Lab Geeks & Escarole Freaks

The next morning I woke up slightly hungover from my over-indulgence of Black Russians and good old-fashioned dice rolling at the craps table from the night before. I was three hundred dollars richer and had a sexy science teacher waiting for me back in Manhattan, so a little cotton mouth and nausea didn’t faze me one bit (well, for the first five minutes).

As if the bags under my eyes weren’t a dead giveaway, I wolfed down a slice of pizza and a Diet Coke for breakfast to cure the hangover that I totally didn’t have (because why would I have one in a professional setting on a business trip, right?). I chatted with my co-workers about who got too inebriated at dinner the night before (sadly, I wasn’t even in the running), who acted like a real bitch (surprisingly, I wasn’t in the running), and about how the new receptionist was quickly climbing the corporate ladder a la a tight mini skirt and a boss’s open-door/open-pants policy (again, not in the running, but I may have considered this category if said boss didn’t have daughters older than I—the economy is still sh*t, after all).

My right hand counterpart in all things handbags, hot yoga, and wine, Teeny Baggolini, helped me put the finishing touches on my text message back to The Fonz:

Hey Alfonso! It’s Bacchus. Thanks for the call yesterday. I’m out in Vegas for work, but I’d love to meet up when I get back.

So it wasn’t my most profound or witty of texts, but in my vodka withdrawal/post-pizza haze, it was the best my little fingers could type out at that stage in the morning. The Fonz’s reply was simple, to the point, and of course incorporated science (well, sort of):

Hey. Cool. That sounds great. Enjoying the heat?

He’s such a little scientist, I thought to myself as I shook my head and chuckled.

And I knew that deep down The Fonz was probably way more profound and witty, but he was no doubt far too busy building one of those volcanoes that erupts with baking soda or preaching about barometric pressure or something, so there was no way I could hold his complete lackluster, lab geek response against him.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the only gal in Vegas getting asked out on a date from the East Coast. By 10:30am, Teeny had received a date inquiry by way of The Book (jury still out on this method, folks):

Hey Teeny, nice re-meeting you the other day. I was getting over being sick and was trying not relapse/spread the germ love.

Pause. Ummm, really? I felt awkward just reading it. What exactly is germ love? I could only hope it wasn’t something that had made its way to the Upper East Side. Un-pause:

I have a whole free range chicken in the fridge and a head of escarole waiting to be chopped into a salad, but my roommates are all out of town. You interested in a home cooked meal?

“Where the eff did you pick up this germ-loving, escarole chopping, free-range freak from?” I asked with concern. Suddenly, Alfonso’s humdrum reply wasn’t so bad.

“A house party in Brooklyn,” Teeny replied with apprehension while frowning at her phone.

“What did I tell you about picking up men in Brooklyn?” I scolded as I shook my finger at her.

But before I went off on hipsters from Brooklyn who thought they were cooler than the rest of New York society for absolutely no reason other than the fact that they wear dirty jeans, tight t-shirts, and find out about really cool music way before everyone else, I realized that maybe Facebook Free-Range Freddy wasn’t as bad as we so speedily set him out to be.

Here was a guy, that even in his deepest of germ-ed out fogs, put himself out there, took a chance on a girl he just “re-met”, took a chance that Teeny wasn’t the vegetarian she was, and offered to make the girl dinner. Lord knew that not-a-one in any of the five burroughs had ever offered to cook me an entire bird.

So here’s to men with balls and chickens in their freezers. And for any men out there without a Teeny to cook for, I’ve got both an open mind and an open stomach…and on a good night other things could open up as well (vodka highly suggested, but not necessarily required).