Love at First Sight: She Had Me at Alabama Slammers
Descriptionimage AlabamaSlammerDrink.jpg (53.0kB)
I’d been hanging out with friends most of the night until “she” walked in. I noticed her from across the bar and around the corner. I was instantly fixated on her in a way that’s only happened four times in more than a decade: two of those being my two ex-girlfriends of three years a piece, and that was eons ago. Even liquid courage wouldn’t help me approach her; I’d had far too much liquid to have any real courage. So a married friend pushed me towards my Godsend, complete with her own set of wings ordering Alabama Slammers.
Things didn’t click at all with Miss Alabama. It didn’t help that I was beyond gone off Johnny. But somehow, from my recollection, I was uncharacteristically persistent and annoying, even telling off some bar patron who was talking to her that I deemed less than. Still, she gave me her real number. It definitely helped that her being friend with my best friend’s sister.
It didn’t click between us until a few months later. By then she admitted having turned single that week of the party after a horrible experience and had already dated another guy in the interim. Those few months we spent together were fast and furious, but utter bliss. I fell for her like I’d never fallen for a woman before, especially in that short amount of time. From my first time meeting with her, I dropped all my side acts, focused the bulk of my time on her, and hung on her every word. No 3-Day Rule, no waiting, no games, no lies, no bullshit. I knew it was not an act because I connected with her in a way I had never connected with any other woman. I even remember having that crazy feeling in the car before I left that first weekend, the one of just knowing.
Problem is if you’re not whole when you fall, then you’re likely to fall the wrong way. She had baggage. I had issues. And things fizzled with miscommunication, mistrust, and a singular bad mistake on my part. I got exceedingly drunk waiting hours upon hours for her to arrive at a party and I ended up swapping info with a cute friend of a friend. Women’s intuition is too keen to discredit and, despite coming as drunkenly clean as possible, “she” split within 15 minutes, record time. Fate it seems is not without a sense of irony.
Now that everything has played out, the one I cared about most doesn’t want contact with me. Karma can be a bitch, but it can also be a great teacher. I’m unabashedly single with my head back on straight and my mind focused on staying uninvolved so I can get my life on track. Whenever I happen to fall again hopefully I’ll have put in the work to be much more whole and fall the right way, with her falling right next to me.
