Old Friends and Speeding Tickets

Julianne knew she was going to have a bad night. She would be lonely, and she’d probably be bored, but she went anyway because they were her friends. Going out together seemed to be the only way for them all to stay in touch.

She wanted to see everyone. It was good to see everyone. It got her out the house for a while too.

For a while it was even fun.

For an hour, until they all started abandoning her.

Then it was just lonely, and a bit dull.

It was a girls night at a girl bar and Julianne knew before she left home that she’d spend hours sitting the corner, being ignored, while everyone else got laid.

Her friends usually forgot her once they got horny. Once the night got going. Once they’d started stalking each other in a fog of seething hormones. Her friends ignored her, and the strangers, all the strangers, seemed to think she was someone’s straight friend and ignored her too.

It was frustrating and weird and she didn’t know why.

She didn’t look different from anyone else. She’d gone to Melanie’s to get ready, and planned carefully, and she knew she didn’t look that different. Not straight. She might have a dress, and makeup, and heels too, but Melanie had all those things, and was outside fucking someone in their car right now.

Everyone was fucking someone, or kissing someone, or dancing with someone, or falling in love, and Julianne was on her own at the table with their coats, becoming increasingly upset.

Not being picked up in bars had bothered her for years, but it was really starting to annoy her now. She’d never been fingered on the dance-floor in a club with a roomful of people around her, and she was starting to feel like it was really time.

But it never happened.

There was something about her that made her invisible.

She didn’t think it was because she was coupled, and was giving off signals that let people know. She wasn’t, not really. She had Crissie at home, and some people here might know that, but she couldn’t be the only one the bar who had a different kind of arrangement with her partner. They all seemed to be doing fine.

It might be that she knew she didn’t want love, and was putting everyone off somehow that way. But it wasn’t like anyone else was really falling in love tonight either. They were hooking up, that was it.

Julianne wanted to hook up too. She wanted to flirt. She wanted to meet someone and talk to her and have the illusion it was going somewhere.

She just wanted to pretend.

She had to pretend, because Crissie was a workaholic fifty year old who never went out, and Julianne was bored and thirty, and somewhere in that, for them to work, Julianne needed this. And Crissie needed to turn a blind eye.

Crissie did, but Julianne still got nothing.

It was hopeless. Julianne knew it was hopeless. She knew she would have a bad night, and everyone else would be too excited to even notice, but she’d gone out with them all the same.

It was her own fault.

She sat, and tried to decide whether she was more annoyed, or just glum. She drank a little, but the third time her drink was empty, she didn’t even bother getting up to find another.

She couldn’t go, anyway. She had to mind the coats, and mind her bag. Everyone else had pants with pockets, or a skirt and boots, or big enough tits to store things in their bra. Julianne had heels, and a bag, and had to sit in the corner and mind her own bag and even that didn’t seem fair.