Acquiring a Reputation and other Pastimes.

A Friday to Monday Journal.

So, here I go again.

Wait. That did not occur to me, as I downed another shot of whatever was going around. After 3 Vodka largesses and random helpings of a drink that I know as only the half full glass. Rancid! I agree.

Had it occurred to me, would I have changed anything? Perhaps. But misdemeanors don’t lead to misadventures as easily, if that were the choice. And at 30-something, a girl needs misadventures like the sea needs it’s salt.  But that’s just my excuse.

Call it opportunity, call it a habit, call it the first time. I was played and I allowed it. I’m not complaining, ‘cos playtime is always fun. Even if it ends up in buckets of that awfully putrid stuff that simply has to get out and won’t let up until it does. Even if it then involves the bloomin’ head ache that won’t let up. Even if, after all that, the ridicule won’t let up.

But as ol' Yolanda always said, drunken cows produce the best beef. And when the cows come home, they tell of good herdsmanship too.  

And in between minutes of pellucid chagrin and hours of reason tried and tested the very next day, a very basic, juvenile, and almost artless unless do-you-know-any-better-kind-of a sobering reality, happens. 

At the pub last Friday night, the DJ acknowledged a request and then didn't follow through. Now DJs have never been on my list of favourite people. Not ever. Don't they seem to think no end of themselves? And it is a sort of subjugation they're after, not any fun over libation. Why else would a DJ not play your request, you being the patron and instead keep playing what he wants to? What makes them so cocky?

So, off I went, when that happened, to un-clutter myself from the mess and the agony of being displeased under the influence. 

And I thought ‘he’ would understand. Mistake.

‘He’, as it turned out, was an idiot. Here I was, in the middle of a crowd of people dancing to the beat, everyone apparently enjoying themselves and feeling quite out of sorts. Then I saw someone whom I thought may have been feeling like I was. So I decided we ought to start a band or something. So far, great idea.

But the jolly good fellow didn't really listen to me, with the loud music not helping and proceeded to misread my heading off with him for a tête-à-tête for something else.

(Yes, I did head off with him; I kind of dragged him out of his circle of friends and demanded a sudden friend for someone who needed to be understood) & (Ok, so that was a little unplanned- so what??)

He interrupted me even as I was introducing myself, and said he was married.

So I turned around and said to him, “ So am I.” 

So am I? So this now is something I discovered: In a conversation at the bar, just to keep up with it, one can say, one does say, one is completely within one’s umbrella of sanity to create a rapport thusly: A: I’m a fan of Ed Norton. B: So am I!!!

One does not go about it like this : A: I’m married. B: So am I!!! But what else could I have said? 

The next thing I know, I’m standing in front of a group of people who have the look of gasping for air on their faces and total and utter bewilderment- Look @ her, did she just do that, no compunction whatsoever??!!!  Uh- uh.

At this point, the alter ego wisely observes: So what, you have a life! And you’re living it. Or was it following through from what happened about a half hour ago? Or worse, it wasn't the alter ego at all, but the "wild shadow side of me."

Since I was being so misunderstood, very wisely, I must have thought I should give that a crack again. Trust a conversationally vexed, misinterpreted, misunderstood and completely facile-by-now shadow to come up with Plan B.

Then, the next discovery happened: the discovery of exactly how ditzy I can allow myself to get.  I discovered that women, even at a full and clocking thirty, can still not have a decent chat; a random conversation anywhere with a guy and lord forbid if it happens to be in a bar. 

The overwhelming dud-ness of the connotation of such a chat in our socially vexed pub culture is something I never foresee; no matter how times I have had the benefit of that hindsight. 

Oh but on the other hand, a guy can chat up a girl, and she may even hold that conversation. And while I don't grudge that, since that’s what supposed to happen ideally, I do become the exception to the rule when I initiate. But regardless of who makes the first move,  can people chat without a footnote to accompany that says: MOJO RISIN' in Bold Capitals? 

So here I was, out for just a bit of fun and fast becoming messy. It was after this rather mechanical and tedious turn around that I gave up trying to control the things I should not have even needed to.

People can chat, people can dance, people can sing, people can hug, people can kiss, people can ride, people can walk together without any of it meaning whatever the bold lettering of a paranoid culture’s histrionics can ever espouse. Unless it does. Will that ever be clear enough?

And believe you me, it is a discovery for me that Gumption + Good Intentions does not always = A splendid time.  Unless it does, because on the other side of my asinine misadventures, I still had a pal willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. So I’d just lost my marbles temporarily and was on the road back to Recovery. That’s something, and a bit.

And then came the dizzy bump on my head, from banging into the lift door. Or was that a tree? And with a little help from my friends, the ride back home, the bed and the bucket.