Winning Appeal(51)
As he stood there with all of his manhood dangling in the cool, smoky air, he thought only of that glorious moment. He didn’t see all of the people watching him with a mixture of fascination and repugnance. He focused only on Tina. He waited for her to acknowledge his courageously stupid act with some look of impressed gratitude and/or validation of his size. He waited for her to signal in some way that he had gone well beyond the call of duty, and that he could now pull his pants back up and receive his reward. But he saw none of this in Tina’s face, which just looked slightly amazed that he had actually gone through with the whole thing.
So Evan ended up holding his pants down for longer than he had originally planned to, and lifted everything back up only after realizing that he would receive no instruction from Tina to do so. As he zipped his pants back up, he heard some ornery howls from the crowd of guys, and saw the couple quickly resume their kissing with another you-caught-us-staring blush. He couldn’t tell how much the barman had seen.
“So?” Evan asked, looking expectantly at Tina. “Did I pass your test?”
Tina looked unmoved by Evan’s Bowery Bar boldness. Somewhat reluctant to answer his question, she replied, “Well…To tell you the truth…I don’t think you did.”
“Really?” Evan felt a devastating humiliation barreling his way, but – in what was to become a pathetic pattern that night – he felt perversely determined to confront it head on. “Why not? I’m not hung enough for you?” he asked, preparing himself for the worst.
“No. I actually think you’re probably hung enough.”
Upon hearing this confirmation, Evan exhaled a small sigh of relief, but was still waiting for the bad news.
“So what is it? I mean, I’m obviously uninhibited, right? I mean, you weren’t expecting me to dance on the bar naked, were you?”
“No, please. Spare us.”
“So what is it? Why didn’t I pass your test?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Do you really think I would take home someone who drops his pants in public just because I asked him to? I need a man with a little more self-respect than that.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“But you get naked in public all the time. Hell, you even simulate sex for the public.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What do you think being a soft porn actress is?”
“It’s definitely getting naked and simulating sex in public, but I’m not a soft porn actress.”
“What do you mean?” Evan asked in dismay.
“I develop swaptions, derivatives, and other hedge instruments for the futures markets at Morgan Stanley. Princeton grads generally don’t go into soft porn.”
“But…But you…”
“I know that’s what I told you. But that’s just my screener. I get hit on by a lot of guys, so I like to filter out anyone who’s really promiscuous, bisexual, infected with an STD, or willing to drop his pants in public…I’m too busy to waste a bunch of dates finding out deal-breaking data that I could have uncovered from the get-go…Life’s too short not to cut to the chase, right?”
And when Tina finished that reply, 104 anvils, each carefully crafted and weighed in the best metal workshops of the American heartland, came crashing down onto Evan’s head.