2000-08-14 | 02:51:37

boom. desert storm. boom.

how apropos, one might think, that tonight i watched "three kings" on vhs with my nuclear family--a movie set at the end of what? yes, desert storm.

art imitates life imitates diaryland.

i remember the first time i saw desert storm.

it was during the usual welcome-to-your-first-day-at-the-office tour at my exciting new job at a cool video game company. my boss, who was to become a very special friend of mine, was taking me around, having me glad hand all the other marketing mucky-mucks and ducky-ducks.

there he was. ensconced in a cubicle-shaped, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, wacky shrine of pop culture...alien dolls, cereal boxes, happy meal toys...all culminating in a homemade tribute poster to debbie gibson hanging above his head like a tibetan prayer blanket.

i knew then, this was the man for me.

bald as a jaybird, if that's the term. shaved head, actually, in anticipation of mother nature's oncoming scalping. wacky hawaiian shirts. long-ass shorts. wallet chain, de riguer. he was a year and a half younger than me. an amateur actor/comedian who was making due with a day job crunching numbers until his big break came a'knockin'.

the most smoldering eyes this side of bette davis with a penis.

it was hots at first sight.

my boss failed to introduce me to desert storm personally. i was to find out soon after that she and he had shared a checkered past. they had been best friends a decade prior, and had dated for two weeks before crashing and burning due to the fuel of his fears of intimacy. since and hence, a love/tolerate/hate relationship, intensified by the fact he was good friends with her sister and popped up at all kinds of family get-togethers. and, of course, the work connection. she had helped him get his job in sunnier times.

desert storm was charismatic. desert storm was a gigantic ham. desert storm was fucking damn shit hilarious. desert storm had hard-as-obsidian eyes and compacted steel features. he was handsome, most would agree. of course, his groucho marxist asides diluted his macky daddy quotient a bit. that, and when he busted out his rust-colored corduroy jumpsuit, a la mr. furley of "three's company" fame. yeah, so we're getting into the wacky handsome sector here, you see. robert goulet-ish.

so, crush maneuvers began. we hung out with the same circle of work friends and began to cross paths with more and more regularity.

to borrow a phrase from my dear friend mikey, desert storm flirted like fire. with me. and every other uterus-bearing creature employed in our company. and in the outside world. it was his birthright, by all appearances. a gift he proferred with pleasure and cunning skill. the flirting fed his bulimic ego and those of the girls he fanned with his flames. a win-win, you might say. yes, a win-win.

i know i ate it up when his spotlight was focused on my stage. ate it up with radicchio, baby. oh yes, indeedy.

and yet there was nothing to make me feel that i was drawing any special favor from this mercurial soul. oh no. at least not a first. at least not for months.

eventually, it was to be our humor and interest in writing that brought us together. for awhile, we had a small group who would all meet up for 99-cent taco night on tuesday at a local spot. then we'd catch a $4.50 movie. we were cheap dates. the dinner conversation was the stuff sit-coms wish they were made of. we slayed on a weekly basis. all of us. gertrude stein would have busted a button. dorothy parker would've eaten her heart out, with raddichio, no doubt.

desert storm was king arthur of our taco table, but i did my best to vie for the queen's throne. every once in awhile, i would see a little look in his eye that made me think i might be swinging up to the top of the batting order. but then, just as soon, the look would be gone, and he would be bathing in the light of a lovely goddess to my left or right.

one night, he and i ended up in the same taco-to-movie-transition carpool. it was just the two of us, for some reason. i think he had actually made an effort to be in my car.

we started talking about how we both liked to write short stories. he recalled a short story he had written with a friend, paragraph by paragraph. they would each write a few sentences, and then trade off with the other for their addition. back and forth it went, until they had a complete story between their two somewhat separate efforts.

this sounded too cool for school to me. i suggested that he and i try it. he was down with that. i said, "how about through e-mail?" he was down with that, as well.

the next day i sent off the first three sentences of the story. he batted a few more back. this was gonna be fun. i could tell. of course, even in the first few stanzas of prose, he had already turned it into a burgeoning sex scene. i turned the tides in a more innocent direction in my next entry and flung it back his way. this went on for a couple of weeks. i remember occasionally staying late at work to finish my portion. once i slipped back into the office after a date with luke skywalker to add to the story. and i remember being more excited about the story than about having just spent a couple hours with luke. hmm...a sign perhaps? perhaps. ok, duh, of course, a sign. major sign. major sigh.

one afternoon, four of us snuck out of work for a trip to the local brand-x, dairy queen-type stand. hee hee. we were ditching work like so many cigarette-bumming drop-outs. we parked ourselves on a picnic bench outside. the sparks between desert storm and i could have melted the ice cream.

he suggested, in front of the two other gals in our posse, that he and i should perform our still-forming story at a local coffeehouse's "erotic open reading" night. he said, "there's something very erotic about our writing project."

i blushed as bright the strawberry topping on my banana split. while i didn't think our story was erotic in the least, i did agree that what we were doing was erotic. very! something about the give and take of the words, crafting a piece of "art" together...we weren't exchanging fluids, but we were exchanging creative juices and it was HOT! whew. sorry. ok. i'm back now.

we soon after ended up performing our story in the office of our vacationing vp to the two same girls, one additional peep, and a small dog named spencer. spencer lost interest rapidly, but the other girls were giggling their asses off. we were onto something. i walked out of that office on a dual high...first, for getting laughs from what i had written with him, second, for having written with him.

the catch?

a nineteen-year-old who worked at victoria's secret.

yeah, that would be the girl he was dating at the time. hi!

then comes the company christmas party. luke skywalker, never much for socializing, showed up for the cocktail hour. i, never much for getting anywhere on time, arrived five minutes before the cocktail hour ended. luke and i chatted a bit. he complimented my dress and ducked out. he had dressed up a bit, too. wore shoes. looked cute and all. we had barely started dating, so awkwardness was the theme of the exchange.

desert storm was wearing a vintage tux with a open-to-the-middle-of-his-chest white shirt and a monstrous ring. sammy davis, jr. action. he was all about attention-getting appearances. the nineteen-year-old was on his arm, but i couldn't help noticing he seemed to be turning his warming spotlight on me more than her during the evening's events. i was killing with the funny one-liners and stories, baby. it was beautiful. (ok, now whose pulling the sammy davis, jr. action? mkay?)

time to boogie down on the dance floor. a poor man's peaches and herb serenaded the butt-boppin' crowd. desert storm, being desert storm, soon captured the band's attention as he busted a move. they invited him on-stage. he didn't fail to please. the boy is a showman, through and through. all this only intensified my appreciation of him. as he and victoria's secret gal bid their adieu, he ran back on the dance floor to hug me and my dancing fly girl squad goodbye.

come next morning, the phone rings in the hotel room i was sharing with two other gal pals. he inquires if we would be able to rouse ourselves in time for breakfast en masse.

my girly shawn said, "tell him i liked meeting his girlfriend."

i repeated the message into the phone.

"she's NOT my girlfriend," he sassed.

"ok, life partner...whatever," i responded. i got a laugh on both ends of the line.

off to breakfast, again with the spotlight on me, not young girl. while i enjoyed the attention, i felt sorry for her. felt that she must feel the difference, too, and not be too pleased with it. and what did this say about him? being willing to dis a girl he was dating to favor another? a glaring example of previously warned-of intimacy issues, anyone?!

ok, but did i mention he was paying attention to me?! the guy i had been swooning over for months?! even though my boss had told me horror stories about him and how he treated women? even though i had related those stories to my mom as a pre-emptive strike against my temptation to like such an apparently troubled soul? what was that? eh? look! he smiled at me! see! he got my joke! he thinks i'm funny! and maybe even cute! and maybe even sexy! fuck intuition! fuck common sense! cute boy like me! wheeeeeeeeee!

the nineteen-year-old was a very attractive, sweet girl. ok, so she said "full on" with a bit too much regularity, but she was really trying to fit in with desert storm's breakfast harem. we even invited her to join us for tuesday movie club night.

so, the next two months involved me dating luke skywalker and desert storm dating the minor. heh. i couldn't pass that slam up.

i remember that after i found out how old luke was, i apologized to desert storm one day over the phone during a "what movie is the club seeing this week?" discussion.

"you know, i had thought you were such a cad to date a nineteen-year-old, but i just found out that i'm no better. my guy is only twenty-two."

when i explained the scenario, i felt a weighty silence on the other end of the line. i don't think desert storm knew about luke until then. hmmmmm. hmmmmmmmmmm. hmmmmm. the alpha male had been prodded with troubling information. all was not well at the watering hole.

valentine's week was around the corner. remember the st. valentine's day massacre? well, it wasn't an isolated event.

to be continued...

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