Close Call #1: Paz (Part 1)

(What's a Close Call? Click here!)

My first Friday night in Denver, I decided that I wanted to meet someone to go out with. I had been completely out of my element the night before when I went to a club and could not find a way to meet someone there. I figured I would have better luck with something that wasn't available in the small town I came from: telephone personal ads.

I found one 900 number that I could call and listen to a large number of ads. One of the features of this service was that, once you paid their fee, they would connect you directly with the woman you chose from the ads. After listening to the ads, I found one that sounded interesting. Her name was Paz. I actually got to talk to her that night. We arranged to meet at Congress Park in Denver the next day.

On Saturday, I showed up at the park. We managed to find each other. She had long, curly blonde hair and was a little overweight, but it was a muscular overweight, if that makes any sense. She was wearing sunglasses the whole time, so I couldn't see her eyes.

I asked her where she worked. She said she was a travel agent for Travel Travel. She said that she had mentioned that on the phone ad. I didn't recall that detail, but she seemded kind of irritated that I didn't know that. (And actually, I got a chance to listen to her ad again a couple of months later on that service's free line, which plays some of their older ads. She made NO mention of being a travel agent.)

We didn't really talk a lot and it was really hard for me to get any kind of read as to whether or not she liked me. She didn't smile and she never looked directly at me. I actually thought the meeting was a bust.

A few days later, she called me and asked if I wanted to play tennis that Saturday. We would meet again at Congress Park. We would go out to eat after that. I agreed and borrowed a tennis racket from my aunt. I also had to buy some shorts. I actually bought some bicycle pants because they wouldn't show off too much of my (rather pasty white) legs.

When I got to the park on Saturday, it was raining, REALLY HARD! I thought, "Well, there's no way we're going to be playing tennis today." As I waited in my car. I saw the headlights of another car coming up behind me. The car pulled up beside me and the passenger window rolled down. It took me a second, but I realized it was Paz. She wasn't wearing her sunglasses, so I didn't recognize her at first. She said we should just go ahead and go eat. I still needed to change out of my pants. I got into the backseat of her car and asked her to avoid the temptation of looking in the back while I changed. She laughed at that. I don't know if she looked. I was too anxious about changing my pants.

I had found this restaurant called Chives that I thought would be a good place to eat. It wasn't too expensive. We went there and we had a good lunch. We planned to drive over to the park so I could get my car and then we would drive to her house. She said she was living with this woman and her child. She told me she didn't want her to know that she was dating someone, so she wanted me to pretend to be a plumber's assistant who was working to install a bathroom in the basement of her home. I kept asking why we needed to lie to her. She kept saying that she just wouldn't get it, but that we were going to be going out.

At the house, the woman she was living with had a psychology practice and her name was on a sign out in front that indicated she was a Ph.D. There were other people in the house. We went down into the basement. Paz asked me to get a pencil and draw some lines that indicated where the commode was supposed to go and so on. I drew an outside of a toilet tank in the middle of the wall. When the doctor came down to talk to me, I had to act like I knew what I was talking about. I mentioned the proposed location of the toilet, but said that the tank wouldn't be that high, but it would be located there. I felt like I was in an episode of "Cheers."

Paz asked the doctor what was going on with all the people upstairs. She said that they were about to start a meeting. Paz asked if we could take part in the meeting. She said, "No, because it's a meeting for lesbian mothers." I tried really hard to stifle my laughter, but a little blast came out. I don't think the doctor liked me much after that.

Outside the house, we could hear some music coming out of the backyard of a house in the neighborhood. A party was going on. Paz and I crashed it, although I did so reluctantly. There was a live band playing music. They played one song by R.E.M. and referred to the group as their "friends." There was this one person at the party that Paz was talking to. He was apparently gay. At some point, they were having a discussion about bisexuality. Paz turned to me and said, "You're bi, aren't you?" I said no, I wasn't. She said, "It's okay to be bi. Everybody's bi!"

We left the party. Paz said she didn't really like any of the people there. She thought they were stuck up. (While we did crash the party, it wasn't like we were eating up all the food and drinking up all the alcohol.) We started walking. We kept walking and walking through the streets of Denver. It was at this point that she started holding my hand. I was rather surprised by this development, but just went with it. We stopped at an A&W and had hamburgers. Then we walked some more, a LOT more. She said, "I think we walked off those hamburgers." I had no idea where we were at. We finally got back to where we started. I gave her a quick hug at the door and headed out to my car. Even though I had a good time and enjoyed holding hands with her, I was still glad when the date came to an end. I had been through a lot that night.

I continued to date Paz a few more times. I'll go more into detail about that in the next post.