Here's Looking at You, Kid

I met Allison on the campus of University of Illinois. The fall semester had recently begun and everyone was getting settled into their classes and university life. I went to go meet at friend in front of his dorm and we were supposed to do what good college boys do: go drink. Imagine my surprise when I arrived and he told he needed to study instead. I was shocked and baffled. Study on a Tuesday night? Didn’t he know that the weekday is the thinking man’s weekend?

He didn’t. “Go find someone else to hang out with,” he said. “I really need to study.”

“Pfff,” I said and bid him farewell.

After he disappeared into the shadowy insides of his dormitory, I paused to gather myself and figure what was next.

Then I saw her sitting there in the sunlight. And she looked like a dream. I walked up to her with nothing, no plan, no ideas. I was flying blind. This is usually a big mistake for a man. There’s no telling what might happen. It’s the wild west. It’s the front lines under fire. And a pretty girl sitting on a bench eating ice cream is way more disarming than an old time desperado or enemy fire in a war zone.

Totally disarmed, I stepped up to her and lipped the only thing I knew at that moment. “You look really cool,” I said.

Now if I was twelve, this would have been a great line. Sadly, I was all grown up. Apparently. I recognized the lameness of the blunder immediately and set to correcting it right away. And the only way to get her to forget all about it was liquor. High doses of the hard stuff on the top shelf would’ve worked best, but anything would do. It was a crisis situation with heavy injuries and strong meds were needed fast if the patient was to survive the night.

I don’t know how I managed it, but somehow we ended up in my car en route to some little dive bar in Wicker Park that she recommended. “I can get in,” she said.

At this point I knew just a few crucial facts: She was beautiful, knew how to dress well, between 18 and 21, and knew where to get a drink. (Later I learned that this last skill was likely a genetic trait from her Grandmother Virginia, who, in the prohibitive twentieth, was capping the home brew when she was like nine. In a jam, she could probably still make some bathtub gin and sell it to ya, sucka.)

However it came to her, going for drinks at Zack’s Bar in Chicago, Illinois was just the thing to lead to an amazing love affair. We drank Becks and shot pool. She beat me like eight games to none on a spent, old table.

Like a gift from above, we started talking about movies. And the kid hadn’t ever seen Casablanca. So that’s just what we did next—saw the ultimate movie about love lost. When the credits rolled, the stakes were set and she was my girl.

Suffice it to say, I now truly believe in the importance of studying.