25. On the Pretty Girls of San Francisco

Tags

creepy, J-Date, Memento, pretty girls, San Francisco, Tone Loc

WARNING: THIS POST IS R-RATED.  ‘Bout time!

Being a lawyer, I don’t have much opportunity to do “pleasure reading”.  Even when I come home from work at a reasonable hour, I’ve just spent the past 10-18 hours reading and the last thing I want to do is open up a book.  No, post-work is for baseball games and Game of Thrones (I’m almost done with Season 1, but loving it).  I end up reading about one book a month, and it’s almost always non-fiction. However, a couple of weeks ago my aunt lent me a copy of A Visit From the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan, and I must say I’m really getting into it.  I had heard mixed reviews from other friends and family members who read it, but these are mainly people who don’t appreciate quality writing about sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll.  What I like most about Egan’s writing is the way she examines all of her different characters’ neuroses.  I guess there’s something nice about reading about people who are even more screwed up than me.

Most of you reading this blog are probably unaware that I actually used to write a bit of fiction.  Not much, just a few short stories and the occasional screenplay here and there. But reading this novel has inspired me to write a little fictional piece, for the first time in a damn long time, and I’m kind of excited.  I can’t promise anything—I’m barely competent at writing my autobiographical stream-of-consciousness-drivel that I have honed over the past 8+ years, so I certainly can’t represent and/or warrant the quality of my writing in any other genre—but I do at least plan to have some fun with this.

So what am I going to write?  Allow me to drag out this introduction for just one (or two—what can I say?  I like introductions) more paragraph(s) and I’ll explain.  When I lived in LA, I had a buddy who used to sleep with a lot of girls.  He was telling me about it one night, at the Coach and Horses (a.k.a. the “Crotch and Herpes”), my favorite disgusting dive bar close to my Hollywood apartment (which bar, sadly, has since closed down).  “You see, J, most guys don’t give girls in LA much credit.  They assume that these girls are shallow, superficial, vapid bitches who will only talk to guys who look like Brad Pitt and who have tons of cash to burn.  But that’s not true at all.  LA girls are like girls everywhere else.  They only care about one thing—they want a guy to not be creepy.  I don’t care how poor or ugly or fat or old you are—you can get any girl in LA, or New York, or Israel or Rio fuckin’ de Janeiro, as long as you aren’t creepy.  That is the only thing girls care about.”

With that in mind, I am clearly not out to get laid today, as I am going about to engage in one of the creepiest exercises of my writing career: I am going to sit in a café in my neighborhood that is always rife with pretty girls, select the two prettiest, and write their fictional back stories as I steal furtive glances.  It’s gonna be hard for me to write women, as I really don’t understand the fairer sex much at all.  As you’ll see, when I try to write women, I end up doing it very obviously through a (slightly creepy) man’s eyes.  Back in college I took a creative writing course in which we had an exercise where we had to write monologues in the opposite gender.  I don’t remember the context, but I used the word “dick” and one of the female students in the class said that no girl would ever use that word.  I asked, “what word should I use?”  She replied “cock,” and all of the girls in the class nodded in agreement.  Shows what I know.

In any event, this is going to be awesome.

*            *            *

Rachel

Rachel stares at her iPad, then at her watch (even though she is aware that her iPad has a perfectly good clock in the corner), and then back at the iPad.  She raises one eyebrow, scrunches her face into a tight ball for a good five seconds, then shakes her head with a giggle.  She reads the email one more time.  “I hardly go clubbing so I guess it’s safe to massage you.”  This is from John (boring name, minus 1 point), yet another suitor on J-Date.  Was John aware that he had actually written this?  How could he have made such an egregious (if not hilarious) error?  Was it poor spelling (which would be minus 3 points)?  Trying to be witty, but coming off as perverted (minus 3 points)?  Freudian slip?  That one could potentially be connected to an Oedipus complex…normally minus 2 points, but what do you expect on J-Date?  Exhaling a silent sigh, Rachel tosses back her hair (brown with black streaks, but on first glance it appeared to be black with brown streaks), blows back the foam on her cappuccino (they didn’t have skim milk, but really, who gives a fuck?) and takes a sip.  She knows that Daniel, her date for that day (her third in a week) will be arriving momentarily, but dammit she needs at least some caffeine before dealing with this schmendrick, and since he texted saying he’d be five minutes late, that was five minutes better spent looking for the next date (well, the next date was drinks at RN74 with Aaron on Tuesday, but that’s irrelevant).  Rachel realizes she doesn’t want to look too rude for ordering without Daniel, so she chugs down the rest of her beverage and quickly places it on the table next to her, then shoves her iPad into her purse just as Daniel enters the door.  Rachel immediately pops up, put on her best “nice to meet you, I know you want to fuck me” smile, and skips across the room to meet him.  “Hi Daniel, I’m Rachel!”  She shoves out her hand and he shakes it awkwardly, gulping slightly as he realized that, by some bizarre miracle, Rachel looks much hotter in real life than in her J-Date profile.

Daniel does not look hotter in real life, at least not to Rachel.  He does look heavier, but after 2 weeks of this J-Date crap, Rachel is getting used to such disappointments (posting very old photos that don’t show your true physical appearance, minus 4 points).  She had low hopes for Daniel since first contact.  His first email to her (5 days ago) had been: “I saw your profile and I would really like to learn more about you. You seem like an incredibly intelligent, driven woman. It’s kind of surprising a girl like you is still available. Would you be interested in getting to know each other?”  Jesus Christ Daniel, part of the J-Date game is to try to not make it obvious that you use the same exact initial message with every woman you reach out to (a crime for which Rachel deducted at least 5 points).  Had he read her profile at all?  He didn’t mention anything about 24, Bon Iver, dogs, politics or tennis in his email.  Would they have anything in common?  He had probably just focused on the picture of her in the very tight black dress.  But…he was handsome enough (or had been, in the picture) and worked at a start-up…although after 2 weeks of officially “trying to date” in San Francisco, working at a start-up was starting to seem less and less sexy.

Rachel had intentionally picked the table in the café furthest away from the counter, so she could allow Daniel to see her gloriously sculpted ass in her tight blue yoga pants for a full dozen heavenly steps.  That would give him something to think about when he drank his mocha-latte-whatever-the-fuck he ordered (I’m sorry, what a pussy.  Men in this town…).  Rachel has Daniel buy her an orange and slowly peels it, explaining (for the umpteenth time) that she is actually Ashkenazi, despite her dark skin (California did do wonders for her tan), and that she was been born in Great Neck and lived in The City (and when Rachel says “The City”, she’s talking about The REAL City, which is not San Francisco) for 9 years after high school before moving west just a couple of months ago.

Of course, Rachel doesn’t mention why she came to San Francisco…I mean, yes it was to work at her law firm (a Jewish lawyer, whoda thunk?), but she didn’t mention the fact that just six months after starting work in her law firm in the City, she had finalized her divorce and had asked for a transfer to her firm’s SF office.  She had honestly thought that she could stay in New York, and had given it the old college try, but Eddie, her ex-husband, had eventually driven her to the other side of the country.

Her ex-husband.  At 29 years old, Rachel has an ex-husband.  She doesn’t mention that on her J-Date profile.  The problem is that J-Date had options for “Never Married” and “Divorced”, but there was no option for “One of Those Dumb Girls Who Actually Married Her High School Sweetheart (He Was Really Hot and Rich and We Were Totally ‘In Love’) At The Age of 23 And Then After 6 Years Realized She Had Made A Terrible Mistake (Well, Actually I Realized It After Only About 1 or 2 years But I’m No Quitter) So Now No Longer Married And The Marriage Doesn’t Count.”  Rachel had slapped her forehead all the way from NY to SF, hearing the laughter of her father on the plane and every day after.  Did this shit happen to other girls?  A horrible fairytale gone wrong: your first kiss becomes your first boyfriend (Eddie was actually her third kiss, but that’s besides the point), you stay together through high school, he goes to Columbia and you go to Cornell, and that’s not too far to keep up a long distance relationship, is it?  All of your new-found college friends encourage you to dump him and “explore,” but instead you transfer to Columbia the next year to be with him.  Besides, you did explore: you broke up for a full 3 months and during that time had sex with Chas (a goy!) and gave a blowjob to…fuck, what was his name?  It was in a movie theater.  The movie was Memento, and you regretted giving the blowjob because during those 11 minutes you completely lost track of what was going on in the film and were utterly lost for the entire last half of the movie.  You remember that much, but not the dude’s name (maybe Marcus?  Jordan?)  But moving on, after you graduate from college, you realize you’ve been with the same guy for 7 years, so that means you two must get married.  So you do, and realize that all of your friends at Cornell were right, and that you should have broken up with him long ago.  Not just because you need to “explore”.  There’s also the fact that he’s an asshole.

But Rachel had known that since nearly the beginning—Daddy had educated her.  Daddy had never liked Eddie.  When they got engaged, he repeated the same shpiel he’d been spitting out for 7 years.  “He’s an asshole Rachel, just like his dad.  I’d be thrilled if you were marrying a nice Jewish boy, but you’re not.  You’re marrying a Jewish asshole.  Jews can be assholes too, ya know.  Your fiancé is living proof.  Just like his dad.”  There were times when her father behaved better, and most of the time he masked his hatred, like on her wedding day, when he threw them an unbelievably extravagant wedding in the Hamptons, expensive even by Long Island standards.  Her father had given the hoakiest, cheesiest, bull-shittiest wedding speech in the G-d-awful history of wedding speeches that night, and the audience had lapped it up.  Eddie’s father (who was an asshole, daddy was correct about that) had been on the verge of tears.  Those times, when daddy pretended to like Eddie, were the worst, because even though Rachel knew he was bullshitting her, life was less fun when Daddy wasn’t horrified by her significant other.

Rachel laughs at Daniel’s joke.  At least she thinks it’s a joke.  Something about how he never met a bacon-wrapped hotdog he didn’t like.  It’s funny because we’re both Jewish, and pretend to be health fanatics, right?  But Daniel is not very good at pretending.  He doesn’t have a father like Daddy; he didn’t learn from the best.

Daddy, like all Jewish fathers, had a corny sense of humor that embarrassed his children since they were young enough to feel embarrassment.  Rachel had waited months before telling him about the divorce, mainly because she was afraid of the horrible jokes he would make (it had nothing to do with her pride, admitting that, for the past however many years, she had been wrong and he had been right).  At the moment she told him (and he must have already known, maybe from her mother (bitch can’t keep her mouth shut)), he busted out with a rendition of Billy Joel’s “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,” which worked all too well, “everyone said they were crazy, Rachel you know that you’re much too lazy and Eddie could never afford to live that kind of life…”

Rachel looks at her watch and informs Daniel it is time for her to depart.  Daniel, confused, has no idea why Rachel is suddenly leaving—were they not having fun?  But, as Rachel anticipated, he is too shy to ask why (which is too bad, because she had a great lie lined up about having to go try on a bridesmaid dress for her friend Maggie’s wedding in Jamaica next month).  She gives Daniel and big hug and a peck on the cheek, and his face lights up.  “Can I see you again?” he awkwardly stutters.  “Of course!” she chirps back, before quickly turning around and walking the dozen steps across the café to the door.  She can feel his eyes staring at her ass as she walks away and smiles, knowing that it’s one joy in life poor Daniel will never experience again.

*            *            *

Ana

Ana was nearly 30 minutes late, as Elisha expected she would be.  Elisha wasn’t even sure why she had bothered showing up to the café at 1 when she knew Ana wouldn’t be there until at least 1:20 or 1:30, but she had, and sat at the table by herself, sipping iced tea and checking her phone again and again in the hopes that she might stumble upon something interesting (this world really needs a new Angry Birds).  While Elisha looked for a new distraction, Ana tied up her toy poodle, Fritz, to the meter right outside the front door of the café and bounded in.  “Hi, I’m so sorry I’m late, but Fritz was being completely out of control and I had to calm him down.  Were you waiting long?”  They hug.

“No, not at all, I just got here.”  Of course you’d say something like that, thought Ana.  Elisha never criticized, never stood up for herself, always let everybody walk all over her.  Frumpy, lacking in self-esteem, book-smart-but-not-street-smart, gloomy, Ana thought of Elisha as her polar opposite.  Ana knew Elisha was jealous of the way she exuded confidence, but she couldn’t help it—Ana was confidence.  As she got a dish from the barista for water for Fritz, Ana could feel the gazes of several men in the café tearing through her faded orange summer dress and grasping at her pale flesh.  She leaned out the window to place the water dish in front of Fritz, then quickly turned around and flashed a glance at the particularly-creepy white guy with dread locks two tables down whom she was sure had been checking out her ass.  “Was that guy with the dreads checking out my ass just now?” she asked Elisha.  “Um, I don’t know.  I guess so?  Don’t guys always check out your ass?”  A valid point from Elisha.  Ten years ago it would have bothered Ana, when the two girls were drifting apart, but today that kind of comment gave Ana a feeling of warm nostalgia.

They grew up on the same street in Westportal, the only two Asian girls within a 10-block radius.  Ana Lee and Elisha Kim.  Their parents were friends and raised them as if they were sisters.  The young girls shared many first-time experiences:

First piano teacher: Mrs. Crane, who taught out of her house on 10^th and Taraval.  A real bitch.  Elisha exceeded from the start; Ana couldn’t handle Crane’s instruction.  Ana switched to another teacher after a year, but the lessons never sank in.  Elisha continued playing and performing through college.

First trip on an airplane: Their families went together to New York when the girls were 9.  Elisha loved the Met and Times Square.  Ana was more a fan of the MoMa and Central Park.

First time drunk: When the girls were 12, Ana’s parents went out of town one night and Elisha came over, and the two girls went into liquor cabinet and attacked Ana’s father’s cognac.  Elisha said they should drink something different, one of the bottles in the back so that Ana’s father wouldn’t notice, but Ana wanted the cognac because if it was her dad’s favorite, it was probably the best.  Ana always wanted the best.  Elisha wanted just a sip but Ana made her drink a whole cup.  Both of the girls threw up and Elisha wanted to run home and tell her parents what had happened but Ana stopped her.  When Ana’s parents came home the next day, her dad immediately saw the lower level in the cognac bottle and demanded to know what had happened.  Ana told him that she had drunk his cognac, and received a firm tongue-lashing and a few days’ worth of head-shaking disappointment.  She did not mention anything about Elisha.

First crush: While staying up late one Friday night sleepover, sitting on Elisha’s big bed with the fluffy pink bedspread, Elisha let slip that she had some kind of romantic interest in a boy (the first time in her life she had admitted anything of the sort), and Ana pestered her for nearly an hour until she admitted the object of her adoration: Greg Bradshaw, the muscle-bound blonde Aryan-looking boy who was the captain of the basketball and flag-football teams.  Of course Elisha had a crush on Greg.  All of the girls had crushes on Greg.  Including Ana, but she didn’t admit it.  She told Elisha that she should “hella go for it,” but then, noticing Elisha’s face turning red, mercifully changed the subject.

First hair-dying: Ana decided that she wanted to dye her hair red the night before eighth-grade graduation, and was set on Elisha joining her.  Elisha was adamantly opposed—did Ana know how much trouble they’d get into if their parents even knew that they had bought henna in the first place?  Sure enough, when Ana’s parents saw their daughter’s and her best friend’s beautiful black hair splotched with streaks of dirty brown, they were furious.  Elisha’s parents were completely mortified and blamed Ana’s mother and father for sub-par parenting.  Ana found the whole affair hilarious, and even stuck out her tongue and made a goofy face during the class graduation photo.  Elisha ran to the bathroom, thinking she was going to cry.  She fought back the tears, but realized that it was going to be more and more difficult to remain best friends with Ana.  Elisha never brought this up with Ana, but made a conscious effort to spend less time with her.

They both went to Lick-Wilmerding (Elisha would sometimes tell herself that she could have gotten into Lowell if she hadn’t been best friends with Ana, but never vocalized such sentiments), but did not see much of each other.  Elisha was focused on her studies, and Ana was focused on other firsts:

First Kiss: Greg Bradshaw, who also went to Lick.  When Ana told Elisha, she could see the hurt on Elisha’s face, and wanted Elisha to lash out at her, to call her a bitch, but she knew Elisha had probably never even said that word once in her life.

First Time Smoking Pot: At a party at Lana Hartley’s house, when her parents were gone in Europe for two weeks in the summer in between freshman and sophomore year.  Braden Pratt and a couple of the other “hippies” offered her a hit from a metal pipe on the back porch.  Ana took a long drag (Braden commented on her expert ability at “sucking” and his friends laughed), and handed the pipe to Elisha, who shook her head.  “What’s wrong?” Braden asked.  “Your friend can’t suck too?”  Elisha turned red and watched on as the others continued to indulge.  This would be the last time for many years that Elisha went to a party with Ana.  Later that night, Braden tried to get Ana to give her first blowjob in Lana’s parents’ bedroom (once again commenting on her sucking skills), but Ana declined.  She would give her first blow job six months later to Perry Blackman in the back row of a movie theater during a screening of Memento.  They had smoked pot in the parking lot before going in to the movie, and about thirty minutes into it she had lost the plot completely and was so bored and confused that she figured going down on Perry would be a better use of her time.

First fuck: The second weekend of junior year, very drunk during a house party at Rob Parker’s house (a huge Pac Heights mansion), with Rob Parker himself, in the master bedroom.  Ana was embarrassed about the whole affair and didn’t tell anybody.  She had wanted to tell Elisha all about it, but she knew it would probably just make her friend uncomfortable, and besides, they had barely spoken with each other for the past 6 months.  It didn’t matter—Rob told everybody and within 24 hours the entire school knew.  Ana saw Elisha by the vending machines the next Wednesday and ran to her, to talk to her for the first time in…seriously, how long had it been since the two had even exchanged pleasantries?  Elisha didn’t want to talk to her.  She said hello, pulled her Diet Pepsi out of the slot at the bottom of the vending machine and muttered that she had to go study before scurrying away.

First tattoo: Two weeks after turning 18, one week before high school graduation.  A pair of roses, one red, one pink, on her forearm, openly seen anytime she wore short sleeves.  Her parents did not freak out as much as she hoped they would.  Then again, they had already expressed deep disappointment that she was going to UC Santa Cruz and not Stanford (like Elisha) or not even Berkeley, for Christ’s sake.

Naturally, college was a parade of firsts for Ana.  First trip to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, first threesome, first real boyfriend, first heartbreak, first camping trip, first time taking mushrooms, nitrous, ecstasy (at her first rave), acid, first time snorting cocaine, first lesbian experience (the last two took place the same weekend, during Ana’s first trip to Vegas), first time bungee jumping, first time sleeping with a much older man, first time getting in a fight with her parents and not communicating with them for three months, first time going six months without any communication whatsoever with Elisha, first time snowboarding, first time getting a “C” on her report card, first time leaving the country (to study abroad in Italy), first time being an international heartbreaker, first time scuba diving, first time drinking Dom Perignon–at graduation.

Then came the New York years (there are always New York years), before moving back to SF.  For the most part, Ana was done with firsts, except for Fritz, her first pet, with whom she had a somewhat unhealthy obsession.  She loved the dog seemingly more than she had ever loved any living thing, and was constantly kissing and coddling him.  “You know why you don’t have a boyfriend?” her father had asked her at dim sum lunch a week before.  “It’s because of that dog.  No man wants to be with you because of that dog!”  “Aw, Daddy, but he’s so cute!  Besides, if a man can’t love Fritz, how can you expect him to love your grandchildren?”

Ana didn’t care about getting a boyfriend.  Boys came and went, and always fell in love with her.  At the age of 27, Fritz was the man in her life and that’s how she liked it.  She loved the way Fritz made her dates uncomfortable.  Two weeks ago she went to a guy’s apartment so he could cook her dinner, and brought Fritz (“oh, sorry, Fritz comes everywhere with me.  That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”).  The guy had freaked out when Fritz jumped on his couch, and Ana found this hilarious.  Later on, when they were making out on the same couch, Fritz jumped onto her lap just as he was sliding his hand up her thigh.  She had laughed and said, “aw, how cute.  How does it feel to be cock-blocked by a toy poodle, buddy?”

Elisha laughed when Ana told her that story.  Although Ana’s stories often made her uncomfortable, sometimes Elisha enjoyed living a wild life vicariously through her old friend.  She had been quite surprised when, after 4 years of virtually no communication, Ana had called her out of the blue to meet for brunch, shortly after moving back to SF after a few years in NY.  Now they met at least once a month, to catch up and talk about boys, work, life, the universe and everything.  Yes, Ana’s life was certainly more interesting (at least in terms of boys), but for whatever reason, Elisha’s childhood best friend was strangely loyal and kind to her and both of the girls (or really, now young women) treasured their monthly hang-outs.

“Wait, I have another one, from last night, this was so funny and so like me,” Ana began, still laughing from the dog story.  “I went to Noc Noc, and it was actually pretty happening—I mean, it’s usually dead, right?  And there was this gorgeous guy there.  Lish, you should’ve seen him.  Tall, tan, jet black hair, wearing a tight gray T-shirt…he looked like an Italian porn star, I swear.  Hell, you could see his huge cock bulging out of his jeans—some girls think that’s gross but I like it when a man advertises, right?  And I want to talk to him and I’m trying to think of something to say, when the DJ puts on ‘The Weight’—”

“Your song!” said Elisha.  “Yeah, my song.  So of course I go up to him and ask him his name—it was Tone, like…Tone Loc.  Really Lish, Italian porn star.  And I tell him, “My name’s Ana Lee.  Do me a favor, Tone, won’t you stay and keep Ana Lee company?”

“Classic Ana—I love it!  What happened?”

“What do you think happened?  He was super-hot, therefore he was gay!”  The girls burst out laughing.  “This fucking city!” Elisha said.  Ana smiled, wondering if this was the first time she had ever heard Elisha use the f-word.  “Hey Lish, look over there, at that guy on the laptop.  The cute Jewish-looking guy.  I just saw him staring over here.  I think he’s checking you out.”

“No Ana, he was probably looking at you.”

“No no, I’m not his type.  He was looking at you.  You should hella go for it.”  Elisha’s face turned red.

*            *            *

Oh my G-d, y’all have no idea how fun that was to write.  If you enjoyed reading this post a tenth as much as I enjoyed writing this, then I’ve done a darn good job.  Let us celebrate with a clip from the Muppets.

24. On Alcohol

Tags

alcohol, booze, college, hangovers, Israel, Japan, just like heaven, kikar shikur, plastered, vomit

By the time I arrived at the bar last Saturday night, I had already knocked back a couple of strong gin and tonics and a cold MGD.  This particular bar, the Knockout down in Bernal, proudly serves up something called the “Hamm Job,” which is a shot of cheap piss whiskey and a can of Hamm for the low price of $5.50.  It brought me back to those NY nights at my favorite bar, the Cherry Tavern, in which I used to down Tijuana Especials (a shot of cheap piss tequila and a can of Tecate for $5) all night without blinking an eye.

It was 90s night at the Knockout, and the DJ was spinning up an enjoyable mix of Pavement, Blur, Nirvana and Snoop.  Things were a little mellow, but then he busted out with “Just Like Heaven” and that immediately populated the dance floor.  While I was getting my nostalgic groove on, I felt a tugging on my arm and turned around to see a completely beautiful Indian woman.  She asked me, “straight or gay?”  I told her I was straight and she said, “that’s great, let’s me introduce you to my friend!  It’s her birthday!”  Her friend was not nearly as beautiful, but at that point I was drunk so I didn’t care.  I talked to the friend, I think.  Or maybe I just sputtered and drooled, so intoxicated that I was unable to formulate full sentences.  I don’t remember.  I don’t remember going home either.

I do remember vomiting shortly after my arrival home.  And I remember passing out, only to wake up an hour later to vomit some more.  Then I remember Sunday morning, working on a contract from home while my head was splitting open, trying to sip water but afraid to do so because I felt like it would make me throw up even more.  It was an awful feeling, but it was a familiar feeling, the same feeling I’ve experienced nearly every time I’ve drunk too much in the past 3 or 4 years.

It’s sad really.  I used to absolutely love alcohol.  And I’m not talking about the taste of fine wine or expensive scotch.  Now that I’ve turned all lawyer, I have been splurging a bit more on the pricey booze, and I must say that it’s kind of nice.  But really, I’ve never been one to drink alcohol for the taste.  If I wanted to drink something that tastes good, I’d chug down a bottle of Yotvata chocolate milk, or maybe a smoothie.  My love for alcohol comes from the feeling it gives (or used to give) me: the warmth that spreads over my body and became more intense with every sip, the tingling numbness, the reassuring dulling of the senses, the sudden appearance of beauty where it was not found before, the newfound appreciation for old friends and lovers, the unquenchable desire to sing and dance.

If you are willing to indulge me (not that you have a choice), I’d like to take a little stroll down memory lane to relive some highlights of my nearly lifelong romance with the amber (and clear, and red, and sometimes mutli-colored) nectar.  If you know me personally, then chances are that you’ll remember some of these moments yourself.  If you don’t know me personally, something tells me that my relationship with booze was not unique, and so hopefully reading this will give you a whimsical smile and maybe even elicit a chortle.  That’s really my favorite thing in the world: eliciting chortles.

*            *            *

I got drunk for the first time when I was twelve.  My sister was staying at a friend’s house and my parents were out at a movie, so I was home alone.  A couple of the “bad kids” in the 7^th grade had already experienced getting drunk, and I wanted so desperately to be able to join in the conversations discussing the excitement of not being able to see straight, so minutes after the front door closed behind my parents I ran downstairs to the kitchen and opened up the liquor cabinet.  I was so nervous about getting caught (what if my parents suddenly decided to cancel their movie plans?) that I grabbed the first bottle I saw without perusing my options, which was dad’s cognac.  I filled up one of our plastic tumblers and promptly chugged as much as I could.

I was vomiting within minutes, and then I experienced a couple of hours of nightmarish nausea before I was overtaken by merciful sleep.  All in all, it was not a success.  I was so embarrassed with my failed act of rebellion that I didn’t even bother making up a good lie to tell my schoolmates on Monday.  I eventually told my sister, who laughed and explained to me that next time I need to (a) not go for dad’s most expensive booze, but to rather steal from the large plastic bottle labeled “Vodka of the Gods,” and (b) mix it with something, preferably orange juice.  This is one of many life lessons learned from my older sister—I could probably write an entire post of them.  In fact, I’m adding that to my list of future posts (yes, I keep a list).

Middle school ended and high school began.  I drank a fair amount in high school, no more than your average suburban high school kid, but more than most of my classmates had when I eventually got to Columbia (sheltered rich kids and the whatnot).  A lot of kids went to keg parties, but I wasn’t really friends with the kids who threw those gatherings (the proverbial “in-crowd” a.k.a. “the Socks”).  I used to hang out a lot at Old West Pool Hall, which was one of the few public places in Marin County where high school kids were allowed to smoke cigarettes.  The place was always packed with kids smoking, and occasionally shooting pool.  After the “no smoking in establishments” law was passed in California my senior year of high school, Old West suddenly had no customers and the place was closed within 4 months.  But before that, we used to go there nearly every weekend night, and there was an older guy named Dan who worked there (or maybe he just hung out there, I can’t recall).  After work, Dan would drive with us to Mr. Liquor a few blocks away and buy us whatever alcohol we wanted, in return for a small tip.  I used to like to drink rum—I’d hold a pint bottle in one hand and a bottle of Stewart’s Oranges and Cream in the other.  I don’t recall the experimentation process, but somehow I discovered that Stewart’s Oranges and Cream was the perfect drink for eliminating the harsh aftertaste of cheap rum.  I’d switch back and forth—a swing of rum followed by a swig of Stewart’s, repeat until wasted.  Either that, or we’d have forties of Mickey’s.

The purpose of drinking was to get drunk, period.  I later learned that there was a term for what we did, called “binge drinking.”  To me this was ridiculous; we weren’t “binge drinking,” we were “drinking.”  Why the hell would you drink disgusting booze if you weren’t trying to get completely shitfaced?  I’ve heard that in European countries, parents encourage their children to drink wine with dinner in order to give them an appreciation for alcohol in a form other than binge drinking, and that these same kids don’t spend their high school and college years leaning over the toilet and making bad decisions.  Go figure.

When I was 18 I spent a year in Israel, on a program with a bunch of other American 18 year-olds.  Conveniently, the drinking age in Israel happens to be 18, so you’d better believe that we enjoyed ourselves.  Many of my fellow participants on the program had never been drunk before, and you can imagine the vomit, headaches, and wild making out that happened during those first few months.  Not that an experienced drinker like myself was any better at imbibing.  We drank “Gold Vodka”, which was 7 shekles (under 2 bucks) for a fifth, or if we wanted to splurge, Keglovitch, which was I think 12 shekles.  We drank Goldstar beer only.  If you ever meet somebody who goes to Israel and orders a Beer Maccabi, I want you to punch him in the face, do you understand?  And we drank 95.  That’s 95% alcohol, 190 proof.  We’d mix it with anything available—95 and OJ, 95 and coke, or mix it with beer for a “strong beer.”

How I miss those drunken Israel nights!  I spent my first 4 months on a kibbutz, and we used to get wasted and then get naked and play in the huge piles of cotton that would eventually go into the cattle feed.  We held a century club (100 shots of beer in 100 minutes…power hour is for sissies) around the ping pong table, eating sunflower seeds and leaving the table only to piss or vomit (sorry there is so much vomit involved in this post, but it was, and apparently remains, a pretty important part of my relationship with booze).  For Halloween, we had a “trick or drink” party, where everybody made a different mixed drink, and you’d from room to room and try a bit of everything.  People would get loud and obnoxious.  Some would throw bottles.  Some would make out.  It was bonding, dammit.

I’ll never forget the first time I blacked out.  I mean, obviously I forget what actually happened (I was blacked out for chrissake), but I sure as hell remember the hangover.  We were living in Jerusalem at the time, and we used to like to pick up cheap booze from what we referred to as “Ye Olde Liquor Store” before heading to “Ye Olde Drinking Square” (or in Hebrew, “Kikar Shikur”).  I was supposed to split a fifth of vodka with a buddy of mine, but he kind of bailed on me so I ended up drinking most of it myself.  I woke up the next morning at my grandmother’s apartment in Rehavia.  A friend of mine had walked me there, and had stayed all night by my side, afraid that I was going to die.  We went to breakfast and she said that I had spent most of the night in a catatonic state, talking about how much I missed my ex-girlfriend (we dated for a month before she dumped me, and then I was obsessed with her for the next 6 months or so.  Anybody who was friends with me at the time who is reading this now might be laughing, but they weren’t so happy with me about it then.  And I know what you’re thinking now, so don’t say it.  Asshole).  This was the first time I felt “hangover shame,” a weird sense that I completely fucked up everything the night before without actually having any recollection of what had transpired.  I would get hangover shame quite often for the next few years, until I got to Japan, where the rule is that “whatever happens when you’re drunk doesn’t count,” so there’s no need to feel bad the next day.

But I’ll get to that soon enough.  Before Japan there was college, where I, like 80-90% of Americans, became what would most likely be considered to be a full-fledged alcoholic.  I probably drank 3-7 nights a week, and would always binge drink.  Being a cheap student, I was not yet ready to enjoy good-tasting drinks.  Poland Spring sold vodka for $11.99 a handle, and Jim Beam was, well, Jim Beam.  It was harder to get Mickey’s on the east coast, but we still drank plenty of Colt 45 and Old E.  And Bud.  College was the only time in my life I think I’ve ever drunk a lot of Bud.  We drank Bud Ice, because it had the highest alcohol content and thus gave you the most bang for your buck.

I lived in a 14-person suite my freshman year, and we instituted a “drinking buddy” system where every week each resident would have to drink with somebody else.  We put a lot of work into planning this out—I believe there was even a spreadsheet.  The idea was that by getting drunk with somebody, you could really connect with him or her, and I must say the system worked.  I truly love my college friends, and I feel like this is, to a large extent, due to all of those nights getting wasted together.  In fact, I’m not sure how people who don’t drink are capable of making friends.

Or making out, for that matter.  Think about it—when was the last time you had a first kiss with somebody where alcohol wasn’t involved.  Nowadays it’s usually a glass or two (or three) of wine, but back in college—well you remember.  You’d go to the bars (the same bars you went to every night) and get completely wasted on cheap margaritas, and then if you were lucky, end up making out with somebody in the bar for all to see, and if you were really lucky, you’d end up taking her back to your bedroom.  Then, in the morning, either one or both of you would be embarrassed or disappointed in yourself.  If neither party was disappointed, you’d start dating, and the romance would last for about three weeks.  Every once in a blue moon, a relationship would ensue.  We all remember that night that [NAME REDACTED] made out with that incredibly drunk and confused girl in SoHa, and was embarrassed about it but kept secretly dating her for 7 years until they finally got married.  Now that, my friends, is romance.

I want to go back to the alcohol/friendship relationship point I brought up two paragraphs ago.  One thing college really instilled in me is the importance of alcohol in creating tight bonds.  I often say that my best friends in the world are those people “with whom I have been to hell and back,” and that’s sort of a colorful way of saying “with whom I have gotten very, very drunk on many, many occasions.”  I have difficulty trusting people who don’t drink, or won’t drink with me.  Getting rip-roaring drunk is an important way that we expose ourselves.  I want to be comfortable making myself vulnerable to my closest friends in that way, and I want them to be comfortable doing the same for me.  I’ll fully admit that I’m not the best drunk in the world, and I know that some of my most inspired benders have left many of my friends ranging from irritated to genuinely pissed off.  And of course, the same is true of my reactions to their most extreme booze-fueled evenings.  But really, who cares?  It’s important for my friends and I to see one another at our most base and most vile, when the truth comes out, when we’ve lost all control.  There has been judgment, there have been mornings where apologies were absolutely required, and some wounds have taken longer to heal than others, but in the end, these experiences were integral parts of forging my closest interpersonal bonds.

My copious drinking in college prepared me for the next phase of my life: Japan.  Japanese people love performing all activities like there’s no tomorrow, and it begins and ends with binge drinking.  There is no sipping fine wine, there is only chugging Asahi and “tea drink” by the liter in 2-3 hour nomihodais (arrangements where you pay a set amount for unlimited drinks—very easy to take advantage of as a foreigner with a much higher alcohol tolerance than the average Japanese person).  The “drinking to form friendships” concept is also taken to the extreme, as many Japanese people are literally incapable of opening up to others, especially foreigners, until they are three (or more) sheets to the wind.

In Japan I drank like I was still in college.  We had all sorts of social events based around drinking, like “conbini golf,” where we all dressed up in tacky golf clothing and walked from conbini to conbini (convenience stores), chugging beer and yelling “fore!”.  I once attended a “konpa” (group date), where I introduced the body shot to rural Japan.   There was also our annual Halloween party, a 5-hour nomihodai that never ended very well.  I had a Japanese girlfriend who loved drinking, and our favorite activity was to split a bottle of sake and just get tanked together.  I will admit that drunk sex can often be sloppy and unpleasant, but I do think that sometimes it’s fun to just get plastered with somebody you’re dating and see what happens.

By my third year in Japan, my tolerance to alcohol had reached a truly frightening level.  I remember the day of the Aussie Rules Football final, Sydney Swans (woo-hoo!) vs. West Coast Eagles.  I went with an Aussie friend of mine to an Aussie bar in Shinujuku to watch the game, which started around noon.  We started drinking at noon on Saturday, and finished up around 6 AM on Sunday, essentially taking no breaks.  I took the train back to my little town in Kanagawa, had a quick nap, then planned my lessons for the next day with no trouble at all.  Okay, maybe the lesson planning was a wee bit difficult, but the point is that I could drink like that without dying.

Then came law school.  I cut down on my drinking, as I decided I did not want to be one of those LA people who drinks and drives all the time.  Also, upon turning 26 years old, my hangovers became truly crippling.  The first horrific “adult” hangover I had came from our post first-semester party.  Coming from the responsibility-free life of being a foreign English teacher in Japan, my first semester of 1L year was a very painful, horrendous, depressing and all-around shitty jolt back into reality.  They say that your 1L grades are the most important (and that’s true), so that initial final exam period was the first time I had truly felt stress since…hell, I don’t know.  After finals were done, our school took over Boulevard, a really cheesy, shi-shi, obnoxious club in Hollywood, and we celebrated by punishing our livers like they were convicted heroin smugglers in Turkey.  A sober classmate tried to drive me home, but when we got about a mile away I needed her pull to over so I could fall out of the car and vomit.  Two other classmates walked me home (G-d bless them), and upon arrival back to my apartment I promptly threw up again, and continued to vomit pretty steadily until about 4 PM the next day.

And it’s been all downhill from there.  I don’t think I’ve experienced anything quite so bad since the Boulevard night, but I’ve had many a Sunday lost to headaches and nausea, even when I don’t drink that much.  With the exception of my last stint in Japan, when I actually gained my tolerance back (and had many agonizing hangovers along the way), I’ve now essentially quit binge drinking.  I’m drinking more wine, and I’ve graduated from the boxes to bottles with prices in the double digits.  I keep a bottle of nice scotch in my desk at work and like to take a nip at the end of the week to celebrate (or at the end of a long day midweek, if necessary).

I miss binge drinking.  I still get the desire to quite often, what with work sucking and all.  Now that I’m single, I’m going out and about more, and binge drinking is what I’m used to doing when I’m out and about.  But, as the saying goes, with getting older comes old age.  I’m not 24 anymore and shouldn’t be abusing myself as if I was.  Quitting binge drinking is probably not a horrible thing—like everybody else, I’ve had a few drunk nights I wish I could erase, and for which I still feel the need to apologize (two that immediately come to mind are the Giants/Mets game senior year at Columbia and my final night in New Orleans).  As I think I mentioned before, I’m not the best drunk.

Still, alcohol will always have a very special and warm place in my heart.  The wild karaoke, the sloppy wet kisses, the “I love you man,” the l’chaims in multiple languages, the stumbles home, the pissing in the bushes, the wrestling on the pavement, the bedroom eyes in all rooms, the falling down and laughing, the slam-dancing, the liquid courage, the getting naked, the innocent mistakes and the not-so-innocent mistakes, the late night confessions, conversations and revelations, the agony and the ecstasy, and the general revelry…these experiences made us who we are.  I’ll drink to that.

 

23. On Stalking

Tags

carrier pigeon, creepy, Debbie Harry, exes, Radiohead, stalking

On Thursday of last week, I was hanging out with Laura and Mark, two friends I’ve only started hanging with relatively recently, so we don’t yet know everything about each other and are still in that “honeymoonish”, getting-to-know-you phase.  Before we were halfway done with our first drink, we had ascertained that all three of us (a) have exes on the east coast, (b) broke up with said exes at least 6 but no more than 12 months ago, and (c) are still a little more hung up than we should be.  We all shared how we are coping with our overly-stale break-ups…in the cyberworld.  I myself am trying to keep things simple by just disappearing my ex from my life (yes, I just used “disappearing” as an active transitive verb.  I’m allowed to do that).  First I blocked her on gchat.  It actually took me a while to get there…we tried gchatting for a while, but then it got awkward when the conversations would end like this:

Ex (at 10 PM): I have to go now.  I’m meeting my friend.
Me: Oh, which friend?
Ex: Just someone.  Anyway, have a good night.
Me: I love you.
Ex: night.

Then, after seeing one too many pictures (that is, one picture) of her with “just someone,” I de-friended her from Facebook.  But that wasn’t enough, as I could still see her picture on other people’s pages.  So I de-friended all of her friends whom I had friended during the course of our relationship (we all know how that works), and I had all of my friends whom she had friended de-friend her.  Wow.  I love it how you are reading that last sentence and you understand every word I’ve written, but if I showed my parents they would have absolutely no idea what the hell I was talking about.

Anyhow, de-friending wasn’t enough, because every time I’d type the first letter of her name into the Facebook search bar (it’s a pretty common first letter of a first name, shared by many of my friends), her name would come up.  And of course I’d have to click on it, and of course she keeps her Facebook page “semi-public” because she’s trying to work in social media, so I’d see pictures of her looking pretty, occasionally with “just someone.”  Then I discovered that you can actually block people on Facebook.  Not too long after that, I discovered that when you unblock somebody on Facebook, you have to wait 48 hours before you’re allowed to block her again.

In the end, I’m taking the “out of sight, out of mind” approach.  The complete radio silence is working great—because I know that she’ll email me soon.  Of course she will.

My coworker Laura takes a similar approach, but is slightly more prone to giving in to temptation.  Every now and then she’ll unblock him from gchat, “just to check his status,” then block him again three seconds later before he notices.  She’s more connected than me, so she’s had to block him from Twitter and Foursquare as well (or something like that…I’m not sure if you can actually block somebody from those social media outlets).  If you go to her Pinterest page, you’ll see all sorts of sad, depressing pictures, like a picture of Le Petit Prince where he’s saying “I miss you” in French (or something like that…I don’t actually understand French).  She swears the pictures aren’t about her ex.

Mark is a more interesting case, as he was on the receiving end of the Facebook block.  However, that didn’t stop him.  His ex’s mother is an avid Facebook user, and although Mark is not friends with said mother, he noted with a smile that his ex’s mother “does not know how to set the privacy settings on her Facebook page,” and so Mark has access to all sorts of pictures and humorous anecdotes about his ex…and his ex’s new boyfriend.  Mark, it seems, is also a glutton for punishment.

I wouldn’t say that we’re actively stalking our exes.  I think it’s fair to say (and by “fair” I mean “a stretch”) that the internet, what with its vast array of ways of keeping tabs on people, is forcing us to pay attention the lives of those with whom we once shared a kind of special love.  We really have no choice.  But enough about that. I’m focusing too much on the post break-up aspect of romantic internet stalking, when there’s so much more fun to be had with the wonders of modern technology.  The internet and social media sites have completely transformed all aspects of courtship, giving average Joes like me seemingly unlimited new ways to be creepy.  Then again, to quote the girls of Social Proof, “hey, it’s not creepy if it works.”

For example, a female friend of mine currently has as her gchat status, “when did it become acceptable to ask a girl to FB her rather than ask for her number?!”  I’m trying to imagine how this played out.  They met at a bar, had some playful banter, he bought her a drink, she started twirling her hair and giggling, touching his hand, he was kind of shy but started to notice that she was actually interested in him, she gave him that “ask me for my number and I’ll go out with you” look (note: from what I understand, there’s a popular song out called “Call Me Maybe.”  Would it apply here?  I wouldn’t know—several friends have advised me to avoid listening to this song at all costs), and then… “so, can I add you on Facebook?”

It did not work.  Honestly, what the heck was that dude thinking?  There’s so much that can go wrong—what if you add her on Facebook, then you go out on a date and things don’t quite click?  Now you gotta go and delete her—and that’s never fun.  Call me conservative, but I don’t believe in adding a girl on Facebook until at least the third date.

Of course, you don’t have to wait to meet somebody before you begin cyberstalking her or him.  In fact, it’s a great way to get to know somebody, in a creepy way (again, only if it doesn’t work).  A few days ago, my aunt sent me an email with the name of a pretty girl with whom she wants to set me up.  In order to get the ball rolling, my aunt actually wrote, “look her up on google or something – there’ll be some pictures. and then tell me if i should connect you guys.”  What could I do?  Of course I looked her up on Google (or “googled” her, as some might say), and naturally she was all over the internet.  Aside from reading her virtual resume on LinkedIn and not seeing her photos on Facebook (damn privacy settings!), I found the website of the organization for which she works (a very cool SF-based non-profit), an interview with her from some “young entrepreneur” conference, and of course, her food blog.  All eligible bachelorettes in San Francisco have food blogs.

We need to take a step back here: in order facilitate my seeing if there was any interest, my aunt actively encouraged me to stalk this girl.  Imagine if this were ten years ago—how would it have worked?  “Here J, there’s a girl I want to set you up with named ________.  Her place of work is here.  There’s a tree across the street from her office that you can hide behind.  Take this pair of binoculars and wait for the short, cute girl with frizzy light brown hair to go on her lunch break.  Then call me (from your land line) to let me know if you’re interested, and I’ll send her a singing telegram with your snail mail address so she can contact you via carrier pigeon.”

I’m kind of nostalgic for the days of analog stalking.  I kind of had an old-school stalker in high school.  She memorized my class schedule and would always just happen to be waiting outside of each of my classes.  Whenever I’d go out to lunch she’d magically appear at my eatery of choice (either Taco Bell or Eddie’s), and she befriended all of my friends, who encouraged me to date her.  I probably should have, but in high school I was even more shy and awkward with the fairer sex than I am now (if you can imagine that…well, if you went to high school with me, you could.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, thank G-d for Jewish camp or I’d still be a virgin).  Needless to say, she was quite the little stalkerette.  I don’t really remember it much now; looking back, I think that I was a bit scared (although this may have just been my fear of girls in general), but I think I definitely liked the attention.  Anyhow, I just returned the favor with a little internet stalking of my own.  She’s now living on the east coast, working for an investment banking firm.  Good for her(?).

Of course, that’s all in the past.  Focusing on the present, what’s scary to me is how easily we allow ourselves to be stalked.  I mean, we do it to ourselves, don’t we?

Man I love that video.

But I digress.  I still can’t get over how stupid we are when it comes to publishing personal information on the internet. I had dinner the other night with some folks who work at the ACLU, who explained to me that the organization is fighting to prevent minors from being tried in criminal courts for sending naked photos of themselves to each other via their phones and the internet.  Without getting into that particular case, let’s slow down for a second and address what I see as a much bigger issue: Minors are sending each other naked pictures of themselves.  Now quickly, let me get a show of hands: how many of you are still with your significant other from when you a minor?  Okay, not many.  In fact, I can only think of one couple with whom I am friends who were high school sweethearts.  Next question: how many of you were somewhat immature when you were a minor?  Ah, that’s more like it.  Now, imagine if you were 16, and Sally, the love of your life, with whom you were going to be with forever and ever, left you for Tommy, captain of the lacrosse team and all-around douchebag.  Oh, and did I mention that you have a naked picture of Sally on your phone?

But let’s not even get into the nudity thing.  When we let our lovers take pictures of us in our birthday suits, we usually assume that they won’t share those pictures with the world, because despite everything, we believe that people are really good at heart (was that allusion in really poor taste?  If you didn’t catch it, I’d better not tell you who said it (not that you don’t know how to use Google.  I know, I know, you’re not stupid.))   What’s more amazing to me is how eager and excited we are to let the world know of our whereabouts at all times.  Through Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and dozens of apps utilizing Google’s kick-ass (and terrifying) blend of geolocation and satellite technology, many of us are, every day, every hour, hell, every minute, letting the whole world know exactly where we are.  Do we not remember in the 90s, when hardcore Republican congressmen were petitioning to have ex-convicts implanted with microchips so that us good, law-abiding, G-d-fearing folks could know their whereabouts at all times?  As I recall, the ACLU and all other people with some modicum of sanity identified this as horrifyingly Orwellian.  Well now we’re essentially implanting ourselves with microchips and letting any nutjob with a computer, a bad haircut, and a hard-on follow us to the gym to watch us shower and then to the laundrymat to steal the lint from the dryer after our clothes are done and do lord-knows-what with it.

There’s this thing people do on the internet now where you make an animated .gif of a scene from a movie and show the words with subtitles and play it over and over again, to show a reaction to something.  If I knew how to do that, I’d make one of Walter from The Big Lebowski shouting “Has the whole world gone crazy?!”  But I don’t know how to do that, so instead I’ll just return to my normal evening routine of using my computing box to stalk women from my past, present and hopefully future.  And I leave you with this, the best video ever on the subject of stalking:

Yeah, I know I promised many Muppet clips way back in my first post.  Those of you who were patient enough have been, and will continue to be, handsomely rewarded.