omg omg omg!!! Last weekend was so incredibly fun!
And it was made even cooler by the fact that this cool guy that we met (Brian) left me voice mail today.
Okay, let’s start at the beginning. I woke up around four o’clock in the afternoon, and I wanted to go into town and get the audio/video cable to hook my iPod up to a TV. RadioShack closed at 5 p.m., so I wanted to go as soon as possible. I called Kevin, as I had sent him a MySpace message earlier in the week wanting to hang out, and he was all for it. In about a half-hour, I picked him up and we went to RadioShack. The person there helped me find the right cable, and watched my orgasmic glee when he let me hook it up to a television there to try it out. It totally worked! The quality was incredible, it was like watching normal TV. Anyway, I bought that and was checked out by my friend from grade school, Samantha, who totally had a crush on me in third grade. It was really cool to talk to her again. Anyway, after that, Kevin suggested that we go to Arcata. “Sure,” I said. “It’s not like I have anything better to do.” So we stopped at his house for a bit (I took over his television with my AV cable and played iPod commercials for 15 minutes), and it turned out that the friend he was trying to get ahold of hadn’t messaged him back, so we just decided to go anyway. I picked up a bottle of water at Gas 4 Less, and we were off.
It was starting to get dark as we were driving out of town, and it was then I realized that I had never driven south on Highway 101 in the dark. I always drive north in the dark when we are coming back from a Eureka trip. I am SOOOO glad I had my new iPod and my car charger and everything, because we had the ultimate nonstop soundtrack to everything that happened to the entire trip. 2,500 songs. 150 videos. In my pocket. Fucking amazing. So we put on some Chemical Brothers and Meat Beat Manifesto and happily drove off into the darkness. It was a wonderfully quick trip down, I think because we couldn’t see all of the scenery that was passing and know where we were most of the time.
As soon as we got into Eureka, we decided to stop at Target before we went to the mall. Kevin got a few shirts, but I wasn’t really interested in their selection. I spent the whole time checking out my outfit in the big full-length mirrors. Earlier that day on a whim, I had decided to wear my blue pinstripe suit. I was totally the model of ’40s elegance in my retro wool suit, white collar shirt, red Paisley tie and Converse. After exhausting Target’s entertainment repertoire (which consisted of me trying out every single iPod speaker system), we decided to check out what was going on at the mall.
Surely the mall would be open to nine or 10 p.m., due to how close it was to Christmas. We got there at around 7:30, and the place had already been closed for half an hour. Unfazed, we put on some Felix Da Housecat (no matter what I may say about Kevin, he has impeccable taste in music), and continued on our quest.
Kevin was famished, as was I, so we decided to do the Crescent City thing and go to Denny’s. Oddly, we were the best-dressed people in there. Kevin got a bagel, I got an omelet, and within 45 minutes we were ready to party again. The next destination: the club formerly known as Club West.
By this time, the playlist had changed to songs from iPod commercials, and we were rocking out to Jet as we pulled up to the abandoned façade. There was nobody outside. Not a single soul. Before, and in the days of Club West, there would always be people lingering outside: smoking, talking, having a great time… but there was none of that this time. We thought it was closed, but then we noticed that it had an open sign. And it was 21 plus only. Darn.
At this point, we were out of ideas. The only logical conclusion seems to be to go to Arcata. I was down for that, as it was only like 7 p.m., and we set off through the wilds of the safety corridor to the Plaza. We drove around a bit before parking, to scope out the place. There was a hot guy in the ice cream store, so it was an easy decision to go in there and get ice cream. I had expresso flavor, which got very old halfway through the cone, and Kevin had apple pie flavor. We walked around the streets off the plaza for a while and hung out underneath the statue, but as we started to finish our ice cream, it was obvious that we really were out of ideas this time. We set in the car for five or 10 minutes before Kevin decided that we should go to HSU and see what was happening there. We drove all the way to the end of the big street that HSU is on, all the way to their new big gateway thing that they built. On the verge of giving up and going to back to Crescent City, we turned around and decided to probe the northern extremity of the road.
Around this time, the playlist was in disrepair. Shuffle mode was failing us, serving us up nothing but obscure Sheryl Crow and Muse. Finally, as we started to reach what looked like dormitories, some Daft Punk came on the iPod and life was good. A minute or so later, as the wonders of the Dandy Warhols were gracing our eardrums, we saw this random building with a big “open” sign. Whatever it was, we were going to check it out. However, I ended up turning up this really steep road in an attempt to make a U-turn and we were so entertained by the road that we had to go down to the end. There were all these gigantic houses with odd Christmas lights, like this one house that had this gigantic nine or 10 ft. sphere that was all lit up.
After the big dome, we reversed course and made our way to the “open” thing, whatever it was. We pulled into the parking lot, and slowly approached it. We walked into the door, and it turned out to be this cute little bistro/coffee shop/convenience store. We felt like we had found our element, and staked out a table near some students who were having a lively philosophical debate, but they were speaking in such hushed tones that we couldn’t decipher it. There was a television up in the corner of the room, and it was an MTV “Making the Video” of the Dandy Warhols song that we had just been listening to in the car. I thought that was a wonderful little reality loop. We checked out what the place sold, and decided to get chai teas. We sipped our chai teas, and soaked in the ambience of the place. It was really cool, you could tell that a lot of smart people had been there. It was tastefully decorated, but the decor was very subtle. I felt like we had sort of found our people.
The guy that ran the place started putting chairs up which was one of those ” you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here” messages. Kevin and I stood up and prepared for the long trek back to Crescent City, when this guy walked in. He was dressed in pajamas with gigantic furry slippers. Of course Kevin had to start talking to him. “So, where’s the party?” (the guy was buying a 40). Kevin chatted him up and we ended up following the guy and his friend to some random parking lot outside the library. The guy had the same kind of car as me, which was odd, as I’ve never seen anyone else with the specific model that I have. His friend had to get something at the library, so we talked to him for about 20 minutes while he nursed his 40 and him and Kevin smoked. We learned that the guy’s name was Brian, and that he had only moved up to Humboldt County a few months ago. He said he didn’t know much about the gay scene up here, but that he knew a few people. He commented on my Nine Inch Nails backpack in the backseat, which made me immediately classify him as a cool guy.
So anyway, I don’t know who thought of it, but we all decided to go to the beach. We followed them to his place, he jumped in the car with us, and we were off. Me and Kevin had already schemed as to what we were to impress him with in the way of our musical tastes. We decided that the perfect thing to do in order to judge his coolness was to play strictly Madonna for the first 30 minutes and if he complained, we were going to denounce him as lame. I ended up wanting some Daft Punk after the first song, so our plan failed entirely, but the guy was cool anyway so it didn’t matter. I can’t remember the name of the beach that we went to, but it was pretty cool. I had my iPod (of course) and I was showing off my dancing skills a la the commercials. I also should Kevin the porn that I put on it. He was all, “Why do you have porn on your iPod?” Because I can, of course. That’s the only reason for doing anything nowadays. Brian wanted to check out some of the videos I had on my pod, so me and him shared earphones for a while. He was leaning on me, but I didn’t really think anything of it because he was drunk.
The beach got old very quickly and we decided to leave, but Brian was not very steady on his feet. Being drunk and also wearing gigantic furry slippers does not help in that department. So I helped him walk back to the car. He ended up getting a bit more friendly than I had planned for, and after a bit he was hanging off me more than he should have been if he was only using me for a balance. I didn’t mind. It was flattering, even thought he was drunk. We walked back to the car and put some music on, and after watching these weirdos attempt to light a bonfire with this wet wood, we decided to blow that Popsicle stand. Our official plan was to go back to Brian’s house and get some phone numbers of some guys he knew that we could hang out with. Brian’s directions were so crazy, but we eventually got there. In all of the driving around, I learned a few things about about the guy that made him a very cool person. 1) he didn’t smoke pot, 2) he had seen Pi, and that’s all I can remember. So we got back to his house and found the numbers. One of us had to pee, so we went into the house for a bit. There were all sorts of cool people there. They were all huddled around a bunch of notes, obviously studying for a big test in some class regarding classical music. What made them 10 times cooler was that one of them had one of those sweet 15″ PowerBooks and was playing all this beautiful classical music from it.
We went outside and tried calling some of the people that Brian knew on my cell phone, but they were all going to sleep (this was Sunday night at midnight, after all). When that didn’t pan out, Kevin decided to go tried to find one of his friends that he knew lived in a certain apartment complex. But before that, we had to go to Safeway to recharge the alcohol. (I wasn’t drinking a drop, just so that’s clear.) Kevin got a big bottle of Jose Cuervo and some orange juice. I had never seen Kevin drunk before, so I was wondering how it was all going to play out. It was around 12:30 as we pulled up to the apartment complex. Brian had been hanging all over me the whole night and I had been mildly flirting back, but I wasn’t really into it. While Kevin scouted out the complex, me and Brian sort of hung back (mostly I was afraid of being embarrassed by Kevin’s antics) and we talked a bit. Kevin found this apartment full of people that seemed to be having some sort of party (I found out later that the denizens of the house were all on mushrooms), and he totally just went up to the random strangers with a bottle of tequila and befriended them. I was embarrassed, as I would never do such a thing, so me and Brian hung out around the corner, as to not weird out drunken straight guys, if there were any on the prowl. I was waiting for Kevin to come back to give us some sort of status report, but as I learned later he drank almost half the bottle of tequila by himself. Brian had basically attached himself to me by this time. It was a very cold night, and he was still in his PJs. As I was covered head to toe in wool, I would have been toasty warm in Antarctica. We moved away from the lights of the complex a bit, still cuddling. After a while, he started kissing my neck and going “stole one.” He must have done it like twenty times. The whole time I was thinking, “Okay, this guy is drunk, he doesn’t even like me,” but as we talked I realized that he wasn’t really is drunk as he looked. Anyhow, we ended up making out. And it wasn’t even like, drunken sloppy making out either, it was fun. I had never really looked at his face before, but I realized he was pretty cute. Needless to say, my breath smelled like Budweiser and cigarettes the whole rest of the night. We went over to this little picnic table in the center of the complex and cuddled and talked for a while. Oh, another cool thing about him was that he knew the Greek anecdote that I was telling him (the “seek shelter within wooden walls” thing, I love that one). One of the cool things about him was that he spoke better Spanish than me. I always speak in Spanish from time to time when I feel like being esoteric or get tired of repeating the same thing in English, but he totally understood everything I was saying. I even couldn’t understand him when he said a few things. So it was really cool that we had our own private conversation going a lot of the time when Kevin was around us.
This was about the time that Kevin emerged from the random apartment with this bisexual guy that had this amazing Nikon digital SLR. Like, we’re talking $1000+ for just the body and no lenses. He took our pictures, and it came out he was on mushrooms. Kevin, me, and Mushroom Guy started talking about how much we loved this band called Meat Beat Manifesto. He said he had a whole bunch of their CDs. Well, eventually at the idea came to somebody to go to the beach. I guess the people on mushrooms wanted to go to the beach. Brian, on the other hand, would not budge. He just wanted to hang out in the strangers’ house, even though it was obvious that they wouldn’t just let us stay there. So we all climbed in the car (including Mr. Shrooms) and Mr. Reluctant (Brian) and proceeded on the way to the beach. Mr. Shrooms had me put in his favorite Meat Beat Manifesto album, which oddly happened to be my favorite as well (Satyricon). We had to pull over three times for Kevin to puke, but other than that the drive was pretty fun. However, when we got to the beach, it was around 3 a.m. When I turned off the lights after I parked, exhaustion hit me like an oncoming car. Brian was fighting it off as well. I think Kevin puked again while me and Brian cuddled in the front seat. It was wonderful, but everyone knew the night was soon going to end. Kevin had been cuddling with the guy on mushrooms in the backseat, but we lost Mr. Shroom and the gang, as none of us actually left the car. Exhaustion had set in. We watied for Kevin to regain his composure as me and Brian exchanged sweet nothings in Spanish. I don’t know why, but ” I don’t want you to go” sounds 10 times as endearing in Spanish. We took Brian back to his house and he asked me for my phone number and everything, which I gave to him. I was quite surprised that he wanted my info, and I was even more surprised when I checked my voice mail after I got off work today and he had left me a message. Anyway, we said our goodbyes, I put on the fuckin’ Devin Dazzle (that Felix da Housecat album was like the theme song for the trip), and we merged onto the wonderful dark womb of the highway. We kept saying “we aren’t going to look at the clock”, but since there was a clock on the menu bar of my iPod, we both ended up getting a glance at it. It was now 4 a.m. We played incredibly cheesy ’90s dance music to keep ourselves awake, and as we passed the Apple peddler in Crescent City blasting “Jellyhead” and singing along, we knew we had reached a new level of gayness.
I was SOOO glad we went and SO excited about the whole thing!!! I’m still giddy. I got to make out with a hot guy, make some new friends, and stay out until the middle of the night.
Sunday fucking rocked. Enough said.
Categories: Ennui