Most Daring Meets Her Match

Back in college days, I rented a little apartment right off campus with a friend of mine from my hometown, Jules. Jules and another hometown friend of mine (whose name also started with J), Jane, had always been the wild, adventurous types I could never hope to be; not surprisingly, they had both been voted “Most Daring” their respective senior years at our high school. I always got a big kick out of the crazy tales they always had to share, and somewhat lived vicariously through their adventures.

Jules had met this guy in a class at the university who just happened to live in the apartment complex behind ours, a good-looking Middle Eastern fellow from Saudi Arabia who shared an apartment with a cute and funny guy from Kuwait. They were party animals and for a while we took to spending time over at their place hanging out.

The Saudi Arabian guy had a thing for Jules and eventually got around to asking her out on a date, and she complied. I had a paper due the next day that I had been procrastinating getting done, so I was still up and awake when she came home, working on my paper in front of the TV, which at that time in our pad was permanently on MTV.

The date had started out well enough, Mr. Saudi having taken her out for a nice dinner at a local restaurant, then dropping by a local bar for a couple of after dinner drinks. Next, he drove her back to his apartment, which was when the fun started… though not the kind you might think.

Jules was never one to be shy, but she was a little put off by his rather aggressive make out attempts and brushed him off again and again. He didn’t appear to be getting the hint, however, because the next thing she knew, he was patiently but firmly explaining to her that if they had sex that night – as if this was definitely going to happen – that there would then be a 90-day waiting period afterwards in which neither could have sex with anyone else, until they knew for certain that she was not pregnant.

Jules was also never one to be at a loss for words, but was at this point. “I didn’t know whether to laugh or leave,” she laughed while relating the story to me later.

What happened next was the deciding factor on her exit, however, when she absentmindedly slid her hand under a pillow beside her on the couch - still sitting there with her mouth open incredulous at what she was hearing - as he continued to be insistent about this 90-day thing, asking her if she understood. For under the pillow, her hand came to rest upon the unmistakable cold and sharp metal blade of… a knife.

As she was telling me the story and laughing about how she could not have possibly gotten out of there quicker at that point if she’d tried, high-tailing it back across the street to our place fast as she could, Michael Hutchence was dancing on the TV screen behind her as MTV played the “What You Need” video. I have a photograph of Jules dancing in front of the TV at that moment, smirking while recounting the evening’s events in her two-toned hair and post-New Wave shirt and tie and miniskirt. Talk about so very Eighties!

My memory of that night and that picture are forever tied to that INXS song. We used to joke about what a near miss it was – whether Jules would have wound up as Number One wife in the harem or with her throat cut, who knows, though I really doubt it would have been the latter. As she said at the time, the whole knife thing just creeped her out so she split in a hurry.

Jules is still her wild and adventurous self, now a grandmother, but also pregnant with her third child at 40 years old, yet still living an extraordinary life doing and seeing all kinds of things that are uncommon to most. I should call her up and remind her again of what might have been, heh.