Sitting at the far end of the room, there’s a girl sitting by herself. It’s been a few rotations now, and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone go to sit with her. It’s a shame, to be honest. Almond shaped eyes, subtly reddened lips… You have to accept the bright pink and blue hair color, but can that really be a downer for some people? I refuse to believe that’s why people are avoiding her. My time with this guy is coming to an end, I think I’ll just bump up a few spots and go have a chat with her.

“You seem to have drifted off, is everything okay?” The guy in front of me says.

I shake my head, indeed pulling myself out of my thoughts. “I’m sorry, my mind was on another planet.” I was absently pinching my stump, as I do every time I become blatantly uninterested in a situation. “If you’ll excuse me.”

As soon as the bell rings, I slide my phone into the nook of my elbow, hook my purse onto my shoulder and strut away from him and towards the back of the bar, around the tables, my half-finished cocktail secured in my hand. As I approach the girl, I see a few guys eyeing her, getting close, and then faking an excuse to turn around and find another table. I crane my neck to steal another look above someone’s shoulder and there she still is, obviously bored, slouched in her seat, texting. While most of the spots in the bar are set up with stools, she’s hanging out on a low seated leather couch that’s been coupled with another just in front.

“Is this seat taken?” I let got nonchalantly.

So cliché.

“It hasn’t been for the last 20 minutes, feel free to take it away, I don’t care at this point. I was about to leave.” I would’ve thought it rude of her to say this if it wasn’t of the terrible boredom plastered across her face.

“That would be a shame, don’t you think? The night’s only getting started.”

“This is usually how these things go for me. Not that I am ever lucky when I……” Her words trail off as she raises her head to watch me sit down in the seat before her.

“Alright, that leaves me one last chance, right?”

For the umpteenth time tonight, I can see my date flinching as they notice my right arm, only this time it has an almost opposite effect. Instead of showing disgust or discomfort, her features soften, the tension in her shoulders unknots and they lower visibly. She sighs out of relief.

“Sorry, I wanted to make my little entrée. I was hoping for that effect exactly.”

She stammers, not sure what to say. “I.. I… I.. Sor-sorry, ok... *breathes in and out* I’m Jade.”

“And I’m Kate.” I extend my stump, which she shakes without skipping a beat. “See?? We’re making progress here. I almost made the short blond guy gag when I tried that on him. Had to get the left hand out.” I raise the two fingers that compose my left hand as I emphasise on the word.

“Figured I had to make it up to you… Thanks for coming over.”

“Oh, don’t thank me. At first I was wondering why they were all skipping ahead of you and wanted to cheer you up, but now I’m actually interested.” I take a sip of my drink. “By the way, the wheelchair might be a bigger deterrent than the actual situation for it. Personally, I’d have an employee hide it just to get my chances up. Hook them in before showing them the catch.”

“I left it here exactly for this reason. I’m tired of getting people interested and then have to convince them to stay after they’ve seen me. Now I cut the crap at the start.”

“Which is pretty bold for you to do. I would applaud you, but that isn’t my forte.”

She chuckles and finally puts her phone aside, face down. She pushes herself up using the armrests to correct her position then lets her legless rump sink into the cracked leather. Leaning on the glass table, her hips angled impossibly forward for anyone other than her, she rests her chin in her joined hands and speaks again.

“Do people at least come to talk to you? I refuse to believe they won’t at least give it a try.”

“They do, but it’s often out of respect, I think. Like, ‘oh fuck it, it’s worth a shot, it’ll be over in a few minutes’ kind of deal.”

“Yeah, I only get a few even of those guys. So imagine the rest. Not exactly plenty.”

“Yikes..”

“So, what’s your... situation?” She circles one hand around the other. “You have a wrist on there?”

“Nope. Ends just a bit before.”

With my elbows set on the table, we compare the length of my arms. On top of being shorter, my right forearm narrows quite a lot, ending at half of width of its counterpart. I slide my stump in her open hands and she gives it a quick look-over.

“And how about this one?”

Palm side up, my index and thumb pinch the air as a demonstration. “It’s not much but it gets work done. It’s nothing compared to a complete set of five. How about you?”

“Nada, niet, nichts, absolument rien…” I raise my eyebrows and she starts laughing. “Weird flex, yeah?”

“Kinda.”

“It means there’s nothing stopping this cunt from turning into a swiffer sweeper when I move around on the floor.”

“Really? Not the smallest bit?”

She reaches for her glass of water to take a sip. “I was in a car accident when I was younger. Nothing too major, but I had some back pain and while they were doing x-rays, I convinced the technician to do one more off the charts. Turns out we couldn’t even find floating bones.”

“Crazy stuff.” I scoff.

“Of course, look at us, two handicapped chicks hanging out in a bar full of guys that won’t give us any attention. What are the odds of that?”

“The first or the second part? Even when I’m wearing my prosthetic hand I can attest the second one is very frequent.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh! Do you have it with you?” She straightens herself out of excitement.

“Yeah, it’s super expensive, too.” I retrieve it from out of my purse and hand it to Jade. “I got it a few months ago through an amputee foundation. I was real’ excited, wore it a bunch at first, but never could get used to using it.”

“Wow it feels so… Soft.”

“That’s the expensive part.” I gently take it back and run my stump across the synthetic skin. “The fingers are articulated but it’s not even robotic. The whole point for me was that it looks real so I could be incognito, but then my other hand started ruining the whole stratagem.”

“For that it does look realistic. Would you put it on for me?” As I frown and start to breathe in deeply, she retreats immediately. “No, no no no forget it, my mistake. That was offensive wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, maybe later.” I stroke the soft fabric again before putting in back where I took it. “I still wear it when I’m in the bus and stuff, feels like I get stared a whole lot less with it on. But I’m too used to using my stump to learn how to do everything all over again.”

“Right?! I don’t understand why people keep being so protective and pitiful of me. Maybe I can’t walk, but girl not having legs is way too fucking fun to want to live otherwise.  My ex used to lay on his back and spin me around his... dick..." she whispers,"like a fucking top! Nobody here can do that except me!"

"That actually sounds like a neat trick."

"Neat is far from it, girl.  Don't tell me guys don't love the way you jerk them off with that sweet wicked hand."

"You're not wrong..." I mutter, fiddling with my bangs, unsure what else to say.

"Of course they love it, it's new, it's unique, it's wild! They've never seen that before. The only thing I’d wish for is for people to care less about it.”

We're silent for a minute or two. Through the glass tabletop, my eyes are drawn toward her legless hips. Snugly fit in an abruptyl short pair of light gray leggings, they pop against the dark color of the worn out chairs. She sits back and I see them smoosh slightly against her seat.

"I guess missing a hand and most fingers is already pretty weird in and of itself, but I feel like walking is such a basic thing. And yet..." I gesture my stump towards her stumps

"What do you wanna do, huh? Just try not to think too hard about it when you fall asleep on your own at night and make it through the next day." She raises herself above her seat for a moment, like to showcase her situation, before slowly sitting down again and grabbing her glass. "Most of the time I end up fine with it."

“Did you ever try dating other amputees?” I ask. “It’d be super cheesy but at least they wouldn’t be so judgmental.”

“I did, once, back in college. I attended a summer camp. Two whole months spent only with people like me, people with differences. It was cool at first, we all kind of knew what the others had experienced in their lives just because of their anatomy, but it quickly turned into a smaller version of everyday society. There were lots of people who were just missing a forearm, kinda like you but a complete hand. They stuck together in the cool gang, stigmatizing others.”

I put my elbows up in the table and nestle my stump between my fingers. “It may shape who we are in part, but shitty people will be shitty people…”

“Yep. But it’s where I met my first girlfriend, Caya. We became inseparable during these months. She had a whole bunch of fingers missing, more even than you, so much so that you couldn’t really call them hands, but the rest was fine, perfect even. She’d carry me around the site and we’d hide in the woods to where the SBEs wouldn’t find us. But after the camp ended, we never saw each other again.”

The bell rings again. As people shuffle around the different tables, we stay put and stare the other down.

“Kate… Do you… wanna get out of here? Let’s go to my place and continue this conversation.”

“I’d love that. Your tab’s on me.”

I raise my hand to signal the waitress and by the time she swoops by with the checks, Jade has already transferred onto her wheelchair and secured a strap around her waist. As I turn around to find my way out, I bump into a cute tall black guy with inquisitive eyes.

“How about a quick chat so we can learn to know each other better?”

His honeyed voice sounds so smooth I could almost spread it on a piece of toast. Spoken so close to my ear, I can almost feel my ovaries shake in arousal. However, looking back at Jade trying to carve herself a path in the moving crowd, I get another stronger feeling deeper into my guts.

“Holy… I’d love to, really, but I’ve already found my match.” Feeling his hand sliding down my arm in search of mine, I guide my stump between his fingers. He recoils as he looks down, confused. “See? You’re too perfect for me, my body's a botched job, a misassembled mess, it wouldn’t work you and me, but help me God if you come back next week same time same place…”

I bite my lower lip and reach out to feel the muscles hidden under his shirt. Now glued to his chest, my hand catches his attention. From my fingers, his eyes go back to my stump then to Jade, who’s just caught up with us, before meeting my own.

“I’m so sorry.”

Then, my clawed hand on a handle, my elbow on the other, I run off into the night pushing my one-in-a-million perfect date towards a night I'll not easily forget.