Jerking Me Around

Submitted by Isaac:

Penny was in my tennis club in college and we partnered up on the court pretty frequently. I thought she was cool so I made arrangements to take her out to dinner, dessert, and maybe a walk.

At dinner, I discovered that she was very into herself. To the point of telling me the life story of her ex-boyfriends. Each of them. One was an aspiring astronaut. One was a physicist. One, a vegan, cried in her arms for two days straight after accidentally eating cheese.

Anything I said about myself was promptly ignored. Unless I talked about tennis. Or one of he ex-boyfriends.

When she did ask questions, they were weird on the order of, "Have you ever been naked in public?" "Have you ever worked as a garbage man?" "What's it like to want to fuck me?"

I filed these questions under "quirky." When we left for the coffee place, her behavior became even weirder. She pressed her phone to my ear. "Talk," she said, "It's my grandma."

"Hello?" an elderly voice came over the phone. "Who is this?"

Penny took the phone back and hung up. On her own grandma.

We made it to the dessert/coffee place when Penny stopped and said, "Let's get some jerky. There's a gas station rght across the street. They'll have jerky there."

"Jerky? Okay."

So we went to the gas station and I bought her gas station jerky because she didn't have any money. Let me tell you, she tore into this jerky like a Tyrannosaurus, complete with frustrated growls and snarls.

She looked up at me, watching me watching her. She said, "Think fast!" and smacked me, open palm, on the forehead.

Acting on impulse, I slapped the remainder of the jerky out of her hand and it landed on the ground. She shouted, "You son of a bitch! What the hell's your problem?"

All manner of colorful replies came to mind, but the most mature one won out. I said, "I think that we should call it a night."

The next time we did a tennis practice, she partnered up with me all smiles, as if nothing had happened between us. To this day, I wonder if she even remembers that we went out in the first place.