4:46
Guess that gives me a place to start. The X-files themesong kicked in just as I started writing, so that'll do. Lesse here, X-files. Alyssa likes the X-files (more than I do, if that's possible), and I had a drink with her this afternoon, partially as a reason to hang out, partially to ask some advice, mostly to talk about a bad situation between some friends that I decided to get myself involved in. For once, I did something I think was the right thing to do, but I know the consequences are going to be unpleasant. Alyssa's advice was to get smashed out of my mind, blurt something out, then go to the bathroom, and sneak out twenty minutes later once the fallout's in full swing. Social engineering is a form of engineering right? Perhaps a EE was the wrong person to ask. Actually, it felt nice to talk it out with somebody, and it was fun to catch up about life and work and such.
I've been fortunate, for the most part, with the girls I was stupid over and involved with, respectively. Alyssa's become a comfortably good friend, which I'm both surprised by and appreciate. I gave Megan a belated call for her birthday, the usual wishing happy and so on. Got a letter back, even, and an invitation to visit if I'm ever near her place, which is a good hour and a half away. Sigh. No, that's one scar I've little intention of picking at. Still, good to be on good terms, considering how foolish I was at times during the relationship.
Letting go always hurts; practice, unfortunately, seems to tenderize rather than callous one to the effect. An advantage of being harsh and judgemental, probably; cut things off sharp and quickly, leaves a cleaner wound. And I took far too long to let go of that one. It was so close to working, y'know? Just kept thinking that if I just did things right, I could make it work, and everything would ok. At some point, I lost the point, and it became about making things work rather than growing closer, like I was trying to win at Relationship(tm). That's a lousy way to approach a relationship, even if everything else fit, which it didn't. Patience is what I needed to learn there. Not the patience to keep fighting for something dessicated, but the patience to let go, and trust that I'd find the right one for me with time. Hard lesson to learn.
Anyhow, enough of that. Heh, another excellent musical cue: "Man, It's so Loud in Here" by They Might Be Giants. I'm wearing one of their shirts, actually. It's so soaked in sweat from dancing at the Quest tonight, that there's curving lines of salt across it from the sweat drying. Appetizing, eh? Hey ladies, he's single! Eh? Eh?
We went there after a short stay at Andy's sister's birthday party; he's a great kid, but her friends were all the people I never cared about in high school, except drunk. The decision was delegated to me, long story short we left and took our liquors with us. In the short stay there, however, I put away, er, a lot. Like, lemme see ... hmm, I'd say roughly equivalent to two or three shots worth of vodka mixed into various fruity drinks, and about two...ish straight. We were there around an hour. So yeah, I was pretty sloshed heading to the Quest. We got a bit lost, the long ride helped clear my head a bit, but I was still pretty tipsy standing outside the bathroom at the gas station, next to the two cops. The one munching chose a cookie, surprisingly, not a donut. Also, both were quite spry. Those St. Paul cops are good folk. Also, peeing while drunk is both engaging and entertaining. That'll be all about that.
When we got to the quest around midnight, the floor was comfortably full, and stayed that way all night. Just about ideal, actually. And since I didn't use glowsticks, I was forced to rely on my dancing, which I won't degrade further with the "word" skilz. I'm quite bad. But being liqoured up does wonders for loosening you up, so I temporarily lost my perma-hunch, and tried more footwork stuff, and copying bits of what people around me were doing, and just concentrating on the music, it felt like I was really getting it. Found myself smiling like crazy, even when no one was looking at me, because I was feeling happy, genuinely happy. Crowd wasn't all that huge, so I didn't nail anyone with my waving (and probably weaving, a bit) about, fortunately. Some cute girls, none that floored me; mostly concentrated on the dancing, actually. And the music was great. The headliner, who came on maybe 45 minutes after we came in, was a guy named Richard "Humpty" Visson, who played House-ish music that I not only didn't dislike, but was a blast to dance to. Also, he played housified versions of The Killer's "Mr. Brightside" and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which were just a blast to dance and sing and yell along to. Couldn't stop grinning. The wall video was just the Cowboy Bebop movie, played straight through; it sounds wierd, but it worked quite well, especially when the fight scenes meshed with the music. Toward the end, they had Lost in Space, which was a pretty lousy pick, but I wasn't really paying much attention to it.
Oh, and somewhere in the middle of the night, someone grabbed my shoulder really hard, and I kind of, er, turned around really quickly and hooked my foot behind their ankle and sent them sprawling. Turns out it was just an extremely drunk african guy, who'd lost his balance and caught himself on me. Poor guy was so drunk he apologized to me for bumping into me after I helped him up, didn't even realize I was the reason he fell. Helped him get to the edge of the crowd, and went back in. I was sweating like crazy, as I'm prone to do, so at some point in the night I just let it turn my hair spiky, so it was up and out of my eyes, pushing it back. Didn't look too terrible in the mirror later in the night, and since it's inevitable, it'll have to do. For the last 45ish minutes, I hit a really great groove, a footwork pattern that felt natural and looked decent, and just got lost in the music, and dancing, grinning at girls and the ceiling and the DJ and the bouncers and the bartenders and everything. I was bummed when we had to leave, but people were tired, and it'd already been a few hours, so on we went. Got back late, and with the caffine in me, I felt like writing (only drank soda after the party, I was more than liqoured enough).
I'll probably put up a shorter post about this last week up later, but for now, I need to get to sleep before the sun becomes completely visible. Pleasant dreams, all.