All of us has, at one point, woken up next to someone and wondered what in the hell we were thinking the night before.
The story I'm about to tell you is quite possibly the most classic example of bad judgment that you'll ever read.
It's about the night I shacked up with a former felon.
To begin, this all happened a few years ago while I was in law school, after Rick, the game warden, and I had broken up.
My law school campus is in a small town, so back in those days, whenever I escaped small town life and ventured into the city several hours away, I was like a kid in a candy story.
This particular weekend, I was crashing at a buddy's townhouse near downtown.
My buddy and his boyfriend were fighting all weekend and were trying to pull me into their drama at the club we were hanging out at.
Consequently, at one point, I decide to take a break from the drama and make a lap around the bar on my own.
After weaving through a pair of aggressive drag queens, escaping from a vicious pack of ankle biters, and fending off the shot boy, I find a calm corner near the edge of the dance floor with a railing to rest my drink on.
The bar I'm at is a country bar, and, as this is fairly early in my "gay scene" exposure, I am fascinated by watching men two-step with other men. Even more intriguing are the lesbians - the extremely rough bull-dogs with spiked hair awkwardly leading their women around the hardwood dance floor.
It's funny to me, but also refreshing that people feel free to let loose in such a place, a concept which is entirely new to me at this point.
I don't really notice the three men standing slightly behind me and to my right until after I get comfortable in my new spot.
Finally, from the corner of my eye, I catch them evaluating me.
Oh shit . . . one of the old guys is gonna come over here . . . that's my luck, I fear.
Two of the men eying me have white-grey hair, and can't be under 50. The third one, seemingly out of place, is about 5'10, with short, dark hair, a perfectly sculpted face, and intense, almost dangerous, dark eyes.
He's cute, I think. Really, really cute.
I've always had a bit of a crush on Patrick Dempsey, and this guy sorta looks like a young version of him, but even cuter, I think.
I imagine that he's about 25 years old.
What his he doing with those old men?
Within seconds, I realize that I'm about to get an answer, because he bridges the short gap between us just as a Kenny Chesney song hits the first chorus.
"Hey, what's up?" He says simply.
His voice is soft and masculine, with a quiet confidence.
"Not much," I reply as I introduce myself and shake his hand.
After some small talk about the music, the dancing, and our mutual opinion that Kenny Chesney is gay, I discover that, like me, Felon is visiting from out of town. In fact, he'd come all the way from Alabama to hang out for the weekend.
We exchange numbers, and I discover more about him.
First, he's a landscaper back home in his tiny town.
His rough hands and tanned skin confirm that claim, and I listen while he describes his love for working outdoors. His passion for his trade is attractive, and I'm even more interested at this point.
Second, like me, he'd been in the military for several years, which to me is also a very attractive quality.
Third, I find out something that is much less appealing.
He's dead broke and just filed for bankruptcy.
Apparently, Felon had spent every dime he had buying his ex-boyfriend a hair salon (the ex was a stylist), and, like the redneck he was, Felon didn't put his own name on any of the paperwork. So . . . after the stylist had a new salon that was fully-paid-for, he told Felon to hit the road.
Now, Felon is living in a camper in the front of yard of the house owned by the two old men, who are life partners.
At this point in the conversation, it dons on me that Felon isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Still, he's cute, and I've been in a sexual dry spell for months.
We plan to get together the next night, which would be the last night in town for both of us.
The next night, I drive across town to Felon's motel, which is in the seedy part of the city near strip clubs, warehouses, and railroad tracks.
He climbs in my car, and we begin the 30-minute drive to dinner.
The night before, I'd pegged him at 25 years-old. Tonight, he looks more like 30, which is his actual age.
I notice the crows feet around his eyes, which had presumably developed from too many long hours in the sun.
It's not unattractive at all. In fact, it's kind of sexy on him.
During the drive out of the ghetto, I question him about his time in the military. He tells me that he'd been an enlisted soldier in the infantry, and had only been in for 2.5 years.
RED FLAG! Jumps into my mind right away.
Very few people who enlist as a grunt or commission as an officer spend less than four years in service. The usual commitment time to receive an honorable discharge is 4 years. There are always exceptions, but the exceptions are few and far between. Many soldiers who get out early are medically discharged (released from their commitments for medical reasons), which is completely acceptable. But other reasons include failure to adapt, and worse, misconduct.
I start digging for information.
He tells me that he was dishonorably discharged for being openly gay, as he'd "been 'fuc*ing' several of the guys in his barracks."
At first, I believe him, and explain that under military law, openly gay soldiers must be discharged, but the discharges should never be dishonorable. His scenario is completely wrong and against military policy, and I offer suggestions on how he should try to get the dishonorable discharge wiped out.
Then, I find out the real scoop.
In addition to having sex with other males in the barracks, he'd also been caught with marijuana on several occasions, and, the big one: he'd stolen a computer from his battalion commander's desk and had tried to pawn it off.
For the last offense, he received a felony conviction and spent seven months in prison.
He tries to blame the harsh charges and conviction on his company commander, but I cut him short and explain that I would've done the same exact thing if I'd been responsible for him.
I don't hold back my feeling on how stupid Felon's theft was, and I fully expect for him to clam up and get pissed. I assume the night is about to end, and at this point, I'm completely prepared to drive him back to the motel.
Instead, Felon rolls with the punches and admits that he'd been a dumbass and that he'd learned from his experience.
Determined to go through with this date, partially because I don't want to admit defeat to my buddies, partially because it's nice to be on a date for once, and partially because I'm horny and still find felon cute, I suggest that we grab food at an Asian restaurant in Uptown.
The evening is beautiful, and I ask the hostess to put us at a table outside under an awning.
After we sit down and order, Felon opens up even more about his past.
Consequently, I begin drinking heavily. Here's why:
First, when we discuss our siblings, he tells me about his younger brother, and I'm completely unprepared for what I hear.
When he was in his early teens, Felon and his younger brother were playing in the backyard. Like all good redneck boys, they were fighting and shooting guns at everything that moved.
Apparently, while the brothers were wrestling, Felon accidentally shot his eleven-year-old brother.
The brother died on the way to the hospital.
Felon was obviously traumatized by the incident, and it didn't help that the boys' father blamed Felon for the death and reminded him of it every day.
With no one to console him, Felon became depressed, so depressed in-fact that the counselor from his high school got the State involved and enrolled Felon in a residential counseling center.
While at the counseling center, two of the male counselors molested him.
Felon explains that the encounters were consensual. However, as Felon was only 15 at the time he began counseling, I tell him that, under the law, there was nothing consensual about it.
Still, even after Felon reached the age of 16 and stopped going to counseling, he continued a sexual relationship with one of the 25-year-old mental health counselors.
Yes, to answer your question, I'm still sitting at the table, and I'm not preparing to run to my truck . . . not that the thought didn't cross mind.
At one point, I really did think about telling him that this was a disaster, and that it wasn't going to work.
But I couldn't leave him -- he didn't have a cell phone to call his friends and didn't even have money for a cab to his motel.
So, I persevered. Keep in mind that: (1) I have a thing for Patrick Dempsey, (2) this guy looks like him, (3) I've been sexually repressed for a while now, and (4) I'm getting drunker by the minute.
Instead of going somewhere romantic after dinner, I suggest that we go to the gay bars.
Hell, I need some whiskey at this point.
We head back to the country bar, the same place we'd just met each other the night before.
While I was tapping my foot to a Pat Green song and buying us a couple of drinks, some random guy walks up to me, puts his hand on my shoulder, and says something cheesy like, "You're hot."
Out of no where, Felon steps up and shoves the guy.
I look at Felon with shock.
But my shock quickly dissolves into a near panic as I see a wild spark of something in Felon's eyes, like he could snap at any moment.
At this point, I'm seriously concerned for my own safety and for the safety of the random dude who'd just been shoved.
Felon turns to me and asks, "Do you want me to kick his ass?"
"No!" I reply, "Are you kidding?"
The incident causes me to ask him about bar fights, and how many he'd been in.
I shouldn't have asked.
Felon tells me that, once, he'd been in a bar fight with a drunk guy when the drunk guy thought Felon was trying to hit on his girlfriend. According to Felon, the drunk guy wouldn't let up, so Felon grabbed a barstool and shoved it at his chest.
The barstool pierced the drunk guy's chest, ultimately causing his death.
Felon was never charged for the homicide, primarily because all of the witnesses to the incident had been completely trashed during the fight.
Still, you can probably imagine how quickly I downed my whiskey and coke.
The rest of the night went on without incident, from what I can remember anyway.
And, despite all of the warning signs, I took Felon home.
Sexually, we didn't do much -- both of us had consumed too much alcohol, and surprisingly, he was trying to be respectful by not moving too fast.
I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I was disappointed at the time. . . when we left the bar, I'd expected the rest of the night to be full of really hot, crazy sex.
However, not much happened. But more importantly, there was no violence, no robbery, and no drama.
We both just passed out without incident.
The next morning, I drove him back to the motel, and to my relief, I survived the incident with my life and all of my belongings.
We haven't talked since that morning.
To this day, my friends still give me unrelenting hell about my night with Felon. And, I tend to think that the ragging is justified.
What in the hell was I thinking?
But you know, sometimes we all let the wrong part of our anatomy make decisions for us. For me, this was most certainly one of them.
Also, I've been dating a ton, with unsatisfactory results, and recently, I had LASIK surgery performed on my eyes. 20-15 vision, baby!
