes and then, jokingly, I said, "Okay,
let's get down to business."

"Yeah," she said. "Okay, you like me, don't you? I know you like me.
Your mom told me you like me." I'd never told my mom anything about
Janelle but since I liked her, I didn't say anything.

Then came the bombshell. "Is it true that you're a virgin and you've
never had a girlfriend?" My mom had told her things that only a mom
would know. Now, don't get the wrong impression. I'd had lots of
romantic interludes but a girlfriend is something else.

"Yeah," I said bluntly.

"Okay. I usually just don't hang around with guys because they're not
content just to be friends but they don't want to marry me. You know I
have a kid so that's out of the way. I gave you a chance because you've
already shown two things that I really want in a man. You asked me out
after you'd known me for a year, something a guy's never done before.
That shows perseverance. And you gave me flowers, which was all that
I'd ever wanted. You hadn't even done anything wrong but you gave me
flowers." I was a bit taken aback. This wasn't the carefully worded
rejection speech I'd been expecting.

"I can do that. I can marry you but...I want a kid." I got the words
out.

"I want ten," she said with a smile. I smiled back. This was exactly
what I wanted to hear. "And I want a man who has a personal
relationship with Jesus." I thought, I'm happy to have a personal
relationship with Jesus if I can have a personal relationship with
you.

But I said, "I can do that. I'll start praying."

"I could teach you about Jesus but that's not biblical. Women aren't
supposed to teach men about god."

"It's okay," I said. "I can do this." You see, Janelle was a recovering
drug addict and former stripper who needed god in her life. She needed
conservative values and something to believe in and I was willing to
play along.

"This is such a trip," she said.

"Yeah, this is awesome. Here, give me a hug." And we hugged each other
closely for a moment and everything was all right.

And then I paid the bill and left a tip before we drove off.

The relationship fell apart within days.