the weekends after memorial day

I found this old journal entry that will fill up space on my blog until I have more free time to put down some thoughts about what I have been doing recently:

7/1/09

The weekends after Memorial Day:

One weekend after Memorial Day: C in town. Bike ride, Cubs game. C and I dominated the karaoke place in Chicago's Chinatown that we went to upon O's advice. It was a meeting of TAP, the Taiwanese American Professionals organization. I was on my game. We sang "Total Eclipse of the Heart." (We'd watched some funny YouTube spoof videos, where the lyrics were rewritten to describe what was literally happening during the video, so we were prepared for the song.) We rocked the house. Strangers applauded. Everybody paid attention. C and I walked out of there saying, "Total domination."

Two weekends after Memorial Day: Thursday night flight got in delayed, crazy hotel (Hudson - more like a hunting lodge-cum-nightclub than a hotel, tiny little room, sleeplessness), watched the Lakers win the championship in a deli, watched men watching women. Friday, ridiculous last meeting, they had no idea what to say about me besides generalities because I never did anything for that organization, I left for C's and slept for five minutes on the futon on the ground while she slept (in the middle of the afternoon) in her bed because she had swine flu. I met up with R. Massage in Chinatown, S met up with us. S and I then went to Guitar Center for tambourine, then Center for quickie in and out glance at older lesbians playing card games (we declined to join), then to Cubbyhole for some mass flirtation. We then went down to IB's apartment and spent three hours just chatting and sipping beers and whiskey and smoking cigarettes and forcing each other to mime scenes ("Okay, now you're walking down stairs...now every other stair..."). We inspected the weirdness of the former tenant of IB's apartment, who left behind an advent calendar composed of chocolate squares, a cabinet filled with diet pills, a fridge filled with diet Red Bulls, cat posters (I brought the white Bengal tiger one to S in Brooklyn), high heeled shoes, photographs. What was even weirder was that IB kept all of these things around despite having lived there for four months already. I snagged the high heeled shoes that C later told me probably cost $200. I look like a tippy clown in them. There was some sort of Swedish or German or Austrian or Irish low-budget porn-like movie being filmed directly downstairs. We watched rats run around; IB called it his "favorite game." I walked back uptown to C's. On Saturday: I dropped my bags off at S's, then met up with JS for 2-3 hour walk around Prospect Park, restoring our confidence in one another. Met her friend Jen. Went back to S's for dinner party with Connie and Raj. We sang in harmony. Everyone left. S and I had soft serves, discussed our business plans ("Zen Cone" [get it? Zen koan, zen cone?!?!], which would have a pastry skirt on the lip of the cone to catch drips before they reach your hand), and walked around Park Slope for two hours in a light rain. We walked by Ginger's, went inside momentarily, and left. It was a replay of the night before, at the Center. We found an erotica book on the cement and later read bits of this to each other, which, I was embarrassed to find, turned me on. I thought I might want to make out with S. We didn't; she fell asleep. In the morning I awoke late, and then I took the train up to Harlem to see K and IB. I've described my lazy Sunday reading with IB in an entry a few posts back. That was a good weekend.

Three weekends after Memorial Day: T and K's wedding in Boston. New York, night at Connie's. Trip up on Chinatown bus. D and AK's Brazil photographs. A Sikh man handed me a Mountain Dew and a Coke through the window of D's car as we drove past him in Union Square. Took a death cab to the wedding; nearly dead throughout the evening. Cambridge Common. AK and J and I played guitar into the night. I admired their mastery of Brazilian-style guitar rhythms. AK had to close four doors between the living room and the bedroom so that L and her brood would not be awakened by the noise. I felt inadequate all weekend and realized that my last six years have been very unlike the five years that preceded those; the people I have surrounded myself with in recent years are brilliant, but less competitive about their intellects than the people I went to college with. This may implicate the difference between people who go to grad school to develop ideas and people who go to professional school to develop skills. I didn't mind, in the end, although I felt like I was wasting something. The following day was brunch at T's house, which was nicer, smaller, and more low-key. We chatted, played with SM's babies. I asked RR to be my friend again. She hasn't written since then, or called, so I guess that's not going to happen; this is a source of sadness for me, and I cried a week ago when I realized that she wasn't going to respond to me. Still I am proud of myself for having reached out to her, because it is better to be rejected in my friendship overtures than never have made them at all.

Last weekend: sleep, B and RI's bridal shower, and then karaoke event. I played some Beatles songs and "Take Me Out To the Ballgame" with B's mom Marti for the crowd. I bought 96 kazoos so everyone had one to play along with. Marti loved it. B later told me she'd said, "What a rush! I didn't want it to end!" I found this so endearing. She asked me for advice about buying guitars and I just wanted her to hurry up and buy anything and make music because it obviously brought her so much joy. It was out in Oak Park. I wore new sandals that I returned the next day at REI. Later I met up with SL on the first car of the Blue Line and we went up to Montrose for karaoke at a seedy, huge suburban small-town bar that nonetheless was within Chicago limits. There are worlds out there I know nothing about! We didn't stay long. Somebody bought SL a drink. She looked pretty. Sunday: puttered, band practice, puttered, pride parade dregs, an hour of laying on the pier at North Avenue beach, reading a New Yorker, then all-you-can-eat sushi with Asian homos at Sushi Para Two on N. Clark. Didn't really connect with anyone, was too hungry and sunburnt, went home. O wasn't around this weekend and I couldn't be bothered to call anyone up so I missed having someone to goof off with. C'est la weekend.

A backpack button I saw and liked last weekend: "My karma ran over your dogma." Clever, I thought.