Hm. Sunday, alone as usual (Ponge is at soccer). Cleaned the house, did laundry and listened to hours of NPR as usual. I spent SO much money this weekend. I'm still getting used to my limited income. It's not major major, it won't affect any bill payments or any such thing. But it was still idiotic.
Friday Tom and I went to eat at Ch!no Latin0, this uptown frou-frou young urbanite hellhole. With really fucking amazing blackberry mohito martinis. Delicious and highly alcoholic and almost justifiably $10. I thought we had made it in time for their $2 "appetizer" specials. Basically you can either spend a fuckton of money at this place or it can be really cheap, depending on when you go there and what you order. We were aiming for cheap, but once we got there we were not presented with the two-dollar menu and ordered other things as well. Things which, apart from the amazing drinks, were crappy and expensive. Part of one of the things we ordered was jumbo shrimp wrapped in ham and lightly battered. It tasted exactly like a corn dog. I told Tom this and our humorless waiter heard me say it and commented, except just a couple of steps above that!
Um, no. It tasted like it, and I could give a fuck that it was supposed to be frou-frou, just because something is expensive doesn't mean it is quality. Go away. Then we were joking about drinking and driving and the waiter started to tell us we could go for a walk around the lakes for awhile. I was like, no, I'm going to sit on his (Tom's) lap and steer while he works the pedals. That way we'll have less things to concentrate on with our diminished capacities. I don't think the waiter recognized that I was joking. Oh, and the horrid people watching. Metrosexuals and female metrosexuals as far as the eye could see. Gaudy things that were not gaudy in a good, ironic way; but meant to be sexy and fashionable. Horrid flimsy layers of teal and sequined gold belts on automoton looking whitefolk.
Tom and I then got our bikes & left the car to go to a benefit show for Katrina refugees. And fuck calling them anything but - what, people from the United States are too good to be called refugees? That only happens to people in lesser developed countries? Wake up mutherfuckers.
The first band was god-awful but the next, The B1ack Th0rns, was bloody amazing. I don't know how to qualify the music, but it was viola and banjo and autoharp and upright bass and bass guitar and drums and sandpaper. Yes, sandpaper. And male - female duet type East European-ish gypsy-ish swaying dramatic tones. It was good. Definitely my new favorite local band, the Kn0twe11s are now number two.
Then Tom and Gabe and Some Girl Whose Name I Forget went to the Refuge for the last half an hour. It was quite culturally different - go from crusty punk hipster crowd smelling of armpit and patchouli and booze to a mix of downtown college kids and urbanites smelling of expensive and imitation perfumes and hair gel and booze.
Some Girl left about 5 minutes into it, as some guy had grabbed her ass on the way to the bathroom. I can understand I suppose, but I think I would have just hit the fucker and moved on. The three of us danced to hiphop and old skool house until close. We then retreated to Tom's house to watch Simpsons and a really terrible movie called Prozac Nation. I can only hope the book was better. It has Christina Ricci, who I used to love but now she is on the Hollywood diet and looks like a scarecrow with an enormous head. She needs to gain about 20 pounds and then she'll be cute again.
Saturday morning I woke up to hear Tom and Ponge chatting away at like 12:30pm. I had gone to bed about 5 hours previous. I wasn't wasted, but definitely had been drunk and felt tired. I got up anyway. Tom had come over to get his car and see if we wanted to go to breakfast. Ponge didn't but I did (Ponge had already eaten). So Tom and I went to the Seward Cafe. It's one of my favorite hangover breakfast places. We ran into friends of Tom's there - Molly and Joansie. Eventually we all decided to drive to Mankato, MN and visit Tom's parents. I was a little scared because they go to church every Sunday. Other people's parents freak me out. I instantly feel like I'm fourteen and meet with their disapproval.
Anyway, we stopped at some apple place on the way there and I bought some BLACk popcorn. I have no clue how it tastes, but I had to buy it. I didn't pay much attention to the drive, because I was reading this book I borrowed from Molly called Rent Girl, a book illustrated by Laurenn McCubbin about Michelle's life as a sex worker. Obviously, the subject is close to my...heart? Interest, I guess would be more appropriate. Reading stuff like that fills me with lust for my fantasy alternate life. Sigh...
Anyway, Tom's parents were nice, very proper and fed us well. Mankato was not. We went to some college Dude bar called The Haze. Molly and I watched in horror and anger as some asshole shoved his tongue down this girl sitting with the group next to us. The girl was trying to get away from him, backing away and standing up and finally after like 20 seconds that seemed much longer he stopped and she half-assed punched his leg as he sat back down. Victim Girl got up to sit next to her female friend as to put the table between herself and Date Rapist Boy. Her female friend said, oh, just drink some more, it'll be fine. Victim Girl herself started explaining to some other male friend of theirs, just ignore him, he's just drunk.
I can say I'm glad I wasn't drunk, because I had a really hard time not going up to this guy and confronting him on the issue. What if they'd been alone? He had the balls to get that aggressive in public in front of a bunch of people, I highly doubt he would have thought much of fucking her against her will had they been alone in his dorm room or wherever the fuck.
No one in the group seemed to thing it was strange or wrong, and the girl herself didn't have any sort of indignant spirit. She was bothered by it, it was definitly NOT a welcome advance and even when she was trying to push him away he didn't respond to her obvious displeasure in the kiss.
Jesus christ. We finished our drinks and left, revolted and feeling dirty. And all around us were really, really drunk people. There were many a bar on the way to the car. It was only about 11pm, imagine what they're like by bar close...
Then we drove back, about a one and a half hour drive. About 3 blocks from my house some jackass hit Tom's car. Tom was in the left hand lane going through an intersection when someone in the middle lane decided it was a good idea to turn left, right into Tom's car. Then the guy tried to get Tom not to call the police, just take his phone number. Yeah, um, no. He said he didn't have any insurance - the damage to Tom's car was superficial upon initial inspection, but probably still at least $400 in body work.
Tom needed the police report for his insurance. In any case, a squad car stopped and took the info just as I was calling the police so Bad Driver wouldn't have had a choice even if Tom felt like getting fucked over by this guy.
Turns out the guy did have valid and current insurance, what he didn't have was a license to drive. He also had a warrant out for his arrest for, guess what, driving related incidences. If you don't have your license, you probably shouldn't drive like a fucking idiot. So Bad Driver gets arrested. And all these people sitting at an outdoor bar start screaming shit like, Hey, Where's all the black people!? WuTang!! Look at how the Black Guy is getting arrested!
Bad Driver was black. Us four and the two cops in the squad were white. I understand why they might think it was a race issue, but I was really goddamn irritated about it. Keep your drunk far away perceptions of the situation to yourselves. I resisted the strong urge to walk over the the hollerers and say, dude he has a warrant out for his arrest. Maybe he shouldn't cause stupid accidents that can be avoided by not driving like a jackass if he's really concerned about going to jail.
Ug. Anyway. I spent like $200 this weekend, mostly at stupid Chino Latino. Now I'm back to being mostly broke until I get paid again in two weeks. Maybe I really will get out to the Strip Club and work a weekend. I put some money into savings from my check, and I'd rather not take it back out. I think probably if I don't spend like an idiot (like I did this weekend) I should be able to pay all my bills, have a little fun, and continue to put savings away. Ever so slowly.