Sunday, February 13, 2005
post-spinning
Hey.
Well, my evening last night was much more successful than I had hoped. I had hoped for a bit of fun, to see Cait, get some dinner, make an appearance at the party and then basically leave, but it all turned out a bit differently.
The Thai food was very, very nice. Especially with Cait, cause she asks me all the real questions about life. None of this "so....nice weather we've been having" bullshit that so many people descend into when they haven't seen each other in a while. No way. She cuts right to the chase and asks me about important stuff. I only hope I provide responses that aren't totally useless or full of bad advice. I think that's when you know you have a true friend on your hands: when pleasantries are essentially unnecessary and you know that no matter how long it's been since you last saw each other, you can still pick up where you left off.
Cait's thinking of going on exchange to England next year, so that quality of picking-up-where-we-left-off will take on a very literal meaning, again. I'm glad that she's thinking about going. It will be a great experience for her, and I figure it's partly because of my adventures in Switzerland that she thinks it would be fun. It will be, but it's a damn long time to have her be further away than a phone call, a ferry ride, or three minutes on the bus. This makes me a bit sad, because we've just managed to attain something close to regular contact, and then she has to leave again. I will just have to see as much of her as I can while she's still around.
After Thai food we went to the liquor store to stock up. We both got IDed, of course, despite being two-and-a-half-years and nearly-two-years over 19. The clerk examined our IDs like she was SO sure they were fake, she just had to find the tell-tale signs. It's pretty hard to forge a passport containing stamps from Spain, Mexico, London, Greenland, the Czech Republic, and Germany, and visas from Switzerland and Turkey. She gave me a hard Paddington-type stare and asked "so, you do a lot of travelling??" Yes, lady, and the fucking passport's real! Now give me my beer and no one gets hurt!
We got some Corona, some gin, cranberry juice, limes, and some Southern Comfort for Gabey (his favourite, a welcome-home-glad-you-didn't-get-killed-in-the-whole-big-wave-incident present), and headed to the party. It turned out that there were lots of people I knew there, and despite the fact that P.R. was basically ignoring me (again), I was not without people to talk to. Aside from Cait and the Boy (who looked terminally bored the whole evening, except when he was talking to some girl I didn't know), there were a number of people I knew from high school present, plus P. from Prague, his girlfriend who I also know from Prague, Gabey's friend C. who passed out on his floor the last time I was there, and Gabey's roommate Chance, who is 4'9" and TINY! and therefore looked like she'd be fun to throw.
We actually convinced her to come outside with us and let the Boy toss her into hands a few times. She was worried because it was dark and she figured we were drunk (we weren't, at that point), but she was generally game and I think she'd be really good if we put her in a gyme with mats and lots of experienced spotters and good lighting. I told her I'd email her about the stunting club, and she seemed enthusiastic about it. I may be one step closer to gettting my own little flyer! That would be awesome. I need someone light and reliable to practice with.
About half-way through the evening, P.R. actually started speaking to me, directly to me, for the first time in about a year. I was totally baffled -- it was like my dreams playing themselves out in real life. He had shaved his head that afternoon (for no better reason than that it was getting too long, kind of like me dyeing my hair because it was getting too brown) and he told me he was done with the university (he failed a course he needed to graduate twice) and was going to get back into theatre, which I always thought he was best at. It's funny how I came to the conclusion that I ought to get back into theatre around the same time he did. He invited me to an event that one of our mutual friends is putting on next week, and I think I might go. It was so strange but so good to have him talking to me again that I forgot to be bitter, I forgot to play it cool, and I remembered that I actually care. One can only pretend for so long. Eventually I stopped pretending, made him a gin and tonic, and we made an effort to catch up on each other's lives.
There were bands playing in the basement, which was a much better arrangement than the last time when they were in the living room and rather loud and the police got called. They had their usual problems with the instruments drowning out the vocals. I never got that with small bands playing in people's basements. How hard is it to turn down the drums and turn up the mic? One of the girls I met in Prague was singing for P.'s band, but I couldn't hear her over the keyboard and guitars. Sad really, cause it's always nice to hear girls sing Nirvana songs.
I didn't get insanely drunk last night, though I'm certainly glad I stopped when I did. I was kind of on the balance between happy-and-social-drunk and doing-stupid-things-drunk. There was a lot of pot and ecstacy floating around too, though I wasn't about to take ecstacy on my own. I'm still not sure if Cait or the Boy had a good time. They both seemed alternately bored, uncomfortable, and basically done for the evening. It's kind of rare that I'm the one having a good time and not wanting to leave and everyone else is bored.
I will say that house parties are one of the great joys of being in your teens and twenties. Especially when people get old enough to have their own student house that they share with four other people, all of whom invite all their friends, and everyone knows each other or is a friend-of-a-friend. Those kinds of relatively small, intimate gatherings are infinitely superior to the kind where entire sororities show up, utterly plastered, and sap all the fun out of the evening. I loathe sorority girls. Every girl I have ever known who has joined a sorority has turned into a kind of brainless, vapid zombie. It's worse than a North Korean dictatorship, mainly because it's voluntary.
That said, even the house parties where random people show up and crash it are better than the experience of going out to a club, getting IDed and frisked and security-checked, standing in line with a bunch of overdressed fools for an hour, getting into a noisy, smoky, crowded room pulsating with bad R&B, and paying for overpriced drinks and the privilege of entering a space where the motives of all present are to dance and get laid, usually both. The guys get all predatory and the girls get all giggly and stupid. Frankly, clubs bring out the worst in both genders. The only place which occasionally stands in exception to this rule are gay bars, where everyone is looking for sex and therefore there is decidedly less pretense about the whole affair. Gay bars are also nice because I am rarely, if ever, the subject of people's attempts to get laid. I can just sit back and enjoy the Kylie Minogue.
I am miraculously not hungover today, despite having gone to bed with the world spinning around me (usually a bad sign), and I'm hoping to get a bit of work done before I have to take the bro out for lunch and the Boy to the gyme.
I cleaned my room yesterday and now I feel about a hundred times more organized than I really am.
My ducks are all in a row.
Good duckies...pat, pat.
-N
