Quite the Weekend

When I graduated from Major University in December one of my biggest concerns was that my social life would die the moment I stepped off campus.

I needn't have worried.

Things have, to be sure, slowed down a bit from the freewheeling days when I spent my weekends organizing absurd "philosophy" parties, having long conversations in the dining hall about the threats posed by bloodthirsty pagans, and breaking into other people's apartments only to be welcomed into their drunken jamborees. But with a group of friends as large and consistently crazy as mine, things can't stay quiet for long.

I had, for the record, a very different weekend in mind. I was going to spend Thursday night at Laquesha's house and then, after a feel-good slumber party to cheer the friend who just broke up with her fiancé, return home for a quiet few days of movies and reading A Feast for Crows (the fourth book in the phenomenal A Song of Ice and Fire series, which, by the way, you should all go get).

Isn't it funny how God can rearrange our plans?

There I was all ready for a sedate weekend at home, and there He was laughing at my naivete and preparing a care package of Captain Morgan.

To be fair, none of this was intentional.

Laquesha and I were aiming to have a few drinks, certainly, but then we encountered the random black people whom her mother had, for no apparent reason, invited to stay, and by the end of the night a party was had.

I drove home on Friday afternoon with a pounding headache and a newfound resolution to abstain from liquor until I was thirty, never knowing that I'd fall under the shameful influence of Black Dress Girl a mere two days later.

Yes. This one.

Here's how this went. Black Dress Girl and I met up in Western City to have dinner and "a drink" while we caught up on each other's lives, namely her nasty encounter with her estranged father in Humid State.

"I'll have an orange cream," I told our young waitress. "And some of those loaded fries."

"I'll have a Long Island Iced Tea," Black Dress Girl said.

"What?" I asked.

"Load 'er up."

One drink down and Black Dress Girl was feeling mighty fine.

"You should join me, you know," she noted in between telling me about her stupefyingly insensitive parent.

"Wait, are you ordering another?"

"Um, yeah."

"Shit," I said, looking down at the half-eaten plate of food that I knew I wouldn't finish. "I'm not going to sit here and stare at you for twenty minutes."

"Well, then..."

"Fuck it."

About five minutes later I could not imagine why I'd objected to her idea.

The conversation flowed freely as I regaled her with Laquesha's love drama, revealed that my therapist believed I had minor bipolar disorder--"God, we're such perfect friends," she injected. "We're both fucking insane"--and vowed not to let her cats get my loaded fries this time around.

"Just don't bring them in my house," she said. "Because the cats are like fucking Terminators. They'll find them."

At Black Dress Girl's instigation we stopped in at a local bar instead of walking around to sober up, and after a Jägerbomb, a shot of liquor, a mixed drink, and a beer each we were quite the sociable couple.

"BB?" a waitress called out to me.

I turned around and the girl, a twenty-year-old Mountain Town native, jumped forward to give me a hug.

"Oh, my gosh, how are you?" she asked.

We talked about her new job, my brother, and our mutual friends before she excused herself to go back to work.

"Who was that?" Black Dress Girl wanted to know.

"A friend of mine from Mountain Town," I answered before surveying the bar. "Oh, no. You're not going to believe this."

"What?"

"I left my fries in the restaurant."

Black Dress Girl stared at me in silence for three seconds before throwing her head back and bursting into raucous laughter. I joined in and before long we were both sitting there, drunk into insensibility and perched on bar stools as we clutched our ribs and wiped the tears from our faces.

"This--this was a good idea," I conceded.

Such were my Thursday and Saturday nights.

Friday, in case you're wondering, was spent going out to the movies with Black Boy and his absurdly hot nineteen-year-old friend whose name is actually Adonis. Adonis. Come on. The fact that it fit so well only made it worse.

So that was my weekend. All in all, not a bad way to knock off a few days.