the del rio is too crowded.
the eight-ball is too smoky.
ashley's is too expensive.
the full moon will do. it is allegedly a sports bar, but the television in the corner plays a movie, a scene featuring a man stealthily entering a home where he is, presumably, not welcome.
i've come here to read and to get drunk. i take a seat in the corner near the coatrack, doff my headphones and open my book. a harried waitress rushes by me.
"i'll be with you in about fifteen minutes," she barks. ten later, she returns and i order a pitcher of bass.
i'm trying to read, and this bar should be good for that because the table i've selected is equidistant from three other groups of people, and their conversations mingle into one unintelligible garble of mismatched words and inappropriately timed laughter. now and then a thread of conversation rises above the murk and weaves its way into my consciousness, muting my book.
"so i'm standing there and i'm just watching these two guys, and they're, like, in this car and they totally have their arms around each other. i'm not even kidding!" bro-1 tells bro-2 at the table to my east. their girlfreinds look down at the ashtray. "then they start fuckin' making out...it was really gross."
"i dont think there's anything wrong with it!" shouts one of the girlfriends, inexplicably punctuating her objection with some kind of salute.
"no, that's what i'm saying!" answers bro-1.
i go back to my book. a few minutes later, i am disturbed again by the four people sitting to the south. their leader is on a cell phone, ordering a cab to ferry the team to another bar located approximately one block away. my eyes follow the length of their long coats to their shoes, which are all variations on a shiny, black theme. the women's clothes bear a uniformity of texture and heft that suggests quality and therefore wealth, and their blowdried and heavily thickly painted extremities are perhaps meant to distract from their double-chins and too-large noses. the women drink corona, the men drink budweiser.
i turn back to my book, which is opened to a particularly interesting chapter. unfortunately the private diary of michael jackson himself could not keep me from overhearing the girls at the third table, whose hoarse and angular sororityspeak pierces the ear like a stiletto. the eight of them are discussing certain housemates who have failed to perform certain duties and who therefore do not, perhaps, belong in a certain sorority house.
"alls i'm saying is that if she didn't 'feel like' it, then she shouldnt have signed up." one girl declares.
"exactly," breathes another. "what if we'd all missed the pimps and hoes setup?"
"there would have been no party, that's what," concludes a third girl, right on cue.
i take my book and leave. i go home and make a potato curry, and watch sex and the city. i wash my hair. in the shower i think about the night before, when at kevin's show, michael and alison forced me to crowdsurf the tiny room, and i think of all the drunken hours that followed. i remember holding danika's gerbil, Salvador, for an hour, not speaking to anyone but my tiny friend. i groan at the memory of my statement that "since i didn't have a light when you asked me for one thirty seconds ago, it probably stands to reason that i dont have one now, eh?" and the near-fight that ensued, with all of it's cliched taglines about "taking this outside" and "having a problem." i recall the explanation i gave which only seemed to make things worse; "look, man, why would i deliberately try to start a fight with somebody with a beard? could i ever win?" "
it was a nice weekend.