"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.