Friday, January 20, 2006

"Well, I got fired from an apricot-pickin' farm, and my daddy said they was jobs at this Berryville place."

Early Thursday Morning, 2:30am: Wake up feeling really sick for no particular reason

2:37am: Relocate to the living room couch because it’s closer to the bathroom

2:45am: Prepare for the inevitable

2:46am: Relocate to the bathroom and (*insert euphemism for vomit here*)

2:50am: Back to the living room couch

3:00am: Watch an episode of The X-Files on TNT.

4:00am: Back to the bedroom to sit awake for another couple of hours feeling nauseated

7:00am: sleep a little

8:00am: Wake up, go to work.

3:00pm: Fall asleep while sitting in my chair at my computer looking like I’m reading

6:00pm: Go to my second job (tutoring), ask to be sent home if student doesn’t show

6:30pm: The reasonable assumption is made that said student is not coming, and I’m sent home

6:30pm: Crash on the bed and listen to This American Life (good episode this week!)

7:30pm: Get up, get showered, and prepare to party at the China Club with my girls

8:30pm: Arrive at China Club to crash production party with my friends

Here’s where it gets fun. There are two levels in the China Club. The top floor is set up for the food and there’s a dance floor and a Bad Beatles Cover Band. We stay there for an hour or so, drinking free booze and eating. We’ve been introduced to two women at this point, Kelly and Pam, both of whom work at the company who was sponsoring the party and are both from a small town in West Virginia and are about 45 or so. Andrea decides at this point, that we need to go check out the other area downstairs. We troop down there, and we discover the absolute strangest scene. Keep in mind that the average age of people at this party was about 40. The China Club is this big space, set up for huge dance parties, and as I stood in the middle of the room and looked around, I realized it was peopled with yokels and white haired men doing the funky chicken. But far from being a bad party, it was one of the most hilarious nights I’ve had in NYC since I moved here. We ended up convincing the two West Virginian women to come out with us to the Dark Room with us, where we all had shooters and showed them a good old time.

After we packed them into a cab and sent them on their way back to their hotel, we got ourselves a cab to share. Now, after you live in NYC for a while, you start to view the cab driver as a non-entity. As strange as it sounds, it’s like they’re in their world (and usually on the phone) and you are in yours. You just don’t even think about the fact that they are there until it comes time to pay. Well, we were talking on the way home about breakups and relationships, etc. and when it came time to get out of the cab, the driver turned around and said to us, “I wish you guys weren’t getting out of my cab…see, I had the same thing happen to me just last week.” He then went on to tell us that he’d been married and divorced twice, and that he’s got this lovely woman he’s dating now but she wants to get married and he doesn’t, blah blah. So, as Catherine walked back to her apartment, I was standing outside the cab saying to the driver things like, “You know, you just have to do what is going to make you happy in the end, and hope that she will understand and take you for who you are…” It was hilarious! I was psychologically analyzing my cab driver. Weird night.