Pre-Birthday Dinner

Thursday night was an interesting one. Friday was my birthday, and Matty was going to be out of town for work. Since he couldn’t be here to celebrate on Friday, he offered to take me to dinner Thursday night. Unfortunately it had to be a late dinner, since I’m trying to bill 60 hours per week. We agreed to meet at Machiavelli at 8:30 pm.

I got to the restaurant right at 8:30. If you’re familiar with the place, you know that the lounge/waiting area is at the front, with windows that look onto the entrance. The windows were open, and the girls were there waiting for. And they were lit.

It was Matty, Curtis, Paul, Rick, and Mike Meola. They howled, “He’s here!” through the open window, and hooted and cheered while I made my way through the crowd to the barstool they’d saved for me. Curtis got me a beer, there were hugs all around, and they immediately launched into a stirring, if slurred, version of “Happy Birthday, Uncle Fester.” Trying not to show alarm, the other patrons squeezed away from us to the other side of the bar.

We planned dinner late because I had to work, but the boys were all done with work around 5 or 6 pm. Which means they’d been drinking for two solid hours (at least) when I arrived. As Matty explained to me, “We had a bunch of martinis at Chapel and they were CHEAP!” Yeah, the girls were sloshed. They were loud. And they were exhuberant.

At one point, someone grabbed Curtis and unzipped his pants to check out his underwear (red nylon ribbed briefs of some kind, Curtis has a serious underwear fetish). There were loud questions about how long I’d live, what happened to my hair, and if Morticia (going with the Uncle Fester theme) knew I’d stolen her purse. But the highlight was Rick, reserved as ever, standing up and shouting, through cupped hands: “If the lesbian hostess would stop seating all her friends, maybe we could get a TABLE!” It’s groups like us that either get served as fast a possible, or get asked to leave.

We finally got a table, quickly ordered, and secured a nice bottle of Chianti for toasts. The staff (shockingly) had our food ready in record time, and we managed to get through dinner on only one bottle of wine. After clearing our plates, the waitress presented me with a piece of tiramisu with a candle, and everyone sang another rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday, Uncle Fester.” A bite of cake for each of us and they hustled our drunk little group out the door.

The plan was to go to Manray, 3 blocks up the hill. Three blocks doesn’t sound like much, unless you’ve got a drunken Matty leaning on you for assistance. And then it’s like climbing Everest. By the middle of the first block he was demanding a taxi. I suggested a Rascal, one of those little electric scooters that senior citizens use just before they get too fat or stove up to walk. A str8 couple behind us, who had been giving us plenty of room to stagger up the hill, heard this and just started laughing. God knows what we looked like, a couple of large, trashed queens staggering to the next bar.

Finally at Manray, I managed to down about 5 beers while inviting everyone I could find to the party. A good time was had by all.