Escaping Reality

Chapter 38: Midday Mellows

"Woah, woah, woah, take it easy. You're killing my self-esteem right now" I said playfully.

We went back to Lola's place where she got ready for work and I sat on the couch trying to mentally recover from last night. In that moment of discomfort and pain, I decided that I was going to live today up. I had spent the better part of yesterday sitting on a couch and laying in a bathtub. Today I wanted to live on the finer side of things.

"HEY LOLA YOU WORK AT ONE OF THE COUNTRY CLUBS RIGHT?" I screamed up to her.

"YEAH!" she screamed back down to me.

"COULD YOU GET ME IN FOR THE DAY, LIKE A FREE DAY PASS OR SOMETHING TO THE POOL AND GOLF COURSE?" I shouted back up.

"You don't gotta shout I'm right here," she said as she came down the stairs "but yes I can't get you a day pass or something."

"Cool cool, I'm about due for the pampered life, last night was rough."

"HEY, I don't work for another hour and a half, do you want to go grab breakfast or something somewhere?" she asked.

"Is that question."

"Well you're not coming if you look and smell like that," She said looking me up and down.

"What happened to liking me for who I am," I said sarcastically as I made my way downstairs to run through the shower quickly, change clothes, and throw on some deodorant.

I changed into some chino shorts and a polo, figuring I would dress the part of the life I was trying to live. I was stuck when it came to picking a pair of swim trunks. I had the modest pair I had worn the other day or my super short purple pair that got plenty of stares. What the heck, you know you like the attention I told myself as I grabbed the purple trunks and ran to meet Lola in the driveway.

"I'm all cleaned up, I even brushed my teeth. May I kiss you now?" I asked, giving her a half-smile.

"Well I suppose" was all she could get out of her mouth before my lips met hers.

"As much as I would love to continue that we gotta go eat so I can get to work on time," Lola said as she cut me off backing away gently.

Because we were tight on time we ended up at some swanky breakfast place by the country club. Most of their dishes were small and expensive but they boasted a five-star chef and a wall full of awards so we figured it was worth it. The menu was interesting, everything was simplified. For example, all of the meals forwent the fancy names and instead were just listed as "dish" followed by a two-digit number code. Each code came with the ingredients listed below. It was a cool system that made ordering a lot more fun and probably helped the cooks out immensely.

Our server's name was Noah and he was a little bit granola but still a cool guy. Turns out he never went to college and just worked odd jobs for six months out of the year and then traveled the remaining six months and repeated, taking a job wherever he had ended up. He said he saved his money and never actually ate at the restaurant so he didn't have any recommendations for us. Lola and I decided to spin the bottle per se and randomly picked an item. We ended up selecting dish-09 which is an egg benedict slider dish.

It wasn't long before Noah placed the food in front of us and told us to enjoy our meal. Traditionally I was not a huge eggs benedict fan but these were pretty good. There were four different sliders each featuring a different type of meat. They had bacon, beef tenderloin, Canadian bacon, and ham. Each one of them had an additional twist like maybe spicy hollandaise or a waffle in place of a biscuit or the incorporation of hash browns.

Lola and I were each able to find at least two combinations that we enjoyed and cleaned the plate easily. We left Noah a nice tip hoping to support his almost addictive travel habits and head to the club. In the car, Lola gave me a quick rundown on the country club lifestyle. She said that most of the people there were nice but some were brutally privileged and flaunted their wealth at every opportunity. She also taught me the proper etiquette and gave me a quick air map of the campus layout.

She was a poolside server so she was able to sneak me in no problem. She asked around and in less than ten minutes I was walking around with an all-inclusive guest wristband. I needed to get rid of the gross feeling that seemed to hover over my body even after the shower. Golf was considered a sport right? I headed down to the pro shop and checked to see if they had any open tee times.

"We have one older gentleman golfing by himself in twenty minutes if you would like to golf with him?" the desk worker told me.

"That would be fantastic, thank you..um" I paused searching for his name.

"Jared"

"Ah thank you, Jared, enjoy the rest of your day," I said, doing my best to sound like country club material.

Now that I had a tee time I just needed some clubs. The clubhouse offered free rentals so I went and picked out a set of Taylormade clubs, my favorite. Everything went smoothly except for when I asked if they had a left-handed putter.

"Sir, all of your clubs are right-handed, why do you want a left-handed putter," the bag boy asked me with a confused look on his face.

"Well if you really must know it all started my sophomore year of high school" I started going into full story mode. "I was really into golf but I couldn't afford to buy all these new clubs so I would get the year prior model off of eBay for dirt cheap. I got a new driver, well new to me, a new hybrid, a new fairway wood, and new irons. All I had left was the putter and there was this putter that I liked but I could only find it for lefties. It retailed for $165 and it was on eBay for $35. So during school one day I asked to go to the bathroom and sat in the stall for 15 minutes in a bidding war over this putter. So when you take actual time out of your day to sit in a school bathroom and bid on a putter through eBay then you're in deep. The putter came and I haven't looked back since"

"Ah, I see, very cool," the kid said sarcastically as he swapped my right-handed putter for a left-handed one, annoyed that I had taken so much time out of his day to tell such an odd story.

The course had some dumb rule that you had to be 21 to drive the carts so I guess I was walking the nine holes. The course was also very nicely kept and reportedly had been played by some of the greats including Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, and Jack Nicholson. As cool as that was that made me a little nervous, it was jumps and strides ahead of the nicest course I had ever played on.