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17 october 2000
---- Leftover Benihana tastes Chinese. ~~~ I was Bar Mitzvahed 19 years ago today. Strange factoid, ain't it? Of course, that means if I was born on the day of my Bar Mitzvah, I'd be able to drink legally in certain countries today. Either way, drink legally I did today, in Malibu, and I'm very happy that New York will win the World Series this year. It was a shitty day at work, to put it mildly ... a Murphy's Law type of day, everything that could go right didn't go right and vise versa and blah blah blah. By five-o-clock I was ready for a drink, or a few ... At six-thirty I was still at my desk, deparately trying to complete an Excel spreadsheet sitemap for AdForce, due tomorrow morning, as bullshitty as could be. Excel, of course, was running in a MacOS9 emulation layer atop MacOSX, resultantly and consistently interrupting my wonderful playlist of sanity-upholding MP3s ranging from but not completely consiting of, tonight, Howard Jones, The Dream Academy, Marillion, Squeeze, Bryan Adams, The Bangles, and lest we forget, the ubiquitous Stablilizers, singing their almost-but-not-quite-one-hit-wondertune "One Simple Thing." It's all we really need to make our lives complete. Fuck, I want the eighties back. Ain't I at like sixteen days without a cigarette now? Fucking amazing, ain't it? ~~~ Yes, work depressed me today. Or maybe today depressed me today. Birthday excitement over. Parents on their way home. Coming off a really fun evening with Rachel.... I had nothing to do with myself tonight. I talked with Jayme for a while. It was fun, she was tired. I was up, she was not. It wasn't gonna last. So, of course, I headed over to the Dume Room. It was empty when I arrived at 7:30. Blake the bartender greeted me with a simple "Chuck ... how are you." "Shitty. Whaddya think, Tequila or beer?" "Whya shitty?" "Just got through my birthday, my parents just left town, I'm feeling old, lonely, worthless, y'know the drill..." "Tequila and a beer is on me," he replied. "Why?" was my reply. "It's your birthday." "Good ... I just don't wantcha feeling sorry for me." And that was the beginning of my night. I managed to sit at the bar for a good three hours, nursing drinks and making conversation, yet never getting near drunk. It was therapeutic in a way. By 10pm, I was feeling better. I went in the back to shoot a game of pool. Now, the Dume Room changes with the hour of the day. I had never really hung with the later-night crowd there, and they started to filter in as I was kicking ass on the pool table, an anomaly for the day, considering I royally suck at pool. Whereas my normal crowd at the Dume Room consists of 40-50 year-old drunkards with whom I seem to have a shitload in common, the later-night crowd is composed mostly of Pepperdine University students, "Baywatch" lifeguards, and trust-fund-enabled twenty-somethings from the enclaves of the rich-and-shameless. A group of these humans were challengers to my reign at the pool tables. I made friends quickly. It was like meeting my neighbors (11pm) as opposed to my coworkers (6pm) -- not a bad thing. One particular girl caught my eye, jeans, tanktop, extremely cute in a non-traditional, definitely non-malibu sort of way, (and she wasn't that young at all, good lord, dating _one_ nine year old is enough for me, this one was mid-twenties, at least) -- I dunno, it was kinda like if I were to ever look up "My Type" in the dictionary, there she'd be pictured. And I somehow found myself partnered with her in a game of pool. And of course she was oblivious to me, and my thoughts, as was I, most likely, although she said "Short Hills" when I mentioned New Jersey, so that can't be all that bad, or maybe it is, considering "Short Hills" is home to the most expensive mall in the Garden State, which also happens to be the mall capital of the world. But I digress.... We barely talked, although together we won five straight pool games before I got tired and "lost" the sixth game for us so I could head home... I dunno, she just attracted me in a really really absurd way. Absurd is often good... And I'll probably never see her again. But that doesn't matter ... because she so strongly albeit inadvertently helped me realize something tonight, something my soul has been denying itself for too long, somehow in the interest of loyalty to an undeserving past, or commitment, or whatever my idea of that is ... shit, I'll lose myself if I try to overanalyze this too much, because the truth is so simple, finally ... I'm ready to fall in love again. Can you imagine how good that feels? It'll probably be a while, but someday, it will happen. At last, I know it. Smile with me. G'night. 17 october 1999: : on hiatus til december 17 october 1998: : on hiatus til november 17 october 1997: lost : lost this entry for some reason [ swim back | email me | swim ahead ] |
