Then he moves on to the story he mentioned on our first date.
“I had a woman try to murder me at an IHOP,” he tells the crowd. “It’s true. It’s a one hundred percent true story, which I’m opening up to share with you tonight. When I tell women that a woman tried to murder me at an IHOP, they all have the same question. Do you know what it is?”
Four or five women sitting at different tables yell out in near unison, “What did you do?”
“ ‘What did I do?’ you want to know,” he repeats to the audience. “First of all, thanks for blaming the victim. But if you must know what I did, I fell in love, that’s what I did. I was thinking with my dick.”
Appreciative laughter, especially from the men. Some women titter, uncertain as to what’s to come next.
The story of the attempted murder he’s telling is a matter of public record, no matter how unbelievable I found it at first. My mistrusting nature led me to do a search for the 2004 police report, and there I saw it, the woman who had greeted him with a murder-suicide note in her pocket and police-issue Glock 9mm before he wrestled it out of her hands. At that point, she unleashed her fury on him, jumping onto his back, scratching his face, and trying to force her fingertips into his eye sockets.
The woman, who was convicted of second-degree attempted murder, had been his mistress in his failing second marriage. When he cut the relationship off and put all her duffel bags in a hotel room to avoid a face-to-face showdown, she grew obsessive and increasingly unglued. She called his family members, whom she’d never met. She incessantly called his parents, threatening his mother.
Having cheated death that time, Pat resolved to never cheat again.
“Would you like to know why men think with their dicks?” Pat asks the women who shouted out the question to him earlier, asking what he’d done. “Because I’ll tell you.”
A pause.
“Yes!” one woman cries out.
“It’s because,” he says, “our dicks have pretty good ideas.”
He’s killing, and he’s won the women over, too—the same way he’s winning me over as his girlfriend.
After the show, I see him mingling at the bar with the other comics, drinking a Coke and speaking out of the side of his mouth. He’s perpetually unperturbed, his military-close haircut alienating and cold, giving him a look akin to Travis Bickle-cum-Peaky Blinders, which works, since he has the swagger of a maniac, the guy who could either save the day or light the whole place up, unredeemable.
“Good set,” I say, sounding almost hesitant, which I never am anymore.
“Come downstairs with me,” Pat says, and he leads me through a narrow stairwell and into a hidden greenroom with a picture of Rodney Dangerfield hanging above us where he closes the door. Rodney has a look that says, I get no respect, and I giggle looking at it. Pat has taken me to a secret place. He swings one arm over my black lambskin jacket and black disco pants and pulls me close.
“You know who you remind me of? Blondie. Not Deborah Harry, the comic strip,” he tells me, running his hands up and down my body, which is boosted up and cinched into the tightest outfit I own. “When I was little, I thought Blondie was the sexiest woman in the world, with her figure and the tight dress, the hair. And now here you are with me. Big tits. Perfect face. Blond hair. Long legs . . .”
“Fuck,” I say, breathing into his ear. “You don’t seem scared of anything.”
“What’s there to be afraid of?”
I think for a minute.
“I don’t know. My past, maybe.”
“Your past is what makes you you, Mandy. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
When he comes back to my place in Chelsea, I go into autopilot, switching into a character I can do on cue: The Slut. I try not to do it anymore, but sometimes old habits kick in without my even realizing my defense mechanisms are at play.
“Do you want me to touch myself?” I ask Pat, in a caricature of seduction.
“I want you to cut it out,” he says, looking me right in my eyes. “What’s this thing you do, where it’s like you’re doing a show?”
“It’s just easier,” I say hesitantly. “Sometimes just pretending to be someone else feels safer.”
“The only thing that turns me on is seeing who you actually are,” Pat says, moving his hand up my body. “Tell me, do you need me?”
“Yes,” I say, answering what I know to be true. “I do.”
“Why, baby?”
“Because I love you,” I say without thinking.
Good God in heaven above.
Did I just say that aloud?
So much for my “Mandy’s Relationship Expectations” where the guy must say “I love you” first. Besides, it’s only been about six weeks. I try to reel it back in. “I didn’t mean it, like, you know . . . it was just . . .”
“It’s okay,” he stops me. “I love you, too.”
Panic creeps in goose-bump inches up my body. This guy is different.
“I know you, Mandy,” he says. “You were bad, weren’t you?”
I nod, eyes squeezed shut tight.
“Nothing is wrong,” Pat says, “unless it’s untrue.
“Did you fuck a lot of guys?” Pat asks. “You love sex, don’t you?”
“I have,” I say. “I do,” I say.
“Tell me everything,” Pat whispers to me.
My eyes flutter open.
“Okay.”
With every story I tell Pat, he relays to me one of his own.
“Mandy,” he says. “I have a feeling about you and me. That we are worthy of each other.”
On his way out the door, he hesitates. I’m smiling at him, drunk on closeness. He looks at me, eyes shining, taking me in.
“Will you marry me someday?” he asks.
My heart
