Really Random Thoughts

On Sunday, Woodsy invited Joey, Motorbike Mike, Ben, and a guy named Gavin to come over for drinks. They were running a bit late, so Woodsy waded into the champagne alone. And then ran to the store for more. He passed out on the couch by 5 pm surrounded by guests, and I demonstrated my world-famous “Woodsy Awake!” routine. That’s where I shake him and yell in his face trying to wake him up. It works about 30% of the time. It didn’t work this time, he just grunted and snored. We tried to find a Sharpie (to no avail) and then just packed it up and headed for Timberline.

Adam has a new love interest, a guy named Tom. As in “Tomcat.” An unneutered, male cat that goes around fighting and marking his territory and humping anything that moves. They met at Lester’s party Saturday night, which is as good a place as any for tomcattin’ around. Apparently during their weekend together, two of Matty’s pillows grew legs and wandered down to Adam’s room. One can only speculate why Adam might need a couple of extra pillows while entertaining his new friend. As an aside, apparently I met Tomcat at Timberline on Sunday night, but I was too busy being drunk to even remember seeing Adam, let alone his new love interest. Here’s hoping Animal Control lets the lovebirds alone.

Last night I had nothing better to do, so I stopped by the Crescent to have a beer and feed $20 into the jukebox. It’s the best jukebox in Seattle, you can download nearly any song ever recorded. And you can set the queue, but of course you have to pay extra for those features. Sigh. It adds up fast. When I got there I ran into Tim Dorien and his boyfriend Chris. Chris loves the Crescent, I love the Crescent, so we’ve decided to meet up there and drink heavily whenever we can. I also became best friends with the bartender Melanie after playing “Passionate Kisses,” and endeared myself forever to the owner when I brought over 2 cute, young guys from Wingdome (they’re friends of mine that saw me walk outside to take a call). The owner, Joe, bought us a round of drinks. A good time was had by all.

Saturday Carlos and I met Jeff and Jeff at Changes after I finished my endless day at work. We had a nice, drunken visit. I sat right by the door, which was propped open, and people kept walking by and peering in like we were animals in a zoo. Until it started to rain (well, downpour) and then they just ran. That made me happy. The Jeffs left after the rain stopped, and Carlos and I shortly after that. It was nice, if low-key.

And finally, for those that haven’t noticed, JPK’s blog seems to have disappeared. He hadn’t written in it for a couple of months, and I have a feeling he just didn’t want to keep paying for something he wasn’t using. I’m guessing that this means he no longer wants to brag about his life. Yes kids, I suspect married life is Issaquah is no longer rainbows and unicorns, and making up sunshine for the blog wore a little thin. Well the blogosphere is no doubt better off without him. I’d be sad to lose the ammunition, but I suspect that we’ll be hearing from him on occasion.

Oh, and someone apparently pissed in Matty’s Cheerios this morning. He’s all cranky, drop the big girl a note and let’er know she’s still loved. Especially you, Paul.

Ben's Random Birthday Party

Friday night, Woodsy and I hosted Bento’s 26th birthday party. And it had to be the strangest night since Adam, our little Stoned Cherub, celebrated Thanksgiving with LA Carlos and the Denver Phillies. Here’s how it all shook out:

Carlos had been out of town since Sunday, so no one had been cleaning and the place was a pit. I got home from work at 6 pm Friday night, and after a 10 minute nap, swung into action. I threw all the junk from the living room into my bedroom, and then Woodsy vacuumed and started making hors d’oerves. Project completed.

As we all know, none of my friends ever show up on time anywhere for anything. They’ll be late for their own funerals. So when getting ready for a party, I figure I’ve got an extra hour to pull it all together. I was counting on that Friday night, because I needed to pull myself together. Woodsy got the bulk of the cleaning done (it was his party), and I put away my stuff and then retired to the couch with a beer to make me feel better.

Well it was not to be. Motorbike Mike showed up right at 7:30, and Ben brought his posse about 10 minutes later. We didn’t have ice (Joey was bringing it but was still 30 minutes out) and my hair-of-the-dog hadn’t hit yet. But in all fairness, the evite said the event started at 7:30, and it’s great when people show up on time.

I ran up the street for ice (the girls simply HAD to have their cosmos) and started flogging the boys over the phone to get them there. Within an hour everyone was there and the party was in full swing. And that’s when things started to get strange. This little get-together had a higher than average number of randoms. Part of that was because Ben invited a bunch of people from the men’s chorus that no one knew. But then there were others. For instance, the trio of pretty, pretty princess twinks that showed up, made drinks, and then snarled at anyone that tried to talk to them. Apparently they didn’t know Ben, or anyone else at the party, and so we’re not sure how they got there. I gave them a brief interrogation (I was a little too drunk by this point to be really incisive) and after a few snarky comments they left.

Then there was the guy from downstairs, Rob. Rob is a smoking buddy of Woodsy’s; they frequently have a cigarette on the loading dock. Rob is nice, but is a little different. He’s oddly friendly, and has a tendency to linger. Well on this night, he dropped by in his baby blue velour track suit and waded into the alcohol. And ligered.

Motorbike Mike has been nailing a little guy named Chris. I have taken to calling him Student Body because he looks like an 8th grader. He’s cute and nice, and Michael Jackson would find him completely irresistible. Student Body is deeply in love; he actually “gazes longingly” at Motorbike Mike just like you’ve read about in romance novels (don’t deny it). I don’t know if the kid likes body odor or educational elitism, but he is smitten. For some reason, Mike hasn't dumped him yet, but we know it’s coming. How do we know? Because we’re bitter and cynical? Well while that’s true, you can tell because Motorbike Mike was hitting on other boys at the party! He had some other kid trapped in the corner when Mike Meola (no love lost between those two, by the way) shouts out “Michael, why are you hitting on that boy?” And just like in the movies, the room fell silent as soon as the words started to leave his mouth. Really, it was like the in the movies. The whole room fell silent and Mike’s words rang out over Motorbike Mike, the object of his affection, and Student Body making a drink in the kitchen. Good times.

I had to work in the morning, and by 11 pm Ben was itching to hit the bars. So I rounded up the guests and ushered them out the door. With some exceptions; Woodsy didn’t have any money so he didn’t want to go out, and he had some friends coming by. Rob was still hanging around swimming in the booze, and a couple of others hung out for a bit. I was drunk by the time Woodsy's friends showed up, and Italian guy and an Asian guy in matching pale leather coats. They were nice and very friendly, but I was drunk and too tired to be real chatty.

Thinking the night was over, I left Woodsy to entertain his guests and went to bed. Well I was wrong. Within the hour Johnny, Matty, and Paul had all returned. Johnny’s been working out a lot, so the boys somehow convinced him to strip down to his underwear and show off the goods. I kid you not. I got up to use the bathroom and ask that they turn down the music, and was greeted by Johnny in my hallway stripping off his pants. Rob was still there, I’m not sure how he felt about the whole thing but there was plenty of alcohol so he wasn’t going anywhere. I think things wrapped up around 4 am, I was long asleep by then.

"Insert Here" --Paul Villa

I admit it, I’ve been neglecting the blog. Trust me there’s been plenty going on, it’s just that I haven’t had the energy to pull together an entry. I don’t feel much like doing it today, but the complaints (and my conscience) are getting to me. So here’s the low-down on last Saturday:

I got up at 8 am and went to work. Work sucked. But I only stayed until 11:15, when I went to Aveda to have a long-awaited banana leaf wrap. I never go for that sort of goofy spa-treatment stuff (did you know you can have your chakras tuned with diamonds?) but decided to go for it. The wrap was disappointing; it was pleasant but didn’t leave me particularly refreshed or my skin feeling any different.

After the wrap, I met Seth and his new bf Justin at CC’s. We all had drinks and lunch, and Paul and Mark showed up while we were eating. They’d started drinking that morning at Charlie’s, and apparently skipped eating and just drank. At 1 pm Paul was almost nonverbal but extremely handsy. Justin had had a bit of a rough night, and the fact that we were all at our loudest and most aggressive didn’t help him out.

At 1:45 pm I left, over everyone’s heart-felt objections, to take Johnny to Snohomish so that he could celebrate his 36th birthday by parachuting from a tiny airplane at 12,000 feet. Johnny signed the long, long contract and then put on his parachute pants and strapped himself to this SMOKIN’ instructor named Kelly. I liked Kelly a lot, but not enough to jump out of a plane with him. The other boys there were equally hot, which made me think I should take parachuting classes without actually doing it, much like I took a kayaking class without ever going kayaking.

While Johnny and a woman named Julie rode a flying tuna can to 12,000 feet I chatted with Julie’s partner. Turns out Julie was a paralegal at Marler Clark during the summer of 2000 when James worked there as a summer associate. Such a small world. Julie and I had the same opinion of the contract: not written by a lawyer, and utterly unenforceable. But you can give them an “A” for effort.

When not gawking at the hot guys in harnesses, I read skydiving magazines as Johnny got ready. There’s a whole skydiving subculture, and the magazines included summaries of FAA reports on skydiving “incidents.” In my life, an incident is something embarrassing or memorable. Apparently for the FAA, an “incident” is something that results in a human body being peeled off the ground with a paint scraper. One “incident” was a strap that snapped and caused the full force of the deploying parachute to be applied to some poor sap’s neck (don’t ask exactly how, I was skimming). The body floated “limply” (their word) to the ground where it was recovered by the guy’s buddies with the head only partially severed. I decided not to share this with Johnny. Other than tangled lines at 4,000 feet his jump went just fine.

After the jump we went to hang out at Matty’s. The afternoon had been eventful even without me. Paul drank himself into a complete stupor (this was 5 pm). But before he shut down, he pulled off Justin’s shirt twice and tried going down the front of the guy’s pants. He invited Motorbike Mike to hang out with the gang (which had moved to Full Circle at this point). Which meant that Seth’s most recent ex got to meet the new boyfriend. And for poor, hung over Justin that was enough. He left, with Seth running after him trying to fix it.

And finally, Paul invited JPK to join the group at Full Circle. Why JPK wanted to hang out with Paul is anyone’s guess (think real hard on this one, kids) but apparently he wasn’t expecting to see Seth or Matty. Since the three of them have a difficult history, it was a less than comfortable situation. Unfortunately, I was standing in the rain hoping Johnny either made it or died quick. I would have enjoyed being there.

All of this had not endeared Paul to anyone by the time we arrived at Matty’s. Curtis could have defused things, but he had a date with John Ferris. According to Curtis, said date involved a nice dinner, drinking at the Eagle until closing, spending the night together, and breakfast. But that’s all, there was no sex. Curtis was still grinning at 6 pm the next day. But there was no sex. On an unrelated note, Curtis is selling me the Brooklyn Bridge just after he transfers money from this Nigerian guy into my bank account. Seriously.

The mood of the crowd at Matty’s was ugly. To help Paul out, I encouraged him to drink some beer. To make sure it was strong enough I added vodka. Matty wondered out loud whether to drop in a national forest or Volunteer Park, then suggested the old frat trick of “write on the drunk guy with a Sharpie.” Considering that we could have left him naked in Seth’s front yard, it seemed a mild punishment. Paul struggled but soon passed out with the phrase “Insert Here” written above his ass, and “Hi!” written on the back of his neck. And kids, that pretty much wrapped things the heck up for the night.