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November 30, 2005
Getting the Boys' Attention
Around last call many of us at bars are confronted with difficult questions, especially on weekends. Last weekend I was confronted with a very serious question, and it wasn't, should I have another drink?. I'd already decided to get another pitcher. No, my question was one I didn't expect to be asking myself when I left home.
It was, "should I watch these two girls making out or not?"
Usually a guy wouldn't even think twice about watching two drunk girls making out, but something about these girls and what they were doing wans't quite right. First, one of the girls looked almost exactly liek Uma Thurman.
But not assassin-in-tight-yellow-body-suit Uma Thurman, I'm talking about recently-ODed-just-got-an-adrenaline-shot-in-the-heart Uma Thurman. The strung out on cocaine, sweaty, full of snot looking Uma Thruman.
Her and her friend found each other in the bar and seemed to devise a plan to grab the attention of guys in the bar. "Hey, I look like I just vomitted on myself and most of the guys here are going to look right past me at the girls with out vomit on their pants."
"Oh, that sucks. Maybe if we make out guys will watch."
"Good idea."
So they ran at eat other and started making out with a strange physical intensity. Arms were vigorously flailing about, hair flying like they were in some sort of make-out race. Out of curiosity more than arousal I gave in and watched for a few seconds at a time.
I watched until they suddenly split up and the Thurman look-alike hurried to the back of the bar -- toward the bathrooms.
"Why were you watching them make out?" I was suddenly asked.
"That was not hot."
"Why were you watching. That's so rude."
"How could you not look at that? They were, like, all over the place."
"How would you like ti if I was staring at two guys making out?"
To avoid further questioning along those lines I decided to the bathroom.
While in the bathroom I heard an irate English voice yelling. "What the fuck is she doing with my girlfriend? No, I won't calm down. How would you like it if some cunt was fucking with your girlfriend."
She must be making out with another girl back here I thought to myself.
Sort of chuckling to myself about the situation as I left the bathroom I looked up just in time to see that it was, indeed, the girl that looked straight out of the gutter that had caused the uproar and that the beer the English guy threw at her missed.
Of course I would have found that out anyway. When the beer hit me.
Posted by calculatoronfire at 09:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 29, 2005
Bar Crawl pt 3 (that's it)
Maybe I was too drunk to have another drink. Maybe I was just bored. I don't remember exactly. I do remember that when I told Kasey I wanted to leave and asked her for my drink ticket she gave me a sort of shocked look.
"I just had it. It was in my hand. I swear. I must have just dropped it or something."
"What? You lost two tickets in one night?"
"No. I just dropped it. It's got to be right here."
"I don't see it. Is it in your pocket?"
"No. these pants don't have any pockets."
she must have just dropped it then I thought.
We looked around at the bar's floor. Shoes stomped on a floor wet with spilled drinks. We looked around and through legs without finding the drink ticket.
"There it is" Kasey yelled pointing at a piece of paper near the men's room.
I went over and grabbed what turned out to be a soggy flyer.
"Damn. This one's just a receipt."
"This one has someone's number on it."
After growing tired of picking up every piece of paper on the bar's floor we gave up. We decided it was time to leave.
Knowing full well that we couldn't exit the bar in the normal fashion we devised two different plans. "The bouncer has to get behind the cash register when the people ahead of us pay; I say we make a break for it then."
"What do you mean?"
"They can't chase after us. Let's just run" I said.
"We can't out run them. We don't even know where we are."
"Yes we do. We only walked, like, blocks from your house."
"I say we just tell them what happened and what we had to drink. They'll just make us pay for what we drank."
"I don't think so. I like my plan more."
I did like my plan more until I realized that there were two door men. One acted as the cashier and the other stood blocking the doorway. My plan didn't look like it had much of a chance of working. It definitely didn't have any chance of working after Kasey yelled out, "We lost our tickets."
We were informed that we couldn't leave without paying the equivalent of $100. an amount, even to this day I don't carry with me when hitting the bars. -- This past Saturday I went out with Emma and Rachel. We all ended up drunk. Someone ended up puking on my stairs. And all together we spent less than $25. (Granted, I did steal one beer.)
After some negotiating Kasey and I developed another plan and got it OKed by the doormen. She was going to give me her debit card and her PIN and I'd go down the block to withdraw the money. She'd have to stay in the bar.
I'm not surprised that, on the the way to the ATM, I considered leaving Kasey in the bar, but I am surprised I remembered her PIN. I withdrew the money and got her out of hock. Then together we stumbled the six blocks or so to her house. There I capped the night off with some more wine while Kasey spent some time hovering over the toilet before passing out on the bathroom floor. I never finished my glass before passing out. Luckily I was already on the couch.
We started moving in the early afternoon. "Did I lose the drink tickets last night?"
"Yeah."
"I thought so."
"How'd we get out? Did we have the money?" She asked and sounded like she honestly didn't know.
"No. You gave me your card and they let me go get the money."
"I gave you my card? I don't remember the PIN."
"You gave it to me last night. Or maybe I just made it up. Pretty sure you gave it to me, though."
"Damn. How much did we have to pay?"
"$100." I told her.
"I'm surprised I had that much. Well I'm going to take a shower" Kasey said as she shuffled back toward the bathroom.
I decided to go back to sleep, but as soon as I lay my head back down I heard her yell. "Hey, Brian."
Kasey came running into the room. "Is this one of the tickets?"
"Yeah." It had one drink marked on it for a total of $1.50 "Where'd you find it?"
"In my bra."
"You had it the whole time?"
"I guess so. I must have put it in there so I wouldn't lose it."
"Some good that did."
Kasey went back to the bathroom to tkae a shower while I nursed my hangover. When she came back into the room I asked her, "Did you find the other one in your panties or something?"
"No. I can't believe I had one of those tickets."
"I wouldn't be surprised if you had the other one too" I teased her.
"No. I would have found it. I was wearing this shirt and these pants." She picked her clothes up off the floor and for show rifled through the pants. "And they've only got one pocket and I know it's not in ... Shit."
Posted by calculatoronfire at 11:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 22, 2005
Bar Crawl pt 2
At a lot of bars in the Azore islands you are handed a piece of paper when you enter. Often if you look confused the doorman will tell you not to lose it. If you're with friends they usually take over from there.
"What is this? Why shouldn't I lose it?"
"That's your drink card. Every time you go up to the bar they mark off the drinks you get. If you lose it they charge you like 1000 scoots or something."
At the time 1000 scoots, or escudos I guess they called them officially, came to about $50.
"So you can drink all night, throw away the card and only have to pay 50 bucks?"
"Uh, yeah. Try it."
You could drink all night, but it always cost less than $50. Losing the card meant, for even the heaviest of drinkers, paying more than twice your bill. So it wasn't advised.
Kasey and I were already initiated into the whole Portugese weird-drink-card-thing, so we must have looked confused when we entered the last bar on our crawl through the city. That or we were just so drunk the bouncer mistook our drunken looks for confusion. We had, after all, stopped at more than 10 bars in the space of about 6 blocks.
Things started to get a little fuzzy around the time we stopped at the "old man" bar a couple stops previous. There we had a couple drinks and the bartender, for some reason or another, made us try some apple juice/milk concoction. It was also there I had to use the bathroom again.
I had to crouch to get through the bathroom door and then hit my head on the ceiling inside -- it was at a strange angle because it was under a stairway. The urinal was an open concrete trough with a short length of garden house hanging above it. I figured I was supposed to "flush" the "urinal" by turning on the water and spraying the hose. Then everything would wash out into the street -- I could see from the open hole in the wall that's where everything went. I tried to recall whether I had walked through a puddle on my way into the bar. But things were a little too fuzzy and I soon found myself wondering what I was doing just standing there in what they passed off as bathroom.
I went back into the main part of the bar and found Kasey making out with the bartender. This time the premise was exchange for a Milky Way bar. So I had another drink.
We eventually ended up at the last bar, the bar where, earlier in the night, we had decided we'd "stay and drink." While at the bar - our immediate destination - waiting for the bartender to come over Kasey turned to me and said, "So this is the bar where everyone makes out."
"Yeah. Last time everyone was just hanging out making out."
The bartender interrupted us asking what we wanted.
As soon as Kasey got her drink she left the bar without waiting for me to get mine. When I turned to look for her I noticed a few acquaintences and went over to talk to them. It was just a bunch of guys sitting, talking. They must have heard that this was the bar to go to if you wanted to make out.
"What are you guys doing here?" I asked.
"He's looking for chicks."
"No, I'm not."
Ok, so they were young guys - Portugese high school kids - about 16-18 years old. I'm not sure if it came to me right away, but eventually it did come to me. "What do you think of my friend over there?" I pointed to where I finally stopped Kasey."She's looking to hook up."
"Yeah? She's OK. I guess."
When Kasey was done making out with who ever it was she was making out with there -- what she rushed away from the bar to do -- I called her over. "These are some friends of mine. Remember that orgy I told you was going to be at my house? These are the guys."
"Orgy?"
"Yeah. These guys wanted to have some orgy or something, but couldn't find any women."
"Ohhhh. Yeah. I remember. I thought you were saying I was there."
I introduced here around and ended up with Francisco, the oldest and undoubtably the most shy. Or so I thought.
Perhaps it was my assurance she was looking for a man. Maybe it was because he was drunk. Or maybe some sparks flew when I turned my back, but within seconds they were withdrawing to the corner.
I stayed and talked with the rest of the guys about whatever it is drunk Americans in their 20s talk to drunk Portugese teenagers about in bars. It must have been a while, long enough to finish a drink, at least, because Kasey came up to me, "Let me have your card."
"Why?"
"I lost mine."
"How'd you lose it?"
"I don't know. I just lost it. And I need another drink."
"Why should I give you mine? So you can lose it too?"
"Come on. I'll give it back when I'm done."
"Ok, but get me a drink too." I handed over my drink card. And that was the last I saw of it.
Almost.
Posted by calculatoronfire at 04:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 20, 2005
Ghetto Bidness
Recently I decided that even though my neighborhood is sometimes described as "scary" it was getting a little too fancy for my taste and that I'd soon have to move. So I set out on a search for a cheaper house somewhere in the city.
It wasn't very long before I came across a whole slew of houses for sale for $10,000 or less.
I decided to go for the middle of the road -- I figured something too cheap was bound to be in an area of town I wouldn't be welcome, and something too expensive - well, it was too expensive, and at $10,000: well out of my price range. I finally settled on checking out a house in west Baltimore with an asking price of $7,500.
Emma and I grabbed a flashlight and drove down there. After hiding everything of value we had inside the car and double checking to make sure the doors were locked we went to have a look at the house.
Without a realtor we couldn't get too far, but we could at least check out the back of the house from the alley.
It turned out there was no alley. The "alley" was just a 3-foot wide walkway seperating the houses on each side of the block. We ducked into it right in front of a kid from the neighborhood as walked by.
He seemed like a normal kid. He wore the Baltimore City normal kid uniform this time of year - an oversized black nylon jacket, a black hat and baggy jeans. "Were you going?" He yelled to us he followed us down the walkway.
"What's it look like?" I replied.
"Get outta here."
I ignored him and we walked to the back yard of the abandoned house.
"Whatchou doin' back here? You cops?" He yelled to Emma and I as we peered through the cracked wall trying to see how much of the roof was missing.
"No. We're not cops." I laughed back at him.
The boy then ran out to the street. He came back a few seconds later, emboldened. "Don't you know we's runnin' a bidness back here?"
I could only assume he meant he was selling some sort of drugs in the back yard of the abandoned house. "Do you know who owns this property?" I said to him.
"No."
"Well, I do. I own it." I lied to him.
With that he ran away much quicker than before. I think he was afraid I'd start charging him rent.
Posted by calculatoronfire at 02:42 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 15, 2005
Bar Crawl Pt 1
"Hey. Do you wanna bar hop?"
"What?"
"Pub crawl. Whatever. Like, go to a bunch of bars?"
"Where? You wanna go to Twins?" Twins was the name of the biggest bar on the island. It was basically a cave caved into a hillside. It was always hot and the air sticky with what you could tell from the smell was perspiration. It was owned by a couple midgets, twins naturally, that made some money in the US and then went back to the island to fulfill their dream of owning a club with a Michael Jackson poster in every room.
"No. That place sucks." It did. Sure, I regularly got drunk enough to forget how much I spent on drinks but I never woke up with more than $20 fewer than I went out with.
"Where do you want to go then?" My friend Kasey asked.
"Let's go to all the bars on your street. There's a bunch of them."
"Yeah, but they're all full of old men."
"So. We'll be drunk after just a couple. Besides there's that club at the bottom of the hill -- on the square."
"Have you ever been there? How is it?"
"I went down there once with this one Portugese girl. It's basically year olds getting drunk and making out. But we can just walk back here when we're done."
"Ok, let's do it" she relented.
"Let's drink a bottle of that green wine first. We don't know how many bars there are. Better safe than sorry, right?"
So we split a bottle of wine and then headed off to the old man bars on main street of the village. At the first one the bartender inquired in his best broken English as to what we were doing in his bar. He did it in a friendly, curious tone. "We're hitting every bar on the street. You're the first one."
The bartender smiled and nodded. He laughed a little and acted like he knew what we we said to him. I think all he caught was where I said "the first one" because he started repeating "first bar" over and over as he turned and went into the back room. When he emerged again he had finally stopped. He was carrying a bowl of something.
The bartender held the bowl out to us like he was offering it to us and said, "First bar. OK. From me. Octopus in own juice."
A younger guy at one of the tables said, "Ink. Octopus in its own ink."
The two spoke in Portugese for a minute before the younger one said, "He wants you to take some octopus as a welcome gift. You know, to thank you for soming to his bar. It's not very good though. I think he might just be trying to get rid of it."
The bartender smiled and nodded. He motioned toward me with the bowl.
"Ok" I said as I grabbed a fork and stuck a couple pieces.
"You, please" He motioned toward Kasey. "No thanks, I just ate." She replied.
"Let's go before he tries to give any more of that stuff." She whispered to me.
"It wasn't that bad. Besides it was free."
"Come on."
We said our good byes and explained that we had a one drink max at each bar before heading to the next place. It was three doors down. "Did you know about this place?"
"No. I guess I never noticed."
"It's your neighborhood."
"I never go to these places."
"It better not be like this all the way, we'll never even make it to the bottom of the hill."
"Well, let's go."
We walked into what looked like an ice cream stand. An ice cream stand that sold liquor. But having no idea what it was exactly and having vowed to each other we'd hit every bar on the way down the hill we felt obliged to stop. Besides I had to pee already. Sure it was early, and we just started, but I had to go.
Apparently I was a little better off than Kasey. When I came out of the bathroom she was making out with the bartender already. "He said the drinks are on him."
"Awesome. Give me a glass of red wine."
"What kind?" he asked.
"The cheaper the better." My cheap assedness from the States carried over to the island even though even the most expensive of drinks was less than $3.
"I have just the stuff for you" He said as he pulled out a 5 liter jug of wine. "This is what the farmers drink in the morning."
I was on a high when we got to the next bar. It was smoky, about to close and full of old handicapped men playing cards, but I had a feeling I'd get something cheap if I only just asked. Indeed.
Well, after I asked the second time.
The first time the owner didn't understand me and had to run upstairs to get his daughter to come down and translate.
"What would you like to have?"
"The cheapest red wine you have."
"A whole bottle?"
"No. Just one glass. I'm trying not to spend too much money."
"We only sell it by the bottle. For the old men - drunks. Nobody wants a glass. We can't sell it that way."
"OK. Umm. Give me a glass of the cheapest wine you can give me a glass of."
"Here. Take this. It's free. There is less than a glass. And this. Here. This one too. You can finish them."
She handed me three bottles. Each had half a glass or so and I slammed each one.
Kasey was done with her drink already and must not have been too comfortable; she wasn't making out with anybody. "Let's go" she said.
We hit about a half dozen other bars on the way down the street, naming every one of them as we went. The Cripple Bar (The last one). The Coffee Bar (coffee with whiskey), The Cow Bar (some liquor made of fermented milk), The Old Man Bar (more wine), etc.
Finally we got down to the last bar, At the door they handed us pieces of paper and said, "Keep this until you leave."
Posted by calculatoronfire at 12:26 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 14, 2005
Pictures
With the wonder of modern technology you can look at blurry pictures!
I took pictures of some old pictures of mine and put them on one a them picture sights on what they call the "world wide web."
Posted by calculatoronfire at 09:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 07, 2005
All in One Room
Today at school I asked my class to guess how old I was. There were a couple stray guesses until someone yelled out "13." After that there was consensus, I was 13.
No, I'm not thirteen, but I can remember when I was that old.
I was about that old when my family spent a while visiting my grandparents in their 2 room apartment. The apartment was big, but it was only two rooms. So, thing were a little cramped when it came time for bed.
Before bed my brother, sister and I had to go into the other room in the house and grab our respective mattresses we piled up earlier that morning. We'd lay the three mattresses out next to each other in a room barely wider than the mattresses were long. Our mom and dad slep on a real bed at the other end of the room while grandma and grandpa slept on sofas they'd convert into beds at opposite ends of the main room of the apartment.
My grandparents usually slept in seperate rooms. I thought that was strange until I found our how light a sleeper my grandpa is and how my grandma screams out for the police in the middle of the night. My grandma usually slept in the main room of the apartment and the rest of us kicked my grandpa out of his usual room.
He grudgingly gave up his room seeing how tight it was with just the five of us.
And it was a tight fit.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night hearing my parents as if they were right next to me, "Get a condom first."
I don't remember hearing any more. Perhaps I blocked it. All I remember was trying as hard as I could to cover my ears without moving too fast. I didn't want my parents to hear that I was awake and give me a sex talk in the morning.
It took me a few years, but I finally told my brother about what I heard. "Yeah. I heard something like that." He said. "Dad was trying to get some then too, but mom kept saying that she thought we were awake. Dad kept saying 'They're asleep. Come on.' and mom kept daying I think I heard them. Then dad said, 'They're not awake. If they were they'd answer to this.'"
Then my dad called outa little something to each of us. I can't get out of my brother exactly was each was. He says that to my sister my dad yelled, "I found a bunch of change on the sidewalk." And to keep from laughing about whatever was yelled to him he had to cover his mouth and bite down hard on his covers.
But if I remember his story right, he continued to listen.
Posted by calculatoronfire at 11:15 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
November 04, 2005
Bad Ties
My dad recently asked my mom for a divorce.
Among other things he says he feels she is unduly critical of him.
My mom says that he's depressed and suicidal. "I found out he hung a noose in the garage" she said.
But she claims he must have been drunk when he did it, because "The knot was poorly done."
Posted by calculatoronfire at 08:49 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
November 03, 2005
Things I Learned this Weekend
No. You cannot do more shots of vodka than the 300 pound guy whose dad owns a bar.
Go with your instincts. If it smells like vomit, it is.
It only seems like you can get a PhD in "being obnoxious."
Going to bed with two girls at the same time isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Going up stairs in flippers is harder than it seems.
The sober guy at the party is wierd. That's why he's the "sober guy at the party."
Never trust the sober guy at the party with a camera.
A party's hosts won't mind if you sleep in their bed. They asked you to "make yourself at home" and they know all the comfortable spots on the floor anyway.
Dad was wrong. Drinking pickle juice does not get rid of a hangover this time either.
Haunted houses are not scary unless you're 12 or under.
A cooler is one way to keep your 40 cold, but putting your malt liquor inside of one makes it harder to drink.
People do not trick or treat in the ghetto. They drive to the suburbs.
When the eight year old girl down the street does get dressed up and trick or treats people treat with packs of cigarettes.
"Unlock the candy" means "I want your candy. Now."
Posted by calculatoronfire at 07:17 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
November 02, 2005
Flickr Eviction
This weekend I signed up for that flickr thing.
I found it's a good place to put a picture of thecourt summons I got. A necessary step in the (legal) eviction process.
I think Emma also came down with a case of bird flu. But I might be wrong.
Posted by calculatoronfire at 09:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack