Well, There Went October

Not a single blog for October. What gives? I dunno. Had nothing to say I guess. Or I was too damn lazy to do what I am doing now (i.e. typing a blog entry).
My job is going well. I still make mountains out of molehills so I can never achieve a balanced and content state of mind. That is my new conundrum: how to still the ever worrying mind.
Therefore I am studying Buddhism in an effort to know myself better and hopefully to quell these disparate and bothersome thoughts that pervade my everyday life.
Today, however was a good day. Tomorrow... who knows?

So what's new?
I had a very good time with an old friend from way back. We will just call her D. I haven't seen her in twenty years and after finding each other while conversing about a twenty year reunion that neither of us attended, we decided to exchange e-mails and phone calls. It felt good to finally hear from her again. She was the first girl I had a serious crush on in High School and you know what they say about first crushes...
So this past weekend (Halloween weekend, unbeknownst to me) D and I meet at a nice restaurant in Sacramento. I told her I would be half an hour late in getting there, but my foot protested and I ended up in Sacramento on schedule. D, however, was, how shall I put this, SUPER-LATE, but it gave me the opportunity to nurse a Cosmopolitan and watch the World Series and have bartenders and waitresses comment on my lonely state. In fact, D was trying desperately to call me and tell me she was going to be SUPER-LATE, but my phone as most of my friends already know is usually out of juice and sitting in some isolated dimension not far from Limbo, that is to say, my car. So I never got the message. Think of the film 'Immortal Beloved' or 'An Affair to Remember' except nobody composes a master symphony or gets hit by a car.
Finally, she arrives and we hug. Awwwwww. We eat appetizers. Pizzettas w/mushrooms. Yum. Mr. Cosmo meet Miss Cabernet Sauvignon. Yum. We motate. Now, D coined this illustrious verb and I am still wondering if it is some amalgam of mutate and motivate which means, I suppose, that we should be morphing uncontrollably while simultaneously moving toward a common destination. Oddly enough, it was we who remained static and everyone else was mutated... but I'm getting ahead of myself...
This next chapter I have entitled: Gimme Fiction sans Spoon or Gimme Chopsticks or maybe Gimme a goddamn glass of cold water....PLEASE for the LOVE of GOD!
Yes, my friends, we motated toward a sushi bar. I forget the name of it and D did too, but she knew the proprietors and the waiters here (come to think of it, she knew everyone at every place we went...hmmmm). Some dude with a red nose and a shirt that had emblazoned upon it the single word: CLOWN, seated us. And a petite, asian girl who D called by the singular name of 'slut', gave us our menus. The sushi was excellent. I mean excellent. And also fucking HOT! One of these bozo sushi chefs was jealous of my date with D and laced my shrimp in Hell Sauce. We had no water so I was forced to wash it down with cold Saki. Jeezus Christ! Don't ever do that. I also remember some lovely conversation which went from fifteen decibels to about two-hundred by the time we left. It was like some Conversational Bolero. And like Bolero it ends in a deflating crash as I down my fourth glass of Saki. Now, it should be known that Saki and I have a history...not a good one I might add.
Long ago, at the height of my Party Phase, I was at a person's house in Sacramento and it was a Halloween shinding come to think of it! And he had this Saki in a pot and under a flame. I drank it. I continued to drink it. End of Brian as a socially acute, intelligent, sentient being. When you drink this shit you are either Buddha or a slug. There is no Middle Way with Saki. As you might already be guessing, I tend toward the latter.
Anyway, I have four sakis in me. Note that. We then travel (we quit motating I think at this point) to the Bonn Lair which is a favourite haunt of Britons and Scots. We met the bartender and his wife and a man named Lou. This guy had me splitting my sides. His acerbic wit and British accent had me rolling. D was also in a fit of laughter as we both tried to stop laughing in front of this lass dressed as Wonder Woman (remember it's Halloween weekend) because... nevermind. Some things are not meant to be written. All I remember is the word 'Growler'. Which is unfortunate because I named a race of dog-men Growler in one of my novels. Looks like a name change is afoot. Not long after, a mob of costumed Dionysian revelers broke into the joint and I downed a couple Guinesses. (Cosmo+Red Wine+Saki+Guinesses)
Oh Damn! I almost forgot. We went to Tapa the World before the Bonn Lair. But there's not much to tell at that establishment, I'm afraid. I drank a beer with Satan and listened to a Flamenco guitarist, and had some more spirited conversation with D. That was all. D begged to leave that place, so I obliged her.
Back to the Bonn Lair... So we were witnessing a Bacchanalia with these wine-drunk revelers and D decided to take them to another place in her SUV. So we ferried these lost souls to the next and final stop in our Itinerary of Debauchery - a place whose name eludes me. Perhaps it's just as well. Maybe it was Hell. I'll never tell. Muhahahahaha.
Now this place was more my style: Pool table, shuffleboard, darts, dirty and rough. These are places I grew up with. It was only fitting that I end my night here. D is handing me MGD after MGD as I play a game of billiards with two mullet-headed individuals, one of which told me in no uncertain terms that Halloween was only an excuse for women to dress as sluts. Whatever. The Book of Drunken Etiquette demands I say "Hell, yeah!" and give him a high five, which of course I did. After the game, I remember a girl dressed in a Twister game mat and spinner (I almost spun it) and meeting a saint, who got a little pissed at me when I said I was a former seminarian. Then I went into the bathroom and did a comedy routine which lasted about five minutes (It's hard to tell duration when you're tanked).
Time to go home.
I wonder if anyone told the bartender that since the clock changed, we should get an extra hour of drunken fun. Nope. No one did.
D can't drive, and neither can I so she calls her brother. O Brother, Where Art Thou? He finally shows up and they drop me off at my car on J street. They leave.
Guess what I'm doing.
One New Years Party long ago, I lied to my aunt and said I would stay at her house rather than me driving drunk back home. I swore to her later that I would never do such a thing again. Not the lying part, but the drunk driving thing. So, my superego, which never leaves me even in this drunken stupor, demanded I sleep in the car. So I did. At 5 o'clock I wake up and drive home. It was a painful drive.
A week later I realize that my red tie is missing. You see, I wore a red tie with my grey microfibre shirt and I removed it before we hit the sushi joint. It was in her SUV. She e-mails me and says she would like to mail it to me.
I understand now.
My behavior was so raucous, so asinine, so immature even at my near-forty age that she didn't want to see me anymore. The old 'leave the tie behind' trick failed me. I have no excuse now to go see her again. She has seen through my deceit and will mail back my tie via UPS. Screw red, what can BROWN do for you?