Super Sober Spring Break
Day One Friday
Friday rolls in like a gentle tide. We expect little excitement from these waters. It is calm and it is cold. Your legs will shiver like an uncontrollable inner earth quake upon these temperatures. Your teeth would chatter perhaps. At the very least you really must preheat your car for a good twenty minuets.
“I will wear two layers of pants,” Declares Swanky. I must admire this dedication and thank J-Rabbit for salvaging what seemed like the wreckage of my first Spring Break Friday.
I am in fact still on my mental detox no-nonsense kick. It sucks yeah and I have sudden grump attacks but it’s not all horribly horribly terrible either. Tyger whines of being bored and anxious but I really don’t think that’s anything new.
So anyway as I mentioned in a previous blog I’d promised myself I would attend all the First Fridays I could before leaving Dayton. It being so cold and my original invites falling through I had just about accepted the idea of not going at all. When out of the blue Collins posted on Facebook a call out amongst the friends for something to do this night of all nights.
Like a siren calling us to the cliff side Collins presented us a reason to ship out. I had not actually been on said Facebook but received news for this “search of action” second hand from Swanky. I texted Collins and we promptly made such hanging out plans. This being my idea and Swanky being intoxicated I was instantly obligated to drive. She did however provide me with insta-coffee cappuccino which is enough fuel to last me an evening.
When he arrived he said something about facebook and so many people in the group had seen the message and yet none of them had responded. I asked him if he noticed that I had not been one of those people who had seen and yet I texted him about said post. I felt like the all seeing god of the internet. He hadn’t noticed and did not seem impressed like my amazing untraceable knowledge of posts.
I drove like a teenager hyped up on caffeine. I don’t think I’m reckless I just think I’m occasionally impatient. Anyway, I really was hyped up on caffeine.
I had seen Boone for an hour this day. What little time our schedules will afford us. We ate Chinese Buffet. It’s the one on Miller Lane. They have really decent Sushi and I told Collins that you should always tip the Sushi dude because Sushi dudes don’t get enough love. Collins said “Don’t tell me how to live my life.” I laughed at this like a cracked out hyena.
The music in my CD player all night was The Suburbs by Arcade Fire. I remember a friend of mine who moved to Philly telling me that it was a perfect CD for him at that time in his life. It’s a good moving to the city and looking back CD. For right now I associate this CD with long drives but I’m going to not listen to it for like 6 months starting now and then eventually It will be my going back to visit Dayton CD. It’d like to give it a new association and closer meaning to me. It’s a good album. I dunno about top ten… maybe… but definitely top twenty.
So I park and we walk to the gallery underneath the Sinclair lofts. The artwork is cool but we notice right away that the place is fairly empty and they seem to be packing up. It turns out First Friday ends at ten and we had gotten there at 9:45. Well that’s still enough time to check out this one room at least. I do feel bummed out that we missed the “Your Turn” show I’d brought some inspiration for the potluck in my purse and all.
This is why I’m so rarely the one in charge or organizer. I’m not really a plan-ahead-er I’m more of a go-and-do-er-see-what-happens.
So being close enough we decide to wander off to Oregon district. Out we go deep into the bitter chill. I zip up my coat to the neck while Swanky zips hers up to the nose. Upon reaching the four-way intersection we look about for which direction to cross first. We move to cross toward the Neon theater but then I notice the opposite lights turning from green to yellow.
“No this way,” I proclaim. “The tides are ‘a turning!” I point to the changing lights and Collins laughs at me bemused. Enjoying a good nautical theme I ramble on about us being an armada of sea vessels off in search of a new land. I’m leading the way across the brick road of the Oregon district.
“Quickly, I think I saw a sea monster!” I yell at them.
“Oh yeah what do you call that sea monster?” Collins asks me. I don’t know it he’s wanting to play along or mocking me.
Very seriously I turn to him; “We do not name them for names give them power.”
As I continue to lead the way I proclaim myself the leading vessel of this troop. I proclaim myself Magellan but I think the word I was looking for was Commander or Commodore.
We go to the vintage clothes store. (Let me just add that It’s kinda cool being the leader so we only hit the places I want to go.) In there Swanky finds a cool pair of fancy gloves that are bright orange and a Guns N Roses T shirt from 1990. Collins finds a pair of sunglasses that he wears for the rest of the night. Later on I tell him that I’ve become so accustomed to seeing him with those glasses that I shall be frighted to see him without them. “I don’t believe you have eyeballs. There is nothing under there.”
I got to try on the most kick ass shirt that was ever too small for me. It may have been a child’s shirt but fuck that, it was awesome. It was like an outer-space school girl shirt. It was blue with white buttons a white sailor-ish collar and a matching white belt. Very 1960’s and I repeat so fucking cool. Sigh it’s fantastic but it was $30 so probably for the best.
I told Swanky; “How often is it that my boobs are too big for something?” She said “Welcome to my world.” (To explain that I should mention that J-Rabbit has a massive set of knockers.)
Next we hit the super awesome book store Bonnets. I do love that place.
“You like this place because you love chaos,” Swanky says to me. I readily agree with her on that.
Stacks and stacks of books tangled throughout a maze of crooked shelves, pathways on an uneven floor with toy and toys and collectable gathering dust over head. Bonnets books is amazing forever to me. I asked him if he had a copy of House of Leaves and he didn’t but we did have a little discussion about it. He might possibly be a hoarder but Bonnets owner is a super cool nice guy.
As we are heading for the door J-Rabbit stops to swoon over a life size leg lamp from A Christmas Story. We proceed to make jokes with the owner about stroking your hand up the leg slowly as you reach for the switch to turn it on. (In the movie the switch is at the base of the lamp.)
We check out Clash and although I do see a dress I very much like I convince myself it would look weird on my figure. On the other side of the store there are some kick ass handmade shot glasses but not at a price I could easily pay. I tell Collins and Swanky that I don’t want any useful moving away gifts, for when I disappear to Columbus this summer, instead I want everyone to bring a shot glass so that when they visit me there will be enough for us all to do shots together. (Say’s the girl trying to be sober lolz.)
We head back to the car. We start rolling home.
At the stop light a guy pulls up next to me and I know what he’s up to. He wants to jump ahead of me before the merger. Accepting the challenge. I hit the gas hard as soon as the light flips green. Baconator roars with primal fury. The other car however is much newer and it smoothly sails ahead of us as my little clunker struggles to build up speed. All three of us can smell burning plastic. I pat my dashboard affectionately.
“You tried Baconator, you did really good. That guy was a cheater. I still love you.”
At the next light I have no one ahead or behind me. I take my foot off the gas fairly early but I do not touch the breaks.
“I refuse to hit the breaks!” I declare. Ahead of us the light is red as forward we sail getting closer and closer.
“I refuse to hit the breaks!” I yell again. I can sense tension from my passengers. As we are so very close to the red light.
“I refuse to hit the breaks!!” I yell this one last time just before we hit the intersection. My passengers brace themselves for certain doom. And suddenly the light changes a fraction of a second before we roll through. (I had actually seen the other light turning yellow but they hadn’t. [Even I had gotten a little nervous at the last second there.])
We hit the ghetto-ist gas station in Huber for snacks and more caffeine. Munchies, paraphernalia, pay as you go cell phones and illegal DVD’s what more could you need!
Then we go back to J-Rabbits house for a movie.
We watched Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist which I had never seen before. It was ok but what really struck me was the drunk girl character. It was like seeing me and Tyger combined into one girl. Swanky and Collins laughed about it as they remembered some of my past drunken antics. I felt a terrible bubble of shame in my belly as she stumbled around had to be rescued again and again. I don’t want to be that girl. I have no intention to stop partying but I do need to get a handle on it. I need to be able to control my level of messed up. I told them, “I don’t want to be that girl anymore.”
After the movie Collins suggested we bother Grunge aka Fuzzkins at his new job. Swanky and I jumped on this idea so off I drove us to the local UDF.
Swanky and I sampled some ice cream but Collins is the only one to make an actual purchase. We both used our sample spoons to steal from his two scoop cup. After he pulled away from us we both stopped trying. Then next thing we know he started welcoming us to eat more. I responded by telling him that I only want what I’m not supposed to have. He responded by telling me he didn’t want me to have any ice cream so I promptly ate more.
Fuzkins co-worker asked us what he was like outside of work so we started telling her that he was an absolutely wild bad-ass. Grunge tried to deny this but I brought up a certain beer pong game from this past summer in which he did a trick shot from on top of a ladder in the garage. We were all there to remember so he couldn’t deny it. Actually he owned up to it and informed us that although he didn’t make that trick shot his team did go on to win the game.
We ended up sitting in the little ice cream chill out area for an hour or so later. Collins and I discussed philosophy and music as Swanky disappeared into deep thought. (More on that for the next blog.)
Before leaving Fuzkins gave both me and Collins a free expired breakfast burrito.
So off I drove us into the cold night. By now it was well after two in the morning. I was tired sure but most importantly I’d stayed sober and I’d had fun. It was a good Friday with my good friends and a wonderful start to Spring break.