This is the short condensed just add water version. Reality beats fiction anytime schmuck!

where you left off (previously on the life of ‘Howie’)

It was on January 9th…my little rave up as the DIY Sensei in the village voice that was a Wednesday

the next night was January 10th…(fade in…a dark street on the South Side of Williamsburg…)

i am walking over to (the business partner) Sid B’s other club at 285 Kent (S 3rd) to see a show that apparently has been over promoted…NYU kids are out of school and so are all the college students in fact…Sid has turned the club over to (soldier) Rick who is a great guy but somehow maybe Sidney doesn’t trust him – a Tweet just went out that nine hundred people are lined up outside the club and the doors are still closed, Sid is stuck at home with a sick eighteen month old boy and a ‘partner’ who needs some downtime on her own…i am thinking ‘ah, the kid just left…a new year, i had fifteen minutes of fame yesterday…i am going to chill and just enjoy a show…’ just as i approach, there is a line i have never seen this before and Sid calls telling me ‘i am working’ even though this has never happened before…i get in and see that Rick has the staff and everything under control…he is quite warm and friendly in a sincere way in contrast to Sidney’s tough get down to business edginess:

say, where’s your kid?  I heard she was coming down tonight…this is the kind of show she would enjoy!

Oh no, she just went back to college you know California man…

Oh…so where’s that Girlfriend of yours…the one you brought to Sid’s kid’s first birthday party?

You mean, G?  Oh…we sort of broke up…I mean we are still friends but she wants to play house!
I need some space man…I am finally on my own…I just went to chill out, enjoy the show…I’m a bachelor now dude!

Well…who knows Howie…you may get lucky tonight…

He places his large firm hand on my shoulder and I feel an odd psychic type tingle
(JESUS!!! NO…something is going to happen tonight!)

I find the Fanelli’s old man chair and sit down…I am facing the door and can make eye contact or at least perform a super security once over on everyone as they go through the wrist band ID check point…since the show is free…the fire capacity problem is a big problem plus the whole place is beyond the law … full cash bar…no license, no nothing

I start watching as the line comes in…all young, all innocent…NYU for sure…they have been there a long time…they all immediately line up for the two not so nicely cleaned with bleach bathrooms…i text Sid that Rick is doing swell and that the crowd is cool…no guns, no hidden bottles, young and totally cute. I am the only person there over 28 or so…

not stoned…one beer sipping slow…i notice a woman who works there…she is like a dream…the archetypal urban outfitters girl…she keeps staring back at me and smiling…i feel like I know her…I also know that that is my just being horny but I am getting stimulated beyond anything appropriate…then I realize she is Kelly, my old friend Coleen ‘s daughter who is barely twenty when Taylor the son of one my best friends walks in the front door and says hello to her out loud…they kiss and I go give Taylor a hard time about none of that shit in this club…i hate to bounce you out…for a second they are both scared even though Taylor is six six…they realize who I am and I greet Kelly realizing she is Coleen to me!

What a relief…i sit back down and relax…the crowd swells… then…i see this young lady come in…she has an ‘artsy glow’ … i notice her compulsive behavior immediately and completely relate…she has a heavy winter coat on (it is fucking freezing out in Brooklyn now duh!) but this long dress is sticking out of the back…it is sweeping the floor…it looks like a fucking peacock no joke…i try not to stick with her but i am totally gone…even though there is no figure to see due to this big lumpy down fiber black winter coat…she takes the coat off and this big winter Ruskie style fur hat and proceeds to stuff them into a knapsack…then looks around nervously to stash the back pack somewhere where no one will find it and she can dance without a coat on…i kind of chuckle until i realize that the dress while very elegant (Marie Antoinette?) in the lower part is excessively S and M on the top…there is no top in fact just a series of black strips…like some serious bondage thing…i swallow hard and look away.

Back in the chair i am fighting to avoid getting mesmerized again…the Kelly thing was enough for one night…I empty my mind knowing that this woman may not be much older than Kelly…what was i thinking…my life may be a movie but not a fucking Brian DePalma one…so…I stare at the continuing entering customers and chill…

There is one weird leather day bed next to where i am sitting and three wild NYU type dudes sit down and start slapping each other…they leave a space on their right side knowing i will tolerate physical proximity..yes as the old guy in the room with a salt pepper mustache, I intend to scare them into respect/submission and it usually works…

Suddenly this young thing with the leather straps and thin bony shoulders is sitting awkwardly on the sliver remaining next to my left knee like a person leaning out trying to squeeze their butt between two big Americans on a Kawasaki number one train racing uptown…I glance for one second and think, no, she did not sit here cause of me…just a seat!

The heavy breathing begins…i become hypnotized but am fighting it…i make no contact and in fact look the other way! around five to ten minutes elapse…I manage to notice very lovely blue blue eyes…

White really white skin…abruptly she gets up and walks away…I am so relieved…in a few seconds my breathing pattern returns to normal…ah, relax Howie!

Five minutes later i realize the spot she occupied is still vacant…suddenly as if i saw it a second before it happened like when you are about to get punched…she appears with two seltzer bottles, one in each hand and is staring at me…i start to try to talk but she is rehearsed…”do you like this stuff…cause i found these on the L train…would you like to share it?”

I love Seltzer..I reply…how did you know…before I have finished now she is back on the same seat and is rapidly asking me question after question…’i could tell you were very smart…i need to meet smart people…’ within a few minutes she has progressed to repeatedly asking if I am in fact divorced…if i ever remarried…no girlfriend…why not?

‘You sound like you are planning to ask me out…what the fuck?’ I show a bit of quiet anger and sarcasm and smile  as she replies: ‘yes…give me your phone number now…i want your email!’
anyway…enough of this story…i have told it to so many people so many times. They said, Write It Down!

And so I did: I proceeded to ‘date’ Alexis for lack of a better word. I took her to Starbucks and marveled at her muscular back she again was wearing one of those bondage outfits. She exuded sexuality without any effort and it drove me crazy. I took her to a dinner in Chinatown and we talked about Brian Wilson. Then I took her to The Trophy Bar and we began to get a wee bit physical. She told me we would never have sex and I agreed with her. However, with each passing date, she moved from a hug to a kiss on the cheek to a kiss on the lips till finally when she crashed a party on a very snowy night and I brought her into the host’s bedroom to put her coat away, she told me she had decided that we would have sex.

“And listen dude,” she talked in a self parody rock and roll style that only made me that much more horny for her. “When we have sex, you better be fucking good okay?!”

“I don’t respond well to pressure…” I told her as we started to make out. I honestly could not believe this was happening to me. I could not get her out of my mind and I could not stop staring wildly at every twenty one year old woman I saw for the next six months. I was dangling outside the confines of my jeans day after day. I felt as though somewhere someone had answered some prayers, however late.

Howie Seligman I think about it (and have taken to writing lately lol) I bought skinny jeans a few years ago on a whim, I tried them on and they were too tight it was ridic so I shoved them in the closet – then I got ‘picked up’ by a scandalously younger woman who asked me out – so I went to meet her outside where she worked and it was right after a snowstorm – she was so excited to see me she literally leaped on me to hug me – she was relatively light but the force and the boots in the snow led me to wobble while I was holding her up – I fell in the snow and ripped my jeans it was quite romantic – we both laughed – the next day I pulled the skinny jeans out and they fit and i have been wearing them since – something intangible went on – they are really great for the type of dancing I do (TOO!) sorry for the long story – all of this is in my book btw well, really I guess you like already know that now wtf!

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