Last night was bizarre.

First off yesterday afternoon I went out to Georgetown and picked up some comics, then I went around the area bike stores comparing prices. I've gotten a pretty good idea where the deals are, so I just need to go back sometime next week and do some test rides... which is the part that makes me nervous. I haven't ridden a bike in two or three years. It's silly, but I'm afraid of embarrassing myself in front of a salesperson...

On the bus ride home I read more of Vonnegut's "Deadeye Dick," and the black humor reached the saturation point at which I started laughing out loud at every mordant pronouncement. While I was reading some guy distracted me by yelling at the woman behind him for talking too loudly on her celphone. I hadn't heard a word of her conversation.

But yes, last night.

I went down to the Black Cat to see Q and not U and when I got there the line was the farthest back I've ever seen it. For those for whom it means anything, it was back past the Source theater. Being as we were in line for a very long time, I ended up striking up a conversation with the guys in line behind me. So when a Cat employee came by and told us all the show was all sold out, they said they were going to meet some people in Adams-Morgan and asked if I wanted to come along. Forgetting that it was a Friday night (d'oh!) I said sure.

The first bar we went to was The Angry Inch, which has a sign saying "Est. 1969" so I guess the name has nothing to do with Hedwig after all. Anyway, the people we were supposed to meet weren't there, the place was too crowded and elbow-y, the music was bad and too loud, the crowd was entirely not my kind of people... basically I hadn't felt so out of place since the time my boss dragged me to a gay bar (cue Electric Six riff).

So phone calls were made, bars were hopped, and we ended up just the three of us at a largely empty bar (I later discovered that it was empty because everybody was downstairs for karaoke, which we had to hear everytime we went to the bathroom).

Eventually the one guy's girlfriend showed up with a friend of hers from out of town. They were both quite drunk, as evidenced at first by the girlfriend slapping me on the ass.

Then the friend, a short brunette, somewhat cute, said to me, "If I asked you to make out with me, what would you say?" I thought about it for a few seconds and truthfully responded that I really had no idea how I'd react. So she thought about it for a while, at which point the other guy, who had been flirting with her a minute before this question, loudly declared the lack of any justice in the universe.

So then she came back and asked the question she had earlier asked about, and I thought for a few more seconds before answering, "Hey, why not?"

Now as a point of clarification, this is neither the kind of thing that usually happens to me nor the kind of thing I usually do. As evidence of this I offer up the fact that she was only the sixth girl I've kissed in nearly 28 years on this planet. This established, let's move on.

After this she got a bit embarrassed and retreated to talk with her friend. But a few minutes later she was back. "Wanna make out again?" (have I mentioned she was a bit drunk?)

So after we got through with that she asked me how I knew everybody. I told her the story and she suddenly got really embarrassed and quickly excused herself. She didn't speak another word to me the rest of the evening. Which I found very amusing-- making out with some guy she had met 15 minutes ago was fine if it's somebody who's known her friend's boyfriend for a while, but if they've only known each other a few hours, then it becomes a problem. Once again the absurdity of it all made me laugh on the (rather long) walk home.

On the way home I stopped in at the 24/Seven to get some felafel and found a bit of a scene developing. There was some guy with a takeout box yelling at the guy who usually works the counter at night. He and another employee and two or three customers were trying to escort the man out, and he kept saying he would leave (while not leaving) but that he would come back for the young employee and bring friends. Just having walked in, I joined the phalanx of customers between the drunkard and the target of his bile. To the side a woman nonchalantly pulled out her celphone and called the police. As the scene unfolded she calmly described what was happening.

The man eventually left, but he kept pacing outside the store and balefully peering in the front window for several minutes. The woman went up to the counter and explained that she had called the police and started saying how unacceptable she had found the whole scene. She seemed to think that the establishment was somehow to blame for the man's drunken belligerence.

Then I got my felafel and went home. The End.
- posted by Bob @ 11:16 AM