I played my typical jukebox fare (Stones, White Stripes, Cream, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Nirvana, etc.) which is very limited because the jukebox is full of shitty country or jokey (or IS it NOT a joke?) shit like Skid Row. We smoked far too much (Will I never break this sickening habit? Will I never LEARN?) and instead of just splitting a pitcher and calling it a night, we end up splitting three pitchers, which is ALOT of beer for tater-fay to be drinking, my friends. My intoxication seems to come on pretty slow, though, for some reason (at least it did last night) and throngs of people in their early to mid 20's seem to flock in. Larry and never say much to each other through the first pitcher or two, because we just don't have much to say sometimes. A guy with really long, wavy hair and shifty eyes is playing pool with a bunch of people behind us. He is really excited and happy throughout the entire night and talks really loud and keeps stomping his feet to certain songs. After awhile I wish someone would bring him down a notch by handing him a valium or something. I envy him if he was just genuinely happy to be hanging out at the shitty bar, but I have a feeling he was coked up or something. He was just a little TOO up. At one point "Brick House" comes on and everybody in random groups seems to be singing that song and dancing while playing their pool games. Even Larry and I are singing along at this time (and I'm chair dancing) and the mood in the place keeps rising. WTF? The Shitty bar is actually feeling like a FUN place to be? Blow me over! A middle-aged lady that reminds me of a haggard Charo comes in with her man. She has brought her own pool sticks in her black leather bag. I can't tell if she's drunk, or tweaked or maybe just a little mentally ill. She wears tight flared pants and a tight blue off-the-shoulder shirt that accentuates the fact that her body is nowhere close to 20 anymore, even though she wears the clothes of a 20 year-old. I watch her, fascinated by the weird twitchy, smiling she does. You can tell she wants to be the center of attention. She reminds me of a movie star WAY past her prime. She dances as she plays pool and sings the songs, sometimes fucking up the words. Her hair a blur of frizzy dark blonde and her brown eyes are lined with too much black eyeliner. I can tell that she might have been pretty at one point, but she's really let herself go. She smiles at everyone, as if we were all paying attention to her the whole time. She orders coffee. Her man is much more subdued. He draws so little attention to himself, actually, that he almost blends into the woodwork.
Larry and I discuss a very tall man that walks in the bar. He has the eyes of the dead..it's hard to explain, but he scares me for some reason. On my way to the bathroom, my drunken curiosity getting the best of me, I ask him how tall he is...he says that he is 6'6 and I blurt out something about how tall my brother is. I realize he's just a seemingly normal, tall guy drinking a beer. Up close, the ax-murderer in his eyes isn't there at all. Funny how we judge people on first impressions.
Harry Potter is playing on several of the mounted TV's (with the sound muted) and I watch it absentmindedly when I'm not people watching.
When I walk up to the bar to ask for a glass of water, two guys that have been there all night look me up and down. It's irritating. I refuse to meet their eyes. They make little sounds and say "Uh Oh"..I don't know if they are referring to me or not and if they are, I have no idea what they are trying to convey to me or about me. One of them is nearly slumped over on the bar.
Charo and her man clear out and eventually Mr. Happy Long hair and his crew clear out and Larry is pretty lubricated and we are suddenly having the most profound conversation, perhaps, of our entire relationship so far. We are talking about karma (he's arguing that it doesn't exist to my argument that it does) and life after death (He admits that he SORT of believes in reincarnation, but he isn't really sure) and then he is babbling about deja vu and I'm started to tune him out because he's hard to talk to sometimes when he's drunk because he monopolizes the conversation (he'd accuse me of the same behavior) and then he talks about wanting to buy property and blah, blah, blah....I start to lose focus on the conversation. I see this woman that our sometimes roomie, Norm, had a brief fling with. I go up and say Hello and then this guy who obviously knows her is questioning how I know her and asking about whether Norm is "that guy with the hat" and I'm confused as to what his relationship is with this lady, who is being nice. Then suddenly he calls this lady a whore and says "Whore..you Whore. Get the fuck out of here.." and I can't register ANY emotion on her face and she does just what he says..she leaves the bar. I seem him walk out quickly after her and I'm a little concerned about his anger towards her and I go outside to make sure there isn't a fistfight of some kind going on. When I exit the door to the shitty bar, he's standing right outside of it, and we both watch her walking down the block. He yells "Fuck you, you whore..fucking around on me behind my back." and I just look at him with question marks in my eyes. I don't like this guy. I don't like him at all. He sees me as he goes back in and says "Oh, tell your buddy Norm that I'm gonna beat his ass." and I just shrug and walk back to my seat. My buzz is ruined by this prick's behavior and I decide I want to go. I wait for Larry to finish a game of pool and the Prick sits at the bar giving me angry looks. I can't decide whether to ignore him or stare him down so he'll look away. Finally we leave. It's actually only a little before midnight but all I want to do is go to sleep. Larry has other ideas but I repeat that most of the time I just can't enjoy sex when one of us (or esp. both of us are drunk)...alcohol sort of acts like anesthesia for me..I can't feel ANYTHING. So he accepts that it's just night-nighttime. He falls asleep almost immediately and starts snoring loudly in my ear. I have trouble falling asleep with all that beer and nicotine flowing through my veins. I lay awake, worrying about taking my first crisis phone calls on Monday. I lie awake for more than an hour, frustrated that I'm drunk and can't sleep. I eventually fall asleep but wake up almost every hour to either go pee, or tell Mouse to quit scratching at the door, or to try to communicate to Larry to face the other way so that he isn't snoring in my ear. Nobody seems to listen to me. Needless to say, I'm tired and dehydrated today, but oh well. Life goes on.
