Saturday, January 7, 2012

Feast, and Famine

Happy Hour is such a complicated process in this town. It's feast or famine, given that bars are either packed to the gills, or empty to the point that it's just you and the bartender.

Admittedly, this has led to free drinks, doing lines off the bar (or the bartender) and some very interesting, if rushed, interludes in back rooms.

This was not the case yesterday, when
I wandered from the dark, wood-paneled 'gay-Rish' pub to the seedy hell-hole next door. The drinks are cheaper, and - despite the hint of vomit - it's the most popular gay bar in town. This would probably explain why I ran into my ex, Mount Gay, his fag hag, and his new beau. And watching Mount Gay and the toad make out might possibly have influenced my third and fourth drinks.

Nevertheless, when I got an eager phone call from a long-lost fling I recently friended on Facebook, I had the sense things were looking up.

That enthusiasm lasted until he showed up, eyes swollen from crying, bouncy through a veil of inebriation, and with a friend in tow who wobbled and said he wanted to throw up.

That I went home with them has more to do with the memory of what my old fling looked like naked, and that I had nothing better to do.

I should learn not to make decisions in this way.

The next two hours were spent fending off an amorous Chihuahua, taking shots from a gallon jug of Absolut, and letting the guy I was picturing upside down and ... well, anyway ... cry, whine, or sob on my shoulder while he quoted Billie Holiday songs.

Shortly after it became clear I was only going to get more of the same, I called a cab. Out of which I fell upon getting home.

Other than a bruise, and a $25 cab ride, to say nothing of blue balls, it was the usual sort of Friday night for me.

And then, in the course of crawling to the kitchen - for orange juice, grits, and aspirin - I got the impression my father was dead. He was still in bed at 2, and hasn't moved in hours. It took about an hour to work up the nerve to make sure he was breathing.

He is, by the way, so I went back to the kitchen and started dinner.

Ain't life grand?

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