Free Blackouts and Breakdowns by Mark Brennan Rosenberg

may be the one!”
    The week passed and Michael called me and told me that James wanted to meet me at a bar on Bleeker Street called Alibi. I have never heard of such a place but went there in hopes I was meeting my future baby’s daddy. I was really looking forward to this blind date. I had never been on a blind date before and thought that it may be a good way to at least hook up. Tom and Michael were two of my best friends so surely they would know who a good match for me would be. Perhaps this James fellow was the one.
    I got to Alibi a few moments early and stood outside of the bar and smoked two cigarettes and read the latest Soap Opera Digest. It is a ritual of mine every Wednesday to pick up the new Digest after work and read it cover to cover. It’s Mark time. Time for me to relax and catch up with the week’s events. I hoped that James liked soaps. If not, he would have to be dumped immediately. Suddenly I remembered a few years earlier when my first boyfriend told me that I needed to stop watching my shows because it was ruining our relationship. I told him that I had watched my stories twenty years before he came along and that I would be watching them for the next twenty so he needed to get used to it. Clearly, that didn’t work, as I was now going on a blind date so obviously I was going to have to take a new approach to the dating scene. I glanced down at my watch and saw that it was almost time for James to meet me, so I ducked into the bar and sat on a bar stool. I waited for a few more minutes until the person I assumed was James came into the bar. A twenty-something with a red Jew-Fro, a beer belly and a touch of the Downs sashayed his way into the bar, looking disheveled and out of breath.
    “You Mark?” James asked me as he threw the twenty bags he had carried into the bar down onto the floor.
    Could I fake my own death and get out of this blind date or did I have to move forward with this?
    “Maybe,” I replied.
    “Good,” James said as he stuck his hand out to meet mine. I shook his hand and could feel the sweat dripping from it. What in the hell were Tom and Michael thinking setting me up with this guy? I know it had been a slow summer, but surely they thought I had better taste than this. Having remembered to never judge a book by its cover, I decided to have a few drinks with him. If nothing else, I could get a good buzz and possibly a nice conversation out of it. The bartender walked over to greet us.
    “Hi. Can I get you a –.”
    “Cosmopolitan,” I said, cutting her off.
    “Hmmm,” James said. “Do you have cran-apple juice?”
    I looked at him as if he had just asked for a Big Mac at a steakhouse.
    “Excuse me?” the bartender said.
    “Do you have cran-apple juice?” James asked again.
    “Ummm…no,” the bartender said. “We have cranberry juice if you’d like that.”
    James threw his hands up in the air in disgust.
    “What are you four years old? Who the hell even drinks cran-apple juice? Why don’t you just get a drink drink?” I asked.
    “I don’t drink,” he replied. Well, that was Strike One as far as I was concerned. I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t drink. Actually, it was more like Strike Three if I counted his offensive looks and the awful way he was treating the bartender. “I’ll just have water.”
    The bartender walked away and made my Cosmo and got James his water. I decided to move forward and try to be nice to the awful man that sat before me. Perhaps I had not gotten laid in six months because of my own terrible attitude. Maybe if I tried being nice to this monster, it would pay off for me in the long run.
    “So, what do you do?” I asked.
    James sighed, “I work in IT and I hate it. Everyone there is so obnoxious. I don’t know how I deal with it on a daily basis. They are always complaining about everything and I am the only one there with a personality.”
    “ Really? ” I asked in surprise.
    “Yes,” James replied. “What I