wine and cheap perfume

Last night Annie and I got in huge fight because she grabbed my tit on the street and I asked her to stop. What I said, specifically, was: "Not in public."
I understand that this was a hypocritical request, because I grab her tit in public three to four times per outing, but I was wearing this sleeveless lace shirt with no bra and felt really naked so it made me feel weird. We went out with Melissa, who was in town trying to sublet her apartment. First we stopped by Library, and unknowingly plopped ourselves down next to the creepiest guy at the bar. He was staring and laughing at our jokes as if he was part of the conversation. Then we went across the street to Julep to play pool, where instead, Annie made a b-line for the game machine and Melissa sat me down and bombarded me with all the reasons as to why she, her mother, and her Columbine-esque boyfriend dislike me. (Sample quote, sans hyperbole: "Katie, they just don't understand that you and I are the same kind of person: selfish, vain, and only cares about themselves.") It made me sick to think that such a good (albeit ridiculous) friend could describe me in such a heinous way with such utter nonchalance, so I told her I was going home. Annie came with me, and by this point she was belligerently drunk. When we got home, she started tearing around the apartment, screaming about how I'm ashamed of her and my gayness and how dare I tell her not to grab my tit in public? She screamed so loud and so hard that I locked myself in the bathroom and then she punched a hole through the door. I ran out of the apartment because I thought she was gonna hit me, and collapsed against the side of the fire house next door. A few minutes later she came down after me, limping with a bloody foot. She had kicked a beach-ball sized hole in the bottom of the door after I left, and it tore her foot open. We sat there and cried and then went back upstairs, where we sat on the bloody bathroom floor. She said, "We've already broken up," and I said, "No we havent't," and she said, "You either care or you don't. You can't half-care." Then she said, "If I was still mean, you'd care. But I love you too much, so now you don't. You have the edge." She's wrong. I don't have the edge. What I do have is an alcoholic girlfriend with a wounded foot who I care about so much I can't even think straight.

You know you've hit rock bottom when you find yourself on the floor of a filthy bar bathroom, sobbing against a patch of wall where someone has scrawled "Jeanette McPeak will blow you if you piss on her." That was me, last night, when I should have been working. I opted, instead, to take a half-hour long crying break. Afterwards, I had to truck outside with my puffy red eyes and tear-encrusted face, and write in polka-dotted bubble letters on the chalk board outside: "It's Party Time! $2 beer! Cheap shots! Crazy times! Come in!" Not a soul came into the bar until 3am, but when they came, they came hard. A stampede of enormous men came charging in and started drinking up a storm for the last hour of our shift.
This one guy who opened a tab was quite possibly the largest man I've ever seen. I have this ability to guess people's height to a T (though I consistently card 40-year-olds and shower my family and friends with outrageously misfitting articles of clothing on their brithdays), so I said to him, "You're 6'9."
Large man: "Yeah! How did you know?"
He then asked how tall I was, and when I told him I was 5'9', he responded, genuinely impressed, "Wow, that's tall for a girl!" I then tried to imagine congratulating someone who was a full foot shorter than me on their puny stature: "Wow! 4'9! Nice job!"
About fifteen minutes later, this tiny man came up to the bar and ordered a Grey Goose on the rocks, on "him." The little guy (let's call him 'Gus,' for convenience's sake) had gestured to the giant who's height I had just guessed. I went over the the bar tab book but didn't know the big guy's name, so I asked, "What's it under?" A flicker of panic danced across Gus's face and then he blurted out, "Uh...Jack?!" There was no one named Jack with an open tab, and I told him so.
"Charles?" he asked.
I was like, "Dude, are you kidding me? Are you just gonna run through a list of every remotely common male name you can think of?: "John? Mike? Matt?!"
Gus then refused to pay for his already-made drink and ordered a water instead. This means that not only was he deceitful, cheap, and/or broke, but also the stupidest man on earth. Like, if you're gonna try to weasel yourself a free drink by putting it on a stranger's tab, you don't really try to pawn it off on a man twelve times your size.
On another note, I couple days ago I wrote my dad an email asking if he'd like to take me to see the Rolling Stones for my birthday, and he responded,
"Katie, I would rather put a gun in my mouth and blow my brains out than see the Rolling Stones in concert. Love, Dad (p.s. my father died a year ago today)."
Thanks, Dad.

I worked last night, and I felt like death. Nicole was dancing around behind the bar in all of her glory, singing songs and entertaining the masses. I, on the other hand, stood hunched in the corner, drinking warm tequila by myself and cursing every person who walked through the door under my breath. I hate my job. This sleazy latin guy at the end of the bar learned that my name was Katie and started hollering for me to come over so that he could show me that he had my name tattooed on his shoulder. At first I ignored him, but as he grew increasingly insistent, I gave him a death glare and announced, "I DON'T CARE--AT ALL." Initially he seemed hurt, but then he offered me a hot wing and I ate it. Then he left. Afterwards, Nicole, Jeff and myself met up with this Kabin bartender for breakfast at 7A. As I was waiting in line for the bathroom, this drunk mess of a girl came stumbling in and started pounding on the doors:
"Jackie! Jackie?! Where are you?" She pounded and pounded and then she whipped her husky, barely clothed body around and asked a white-haired man standing in front of me in line, "Hey! Is Jackie in there?"
He looked at her like she was a louse and replied, "I don't know who Jackie is." I liked him.

Annie and I just spent three days in Ithaca. Two of the three people I went to see ended up not being in town, so we spent the majority of our time wandering around aimlessly. Our first night there we watched "Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle" on Homa's couch and I wondered what the hell I was doing back in Ithaca. Annie and I fought a lot the first day because I wanted to shop for books and she wanted to get drunk and play pool at this cheesy sportsbar called 'Benchwarmers.' An ATM machine ate my credit card, I sprained my back, and I managed to get food poisoning from a cup of frozen yogurt. I didn't recognize a single person on campus, save for a convenience store guy who told me that I looked "babelicious" with blonde hair and asked where I had been for the past three years. I said, "I graduated," and he said, "Oh."
The next day we romped around in the gorges, which are unspeakably beautiful. I admired an enormous golden retriever puppy covered in mud from afar and came to the conclusion that I would move to a rat-infested housing project if it meant being able to afford a dog. We skipped rocks and slept in the sun and it was nice. Sometimes, though, it's so much nicer to experience something beautiful by yourself, because if it's with someone else then the experience becomes tainted. It's suddenly overshadowed by the perfunctory romantic gestures that you feel obligated to carry out (loving glances, hand-holding, an acknowledgment that something special is being shared), which detract from the thing itself. Afterwards we stopped by the Johnson museam and saw these amazing Japanese scrolls from the 18th century before two guards with red necks told us the museam was closed. At night, we ate amazing gazpacho, grilled chicken and salad and then went to a completely empty bar with Homa where we spent the night playing Erotic photohunt until the bartender politely asked us to leave because it was closing time.

On Sunday night, a preppy little man with cystic acne and a gay lisp told me to suck his dick. The reason? I asked him if he'd like another drink. When I asked him to leave immediately, he refused. I threatened to call the police, and he sneered back, "Please. You're not gonna actually call the police."
Me: "Wanna bet?"
Eventually he got off his bar stool and stumbled out and I noticed that his fly was unzipped and walked pigeon-toed. A few minutes later, an old man dressed like Janis Joplin came into the bar and tried to negotiate the price of his beer. I finally said, "Listen, it's not negotiable. If you don't want it then I'll take it back and you don't owe the bar anything." He grudgingly pulled some dirty bills from his batiked fanny pack and tossed them at me.
His name was Martin, and he took it upon himself to inform me that I was "taller, blonder, and fatter" than Katherine Hepburn. I was like, "thanks." He claimed that in 1968, they had shared a glance in a post office and his whole body felt "an electrical charge." He actually said, "I figure, if that moment affected me as much as it did, it must have had a similar effect on her." I thought, "You're right. Katherine Hepburn probably took one look at your pointy head and bejeweled hemp tunic and wondered, 'Could this be the one?'"
As I was closing the bar, Mike McGuiness swaggered in, drunk as hell, and professed his love for Annie for the 90th time. He suggested they make a baby together. She said, "No thanks." We all left to go get food at Odessa, and on the way he decided to steal two large bouquets of carnations and present them to Annie with a wistful look in his eye. She left them on the sidewalk because she didn't want to get jumped by the guy at the flower stand, which angered McGuiness so much that he picked them back up and hurled them into the street. When we arrived at Odessa, Mike kicked off the meal by flinging a large hunk of tomato at the table of people sitting behind us. Then Martin came in and tried to sit at the table next to us. When he was refused service, he told the waiter that he would "Sue his Greek ass!" They eventually threw him out, and we all ate some food. On our way out, we were accosted by a homeless man, who was trying to sell us the very flowers that McGuiness had stolen. We brought McGuiness home because he was too drunk to stand up. He collapsed, face down, on our futon, fell fast asleep, and about fifteen minutes later, hocked a lugie on our sheet and went back to sleep.

What is it, exactly, that makes devouring pancakes and eggs with a rancid hangover so inexplicably delightful? I just came from brunch with Jason and Nicole. The service was terrible, my omelet was nauseating and my coffee tasted like warm piss. The three of us had nothing to say to each other. We sat, slumped over, shoveled mediocre food into our mouths, and then left. I loved every second of it.
Prior to brunch, I spent an hour and forty-five minutes on the phone with the Time Warner people, trying to get my internet to work. The computer guy was totally like Jimmy Fallon on that SNL skit where he plays that asshole computer technician. He made serious fun of me for not having the right earthlink setting and proxy hook-up. After arguing with him on the phone for close to an hour, he starts laughing and says, all smug, "Whoa. Wow. Hold on. Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me that you don't have your http setting at 8080? Lemme guess--your browser isn't connected to your D:drive. Hello!!"
I was like, "Could you be any more of a loser?"
On another note, I can't stand my job. Really, I don't know how much more I can take. For a while, I took pride in the fact that I work minimal hours and make a considerable amount of money, and only now am I realizing how pathetic that is. It's disheartening to work hard, but not towards something significant. Like a dream, for instance. As nice as it is to have a bevy of tales about all of the crazy, perverted characters who come into the bar, it's getting to a point where it's just not worth it. It's not funny. And I hardly drink socially any more because I've grown to detest alcohol and the people who consume it. Namely, me.

Nicole kind of freaks me out, because she has no character flaws. Like, every situation that arises where any normal person might act a little awkward, annoying, or self-important, she handles like a pro. She is personable, talented, and relentlessly humble. Like, how certain math dorks can multiple 3,872,314.12 by 4,009,721.086 in their heads, she can address any person in any given setting with ease and an earnest charm.
Onto my mom. My mother is an incredibly intelligent woman who's prone to sharing things with people that are either offensively obvious, or completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. Like how last week, we painted my apartment. Afterwards, she said, "I want some white wine." I said okay, and went to buy her a bottle. When I returned and she tried it, she announced, "It's turned. It's matterized!" She insisted on marching back to the liquor store, bottle in hand, and confronting the 19-year old boriqua wearing huge gold earrings.
My mother: "Hello. My daughter just bought this bottle of wine, because we just painted her un-airconditioned apartment a pale shade of yellow. I asked her to pick up some wine for us, and she did--but this bottle is matterized!"
The boriqua (skeptically): "We not gonna give you your money back."
My mother: "We're not looking for a refund. We'd just like to exchange it for a different bottle. One that's not matterized."
The boriqua: Fine. Whatever.
It's like, mom, no one knows what that means. Let it go.

Last night a tiny, frail Chinese woman came into the bar, ordered a Heineken, and burst into tears. Her husband of ten years had just beat the shit out of her in front of her kids, and she left him. As in, she had left him about twenty minutes prior. After a bit of coaxing, I engaged her in a conversation about what she was supposed to do with herself, though none of the options discussed seemed viable. I volunteered my apartment for a while (although with two toddlers in tow, I doubt that she'd want to live with a tattooed butch dyke and myself in a studio apartment for long) and she said that she had too much pride, and too little money, to be able to go anywhere. It broke my heart. At the other end of the bar, two huge losers from New Hampshire ranted and raved about how they were going to move to New York and form a "jam band" that would "make it big" in no time. They used to "rock out" in college. Everytime they laughed, or said some loud, obnoxious thing, she'd cry harder, and it was supremely devastating.

Annie, Melissa and I just had a heated debate about the Mariah Carey song, "We Belong Together." There's this one line where she goes, "Who's someone gon' lean on when times get rough?" Annie insisted she was saying, "Whose shoulder am I going to lean on when times get rough?" Annie was wrong. What's sad is how Melissa and I arrived at this conclusion. Since getting cable, and more specifically, channels on demand, I've been abusing it mercilessly. So we replayed her video on AOL music On Demand about seven times in a row. That's how we decided who was right. Cause, you know, it matters.
Today I went to see an endocrinologist because my mom thinks that I have "hormone issues," and that's why I'm depressed. I don't know what spawned this theory, but I decided to go because I love my mother and I want to make her happy. So at four o'clock, a six-foot lady doctor with permed bangs weighed me, took my blood pressure, and fondled my breasts in an over-airconditioned office on the upper west side. She then bombarded me with questions:
Dr. Albu: Have your feet gotten bigger lately? Have you noticed any unnatural hair growth on your chest?
Me: No.
Dr. Albu: (as she inspects me suspiciously) Have there been any changes in your face lately? Has your jaw become broader?
Me: No. Are you kidding?
Dr. Albu: No.
Me: Why are you asking me these questions?
Dr. Albu: Just to be safe. Come back in two weeks, after I've had a chance to review your bloodwork.
Me: Eat my balls.
I didn't really say that, but it would have been amazing if I had. Annie and I came back downtown and ate loads of meat at a Dallas BBQ. Then we came home and I started crying for no reason, but then we discovered this game that made me feel better: try making out with someone with just one eye open. It's hard!

I just went to brunch with Josh at Supper, and after we had been sitting down for about two minutes, I excused myself to go to the bathroom because I was convinced that a bird had shit all over my hair, shoulders, arms, and shirt. I scrubbed and scrubbed in the dimly lit bathroom until my entire upper body was neon red with irritation, Yet still, it wouldnt come off. Then Josh realized that it wasn't bird shit at all, it was large wads of brown paint that had been dumped on me from a scaffold above. These guys were painting the building and had no problem letting large blobs of paint splatter all over my freshly-washed torso. The waiter and the manager felt really bad, so they both started gently stroking my body with dirty rags drenched in nail polish remover in an attempt to remove the paint. Then a busboy joined in, and I've never felt more pampered in my life. It didn't really work, because I ended up leaving the restaurant looking like a sunburnt black woman with a strange dye job (certain circular patches of my hair are now dark brown), but all the same, it was a pleasant experience overall. At one point, the manager asked me (as he rigorously scrubbed my bare shoulder),
"Wait, is that a mole, or is that paint?"
I turned to look at the medium-sized brown splotch he was referring to and had no idea. He continued to attack it, until finally we decided that it was, in fact, a mole that he was trying to remove with nail polish remover in the middle of his aromatic, well-decorated dining establishment. They comped our breakfast, which was delicious, I might add, and we left the waiter one hell of a tip. I wish things like that would happen more often. Yesterday, the high point of my day was waking up with a penny in my ass. Not, like, IN my ass, but firmly stuck against my left butt cheek.