Adventure with Aphrodite
I met her on a dating site. I saw her pictures. Drop. Dead. Gorgeous.
When I wrote her, I wasn’t expecting to get a response. Most women of her level of beauty have no time for the likes of me. I even stated in my pathetic message, "You're out of my league." To my surprise, she wrote me right back.
We proceeded to exchange a few messages. I gave her my phone number and she called right away. We talked on the phone for three hours. She lives in New Jersey, but she's getting her master’s degree in Albany by taking classes on weekends. She stays at a hotel when she is in town. I asked her out. We planned to go out this past Saturday.
For the purpose of this story, her name is irrelevant. However, I shall for here on out refer to her as Aphrodite.
When I got to Aphrodite’s hotel Saturday night, I called her to let her know I had arrived. She said she saw me pull up and was sitting in the gazebo. I saw the gazebo. I watched her stand up and I stopped breathing. The woman that was walking towards me was, in fact: a goddess -- a thousand times more beautiful than the girl in the pictures, with a body like a Victoria's Secret model. Out of my league.
My heart leaped into my throat. I tried to catch my breath.
Steadily, I got out of my car and approached her. I was weary that I would lose my footing or simply melt into the ground. Neither occurred and I found myself being embraced by the most gorgeous woman that I've ever been within 50 feet of, let alone hugging distance.
I tried to be calm. I don't recall what I said. Maybe, "It's nice to meet you in person,” or something else short and colloquial.
I walked her to my car and noted that she looked me up and down. I had never felt more inadequate. My best plaid shirt... I should have worn something… classier.
She wore a very tight white shirt with black pants. She had heals on. She smelled like flowers or heaven. Perhaps it was flowers from heaven.
I opened the passenger side door of the silver Honda Fit, thinking that she should be getting into a corvette convertible. She slipped in and thanked me.
As I walked around the front of my pathetically dull vehicle, I tried to remember how to breathe. I became aware that this was the time to shine, so-to-speak, the moment to step it up, to make it or break it, sink or swim, to bring the A-game.
At open mics, sometimes, you play after someone who is really, extremely good. And you have to play your best. This was that time.
I slipped in to the driver seat, put the key in the ignition, and started this date. I turned to Aphrodite and gave her a warm, slightly cocky smile. “You ready?” I said.
Earlier in the day, I had asked a friend of mine -- a friend who goes out in Albany often -- about outdoor patios where I could take my date to get food and drinks. My friend had suggested Pearl Street Pub.
Aphrodite asked if dinner was a possibility as she had not eaten. I said, "yes," and we talked about food for a bit as I drove. She then pointed out that I had grown a soul patch for her. (When we were messaging each other in the days before the date, she mentioned that she liked the picture of me with the soul patch and asked me if I still had it. I said I didn't and she said I should grow it. I did. Clearly, I have dreamed this woman up because no “real life” female ever has liked my soul patch.) We continued talking about my facial hair as I drove to down town Albany.
After parking and walking a few short blocks, we arrived at the pub. As we walked up to the patio, which is located at the entrance of the pub, we were met by a server. The server asked if we were there to eat. I said, "yes," and we were seated outside on the patio. We ordered beers and looked through the menus. We talked easily. There was no strangeness or awkwardness. I didn't stutter or accidentally say stupid things. It was too easy. Sometimes, you find that bringing your “A-game” is easier than you would expect.
We joked about inappropriate things – mostly about which one of us was actually the psycho murderer and who was going to kill who first – in between talking with our server, who was sweet and chatty.
Our server asked us where we were from. It was her first day at this job, but not her first time serving. She said she is currently a college student.
At one point, I excused myself and went to the bathroom. While washing my hands, I looked at myself in the mirror. Sometimes when you look at yourself, you don’t actually see yourself because you have seen yourself a million times. Sometimes, however, you actually see yourself and this was one of those times.
There I was. Right before my own eyes. My ugliness caught me by surprise. I wondered how the hell this pathetic looking human being was on a date with Aphrodite.
I returned to my date, and we finished our food and ordered another round of drinks. I used my iPhone, at Aphrodite’s bidding, to look up our compatibility according to our astrological signs. I read it out loud, but stopped when I got to a paragraph about sex. I joked about the sexual paragraph. She said "it's about time" that I got past "all the boring stuff."
I read it and we talked about sex.
The wind began to pick up and we started shivering a bit. I suggested we go inside.
The main pub area had really high tables and people crowded around. It was kind of loud. We saw our server and said "hi." We walked to the back of the pub to the Martini Lounge. It looked kind of scary in there.
There was a hallway that led to the bathrooms. Aphrodite asked where it went and at the same time, we both noticed a sign with an arrow that said "Private Room."
"What's in there?" She asked.
I followed the direction of the arrow to a darkened staircase with a door at the top. Obviously, I thought, the door will be locked.
Imagine my surprise when the handle turned and the door opened.
I led my date through the door and up another flight of stairs to a wide open and abandoned room. It appeared to be a reception room. There was little decor to it aside from what looked like fake birch tree branches around a pole. The branches were adorned with strands of lights. There was the facade of what used to be a fire place, but was cemented over. A corner of the room had a bar table top, but no liquor behind it.
I found some light switches and began flipping them. The little lights in the tree came on. I turned on some music on my iPod and we sat down on a bench that was off to one side of the room.
I was playing with my phone, trying to find a good song for us to listen to when I noticed Aphrodite was exploring a door that was ajar.
"Where does this go?" she asked.
"Let's find out," I said.
I took my date's hand and we walked through that door. It led to a hallway, which led to another hallway. The lights were on. There was some gym-like equipment on each side of the hallway with doors leading to squash courts. We looked at each other in disbelief, still holding our drinks. We decided to continue exploring.
We walked to the end of the hallway and came out into a small open area that had two elevators. There was a sign next to the elevators indicating that there were five floors. Beyond the open area was a large hall with brick walls and brick architecture. There were some doors to the sides of the hall that lead to small rooms. We explored these. They were empty and appeared to be abandoned offices.
We saw a door leading outside. It appeared to be the main entrance to this part of the building.
We saw a staircase off to the side and decided to see what was up a level.
More offices that appeared to be abandoned. There was some construction going on and we surmised that the building was either being renovated for new offices or the old ones were just being torn out. We checked just about every room. Everything was mostly empty aside from a chair here and there or a shelf or a cabinet.
We decided to try the next floor up and found much of the same. We joked about zombies and dead bodies. We continued to joke about how easy it would be for one of us to kill the other in this building and leave the body.
We found ourselves in the elevator lobby again. My date didn't think that the elevators would be working, so I pressed the "up" button.
"Ding." The doors opened and we went inside.
We looked all over the fourth floor and didn't see anything interesting to note. We went back to the elevators and I opened a closet door that was off to the side.
Upon opening the door, movement caught my eye...
My eyes widened in horror as I realized what I was seeing.
Behind the closet door was a television screen that was divided into six blocks. Three of the blocks were black. One was fuzzy. The top right block showed two people in black and white standing next to an open door. One of the people wore a hat and a plaid shirt and looked like he belonged in a thrift store. The other, was my gorgeous date.
"Is that... us?" She said. "Holy shit."
The plaid shirt wearing person waved... and slowly closed the door.
The video camera was located above the elevators.
"We have to get out of here," she said.
"Not yet." I said and I took her hand.
I led my date away from the elevators to the stairwell. She protested slightly, but followed anyway.
We went up the next flight and past the door to the fifth and final floor. There was one more flight left to go with a door at the top.
I approached that door, drink still in hand. There were no locks or handles. In the place where the handle should be, was a hole and I could see... the outside.
I pushed on the door and to my excitement it opened.
My date stood a few steps down from me as I turned and shouted, "Ohhhh yeaaaahsss!" with a big smile.
I took her hand and we walked out on to the roof.
I set my drink down and led her to a corner of the roof where we could overlook the city. We stood their briefly and the sights, while not beautiful, were sights to behold from our vantage point.
I looked down at our feet and they were close to each other. My arm, at some point, found itself on the small of her back. I looked at her eyes and then at her lips. She smiled a slight smile and turned her head to the side.
Then, she pulled away, saying, "We have to go back."
I followed her, my stupid heart pounding, as she walked back toward the door. She stopped and the wind caught her hair. I looked toward her and our eyes met. She looked away and turned back toward the door as if she were about to continue walking.
My heart sank. Dejected, I began walking toward the door.
I stopped. Taking a deep breath, I turned and quickly took my date in my arms. I pulled her closely to me and with pure determination kissed her squarely on her lips.
I pulled her closer as I kissed her slowly. And then pulled away.
We smiled at each other and then, without a word, walked back to the stairwell.
I collected my drink and we retraced our steps through the abandoned building to the "Private Room" of the Pearl Street Pub.
The lights were on as we had left them and we sat next to each other on the bench that we had sat on earlier. We laughed about our adventure and the security camera and talked about the various things that could happen to us should someone review that tape.
Suddenly, we heard a banging noise coming from the stairwell.
It sounded to me like someone was dancing really hardcore on the stairs leading up to the "Private Room."
We decided that we should probably head back to the pub and turned off all the lights that we had turned on. We walked down the stairwell that we had walked up before this adventure started and to the door that I had opened long ago that I thought would be locked.
I grabbed the handle and turned it. It didn't turn. I tried turning it the opposite way and then back again. It didn't turn. I pushed on the door.
We were locked in.
My mind instantly went to my iPhone. I could look up the phone number to the Pearl Street Pub, call them, and explain that we inadvertently got locked upstairs...
Aphrodite recalled the door that we had seen in the reception hall and suggested we try to leave through that.
We retraced our steps through the various hallways and found the door. There were people walking by and we shied away behind a brick pillar.
When the people passed by, we walked out the door and onto the street.
"It's cool." I said. "See?"
I tried the door that we had just walked through and it was locked. It must have been one of those that you can get out if you are in, but not in if you are out.
"Well," I said, "What would you like to do now?"
I took a sip of my beer... and we both realized at the same time that we were standing out on the street holding beer glasses.
"We never paid our bill," she said.
We talked it through and decided the best course of action would be to finish our drinks right now, walk around the front entrance of the Pub, go in, and pay our bill.
So, we did.
However, when we went in the pub, it wasn't the same as before... The lights were off except for some party lights, loud music was thumping, all of the tables and chairs were gone and people were dancing. This was not the same pub we had entered before...
Then, I saw our server.
"Hi" I said.
"You came back," She said in a tentative, uneasy voice.
She produced our bill, which had a handwritten message across it. "WALKED OUT" it said. And there was a sad face.
Another woman came over and said with a stern look, "Thank you for coming back."
I apologized profusely, explaining that we had never intended to not pay. I gave the server an extra tip. It was her first day...
We walked back to my car and I drove her back to her hotel.
I wish I could say that there was a whole lot more to this story. I feel like it’s ending rather abruptly and without resolution. Then again, don’t many of these types of stories end that way?
In the parking lot of the hotel, I turned my car’s engine off. Aphrodite asked me to walk her to her room. I obliged.
Once at her room, we hung out for a little bit. Watched some TV. Kissed. Hugged. Cuddled. Joked more about how and when she was going to kill me.
She didn’t kill me.
Aphrodite and I sat on the hotel bed facing each other. She looked over at the clock and noticed the time aloud. I asked if she was kicking me out. She asked if I get kicked out a lot. I said, "I'm a gentleman and we just met today, so I can understand if you feel weird about me staying." She walked me to my car. We kissed again.
She turned and walked back inside.
As I slowly walked back to my car, I smiled at myself in disbelief of the night I had experienced. I had brought my "A-Game." I gave it my best shot. An adventure in an abandoned building that culminated with a roof top kiss? Can't top that.
The ending, regardless, was inevitable and I surmised that I would not have a second chance with Aphrodite.
In the next few days, we exchanged a couple texts. Her responses were short and non-committal. I called her. I left a message.
And that is the end of the story.
When I wrote her, I wasn’t expecting to get a response. Most women of her level of beauty have no time for the likes of me. I even stated in my pathetic message, "You're out of my league." To my surprise, she wrote me right back.
We proceeded to exchange a few messages. I gave her my phone number and she called right away. We talked on the phone for three hours. She lives in New Jersey, but she's getting her master’s degree in Albany by taking classes on weekends. She stays at a hotel when she is in town. I asked her out. We planned to go out this past Saturday.
For the purpose of this story, her name is irrelevant. However, I shall for here on out refer to her as Aphrodite.
When I got to Aphrodite’s hotel Saturday night, I called her to let her know I had arrived. She said she saw me pull up and was sitting in the gazebo. I saw the gazebo. I watched her stand up and I stopped breathing. The woman that was walking towards me was, in fact: a goddess -- a thousand times more beautiful than the girl in the pictures, with a body like a Victoria's Secret model. Out of my league.
My heart leaped into my throat. I tried to catch my breath.
Steadily, I got out of my car and approached her. I was weary that I would lose my footing or simply melt into the ground. Neither occurred and I found myself being embraced by the most gorgeous woman that I've ever been within 50 feet of, let alone hugging distance.
I tried to be calm. I don't recall what I said. Maybe, "It's nice to meet you in person,” or something else short and colloquial.
I walked her to my car and noted that she looked me up and down. I had never felt more inadequate. My best plaid shirt... I should have worn something… classier.
She wore a very tight white shirt with black pants. She had heals on. She smelled like flowers or heaven. Perhaps it was flowers from heaven.
I opened the passenger side door of the silver Honda Fit, thinking that she should be getting into a corvette convertible. She slipped in and thanked me.
As I walked around the front of my pathetically dull vehicle, I tried to remember how to breathe. I became aware that this was the time to shine, so-to-speak, the moment to step it up, to make it or break it, sink or swim, to bring the A-game.
At open mics, sometimes, you play after someone who is really, extremely good. And you have to play your best. This was that time.
I slipped in to the driver seat, put the key in the ignition, and started this date. I turned to Aphrodite and gave her a warm, slightly cocky smile. “You ready?” I said.
Earlier in the day, I had asked a friend of mine -- a friend who goes out in Albany often -- about outdoor patios where I could take my date to get food and drinks. My friend had suggested Pearl Street Pub.
Aphrodite asked if dinner was a possibility as she had not eaten. I said, "yes," and we talked about food for a bit as I drove. She then pointed out that I had grown a soul patch for her. (When we were messaging each other in the days before the date, she mentioned that she liked the picture of me with the soul patch and asked me if I still had it. I said I didn't and she said I should grow it. I did. Clearly, I have dreamed this woman up because no “real life” female ever has liked my soul patch.) We continued talking about my facial hair as I drove to down town Albany.
After parking and walking a few short blocks, we arrived at the pub. As we walked up to the patio, which is located at the entrance of the pub, we were met by a server. The server asked if we were there to eat. I said, "yes," and we were seated outside on the patio. We ordered beers and looked through the menus. We talked easily. There was no strangeness or awkwardness. I didn't stutter or accidentally say stupid things. It was too easy. Sometimes, you find that bringing your “A-game” is easier than you would expect.
We joked about inappropriate things – mostly about which one of us was actually the psycho murderer and who was going to kill who first – in between talking with our server, who was sweet and chatty.
Our server asked us where we were from. It was her first day at this job, but not her first time serving. She said she is currently a college student.
At one point, I excused myself and went to the bathroom. While washing my hands, I looked at myself in the mirror. Sometimes when you look at yourself, you don’t actually see yourself because you have seen yourself a million times. Sometimes, however, you actually see yourself and this was one of those times.
There I was. Right before my own eyes. My ugliness caught me by surprise. I wondered how the hell this pathetic looking human being was on a date with Aphrodite.
I returned to my date, and we finished our food and ordered another round of drinks. I used my iPhone, at Aphrodite’s bidding, to look up our compatibility according to our astrological signs. I read it out loud, but stopped when I got to a paragraph about sex. I joked about the sexual paragraph. She said "it's about time" that I got past "all the boring stuff."
I read it and we talked about sex.
The wind began to pick up and we started shivering a bit. I suggested we go inside.
The main pub area had really high tables and people crowded around. It was kind of loud. We saw our server and said "hi." We walked to the back of the pub to the Martini Lounge. It looked kind of scary in there.
There was a hallway that led to the bathrooms. Aphrodite asked where it went and at the same time, we both noticed a sign with an arrow that said "Private Room."
"What's in there?" She asked.
I followed the direction of the arrow to a darkened staircase with a door at the top. Obviously, I thought, the door will be locked.
Imagine my surprise when the handle turned and the door opened.
I led my date through the door and up another flight of stairs to a wide open and abandoned room. It appeared to be a reception room. There was little decor to it aside from what looked like fake birch tree branches around a pole. The branches were adorned with strands of lights. There was the facade of what used to be a fire place, but was cemented over. A corner of the room had a bar table top, but no liquor behind it.
I found some light switches and began flipping them. The little lights in the tree came on. I turned on some music on my iPod and we sat down on a bench that was off to one side of the room.
I was playing with my phone, trying to find a good song for us to listen to when I noticed Aphrodite was exploring a door that was ajar.
"Where does this go?" she asked.
"Let's find out," I said.
I took my date's hand and we walked through that door. It led to a hallway, which led to another hallway. The lights were on. There was some gym-like equipment on each side of the hallway with doors leading to squash courts. We looked at each other in disbelief, still holding our drinks. We decided to continue exploring.
We walked to the end of the hallway and came out into a small open area that had two elevators. There was a sign next to the elevators indicating that there were five floors. Beyond the open area was a large hall with brick walls and brick architecture. There were some doors to the sides of the hall that lead to small rooms. We explored these. They were empty and appeared to be abandoned offices.
We saw a door leading outside. It appeared to be the main entrance to this part of the building.
We saw a staircase off to the side and decided to see what was up a level.
More offices that appeared to be abandoned. There was some construction going on and we surmised that the building was either being renovated for new offices or the old ones were just being torn out. We checked just about every room. Everything was mostly empty aside from a chair here and there or a shelf or a cabinet.
We decided to try the next floor up and found much of the same. We joked about zombies and dead bodies. We continued to joke about how easy it would be for one of us to kill the other in this building and leave the body.
We found ourselves in the elevator lobby again. My date didn't think that the elevators would be working, so I pressed the "up" button.
"Ding." The doors opened and we went inside.
We looked all over the fourth floor and didn't see anything interesting to note. We went back to the elevators and I opened a closet door that was off to the side.
Upon opening the door, movement caught my eye...
My eyes widened in horror as I realized what I was seeing.
Behind the closet door was a television screen that was divided into six blocks. Three of the blocks were black. One was fuzzy. The top right block showed two people in black and white standing next to an open door. One of the people wore a hat and a plaid shirt and looked like he belonged in a thrift store. The other, was my gorgeous date.
"Is that... us?" She said. "Holy shit."
The plaid shirt wearing person waved... and slowly closed the door.
The video camera was located above the elevators.
"We have to get out of here," she said.
"Not yet." I said and I took her hand.
I led my date away from the elevators to the stairwell. She protested slightly, but followed anyway.
We went up the next flight and past the door to the fifth and final floor. There was one more flight left to go with a door at the top.
I approached that door, drink still in hand. There were no locks or handles. In the place where the handle should be, was a hole and I could see... the outside.
I pushed on the door and to my excitement it opened.
My date stood a few steps down from me as I turned and shouted, "Ohhhh yeaaaahsss!" with a big smile.
I took her hand and we walked out on to the roof.
I set my drink down and led her to a corner of the roof where we could overlook the city. We stood their briefly and the sights, while not beautiful, were sights to behold from our vantage point.
I looked down at our feet and they were close to each other. My arm, at some point, found itself on the small of her back. I looked at her eyes and then at her lips. She smiled a slight smile and turned her head to the side.
Then, she pulled away, saying, "We have to go back."
I followed her, my stupid heart pounding, as she walked back toward the door. She stopped and the wind caught her hair. I looked toward her and our eyes met. She looked away and turned back toward the door as if she were about to continue walking.
My heart sank. Dejected, I began walking toward the door.
I stopped. Taking a deep breath, I turned and quickly took my date in my arms. I pulled her closely to me and with pure determination kissed her squarely on her lips.
I pulled her closer as I kissed her slowly. And then pulled away.
We smiled at each other and then, without a word, walked back to the stairwell.
I collected my drink and we retraced our steps through the abandoned building to the "Private Room" of the Pearl Street Pub.
The lights were on as we had left them and we sat next to each other on the bench that we had sat on earlier. We laughed about our adventure and the security camera and talked about the various things that could happen to us should someone review that tape.
Suddenly, we heard a banging noise coming from the stairwell.
It sounded to me like someone was dancing really hardcore on the stairs leading up to the "Private Room."
We decided that we should probably head back to the pub and turned off all the lights that we had turned on. We walked down the stairwell that we had walked up before this adventure started and to the door that I had opened long ago that I thought would be locked.
I grabbed the handle and turned it. It didn't turn. I tried turning it the opposite way and then back again. It didn't turn. I pushed on the door.
We were locked in.
My mind instantly went to my iPhone. I could look up the phone number to the Pearl Street Pub, call them, and explain that we inadvertently got locked upstairs...
Aphrodite recalled the door that we had seen in the reception hall and suggested we try to leave through that.
We retraced our steps through the various hallways and found the door. There were people walking by and we shied away behind a brick pillar.
When the people passed by, we walked out the door and onto the street.
"It's cool." I said. "See?"
I tried the door that we had just walked through and it was locked. It must have been one of those that you can get out if you are in, but not in if you are out.
"Well," I said, "What would you like to do now?"
I took a sip of my beer... and we both realized at the same time that we were standing out on the street holding beer glasses.
"We never paid our bill," she said.
We talked it through and decided the best course of action would be to finish our drinks right now, walk around the front entrance of the Pub, go in, and pay our bill.
So, we did.
However, when we went in the pub, it wasn't the same as before... The lights were off except for some party lights, loud music was thumping, all of the tables and chairs were gone and people were dancing. This was not the same pub we had entered before...
Then, I saw our server.
"Hi" I said.
"You came back," She said in a tentative, uneasy voice.
She produced our bill, which had a handwritten message across it. "WALKED OUT" it said. And there was a sad face.
Another woman came over and said with a stern look, "Thank you for coming back."
I apologized profusely, explaining that we had never intended to not pay. I gave the server an extra tip. It was her first day...
We walked back to my car and I drove her back to her hotel.
I wish I could say that there was a whole lot more to this story. I feel like it’s ending rather abruptly and without resolution. Then again, don’t many of these types of stories end that way?
In the parking lot of the hotel, I turned my car’s engine off. Aphrodite asked me to walk her to her room. I obliged.
Once at her room, we hung out for a little bit. Watched some TV. Kissed. Hugged. Cuddled. Joked more about how and when she was going to kill me.
She didn’t kill me.
Aphrodite and I sat on the hotel bed facing each other. She looked over at the clock and noticed the time aloud. I asked if she was kicking me out. She asked if I get kicked out a lot. I said, "I'm a gentleman and we just met today, so I can understand if you feel weird about me staying." She walked me to my car. We kissed again.
She turned and walked back inside.
As I slowly walked back to my car, I smiled at myself in disbelief of the night I had experienced. I had brought my "A-Game." I gave it my best shot. An adventure in an abandoned building that culminated with a roof top kiss? Can't top that.
The ending, regardless, was inevitable and I surmised that I would not have a second chance with Aphrodite.
In the next few days, we exchanged a couple texts. Her responses were short and non-committal. I called her. I left a message.
And that is the end of the story.