January, 2001
I was living in Eagan with a buddy before finishing up my classes at Brown Institute. I’d been chatting up a girl named Nicole, who lived in Minneapolis. She had no picture and described herself as 5′7″ and 150 lbs. We’d talked about meeting, but no firm plans yet.
Suddenly, one Saturday morning she calls me up in a bit of a panic, saying she was stuck in a hotel in Rochester and asking if I could drive down and pick her up. On the one hand, it’s a two hour drive, it’s cold as fuck outside, and the heat in my car doesn’t work very well. On the other hand, I might get something out of this. You already know which brain won out.
Two and a half hours later, my legs were completely numb below my shins, and I was driving in circles looking for the hotel, hoping my frozen feet didn’t accidentally cause me to accelerate into someone else’s rear end. Finally finding it, I got out and went to knock at the room number Nicole gave me. A woman opens the door, and I ask if Nicole is there. “I am Nicole,” came the response that I was desperately praying against.
Remember a couple of posts ago, when I talked about the girl who said she had “curves in all the right places”? Granted, she was embellishing, maybe even misleading in her descriptors. Nicole outright lied. 150? I thought. Did you fail math? Last year, before I got recalled, I weighed about 260 lbs. This girl was twice the width I was then.
She went back inside to grab her jacket and purse, as I stood there in shock. Unfortunately, I didn’t come out of this shock in time to think about heading for the hills until one second before she walked back out, ready to go. And so began the most awkwardly quiet two hour drive that I have ever had in my life.
