Look What You Made Me Do by Taylor Swift

I can’t very well tell you about playing sports in Indiana without the follow up story.  I had just been through a roller coaster of a week.  After three intense weeks of dating someone new, he tells me he is going to have dinner with his ex wife who he hadn’t seen in 4 years.  It was supposedly to clear the air because they had mutual friends coming into town and were bound to see each other?  I don’t know.  In any case, he drove immediately to my house after this dinner to tell me he was confused and we should end this.  I was understandably confused and upset.  2 nights later he texted me to ask if I wanted to talk.  I said ok.  He said open the door.  As in, he was in my driveway.  Kinda creepy, I know, but it led to this:   When I opened the door, in my pajamas, he peered around the house and said:  So this is what it looks like when someone drops in unexpectedly.  I look around at the completely spotless house, nary a cushion askew, and say: Yep!  In any case, he said he was confused and under pressure, but we are back on.  Ok then.  Well come Friday to our scheduled date, he breaks up with me AGAIN because he feels uncomfortable.  Thankfully, I have very very good girlfriends and Kyla J. came to the rescue.  We took advantage of the sitter I had scheduled and went out all by our damn selves!

We peeked into the first bar my cousin had recommended and it was a little scary and also empty.  We went across the street to a hip place where they had live music.  Well, it was bluesy jazzy quiet kind of music which gave me way too much access to my thoughts and I ended up crying into my cocktail.  We went across the street to another dive.  I marched up to the jukebox, selected some angry Taylor Swift, and marched myself right up to some guys playing darts, ahem, sports and announced I would be playing.  Let’s just say I did not have a repeat of my Indiana performance.  

Kyla’s husband came for her and I decided to finish my beer.  One of the guy’s from darts suggested walking up to the other bar and I said I was game for that.  When we got outside, he asked if I wanted to smoke out of his car bong.  Car Bong.  I was picturing the muffler or I don’t even know what, but I was intrigued.  You will be as disappointed as I was to learn it was just a bong he keeps in his car. 

We go into the bar and while I was putting in my Uber request, a bar fight, complete with shirts being torn and bar stools flung, breaks out right behind me.  Allow me to recap.  Instead of being out on a date with someone I really liked…..it was a car bong and a bar fight kind of night.  After the fight fizzled, patrons of the bar said they’d never seen me in there and this was their neighborhood bar and a really great place, ordinarily.  I said I was sure of that, thanks so much, gotta go!  And I have never been back.

Dance (A$$) by Big Sean

It was a brisk 40 degrees in late January in Carmel, IN.  You pronounce it with the emphasis on the CAR, not the MEL, like you would in California.  I was on a work trip.  Before we left the client site, we had asked for a dinner recommendation.  The client recommended something (which was great) and then turned to his employee and reminded him that they had “sports” later that night.  I inquired which sport they might be participating in, in the middle of winter.  Somewhat sheepishly he replied:  Darts.  And beer.  Yes, I know that sounds like the punchline to the evening, but it’s important to the overall story!  My co-worker and I had just finished dinner and opted for a stroll around downtown Carmel.  As you do in 40 degree weather.  She suggested one more round, so we ducked into a bar.

It was a neighborhood kind of bar, but most noticeably to this Californian, people were smoking.  Inside the bar.  It cost me $40 in dry cleaning to get the smell out of my coat later. I go up to the bar to procure drinks and order something I see on tap. Maybe a Stella?  The bartender says they are out of it.  I try something else.  No dice.  I finally request a Coors Light.  Do they have Coors Light?!  Success!  I bring the beers over to my co worker and we cheers.  A couple polite young (very young!) Indiana gentlemen ask if we might like to play darts with them.  I look at my co worker and shrug and say I could go for some “sports”.  They look at us quizzically, but we are on.  Girls vs. Boys.  And we proceed to kick some ass. I had never played in my life, but somehow I get 5 bulls-eyes during that round.  We later swapped partners and had a completely excellent evening full of bulls-eyes, beers, hilarious conversation, and excellent music on the jukebox.  At one point in the evening, someone asked whose coat was taking up a bar stool.  I said it (the fur lined, suede, fur collar, belted jacket I bought in Spain) was mine.  He said OF COURSE it is mine.  It’s the “I’m from California and it’s going to be cold but I want to look fabulous” coat.  And that’s exactly what I was going for with it.  

We got a ride back to the hotel from the nice young gentlemen and I showed my age because there was a song playing that I had never ever heard.  It’s not really my genre and I definitely can’t play it around the kids.  It has the word Ass in the name of the song for goodness sake.  He was blasting it as we barreled down the main strip in downtown Carmel in his (jeep? I think?).  I’m still in touch with the nice young men and they definitely give the name to Midwestern manners, except I suppose for the song with the word Ass in it.