When Hari met Kiri Pt 3

Call me Ishmael. Just don’t expect me to respond because that’s not my name. After successfully getting the seat covers on, MDW invited me up to her apartment for a visit where she poured some champagne and added a strawberry. This really impressed the shit out of me as I’d never it seen done before (it also made me think that Mrs ET may have had genuine cause for concern, as MDW didn’t know I would be pinch hitting for ET, so why did she have this ready to go?).

Whatever her expectations were, we spent a pleasant afternoon watching TV and getting drunk, well at least one of us spent the arvo getting drunk, she spent it hanging on my every word with rapt attention. Or so I thought at the time, it was only some years later that I overheard her describing the afternoon to a friend at a BBQ, and came to understand that the intense gaze was simply her trying to understand my accent.

So it was, with an ill founded sense of conquest, that I left her company to wobble the five miles home on my bike. The next day I ruminated on the situation in the clear light of day and with a clear but pounding head, and came to the conclusion that I would continue my quest for a Marilyn Monroe look-alike and leave the short stout Asian women for those who had set that as their goal.

As fate would have it, about a week later a friend of mine was interested in a particular girl and he called me to go out on a double date with them to see Loudain Wainwright III and Leon Redbone. He was pretty shy and he needed me along because I knew her (she was the friend of a girl I used to date). It was pretty short notice and I had no-one to go with, having broken up with her alcoholic loser friend a few weeks earlier. But I did want to see those guys, so I called MDW and asked if she would be interested in going. She said sure, why not?

We arranged to meet my friend and his date at the venue in San Francisco. Loudain Wainwright was one of the best acts I’ve ever seen, and MDW and I ended up having a pretty good time, except for the bit where we were waiting to meet my friend on Market Street in the Castro and I couldn’t understand why all the guys were looking at me instead of MDW.

This time when I thought about the date the next day (technically this one was a date), I realised that she seemed pretty nice and had a lot to offer. Too bad I had to leave for Tahoe to work on the construction of a house two days later.