The monkey made me do it

I still think every bride would love to register for booze

My friends are strange. That needs to be stated, possibly capitalized, underlined, animated so that it dances about. M is probably the most normal of them, and even she spent years as an artist doing portraits of men’s naughty bits and has a very twisted sense of humor (and for some reason refuses to read this journal because she feels strange about reading my "private thoughts") (which means I can talk about her LOTS and make up stories about her without any fear of discovery! HAAA!) (this does not mean that I make stuff up, I don't, really) (heee, now you're paranoid) (Pa-rentheses!). The rest are a collection of quirky, creative, neurotic, psychotic, wonderful people who bring unpredictable adventures to my life and often leave me wondering how I/we are still alive/sane/employed/in possession of all of my/our limbs.

M and I somehow fell in with a group of guys who went to school at a big university out east, through one of our teachers at college (yes, I hang out with my teacher – shaddup). J is the leader of the pack, the head honcho and muse. He’s a very atypical Irish man (except for the drinking) who wears mostly vintage leisure suits in odd patterns accessorized by the largest ghetto jewelry he can get his hands on. He is incredibly hyper and intelligent and has been a wonderful source for architectural knowledge and sustainable design and random hip-hop factoids, plus there’s nothing like driving around in his gigantic bouncing hydraulicized custom-painted hooptie.

This was one of the first times we had been invited to the casa de J. It is a house in progress, an investment he made with a friend that he has been remodeling for the past couple of years. The main floor has no sheetrock, it’s just slats of wood over hollow walls with no furniture besides a small row of theater seats facing a large window and a futon in the other room by his huge book collection. Kind of looks like the house in “Fight Club” with slightly less creepiness (only slightly). At the time there was also an old chimney hole that connected the top floor to the side of the living room, covered by an inadequate chunk of wood. M and I were a little nervous to be partying with a teacher, and a strange one at that, so we shared a bottle of wine and a few random mini-booze-bottle concoctions (those are dangerous). TIPSY. On the way out the door, I grabbed a couple of fig leaves from the neighbor’s tree and played fully-clothed David, tucking a giant leaf in the front of my pants and then promptly forgetting about it. That’s a great way to meet new people, by the way, and a wonderful icebreaker.

“Umm, your pants seem to be sprouting something.”

There were six of us total, a couple from out of town and a single guy who had begun drinking apparently at dawn. He was hilarious, I saw him physically jump a shrub and pummel it after J insinuated the shrub was talking smack. He also instigated the chimney-climbing fashion show by rappelling down the chimney hole in one of J’s costumes (a 1980's-style Domino’s Pizza uniform if I remember right). I modeled a bright green Member’s Only jacket and fuzzy bucket hat during my descent and managed to get splinters in many odd places. I forget what the other outfits were, things got a bit blurry. I do remember salsa dancing to gangsta rap (works remarkably well if enough alcohol is consumed), asking if the guy at the liquor store did a gift registry (weddings, babies, I thought it was brilliant), and J and the lady from the couple stealing a shopping cart and racing down the sidewalk being pirates.

We hit probably three different bars, drinking anything placed near us and somehow picking up an old high school classmate of mine along the way who I hadn’t seen for close to ten years. I had met him the night before while out on the town with M, and decided not to argue with whatever forces had caused me to run into him twice in two nights (after no contact for so many years), so he tagged along with our group despite my warnings of possible booze-related mayhem. I felt so bad, he ended up going back to J’s house with us and didn’t make it home before his work shift started early the next morning (he worked in a fancy hotel and had to borrow a tie and hope that the reek of cigarettes and beer wasn’t too obvious). Sometime after last call during the blurry stagger home, I inheirited a traffic cone and hat. The oddest part, besides the fact that I don't remember getting either present, is that the cone was in perfect condition and from SeaTac airport. I lost the hat.

The evening ended with M being drunker than I had ever seen her before or since, chasing J around propositioning him blatantly. He refused politely, prompting her to make “Why are you so tight with your shit?!” the mantra of the evening – she even wrote it in permanent marker on an inter-classroom envelope containing grades that J had to turn in the next day. We wove, fell, tripped, laughed, and somehow all made it home alive with hurting heads and splinters from drunken spelunking that tormented me the next day until I remembered and turned them into proud evidence of surviving an evening of excess.

This group also introduced me to the concept of "keg rodeo", where an empty keg (with saddle) is suspended by four ropes tied to four vehicles pointed in opposing directions and pulled forward until the ropes are taut. Then someone who feels no pain gets on, and four masochists each grab a rope and push and pull until the inevitable "Wheeee!.... THUMP" is heard.

posted by LadyJay @ 7:28 AM