so, once in a while i like to have a throw-back evening with my dearest cohorts from my college days...an evening filled with the wonders and sparkling authenticities that only locales in new jersey can provide.yes, i'm openly admitting that i went to university in new jersey.
now, before you close this page and vow never to read it again, let me explain something, my lovely listeners. not all of new jersey is comprised of the turnpike, exits off the turnpike, housing developments with cheeky names & identically hideous nouveau victorian huts in endless rows and malls.
my college days were spent in small, hopper-esque diners, sipping coffee and spewing angsty rhetoric between classes and constructing sets in a black box theatre...oh, and fending myself off from sleep in order to take part in all those necessary life lessons like:
- it's 1am. oh noes, i locked my keys in my car...what do i do?
- i'm in a public bathroom with a passed out transvestite, a man in a suit who's vomiting into a wastebasket and a man in all black chuckling in the corner and it's 2am. how did i get here? more importantly, how did i become the person responsible for watching over them?
- it's 3am. whose keys are these in my bag?
- it's 4am. where's the nearest 24hr home depot? i need to pick up some wood planks and concrete.
- it's 5am. yes, i think it's a good idea to take that 3 hour drive to the beach and see the sunrise on this lovely finals day...clearly that will help me do better on my tests.
- it's 6am. crap. i spilled redbull on this computer lab keyboard...what can i do to fix this without the comp lab assistants noticing?
- it's 7am. the age old conundrum (after realizing the contents of my wallet are: receipts, chinese fortune cookie fortunes, a few singles and a canadian coin): tea & toast or cigarettes?
ok. good. you still there?
you haven't abandoned me, have you?
great. thanks for sticking around...
so, i spent the early afternoon hours having a pretty little heart attack about purchasing a new laptop. it just seems absurd the amount of money people spend on technology that will be trumped the next year...but i just couldn't say no...
shiny new technology that promises a more streamlined, unpixelated, backlit keyboard kinda life cannot be turned away. sometimes one must embrace the fact that they will be making their own lunches and counting the number of cigarettes they smoke each day to make up for money that is spent on such nonsense.
in this particular case, "nonsense" is defined as swirling digital fairy godmothers that transform my outdated desktop into a carriage...a silver, mono-bodied, sexy, helvetica-lovin' carriage.
...and this carriage doesn't turn into a pumpkin after a designated time.
this carriage is my chariot towards a new life...a life filled with eclectic furniture, modern architecture, french pastries, italian leather, swedish design sense and the hording of everything that is beautiful.
...in my head that's what that carriage will do...
in reality, it'll make my life a little easier.
...and when things are easier in one department, you can concentrate on all that other tomfoolery.
(insert a loooooong sigh of consumer guilt)
i like nice things, ok?
so, that was my morning and early afternoon.
me, holding the edge of my desk, nails digging into the wood finish, as i tried to convince myself that this was not an atrocity. that after the initial shock of draining that much coin, i would be a better, more efficient human being. i stayed in that strained position for a while...as if letting my hands go limp would pull me straight into the vacuum that is OMG-what-have-i-done(!)-ness.
my constitution quaked like the monsoons of millions of pacific islands in an apocalyptic haze.
i eased my anxiety by meeting at a cafe with dan & nick.
liam soon followed suit and arrived, making our tricycle into a four-wheeled automobile of conversational gaiety.
we sat outside, in denial of the ever-dropping temperature, and sipped our teas and lattes while trembling ever so slightly in the face of every chilly, increasingly autumnal breeze. i completely broke my 8 cigarette/day limit (this did not help the consumer guilt) and we discussed some economical activities for the evening.
after ditching a possible videogame tournament idea, we decided that dinner and a movie sounded right...alors, off we went to a brewery for boutique beers (they drank. i watched while internalizing my mild envy of the ability to drink while slapping the figurative hand of my horrible alcohol tolerance and asian enzyme-lacking genetics).
and, and, aaaaand...bbq!
i was designated a radiant little pile of pulled pork and two mini-buns which were very quickly constructed into two scrumptious sammies and then ingested with the zeal of starving kittens gorging on tuna fish straight out of the can...so excited that they barf it right back up afterwards as their stomachs reject the deluge of pescatarian delights.
no, i didn't throw it up.
i'm just saying i was that excited.
the conversation touched upon some very important subjects:
- if you only want to sleep with a woman, isn't it more important for them to have a beautiful ass as opposed to a beautiful face?
- man, history is great...so is architecture in prague.
- that woman over there has a very nice posterior.
- let's take a holiday...to where? maine? montreal?...how many miles of driving can we average between 4 drivers?
- ..."when i woke up the next morning, i realized that, though she had an amazing body, her face looked like someone had beaten her with a baseball bat."
- leggings are really all the rage in europe right now...even ireland!
- so, the loose guideline for the limit on how young your sexual conquests can be is as follows:
if y/2 + 7 > x, NO
if x > y/2 + 7, green light says GO
x = the age of the innocent, yet nubile conquest
y = the age of the dashing, vibrant, wise and witty older participant
so, as you can see, the beer and barbecue clearly kicked open the flood gates of testosterone...and, yet, these are the same men i can discuss anna wintour, the ill effects of thin models on female youth, gingham, hairstyles and what to wear to an oscar wilde themed party with. we are a curious group.
cut to us, sitting in the car in the parking lot of the brewery having a serious sing-along to weezer's blue album. serious, people. this was not light, half-hearted singing (ya know, like "i kinda know the words, but not really...but this album was pretty popular back when i was young, so i can follow along" kinda singing)...no, no, no.
this was full on belting with air guitar solos, perfectly pitched harmonies and dramatic hand gestures. the songs were interspersed with infectious laughter...at ourselves...for reverting back to the age of 16.
did i mention we were in a parked car?
...and there was definitely a man in the car next to us, attempting to concentrate on his newspaper while the 4 of us, with the windows up at least, thrashed around in our seats like salmon swimming desperately upstream.
...near 30-somethings desperately clinging to their youth. oh, we are amusing creatures.
the singing continued until our throats were ragged and we all sounded like cowboys...from marlboro country. cool in the tall, swaying grasses of the flatlands, surrounded by horses. questionable in the middle of new jersey on a rainy saturday night.
the evening ended with a few games of pool (the movie idea was a vision of grandeur in the face of our getting-older-exhaustionitis) and a late-night diner run (now that is jersey)...
the conversations began to falter, we all adopted that glazed-over stare of soldiers without sleep on the longest campaign of their lives...
and it wasn't even midnight. it might've been around 11.
so curmudgeonly.
i'm home now...showered and cigaretted, my eyes rolling to the back of my head.
even with that evening cup of coffee, i can't function all that well.
it was an entertaining jersey aberration with my treasured testosterone trio.
we now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
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