My old friend Meg invites me to join her and a couple of her friends for drinks at her place, then to head out to a bar. I know Meg, and I know Meg’s bars. I suspect she picks them based on how many available young professional men she’ll find there to aid her in her weird half-joking quest for a rich husband, or by how well the venue would fit in an episode of Sex and the City. I hate Meg’s bars. Even though I know this, I ask her,

“What kind of bar?”

“A pretty bar. Somewhere we can look pretty.”

“Ah, yes. So, what should I wear?”

“Not jeans.”

Oh, so it’s a “not jeans” kind of Friday. I can deal with that. I like dressing up every once and a while, and would you know? I can actually be really classy, and clean up right nicely. (No, you wouldn’t know that. How could you? None of these narratives lend much support to my outward sophistication.) However, I have nothing to wear that will help me camouflage in with the young professional scene. I don’t got the right shoes or pants or body or “look.”

In my world, “not jeans” isn’t synonymous with “pretty.” This will not be a pretty Friday for me. I know this, but rustle some credible ensemble of clingy blackness and heels from the dregs of my closet, grab my purse, and head out.

Hanging at Meg’s place is nice. Though they don’t really get my jokes, and they talk about men incessantly, her friends are sweet and lovely. We have a few laughs and a couple of glasses of wine before catching a cab to the goddamned bar.

The girls in the cab riffle through their purses for compacts and lipsticks. I look in my bag, and what do I find? Handful of assorted crumplies, book, passport, smokes, wallet, extra toothbrush, and, inexplicably, toenail clippers. Pretty.

I have no idea where this bar is, I’ve never heard of it before, but as soon the cab rolls into the vicinity, I know I’m going to hate it. We’re coasting through the BOMP-a BOMP-a area of Lincoln Park, where every Friday and Saturday the BOMP-a clubs and BOMP-a bars devour and regurgitate a steady stream of hottie hot twentysomethings sharking after the perfect $12 martini and the perfect high maintenance piece of ass.

I can’t help myself; I make a hideous face out the window at the whole scene. Thank goodness it’s dark, because I guess that was kind of rude.

We get to the bar and, sure enough, it’s BOMP-in’. I’m glad for the deafening music only because it drowns out the “Ucchh” sound I involuntarily make upon walking in.

I’ve tried to have fun in these places. Other people seem to enjoy them. For example, Meg loves them, and Meg is smart and funny and awesome. Suffice to say, though, that it’s not my element, and I usually only manage to enjoy myself when I go into Jane Goodall mode and observe from an anthropological perspective. Sadly, I know no one in my present company would appreciate the jokes I want to make. They wouldn’t be able to hear them over the pumping non-melodic din, anyway. So, jokes go uncollected.

Maybe I’d feel differently at these places if I were hot in the same way as the rest of the barflies, but I kind of doubt it. No one and nothing stands out to me as being worthy of notice, which is, I guess, due to my own brand of snobbishness. I apologize for that. But I’m there with the hopes that something out of the ordinary will happen, and, as always, I’m disappointed.

There are no stories to hear or tell here, or so it looks to me. Maybe I’m being unfair. I won’t go so far as to say this bar is a soulless, cash-sucking, horrible, imploding waste of cultural hell, completely devoid of character … oh, no. Like I said, I’m classy. I’ll just say again that it ain’t my scene.

These “see and be seen” kind of places ironically make me feel invisible, and I know this, and know from experience that the night never picks up for me no matter how long I stay there or how much I try. So I drink one overpriced glass of wine, say goodnight to Meg and her friends, and leave. But not before slipping two of the expensive glasses into my purse, to keep my toenail clippers company. Yep, the bar made me mad, so I stole its stuff. Hell if I’m gonna belly-up with a zero score.

As soon as I step out the door, I sigh the kind of sigh one sighs after a much-needed shower, and I head to the bus stop. An obviously drunk and crazy woman approaches me and politely asks for a cigarette, which I give her. She looks at the pin on my decrepit blue Muppet coat, the pin I’ve been using (for lack of anything better) as a clasp since losing the last remaining hook, and asks “What’s your pin say?”

“Oh, it says … um … ‘Serving Donuts on Another Planet.’”

Obviously Drunk Crazy Lady tilts her head, and regards me softly. She says, “You’re interesting,” and slumps away.

That is the best part of my Friday.

Immediately after she leaves, out of nowhere, I start making the telltale noises of “HUH-uh… HUH-uh…” and step gracefully to the side of the bus stop hut to gack up a surprisingly gentle gut-heave of viscous burgundy. I don’t know why this happened … I’d only had a couple of glasses of wine, and wasn’t drunk. Anyway, as a reward for managing not to splash puke on my shoes, I turf the bus idea, and hail a cab so that I can get home as soon as possible.

Know what’s prettier than puking on the sidewalk amid the beautiful people? Puking out the window of a cab. That, my friends, is fucking pretty.

But, oh, my God, the fatherly Laotian cab driver is so incredibly sweet about it. If someone vomited in my place of business, I’d be pissed, or at least annoyed. This man is downright concerned about me, and very gentlemanly offers me his box of tissues in case I need to clean myself up. I use them to mop up the drips of vomit that have pooled in the crevice by the window, apologizing profusely the whole time. I try not to think about the cascade that now covers the outside of the car, ‘round about where the next customer will likely grab onto the door handle.

“Don’t worry, honey. I’ll take care of that,” the driver tells me. “Next time, don’t drink too much on an empty stomach.”

“You know? That’s probably exactly what happened. Thank you so much. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

It is a sad, sad thing when the two redeeming moments of a Friday night are when a crazy lady tells you you’re “interesting,” and when your cab driver offers to clean up your puke. (Actually, maybe it’s kind of great.)

He seems to think I’m upset about something specific, something that abruptly abbreviated my evening. He may have been less sympathetic if he knew my vomiting was just an overdramatic biological purging of an environment to which I am apparently socially allergic. When he drops me off at my apartment, I give him a huge tip… thus spending most of my weekend budget on one undigested glass of wine and two far too self-revelatory cab rides. One of the stolen glasses falls out of my purse onto the car seat when I get out, the cabbie alerts me, and I collect it.

Through my building’s hallway of mysterious smells, I zombie to my apartment, unlock the door, go in and sit on the couch. Then, as I’m wont to do, I turn into Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years and start soliloquizing, under the pretense that I’m talking to my cat.

“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay,” I sigh. “I’m so glad to be home. Why do I go to places I know I’ll hate? Done. Never again. Never again.”

And with that relieving, long-overdue conclusion to wash my hands of the BOMP-a world, I chase a hangover-staving multivitamin with thirty million gallons of water, and go to bed.

You know, it wasn’t all that bad. I was somewhat detached from the events of the evening, and it was really liberating to realize that a situation that once would have left me feeling bewildered and ugly and inadequate actually had very little effect on me, other than the physical. And it was really nice to see Meg.

So, maybe Friday wasn’t all that humbling.

The rest of the weekend was lovely, by the way.

Saturday was my last day at my Drama Therapy internship, which was bittersweet. One of the kids, Matt, was particularly upset when I told him I wasn’t coming back. Matt has Aspergers, so anything that breaks his image of reality is more disrupting than it would be for most people.

“Are you ever going to come back? This is my class! Why are you leaving? I’m never going to see you again! It’ll be like you’re dead! Can’t you try to come back next week, maybe? Oh, I wish I didn’t know this.”

Poo!

And Jay was surprisingly talkative during group. Before he left, he said “Kelly. Bye, Kelly,” and hesitated in a way that made me wonder if it would be okay to hug him. That wouldn’t have been appropriate, though. I told him goodbye and good luck, and that I’d miss him, and he backed out the door.

Then I went home and watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the first time, and loved the hell out of it, despite it’s unabashed Hollywood disparities from the book. Ziggy loved it, too, and ran up to the TV every time Holly Golightly’s nameless Cat meowed.

Saturday night I met up with some friends for drinks and stories and laughs. “Belly” was on the stereo, which made me dance like an epileptic Fraggle and feel pretty.

Sunday I listened to my beloved weekend NPR programs like an old lady, then went to my theatre group’s hilarious band practice where I played the glockenspiel (I’m a glockstar!) and sang like the lovechild of Nick Cave and PJ Harvey.

It was awesome. We suck. Only one of us plays the instruments, so he teaches us song by song, chord by chord, with various onomatopoetic instructions like “Whomp three times after the peedlidink,” and my favorite, “Always stay with the drum, unless the drum is right.”

Then I went shopping and bought one pair of bright blue shoes, and another of shiny gold. They don’t match a single thing I own, and I plan to wear them often.

And at night I and those same friends with whome I glocked out watched the outlaws on Deadwood, like we do every Sunday.

So, overall, it was a great weekend.

Damn, this was long.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Arm-in-Arm Down Burgundy - 09.05.05

Motivated! - 08.25.05

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

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BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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