Some Things Before Nodding Off

It's 2:30 A.M. and I've just come home.

This is rather early for me on a Friday night.

There was that time I came home the following Saturday, past noon, and still another Friday when I woke up in a place I didn't recognize, until I remembered I'd spent the night in the Orchid Garden Hotel in Malate, with G. snoring in the other bed.

I haven't gone dancing in the usual haunts (Absinth, Dream Bar, Temple) in a while - has it been two weeks? A month? More than that? In any case, I miss it - I miss the pulsing waves of mind-numbing music washing over me, I miss throwing my limbs out every which way, usually with my chosen partner for the night, or with whoever manages to catch my eye on the dance floor. To do this, I have to be in that warm, fuzzy place between tipsy and stone drunk. All it takes for me to get there is two VCs, or four shots, depending on how much I'd eaten that evening.

So my nonfiction class just ended today. I am sad. I will miss my classmates. I will miss the strange but interesting reality show I felt privileged to have been a part of every Friday since June. Who needs therapy when you can spill your problems to 12 lovely, intelligent people on a weekly basis? Exhibitionists and voyeurs unite.

Afterwards, to ward off the gloom, I helped him shuck a bucket of oysters and uncork a bottle of Merlot. Shucking and uncorking, I felt quite like Nigella, only without the extreme close-ups, the chocolate finger-licking, and of course, without that luscious backside sliding against the refrigerator door.

Some hours and many slick, just rained-on roads later, I am here, back home, where I should be, writing this entry, which I am sure I will regret in the morning. Thankfully, unlike waking up next to ugly boys and the mothers who love them, it will be easy to delete this.

Oh, if only life could be as simple.

But it's not, and that makes all the difference.