For Saints Have Hands

"For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,

And palm to palm is palmers' holy kiss."

- Romeo & Juliet

Saturday night. The night before Valentine's Day.

I'm already late for my blind-except-for-the-photos-he-sent-over-email date, when my friend returns my call about Sunday. She is stressed and frazzled, having done things for other people all day when she should be studying for her GRE. I commiserate for as long as I can, but my belly is hungry and my brain is buzzing and my lashes are devoid of mascara, so I interrupt and tell her, ok, long story, but I'm going to go meet this guy at a bar. She congratulates me for my chutzpah, then says, "Do you want an out? Should I call you in an hour in case you don't want to stay?"

I tell her, no, he's cool, or I wouldn't be going. If I'm not into it I'll just let him know. My only stress is the time I'll be spending, time I could be writing or moving or revising my resume one more time or catching up on the blog I've neglected, or more importantly, really, PACKING my entire life into boxes and bins since, hello, I am moving in a WEEK. But.

I made a decision the night before, the Friday night before Valentine's Day, that I was going to have some sex in my life. So, later Friday night, I put out an ad, with no photos and no physical description, but a very direct, specific ad, with numbered sentences, 1, 2, 3, an ad that sounded for all the world like an action plan or a football play: in other words, like a man had written it. I figured most guys would think it was fake or be turned off by the directness. But wow. The emails came flying in. About 25 in about 7 minutes. Most of them not even worth reading, but still. It was something.

In about an hour, I had a date. A Friday night date who showed up at my door. And this date, I'll admit, was a catch, a prize, not exactly my type, way to metro for me, but, perfect, objectively speaking. And fun. And open. And young. And easy. And fun. I was terribly, terribly grateful for this, and emailed him the next day, and told him so. He wrote back: "Le plaisir est le mien." He's taking French while he studies to be a nurse. Supports himself by working bachelorette parties: cop uniform, lap dances, thong, the whole deal. It's hard to write about that without laughing, but yeah, no question: the kid is a prize. And he made me feel like a champ. Thanks kid.

You'd think I might have been happy with that. Quit while I was ahead, you know. Yet something was missing from our little tryst. An element of - how you say? - passion. The inexplicable bolt of attraction that makes you want to do something we didn't: slide into each others arms, and kiss.

So cue back up to the next afternoon, the Saturday before Valentine's Day. I call up bachelor #2, whom I'd almost picked from the Friday-night passel, but young #1 beat him to the punch. He's a bit older, a bit more my type (at least from the picture), and he says, a good kisser. Bingo. Will he be my Saturday date?

Sure, he says. He's up for anything. Sort of. In that you-come-up-with-all-the-ideas, I'll say "huh, cool..." to some, and groan at the others, slightly passive-aggressive way. That's ok. I have lots of ideas. I mention the dirty show (www.dirtyshow.org), an international erotic art event that happens here twice a year - he's never heard of it, he's lukewarm. What about an "alternative bar" or a strip club, he asks? Oh yeah, and he never ever comes into Detroit. He wants to go to a dark little dive, but he wants it to be in the suburbs. Huh.

I tell him I'm suburb-phobic ("You're what?"), my inner-ring suburb is as 'burb as I get, and anyway I was just way out in his hood 2 nights ago at that big (boring) pub. So why don't we go to this ancient dive in the Cass Corridor, how bout that? No. Too scary for him. Alright. We'll compromise. We'll meet in Ferndale, my suburb - it's still North of 8 Mile - at the New Way, a scrappy rock & roll bar where I've never been but have googled, read about, and assessed to be to his taste, in the spaces between his "huh, cool..."'s and "ughs".

(Did I mention this guy is a personal trainer and self-described very good kisser with a warm, witty phone manner and sexy voice? If you were wondering, dear reader, why I stuck with it: it was not desperation or boredom, no, but lingering interest in these attributes.)

The closer it gets to our meeting time, the more I really want to back out. I text him, "Let's make out at the bar," but I know I have way too much to do, and I had a sexy Friday night date, but the thought of good kissing pushes me on, to squeeze into lingerie, smear on eye glitter, and drive myself to the New Way bar, a white concrete block building with a dirty red awning where a cute scruffy 5-man band throws down on a tiny stage.

A tall blonde bouncer in black jeans and grey leather, vintage glasses, and Bettie Page bangs, takes my five bucks and asks to see my ID. "I love you!" I tell her. Of course she laughs. "Hey girl, I get carded too - and I bet I'm older than you." She checks my ID and throws her head back. "Uh-huh! I knew it! Two years older than you! Well get in there girl, show 'em how it's done."

Bachelor #2 sits at the bar, smoking patiently, staring at the tv. Yeah, I was late - I called and texted, but still, I was late. At least he had the olympics to watch. I walk up, say hello, apologize again, then have a moment of panic: what if that's not him, but some other cute bald dude with square glasses? Shit. Only one way to test it: "I'm here to meet this guy I met online, but I'm late, so I think he might've left...you're pretty cute though. Wanna hang out?" He laughs, says "That's hilarious," a word he used a lot on the phone when he didn't know what else to say. Yep. It's him.

He's got a tequila. I buy one for myself. We sit at a table across from the bar. We do our best to talk over the band, but he's not talking much. I say, "Well, it's loud here, and there are no strippers - do you want to leave and go to a club?" "Yeah, we could," he says noncommittally. Reminder: the strip club was his idea. Whoever pegged men as the decisive, assertive, action-bound sex has never sat across from one on a date.

So. I talk, as loud as I can without shouting, and embellish my points with gestures and smiles. It turns into one of those bizarre moments when you start to become a different self, co-created by the gaze of another. You feel the self taking shape as you tilt your chin, roll your eyes, tell a story. You imagine the shape this self will take later, in an email, a text, or a blog. Will you become "the one with the tits"? Or the one with the funny stories? The one with the lipstick who talked with her hands, the one who's "dramatic," "expressive," "arty," or worse yet, "artsy"?

(In the 13 months I've spent in Detroit, I've been called this more times than I care to count. Do people not get that it sounds patronizing? What if I called them "blue collarsy" or "engineeresque"?)

Under the inscrutable gaze of my date, I forge on like an actor who studied with Blanche DuBois, taking up her technique from A Streetcar Named Desire. As she explains to her dull date, mama's boy Mitch: "The lady must entertain the gentleman...or no dice!" (Moments later in the play, right after Blanche hangs a paper shade on the room's bare light bulb and says, "Look! We've created enchantment!" Mitch makes an aggressive pass at Blanche. Blanche is insulted. It doesn't go well.)

Our scene is interrupted when Bachelor #2 looks, then frowns, at his iphone. "Oh no." He speaks! I wait, intrigued. "This guy wants me to train him at 6 in the morning." Hey! Something we can talk about! I ask the bachelor about his work. He makes $80 an hour training bigwigs like this guy, who have to jet off for business on a moment's notice and who are hard-core enough about their deep-knee bends - but dependent enough on a trainer to make them do them - to send such requests at 12:45 AM and expect that their trainer will say yes.

"Can you train him on 2 hours sleep?" I ask, smiling. He avoids the question, but he's talking at least, so I ask him more - about his dream to own a business like the bar he might buy down in Wyandotte (Wyandotte! Help me!). Predictably, I tell him to buy a bar in Detroit, or to take over the excellent Mercury coffee shop in Corktown (he doesn't know where that is) that closed 2 months after it opened last year but is sitting there, all sleek and chic, in the shadow of the abandoned train station, across the street from Slow's, that barbecue place I told him about...He smiles, he says, huh, yeah, really, wow. I'm overwhelming the poor guy. Oh well.

The alleged client emails again, allegedly offers $200 an hour if my date will say yes to the 6am gig. Part of me thinks, wow. Rich people really DO that shit, and not just with prostitutes either. Part of me thinks, yeahwhateverright. My date's friend is just giving him an out.

Date goes outside, makes a call, comes back in. This guy is a 3-year client, and he's not taking no for an answer. Date's gonna be throwing medicine balls at this guy in just over 5 hours, so he needs to go. He's sorry. All of it actually seems very real. But of course I'm starting to suspect he's an actor who studied with Tiger Woods.

Just then, the heretofore serious white-boy band band breaks out the funk. It's the Young MC classic, "Bust a Move." The keyboardist, who I swear eyed me when I walked in, is on the mic, throwing down the late-'80s lyrics with equal parts passion and irony: "You're on a mission / and you're wishin' / something could cure your lonely condition / lookin for love in all the wrong places / no fine women, just ugly faces." I once knew every word to this song. I used it as the warm-up exercise for children's theatre rehearsals in college (the actors were college students, not children). I say, "OK. We have to stay for this." The blonde bouncer joins us - "We're old enough to remember this song!" she says, high-fiving me, and to my bemused, quiet date: "I bet you're too young!"

My date is 37. But he thinks I'm 34. That's the age I listed in my ad, and it is, on some level, accurate: a legitimate reflection of the way I feel inside, as is, sometimes, 29, 50, 14, or 5. But I know most people think of age as a literal, chronological, consistent kind of thing, so I shout over the scrambled guitars and AAABB rhyme scheme, "How old did I say I was in my ad? 34? Yeah. I'm actually 40". My date looks at me. "Wow. You don't look 40," he says. And he seems to mean it. He smiles. I smile back. "Well. Thank you."

But really, he has to go, and I'm cool with that. I really am. But I can't help saying, in a gracious way, "Hey, if this is just a ploy - that's ok too. I mean, if you're not into it, let me know. I'm fine with it. Really." No, he insists, he wants to hang out. He really does, tomorrow night. The Dirty Show's still on, right? Let's go to that. Sure, I say, I'm planning to go with a friend, but yeah, come along, and let's hang out after. Cool, he says, where's your car? Right here, smack-dab in front of the bar. His is the down the block. We hug goodnight. He walks away.

Wait, what was that thing about kissing?

I climb into my car, cursing my fishnets: not warm enough for a night like this. I crank the heat and review my options: 1) Go home like a good girl (and waste a good makeup job?); 2) Head back into the bar, hit on the cute keyboardist (and risk 2 disappointments in the very same venue?); 3) Venture out and find a bit of fun elsewhere to redeem the anticlimactic night.

I choose option #3 and cruise (yes, just indulge me, ok, I cruise!) south on Woodward, text my friends who are out at a real Detroit dive, the Apex, but they've headed home. Home? It's only 1 in the morning! There are plenty of interesting places to go. Motor City Casino, the MGM Grand (never been to either, here's my chance), Honest John's, the Comet, The Old Miami, The Bronx, Cass Cafe, the Park Bar, MOCAD, The Centaur...I poke at my curiosity. It just yawns and rolls right back over.

So. I take myself at the Northern Lights Lounge. It's on my way home and I know the scene. But it's the Valentine's Dance tonight, $5.00 cover. Another $5.00. Still I let Tank, the chubby, sweet black bouncer in camo sweats, persuade me it's worth it for just one more hour. It's not. It's crowded as hell, and loud, and I'm the lonely old girl at the bar, drinking Pinot and smoking a Marlboro Light while young-girl laughter cackles around me and big white wanna-be rock star guys slam down shots, yelling "Aw-RIGHT!"

I watch Naomi Watts and King Kong on TV for as long as I can, wait patiently for the bartender's attention, spend $6.50 that I could've sent to Haiti, and start to walk out the door, when Tank takes my hand. "Hey." he says. "Did you have a good time?"

I stop. I don't know what to say.

My hand is in his hand. His soft, strong hand, twice the size of mine. His pale brown flesh wraps around my white little fist.

He is giving my hand a place to be.

It only lasts a matter of seconds. And of course I know Tank is just doing his job.

But whether or not he knows it, of course, Tank is doing something else too. Like his blonde counterpart at the New Way Bar, he is tending to a traveling soul about to cross his threshhold. He is making my pilgrimage worthwhile, justifying my black bustier, my satiny top, my fishnets, eyeshadow, lipstick, mascara. He is giving me the one thing I wanted tonight.

He is giving me my Valentine's kiss.

For an instant, we are palm to palm. For an instant, the night seems almost worthwhile.

Thank you, Tank.

You're a saint.

Happy Valentine's Day.