anywhereisbetter

Maverick and Sundown contemplate how to lure Viper home without having to take Jester, too.

Jumping on the grenade. Perhaps you’ve heard this expression before. The idea is as simple as it is insensitive: jumping on the grenade entails accompanying a friend to talk to a pair of girls–at a bar, party, or wherever–with the specific intention of engaging the not-so-desirable one, so that your friend might have an opportunity to chat it up with the girl he’s interested in. Among men, it is a noble act of goodwill and camaraderie. I imagine that women have less kind words by which they might describe it. Or maybe they do it, too.

Let me tell you of a time that I jumped on the grenade. Several years ago, a friend of mine was set up on something of a blind date. As a safety precaution, the girl was going to bring a friend along, and thus suggested that he do the same (how this was a safety precaution, I do not know). Being the nice guy, I was recruited for this decoy date. I agreed, somewhat hopeful that my female counterpart would actually be cool. If not cool, I figured she would at least be tolerable. Sadly, she was neither.

I arrived at the bar about ten minutes late. It was a decent place with a good crowd and a great jukebox. The three of them were already there, sipping on beers and awkwardly getting to know one another. My “date”–whose name I no longer remember–gave me a warm welcome and ran up to the bar to fetch my first beer. So far, so good, I thought. She wasn’t really my type, but certainly I could kill some time with her until my presence was no longer required. She seemed nice enough, and I thought we might even have fun together.

Viper (right) and The Grenade.

I was mistaken. Not two minutes after handing me my first beer, her personality began to rub on me like bare knuckles against a cheese grater. She laughed at the wrong times. She said inappropriate things. She pretended to mishear my name, calling me “Brad” for the duration of the night. With any normal girl, this cheap gag might have been funny, but in a dazzling display of her preternatural ability to suck the comedic value out of even the simplest of schticks, her comments seemed more contemptuous than anything. It was going to be a long night.

For what were among the most awkward 45 minutes of my life, we exchanged little bursts of conversation punctuated by long uncomfortable pauses. When she finally did say something, I only wished she hadn’t, as she persistently complained that that there’s a much better bar nearby that we should try. I didn’t see anything wrong with a bar that had Fugazi on the jukebox and reasonably priced pints, but eventually we succumbed to her whining and headed down the street. My patience was wearing thin, but things were going well for my friend, and I didn’t want to leave them there with a third wheel who obviously lacked the social grace to bow out when it was appropriate. Or maybe I just felt like this girl had thrown the gauntlet down, and I wasn’t about to leave early and let her claim victory.

It should come as no surprise that the spot Ms. Tact took us to was terrible. We’d given up our comfortable bench at a good bar to pay inflated drink prices and sit on cheap couches adorned with purple velvet curtains, all while the sound system assaulted us with “smooth R&B.” Though I was irritated, I was resolved to be the good friend and play along as amicably as I could. So there we sat, on a lousy couch drinking pints of beer that should have been priced on a sliding scale, continuing our painfully banal conversation. Suddenly, she stood up.

“I’m leaving, Brad, I don’t like you.” I was a little taken back. I didn’t like her, either, but somehow honesty did not seem like the best policy. I was simultaneously incensed and relieved, but the best I could do was shrug indifferently. It was easy, since I didn’t really care.

With that, she walked off to the pool table, leaving me to chat politely with my friend and his date. They were much more interesting to talk to anyway, but I felt bad for intruding. As I finished my beer and prepared to leave, my darling date had returned, her arms wrapped around a square-jawed, junior varsity fullback of a man. “This is Doug,” she said defiantly, “We’re leaving.” I think she thought she was hurting my feelings.

I introduced myself to Doug (“Hi, I’m Brad”), and was on my way. As I left the bar, finally free from the torture that is the Slow Jam, I reflected on what had just happened. As things percolated in my mind, the situation boiled down to its bare essence: I got dissed by a girl I didn’t even like. Does it get any lower?

There’s no moral to this story, other than to say that sometimes jumping on the grenade can be more like jumping in front of a Panzer tank, or maybe fighting a polar bear. Faced with such insurmountable odds, no amount of gregarious banter can save you. No, being wingman isn’t always easy. You try your best to be the Iceman to his Maverick, but sometimes you end up like Goose instead.