Finally, I abandoned the effort completely. Instead, I poured myself another goblet of wine and settled back for the far more pleasant exercise of speculating on my own upcoming date.
Chapter Eight:
“Love is blind. Lust isn’t!”
-D. GIOVANI
I FOUND MYSELF experiencing mixed feelings as I prepared for my date that evening. On the one hand, I wasn’t real sure about how much fun it would be spending an entire evening with a woman I had never met before. While I had a certain amount of faith in Vic not to stick me with a real loser, it occurred to me that it would be nice to have some vague idea of what she was going to look like. Heck, if she turned out to be a lousy conversationalist, the evening could still turn out okay if she was at least fun to look at.
Despite my nagging concerns, however, there was no denying I felt a certain measure of excitement as the time drew near. As Vic had observed, I didn’t really have a lot of experience with dating. Specifically, this was going to be my first date . . . ever. Now don’t get me wrong, I knew a fair number of women, but I had met all of them in the course of business. Before I met Aahz, I had been living alone with Garkin in a shack in the woods . . . which is not the greatest way to meet females. Since tying on with Aahz, my life had gotten noticeably more exciting, but there was little time for a social life. What off time I did have was usually spent with other members of our crew, and while they were good company for the most part, it left little room for outsiders. Consequently, the idea of spending an entire evening with a strange woman just to be spending time together was a real treat . . . and more than a little scary.