The Perils of Pamela, Part 1

“Hey, number 14, you played great.”

 

The voice was definitely female and came from behind, up in the stands where literally handfull's of people came to watch guys like me play in a scrub hockey league. The game had just ended and I was in the back of a crowd of players leaving the ice for the locker room. I was also the only #14 on either roster that night and, though the assessment of my game was questionable, knew whoever it was, was probably talking to me. So I turned in her direction and, somewhat bewildered and definitely out of character, skated in her direction. “Uhhhh… Who me?  Ummm, thanks.”

 

Ah, yes, the pleasing repartee of a brilliant conversationalist.

 

“My name’s Pam”, she answered, ”and I really think you’re a good player. Have you played long?” I still didn’t get why she was talking to me, but explained it was my first year playing competitively and was having a blast. We started making a little more semi-awkward small talk, but I had to get off the ice because the two teams playing next were coming on. So I thanked her again and began skating away. "What’s your name?” she shouted. As I stepped onto the plastic mat outside the ice surface, I turned and hollered Rocket!, then she yelled back, 'Okay, Bye', waved and walked away to the public exit.

 

Our team had the upstairs dressing room that night, and climbing the steps I passed Dennis Bossingham, our roly-poly goalie who’d been watching the encounter from the landing. ”Well, well. Who’s that, lover boy?” he demanded in his nasally smart ass voice. “Beats me. Never seen her before. Said her name’s Pam”, I responded, brushing past him. “Ohh….She’s cuuuuute!" he bellowed, then made a follow up recommendation on what I should try for ‘my next move’ that was so obscene, even I blushed. “Oh, eat shit and die. What’s the matter with you, anyway? I just met her. Pull your head out of your ass. And the gutter, will ya?" Sometimes, Dennis’ lack of tact was too much, even for me. It made being around him annoying.

 

Anyway, I didn't want a puck bunny for a girlfriend. I didn't want a girlfriend, period. In the year since breaking up with Kelly I hadn't dated for real, except maybe with Jill Bauermeister, but hadn’t really tried and didn't really want to. So, I forgot about the accidental meeting at the hockey rink till the next afternoon when the dorm phone jingled. I was closest to it when it rang and when I answered, a girl’s voice was on the other end of the receiver. ”Hey there, remember me? This is Pam.” Pam? How the hell did she recognize my voice?! And how the hell did she get the dorm phone number? And, for the moment bypassing any pretend pleasantries, that's exactly what I asked her.

 

”From the official score keeper at your game last night. He lives down the street and, after you left, I sweet talked him into letting me check over the rosters and that’s where I found your name and phone number. Hope you don’t mind.” Well….I kinda did, but then again I mostly didn't. It was kind of flattering. “Sooo, I was wondering if you might like to go have pizza with me tonight? And then maybe a movie or something else, too, if ya want.”

Not bad looking and forward too, it finally hit me- she was asking me out on a date. I didn’t even have to work at it. But as usual, instead of being spontaneous and just going for it, I had to stop and think.

 

I didn’t know how I felt about the idea-- or her yet, either. I was doing a poor job of rebounding from my first relationship, and my buddies in the dorm and on the hockey team were enough for now. Besides I’d spent maybe all of 45 seconds in Pam’s company and, still strung out from loving and losing Kelly, was pretty sure I could live without any further female entanglements. But then I took a breath. Wait a minute......hmmm....On second thought, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to just see what this chick is all about. Though my broken heart still belonged to someone else, the rest of me was a free agent. I liked blond girls and this one was pretty hot, too. What the heck. Since you only live once, I pushed the past aside for the moment and took a step into the present. “Sure. I'd love to.”

 

I’d live to regret it.

 

We met at Shakey’s Pizza on East Sprague. Not wanting to appear too eager I planned to arrive late, but managed to get out there first anyway. So I found a table and waited. Pam came in about ten minutes later and quickly had my full attention—and everybody else’s.  When she walked in she was clearly not the girl I'd met the previous night. Instead of the wool leggings and loose Letterman's jacket she wore at the rink, Pam had squeezed into about the tightest pair of jeans imaginable. It was amazing she could even breathe. While showing off a nicely shaped derrière, the pants held her butt and torso in such a clenched vice grip, it made her gait look stiff and uncomfortable, like she was trying to walk without breathing or moving her hips. Every guy in the joint was checking her out, and I guess that was her intent.

 

She’d also feathered her blond hair and tossed it about in a cheap Farrah Fawcett imitation. It looked great in Farrah posters but on Pam, just kitschy. To make things worse, she’d saturated it with too much bargain hair spray. Lucky for her, we settled into one of the darker corners because she was probably a walking fire hazard. Then underneath a thick winter coat, Pam’s bright red blouse was wide open--wide enough to drive a Zamboni through. With so little restrained about her appearance- or much left to the imagination- Pam was about as subtle as a category 5.  And to top it off, the girl swore like a merchant marine. 

 

Now generally speaking, curse words were no big deal to me; I tossed them back and forth among the guys all the time. But hearing them pour out of an otherwise desirable looking female mouth was extremely unattractive, like filth draining from a sewer. Pam dropped f-bombs like writers use commas and periods. Her lexicon was littered with them. And call it a double standard if you like, but it was an almost instant turn-off. Her use of profanity seemed more deliberate, too, either to make her feel more important or taken more seriously. Problem was, it did neither. The syntax she chose made her sound “small”,  not terribly bright and kind of dirty, though not  in an alluring way; dirty, as in rolling in garbage.  So in less than a day this once interesting girl had transformed herself from kinda cute to pretty tacky.

 

A Rogers High grad, where she'd been a varsity cheerleader and girls softball player, Pam was now 19 and bored. Her days were spent in the little key making booth outside Sears Northtown. It was a dull job, she said, without a lot of customers which gave her plenty of time to contemplate just how dull it was. She still lived with her mother and older sister. Dad was out of the picture. Her current plan was to save enough money to go to France, or get married right away and have a bunch of kids. Uh-oh.  Not that I had anything against kids, but the way she said it not so delicately implied she might be on the look-out for someone to father these future little darlings. Better she go to France. If it’d help ease me out of the picture, hell, I’d even chip in.

 

We didn't do the movie or anything else but I stayed through the pizza part of the date, listening to Pam talk almost nonstop. Mostly about herself. I don’t even think she stopped to swallow her food. Yet she never said anything. The “talk" was a lot of moaning and griping about her life, her family, her job, her car, and her last boyfriend. You name it, whatever the topic she'd soured on it. Everything was horrible, everything was a crisis. It was easy figuring out she wasn’t a very happy person. What was hard was getting her to shut up.  So I knew right away that Pam wasn’t for me.  She wasn't Kelly. That much was certain.

 

Pam appeared to be a paradox: pretty but unattractive; over-dressed, over emotional, over sexed and over the top.  Nice looking on the outside, her beauty ran only skin deep, where it stopped dead in its tracks. If ‘trampy’ was currency, she’d be worth a fortune and the longer I was with her, the less I wanted to be. As our ‘date’ wore on, seemingly endlessly, she made me miss what I didn’t have anymore. Kelly had been wholesomely cute but not-in-your-face about it, comfortable in her own skin, down to earth, fun and warm.  On the other hand, Pam was crude, humorless and, like a walking billboard shouting in bold letters- I’M SLEAZY, BUT EASY- the calculating approach she used to appear hot turned me off cold. I saw her for what she, shallow and manipulating, and by the end of the evening had decided I simply didn’t want this one. If I’d caught her fishing, I’d have thrown her back.  

 

But she’d prove to be a hard one to walk away from. Like a bad penny she kept coming back, starting with our hockey games and wanting to hang out after. The only way I could lose her was if the team went to a bar. Still 19, she couldn’t follow me there. I hated doing it, because she’d beg me not to. Having the guys see her clinging to me so tightly was sort of embarrassing, literally and figuratively. So I’d go in, say I wouldn’t be long and then keep peeking out a window until I didn’t see her car in the parking lot anymore. By midnight, no later than 12:30, she’d finally give up and go home. Honestly, I was just trying to discourage her. Though I didn't want her hanging around, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, either. Not really. But maybe I should have.

 

And when I wasn't trying to dodge her at night, there were multiple phone calls I tried ducking during the day. Pam called from the time she got to work until turning in. Often I was in class or doing other things- like having a life- but sometimes I was polite enough (or dumb enough) to call her back. But after a while I stopped, because all she wanted to do was complain about being bored, badger me to come over and keep her company till she got off work, as if I had nothing else to do, or not so subtly beg for a date. I never realized how pathetic that was, being on the other end of it. I hope I’d never been or sounded that desperate.

 

But then to my horror she figured out where I lived, and one night showed up at my dorm room door. As a senior, I was living in one of the singles, so didn't have a roommate to run interference. I’m sure I had a look of ’shock’ when I opened the door, but after inviting her in- bad mistake- I told her I wasn’t expecting company and probably wasn’t going to be much fun because I was studying. But she said that was okay, that she didn’t mind waiting. Then she picked up a book I wasn’t using and sat down on my bed to read. It was uncomfortable, and as I went about my business ignoring her figured it’d probably come down to a game of wills trying to get her to leave.

As the long evening went on, she’d get restless and want to play and tease and get silly, and when I wouldn't bite, said she wouldn’t go unless I kissed her. Sigh. It wasn’t that I didn’t like kissing, I liked that a lot. I just didn’t like kissing Pam. One, she sucked on cigarettes all day, so kissing her was like kissing a smoke stack. And, two, I always believed a kiss was special and supposed to mean something and didn’t want her getting the idea that she was. But late into the night, I'd have done just about anything if it’d make her leave. So using the least energy possible, I complied.  “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she teased when it was over. Good grief. Was she stupid and blind??  I'm not kissing back, hello?

But what an ordeal. At least she kept her word and left. Yet alone, I sat down on my bed and felt bad. I knew Pam was just lonely and looking for a friend. Shoot, I'd been in her shoes before and sort of felt that way then. What's was so wrong about that? Nothing. So, maybe there’s something wrong with me.  Check it out: a sexy blond ex-cheerleader, chasing after me. All I had to do was let her catch me but instead, I was running away! What's wrong with this picture?! In high school, and before Kelly, wouldn’t I have sold my soul to be the head-liner in that scene? Would it have killed me to give in? What was holding me back? Was I afraid? A fool? A dullard? Gay?

No. There was nothing wrong with me. I liked girls. Unfortunately, after three weeks of trying, and in her case trying way too hard, I just didn’t like this one. Maybe Pam was unaware of how desperate she seemed; that she was coming on too strong. Some people have a blind spot to that. Maybe I should’ve said something, spoken up instead of letting her continue chasing someone that didn’t want to be chased. Maybe this was all on me. Maybe. Bottom line, though, I just wasn’t interested, but clueless how to tell her. I had no idea how to dump someone. I'd always been the dumpee, never the dumper.

So, until I could figure something out, our little game of pursuing cat and unwilling mouse would, unfortunately, continue. More next time...