Dapper Carter's 8 Rules of Dating Read Free Page B

last thirty seconds of the song, eight inches
apart, careful not to draw the attention of the chaperoning nuns. Even so, it
was magical and evidently it was enough.
    The next day in school my life went to bizarro world
as everything went from Betty Boop black and white to full blown Toto-we’re-not-in-Kansas-anymore
color. There were notes being slipped into my locker and upperclassmen eyes
being batted at me for the first time. Unexpectedly, every girl at my school
started to check for me and I owed it all to Kennedy. She was one of the most
popular girls in our town and every guy wanted her. Here was the first lesson I
was to learn regarding women only wanting guys that other women wanted, and I
was the showcase winner.  
    We dated through senior year of high school, all of
college, broke up during my short stint in LA, and then got married shortly
thereafter. We’ve been married for eight years.  None of that mattered right
now because her brow was deeply furrowed into the crease between her disapproving
eyes.
    I had screwed up before, but this felt different. She
was seething. Usually I could sway her with an easy smile and turn her frown
upside down, but not this time. Nor would I even try. I was pretentious,
arrogant, and pompous—all synonyms meaning the same thing. I was an ASSHOLE!
    I thought the last straw was a year ago when she
clicked on the ten o’clock news and there was my face being praised as a local
hero.
    I was out on one of my “lunch dates” when this
dumbass at the table next to mine began choking on a tiny jumbo shrimp (double
oxymoron).  As my luck would have it, I was the only person within earshot
who knew the Heimlich maneuver and promptly administered it to him, saving his
life.  I was a fuckin’ hero. 
    Unbeknownst to me, a local news crew was doing a
special down in Red Bank on Healthy Lunch choices for under $10 and they
happened to be in this particular restaurant of all places.
    Red Bank was fifty miles away from my home in Edison. I made it a point never to shit where I ate, so I would take my little indiscretions
out of the immediate area. I slipped the busboy $20 to take credit for saving
the man’s life when the news crew decided to interview the Good Samaritan.
    Of course, the Mexican immigrant barely knew English
let alone the Heimlich and the jig was up pretty quickly. He folded like a bad
hand in poker and confessed that I was the real hero.  Even when I tried
to do the right thing, it somehow ended up being the wrong thing to do. 
And to add insult to injury, Kennedy and I were in bed making love when the
story came on the ten o’clock news. Fuck!
    So there I was, plastered all over the news, and
being praised as a fucking hero over one hundred miles away from where I had
told her I would be.  Naturally she was pissed and “preferred” to go up to
Martha’s Vineyard to “clear her head” since she was sooo distraught over what
I did, allegedly.  Who you gonna trust, me or your lying eyes?  
She came home a week later and we never spoke of it again.
    “Do you know what time it is?”
    “Nope .”  And I didn’t care. She already
knew where I was and what I had been doing. “The credit card company called and
said you took out fifteen hundred dollars in cash advances in Chicag-hoes?”   Her
bottom lip trembled as it took her every ounce of composure not to slap the
shit out of me.
     “So?”
    “So that’s my money, motherfucker!”
    “Whatever.”
    I chuckled as I pushed past her toward our bedroom
then pivoted on my heel and spun back around. My head was throbbing and I knew
I needed a shower to wash the sweet stink of coitus with Baton Rougeoff
of my worn out body. She had drained me of most of my bodily fluids, replacing
it with her own mixture of saliva, sweat, and love juice. Since my wife was
part bloodhound, it was just a matter of time before she caught wind. But just
for good measure I decided to take my level of arrogance to another