Sunday, April 6, 2008

We booze, we boozed, we will booze

Yesterday was a day to reflect on. It started with my exciting purchase of plane tickets to Alaska and ended, predictably, with my head in the toilet. I was so plastered that I first threw up next to the toilet, and I still haven't cleaned it up because...well, that shit is gross and I can't yet handle it.

But in the 14 hours between the beginning and end of my day, I had a lovely post-birthday walkabout with Papa. I was feeling the loopy high of 8 hours of drinking the previous night, and we took advantage of the lovely weather to walk from Chambers Street over the Brooklyn Bridge. We meandered through Dumbo for a while, went up the Brooklyn Heights promenade, and then traversed the Gowanus Canal on our way to the Brooklyn Museum. We did this all on foot. I'm actually sore today. The whole day long we were just giggling and chatting and pointing at dogs. Papa is such a great ambling companion, and we were definitely moving at the same speed yesterday.

I can't stop talking about how ecstatic I am that winter is over. I honestly didn't realize how much the winter got me down. And I bet that if you did a study, you would discover that blogging decreases significantly in the spring and summer months. We're all too busy having fun outside to pause, reflect, and gripe online.

But now that spring has sprung, we can turn our attention to love love love again, and the confounding state of relationships today. Let us pray:

Before omelettes with my lovely neighboroommate, I got a message from a former lover, a guy I used to call My New Best Friend, because I was trying not to sleep with him. (It didn't work.) It's the second time MNBF has messaged me this week, which is a little strange, but that's beside the point. The first message was a photo of him wearing this hat that I'd given him. And the second message was a photo of Love Affair. No words, just the photo. I don't really know what that's all about, but I had this vision of them talking at a party, fishing for some common thing to talk about, and that common thing being a common lover. Brrr. I usually try to avoid thinking about shared bed partners.

Seeing Love Affair last week was a mixed bag. I think I used every possible excuse to touch him and kiss him. I got him to help me with some cooking and it really made me miss My Former Life, where we would cook together, eat together, sleep together...I told myself I wouldn't allow myself to miss him. But it just felt good to be next to him. Baw!

Anyhow Papa and my day transitioned into this very entertaining situation when we decided to go meet up with the kid I met in Chicago, the night that I Crown-Royaled myself into sleeping in my car. Let's call him Crown Royale Companion (CRC). I'm not attracted to him at all, but he'd invited me to meet up with him for the Murakami opening at the Brooklyn Museum, and I said yes. From the text message, it seemed like he was going with people, and I should meet up for a drink if I was around. Let me add a disclaimer here that one of our friends was "sure" that CRC was "gayer than a picnic basket," and didn't believe me when I said that CRC was hitting on me, and so I kind of was seeing this as a playdate with new friends.

Text messages have brought communicative ambiguity to an entirely new level.

Anyhow, Papa and I started to wonder if I was going on a date, so I made sure to mention in my next text that I was bringing a friend. I think this caused him to hustle to bring someone with him as well. It ended up being me and Papa, and CRC and CRCroommate.

So the four of us are strolling around the museum, and the dynamic was just funny because Papa and CRC and CRCroommate don't know each other at all, and I don't really know why we're there, because I'm not into CRC really. I thought CRCroommate was gay, so I was trying to give Papa and CRCroommate some space. I was also trying to give me some space so as not to make CRC think I was all into him, but I also didn't want to lose anyone. It was a little challenging because it was such a scene last night, with the collision of opening night and free first Saturday. The ambiguity of the arrangement was very funny to me. CRCroommate (not gay in the end) was probably disappointed that Papa isn't a hot chick, but was being a tremendously good sport about it all, and we had a nice time.

After the museum we went to the boys' apartment in Williamsburg and had beers. I started acting like a dipshit, just chattering to keep the energy up, but also to avoid thinking about the funny social dynamic. I was entertaining myself by rotating us about methodically so I wasn't just walking with CRC and such, and I was a little disconcerted to discover that I liked CRCroommate more than CRC. That kind of stuff amuses me. We then went to Barcade, which was great fun. It was just as crowded and noisy as the museum. We played a bunch of video games and then got crunched into a corner of the bar, where I connected with CRCroommate about architecture and urban planning. I decided I liked him a lot more. Then CRC came to break us up, and in response I went outside to smoke a cigarette and exchanged phone numbers with two boys who I got to talking to about pinball.

Anyhow, CRCroommate left after 3 drinks (smart guy) and we went off to a fancy bar where we somehow dropped more than a $100 drinking wine and eating prosciutto. What the fuck. I was so la-la by then I probably would have agreed to anything. Over the first bottle of wine, we got into a heated discussion about capitalism and the role of the financial markets in New York City specifically, and I found myself hating CRC because of the way he was arguing. He kept saying, "Wait, let me finish," as though we were just taking turns talking. To me that's such a power play in a conversation amongst peers. Part of the conversation is negotiating points and delimiting your own speech in the interest of participation. Again I went outside to smoke cigarettes and demanded to sit with these three guys who were talking about black holes. When I went back into the bar I ended up making out with CRC.

Now that I write this all down, it seems far less amusing. But now I'm stuck with wanting to see CRCroommate again, but not really CRC. Is it possible to make this switch? I didn't get CRCroommate's number. If I want to see CRCroommate again, I'm going to have to set things straight with CRC.

Then this morning I got this weird text (fucken text messages--although they are a hangover's best friend) from him that says:

"All the passionate talk of politics and social reform. Yet I sleep here alone. A man not of capitalist greed or liberal anarchy. But of loneliness."

Does this message give anyone else the creeps? And does anyone have advice for me on making the switch?

Do you think this will work?

3 comments:

Papagayo said...

Yeah so what the fuck was that all about? Can you remember something I/you/we said to initiate CRC's devolution into anger? That's what struck me about his argument, not that it wasn't cogent, but that he was so angry. In any case, I think the MC is definitely a great idea. Go get what's yours!

Papagayo said...

btw- very cute.

Luis Celestino said...

great mis-adventures. excellent chronicling of them (as always).