The Tiger Woman Strikes
By William X. Ray
I was wild and that’s the way I liked it. I lived it, and the crowd I ran around with cheered me on. You see, back then, things were different. Today, my behavior would have landed me on Dr. Phil’s couch or awarded condemnation from the audience of Oprah. Both celebrities have made fortunes as a result of the outrageous attitudes toward behavior that an entire generation experimented with and passed off to the next generation. Don’t hate me, please.
So, it was that magical week between Christmas and New Years and I was celebrating it in my usual fashion; depressed, alone, knowing it and getting a real independent attitude as a result. It sounded something like….
“Screw it. I don’t need this annual grief. This is a cultural shopping spree that I am just not buying into.”
I was real pleasant to be around, no doubt. Mothers pitied me. Girls avoided me. The Rotarians knew this would eventually happen to losers like me. But some saw it as an opportunity and,
Probably the funniest woman alive, Theresa was a practicing eccentric. She was way ahead of her time, way before an army of young and brilliant female comediennes came our way. She had dark eyes, was attractive and Hispanic and she could sing. Theresa was going to be my date for New Years Eve.
The Tiger Woman was also tall and always dressed to make a fashion statement; her everyday favorite, like to the post office and such, was a skin tight, leopard-skin leotard with a skin tight black top. Some would say she wasn’t my type, but then again, my record with women was so sketchy that a “type” really hadn’t had time to establish itself; it was all a work in progress (or a train wreck in slow motion depending upon your viewpoint). So Theresa and I talked, made uncomfortable “nice” while sitting on the bed in her apartment and arranged the whole thing a little awkwardly but determinedly. The “fix” was in from both sides, that subtext was a given. This date was going to happen even if I went into convulsions and spitted pea soup, ala Linda Blair in the Exorcist.
On New Years, I picked her up and we had dinner at the club were she was singing that night. That was okay with me, in fact, it was exciting; a date with a Latin singer was a minor fantasy I lodged in my tortured mind. Of course, I didn’t know how to behave myself in public and while she was onstage, I was grooving on the dance floor with other women and drinking Harvey Wall Bangers, a drink from the seventies that I highly recommend. But Theresa and I would connect and carry on between sets; I wasn’t a completely oblivious idiot. Yet.
Well this is where the story begins to get a little fuzzy. I will dutifully work toward the finish and not bore you with a lot of made up stuff and filler. That night, I met my future wife and mother of two wonderful sons and it wasn’t Theresa the Tiger Woman, but we’re not done yet, but getting closer.
That night, in my abandon and driven by drink and music, I walked up to the bar and approached a young woman who I had never spoken to, but who I had often seen in our little community. She was sitting at the bar between four men her own age. I walked up to the bar and spoke.
“I have often admired your exotic beauty, but only from a distance because I was too shy to talk to you.” I just stood there and recited this; I didn’t say hello or anything else. Unfortunately, all the guys with her heard me also, but fortunately, none of them knocked me down where I stood.
I stood unworthy before her. She had curly brown hair that formed a halo around an angels face centered with perfect lips below a petite upturned nose. She was truly beautiful in a classic, high-cheeked and European fashion. She was way out of my league. She turned from me to her purse, took out a pen and wrote down her phone number and handed it to me. The first words she ever spoke to me were:
“I’m not going home with you tonight” and that was all she said.
I bowed and scraped and exited. I lost that piece of paper but the number on it was one digit different than my own phone number. It is true that God watches over children and fools after all and one month afterwards, I called her.
I don’t remember any details about what happened with Theresa save for this: I drove her back to my apartment where she ripped my fancy shirt down the middle and the buttons popped like peas from a pod. Then, she took hold of my T-shirt, a flimsy “wife-beater”, grabbed it by the shoulder straps and peeled it down to my waist like a banana skin. You can imagine the rest, it was as wild as your active and puerile mind can conjure, until that is, finally approaching the climax of alcohol enriched passion, The Tiger Woman passed out cold. Flattering myself, I took her pulse to feel for hot Latin blood coursing through her veins to make sure she wasn’t dead, but not to worry, she lived. But my Diva was done; her turbocharged engine of desire and lust had conked out near the finish line and she was now snoring like a grandma.
Days, afterwards,
“What did Theresa say? Did she say anything about it”, unsure whether I really wanted to hear.
“He was great! All my men are great! I make them great! She said this with a flourish and a sweeping hand gesture as if she were in a Shakespearean play.
That’s funny; she never said anything to me but “thanks, good-bye”. And that was just what my aching head and distracted ego wanted to hear that following morning.
William X. Ray has published a number of savvy fishing articles, but was kind enough to contribute this whimsical piece. A Bay Area fisherman, he's semi-retired but still keeps the occasional monofilament in the water.
Watch for more of his to-the-point prose.
