A Sweaty Guy is Kinda Creepy
This is the fourth chapter of A Sweaty Guy.
I’m posting here just as it was in the original, with the exception of blatant typos and some formatting changes.
To start from the beginning just click here.
In the meantime, I continued to go to my 12 Step meetings, staying sober “one day at a time”.
I also continued to think about Jessica. She was beautiful, smart, obviously a loving mother and she had made it clear at the IEP meeting that her ex was no longer in the picture… And, I knew where she worked.
About three weeks after the IEP meeting, I went to the International Marketplace. I had an excuse to run into her there. I’d decided to bring a gift from Hawaii to my thirteen year old daughter, Shea. She’d lived with her mother in Wisconsin since she was in kindergarten. The plan was for us to meet at my brother’s house in Minneapolis during her spring break.
The International Marketplace is (was) a sort of open air shopping center full of little kiosks selling jewelry, t-shirts and Polynesian knick-knacks.
It’s located on the main drag in Waikiki, Kalakaua Avenue. I found a kiosk with a sign that says Jessica’s Jewelry, but no Jessica. For the next few days, I returned to Waikiki on my lunch hour with the hope of finding Jessica at her shop.
Finally, on the third day I found her arranging earrings in one of her display cases.
At first I pretended not to notice her as I browsed the trays of rings, pendants, earrings and other trinkets. After a minute or so, I turned toward Jessica in mock surprise. She looked honestly surprised to see me.
She helped me pick out a pair of earrings for Shea and gave me a good price. I asked her about Courtney and sympathized with her difficulties getting appropriate services for her daughter. She seemed happy to talk to me. She thanked me for my help at the IEP meeting. Did I sense an attraction towards me?
I was here to ask Jessica out, but now my heart felt like it was beating through my chest; my hands were sweating. On top of the stress of asking a beautiful woman out, I also had my own position with the school system hanging over me.
She was unhappy with the help Courtney was getting from her school and my job was (in part) to help defend the education that the school was providing. Conflict of interests, gossip, rejection; these were all on my mind.
I paid for the earrings and then gave Jessica my phone number, telling her if she ever needed to talk about the situation with Courtney and her school she could give me a call. I almost left it at at that, but fearing that I would miss my chance, I took the leap and asked her if she would like to go out sometime.
Again, she looked surprised. And something else. Suspicious?
To my relief, she gave me her business card. “I’m really busy with the shop and my girls, but give me a call.”
I called Jessica a couple of days later. We had a date, and then another. It wasn’t long before we had our first kiss. But Jessica wanted to take it slow. She told me that she wasn’t interested in a new relationship. She was busy with work and with her daughters; she had just ended her relationship with Courtney and Amanda’s father. She didn’t want drama in life right now.
We ended up seeing each other several times a week. She had just sold her small condo in Waikiki, and with her mother, brother and daughters, was moving into a much larger new house in nearby Kahala. I offered to help her move, but she refused the help. She did, however invite me to the new house to join the family as they performed a Chinese blessing of the house before they moved in.
A month later, when when I was off to visit my family on the mainland, Jessica agreed to take me to the airport. She drove from Honolulu to meet me at my house in Maunawili. I showed her the house and the view from the lanai outside my bedroom. Sheer, green mountains partially surrounded the neighborhood on one side.
The tops of the mountains were partially shrouded by clouds.
Orange shafts of light shot from the setting sun behind the mountains and though the clouds. On rainy days dozens of waterfalls gushed down the cliff sides feeding streams that were eventually funneled into canals into the ocean. On this day there were only a few of the narrow white ribbons of water.
On the other side of the lanai we had a distant view of the ocean and the peninsula that held the Marine Corp base outside of Kaneohe.
We went back into the bedroom and lay down on my bed. We hadn’t had sex yet, but we had had our first kiss at the door of her apartment after one of our dates a couple of weeks before. We kissed some on the bed. Though Jessica was petite, there was substance to her body. She wasn’t a frail little thing, but had strong arms that she wrapped around me.
I looked at her as she lay staring at the ceiling. “Do you believe in psychics?” she asked.
“I’m not really sure. I think so. I’m sure there are a lot of phonies though.” “I go to this one up in Nu‘uanu every year. I went back in January before we knew each other and she asked me ‘Who is J?’ I didn’t really know.”
“Maybe you know now.” It was almost a question. She showed me a small smile with no teeth. “Maybe.” It was a mischievous smile I was beginning to recognize; it said that she had more on her mind than she was willing to say.
It was time to go; she took me to the airport and we kissed goodbye.
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Originally published in 2011 at sweatyguy.blogspot.com.
