Friday Night

“You want to date me! You want to date me!”

“Good night,” I said with a subtle eye roll as I climbed out of the passenger seat and shut the door. I didn’t turn around when I heard the sound of the automatic windows roll down and the sarcastic, jeering voice continue, “You want to date me!”

That was how I ended my Friday. It took several hours, a little bit of vomit, a whole lot of bleeding, one large snake, several crowded art galleries, lots and lots of sweaty dancing, two ransacked purses, one lost shirt and a very bizarre incestuous round of shots to get there.

And I was home by midnight.

We started the evening innocent enough. Happy Hour and then First Friday’s Art Festival for a group of stressed out friends, all working far too hard and getting paid far too little. We were belatedly celebrating our friend's birthday and she was by far the most stressed out of us all.And tiny. And tipsy.

Tipsy can turn into obliterated when you weigh five pounds but she was by far the sweetest sick drunky I have ever seen. I just wanted to put my arms around her and tell her the whole world was going to get better. That her job would start to suck less or that she would find a new one all together. That her personal life would get easier as soon as her work life got easier and that it would get easier. I just wanted to hug her but instead I held her hair back. I have never looked that sweet while being sick.

We all split up from there and that was when the night really began to get interesting. I boy I had blogged about came out with us. He is a really chill guy but I felt a little awkward having not returned his texts and then putting it out to the whole virtual universe. We had somehow all gotten separated and I was trying to find him in the crowd when I did a slam dance into the pavement right between a crowd of people and the band they were listening to.

This is not the first time I have lost control of my oversized limbs and ended up kissing concrete. There have been too many instances to count but the most memorable will always be walking around Universal Studios in Florida with my parents when I was a little kid drinking hands down the most delicious orange soda I had ever tasted before or since and tripping over my own two feet, flying through the air, covering myself in soda and tearing up my knees.

This time there was no soda but there was a slew of people all who gasped in unison with the band that abruptly stopped playing. I gingerly lifted my head, knowing that there would be hundreds of eye balls peering down at me and questioning my sobriety, which was total. I did one of those half-hearted, I am fine. “It’s all good.” I hoisted myself up and raced out of the crowd stopping only for a second to evaluate the hole in my jeans and blood on my knees.

I finally found the boy and we went looking for our friends, some art and some cheap beer. We found a snake.

Eventually our friends made it down, having safely stowed our passed out friend in her home. The four of us, including V, blogger boy and one of my girl friends, found the jam band we had been hoping to see. By this point the only light in the sky was the glow from the mosquito swarmed street lights, however, night fall had done nothing to break the heat and humidity.

We danced anyway. Hot, sweaty summer dancing. The kind that happens when the band is too loud and the air is too thick to care whether or not you look silly.

We asked the boys to hold our purses while we bounced. Blogger boy said no. My friend V said yes (of course) and stalked away. Later we found that they had ransacked them for cash to buy beer. I had never felt so proud! We deserved it being brats who make boys carry their purses. (That and I never carry cash either so there wasn’t anything to find in mine!)

When the band finished their set, we set forth to find cooler pastures. We found a table on the cramped patio at a bar down the street which, thank the lord! was positioned right in front of a giant fan. We chatted for a bit, teasing each other with the lewd trash talk that typically is part and parcel for our little group.

I am not sure how long it took to do the math on the incestuous nature of this little foursome. Ruling out the more obvious same sex couplings it seemed like all of our paths had crossed at one time or another.

I suppose it should have been awkward and uncomfortable but maybe because of the heat or the dancing or the applesauce shots that tasted like Drano, it just didn't seem like a big deal. When the other side of the table wasn't paying attention, we bounced back whispers. "Why don't you date my friend? Why don't you date my friend?"

Finally it was late enough and the reality of early morning wake up calls and work schedules forced us out of the bar and on our way. Somewhere near 20th and Grand our foursome split up into couples and blog boy offered me a lift home.

I am not even going to pretend his intentions were innocent. And am adult enough to admit I considered it, but we had spent the better part of the evening discussing life and relationships and this blog! I even showed it to him on my phone. So after all this talk of my independent spirit and how much I am enjoying my life as it is, it just didn't feel the road to go down.

I put it to him this way, if I am going to give something a whirl at this point [when I am contented doing my own thing] then I am going to want someone to put in the effort - more than just an 11:30 text message.

I don't really know what happened after that. But he was laughing and I was shaking my head and he kept saying, "You want to date me!"

If it was his attempt at being dickishly charming or just dickish, I will probably never know. But I laughed all the way home and was left with a great story to tell.