first the whiskey and cokes, then the dancing
May 08, 2005 / 12:15 p.m.
Amanda needed to have a partner to go with her to the ‘prom’, a friend to rejection lately that she is, and I obliged. There I was at 10, ten minutes past when I said to be here so I could make whisky and cokes for us to get warmed up on before we pedaled off towards 30th and I’m-forgetting-which-street.
Well, like I said, it was 10, and there we were on the phone, her at home still in her street clothes, un-prom clothes, telling me that she had just had her neighbor drop by unexpectedly and was going to be a little late.
“Anyway,” I said, “I think I’ll just go to the Dunes by myself to dance. If I go to the party now, I’m gonna be there for like half an hour before I need to leave, and that drive is all uphill from my house, anyway. You should just go to the party. I’ll go dancing.”
I was tired and sat later on my couch, after having talked to her, with my shoes off, nodding out, thinking just wanted to crash, but also knowing it would be good for me to go out and dance and at least make a night of it one time in the weekend. I went down and made myself a whisky and coke, since I went all the way to the store for the coke, and went upstairs and had it while slumped over on my couch. I admired the fact that my room was so clean, that I had actually cleaned it today. And as I sipped more from the drink that I had made strong, I realized that I was feeling more up to going. And I put my shoes on without thinking about it too much, or looking at my bed.
I pedaled off towards MLK, lonely, and entered the dunes as Nathan (dj nightschool) stood by the mix tables, not a single soul dancing, just back from recording the latest Gossip album. “You came all the way to Portland in the middle of your tour for this?” Only a few hipsters lingering around the bar and bathroom and tables talking.
But I was early, so it was only my fault that I found myself sitting there on the bench alone, with a beer in my hand, rubbing its plastic rim with the bottom of my thumb in a circular motion and watching the little cross dots of light rotating off the wall and in circles above dj nightschool.
I talked to a pretty girl who just happened to sit down right next to me, rubbing knees and elbows, who was a manager for a band that I didn’t make out the name of over the loud music that no one was dancing to. I almost asked for her number before I got up finally, wobbly, but I didn’t. When we separated, without goodbyes, her on the bench still wondering when the dancing was gonna start, and me standing next to the bathroom in the back… she then stood up for me to see, and she was easily 6 feet tall. I laughed inside, having avoided an awkward moment probably, and stood in a very long line.
I called Vanessa and asked her where she was, if she was going to the Dunes. “Actually, I think we’re going to that party.”
“What party?”
“You know, the one you told us about.”
I sat back down again, feeling really alone.
Eventually the dancing started, somewhere during a le Tigre song I think. But I was bored, ignore the few people that I knew there pretty much, was lonely, not drunk, recognized a guy Amanda bar hopped one night who she had a crush on, and who she went back to his house with and banged and then got rejected the next day when she wrote him a letter confessing how much she liked him and he wrote back saying he wasn’t interested in her at all.
I drove home still lonely. At about 2. The streets were abandoned, stranded in a perpetual state of both ways as far as you could see still.
I picked up my phone out of my pocket as I balanced my bike stopped with my foot on the curb across the street from my house, in front of a weird sight.
I got Amanda’s voice mail, since she didn’t bring her phone with her in fear of losing it and not having any money lately to get a new one.
“Amanda, I just went to the Dunes. I wish I would have gone to the prom instead. I mean, the same songs every time at the Dunes, the same people in the same spots on the dancefloor, the same vibe. It gets boring. I wish you had your phone on your so you could give me a status report on the party. But I’m kind of tired and I think I’m gonna go inside now and go to bed. I’m standing in front of a weird sight. Someone stacked a bunch of glazed maple bars and old fashioned donuts in the shape of a bunch of dicks with balls as if they were sticking straight up out of the sidewalk. It looks like they’re growing up towards the sky. I’d eat them if they weren’t on the ground. Anyway, goodnite.”
The donut glaze shimmered from the amber streetlight that hung 15 feet directly above where they were on the ground, and where I was standing awkwardly.
Tomorrow is mother’s day. Erik and me are supposed to come up with a recipe and food for mom.
I’m so tired right now and I’m going to bed.