I got a new couch today, so we were taking my old love seat over to her place, a tiny bachelor which is one subway stop away from mine, on a trolly I stole from work. The love seat was the first Big Thing I ever bought all by myself, without asking for anyone else's opinion, when I first moved and was living in my own even tinier bachelor apartment.
After we'd got it into her place, I was stripped to my tank top (it is hot work moving things) while my friend shaved her armpits, in compensation for how sweaty she'd gotten, before heading out. I looked at the music on her keyboard and asked if she was actually playing that, because it looked hard.
"It is hard," Casey said. "If you notice, the left hand is in eighth notes while the right is doing triplets."
We both started clapping and chanting, but even with one of us doing eigths and the other triplets, we couldn't pull of the rhythm.
"I could do this, I used to be able to do this" I said. "I spent all of high school being able to do this, and easily."
"I know," she said. "We have lost some things."
She picked up a red miniskirt that genuinely had the amount of fabric normally required for a moderately generously sized toque. It fit, and she wore it with a loose black t-shirt and cardigan, and her black Bloodstones and looked like the much coveted, and difficult to actually pull off, Sexy Nerd Next Door.
The party was at the house of an actor, a graphic designer, a writer, and an animator. I went last year and it was wretched because they made everyone stay quiet for a spelling bee. This year, they focused more on alcohol, so I guess that shows some personal growth.
This girl I'd just met, who does marketing (we were talking about how neither of us studied it in school, but it's easy to figure out.
"No one knows about marketing," she said.
I say, "It's really just about knowing how to --
"Write," we both say at the same time.), Casey and I were talking, when Casey's exboyfriend came over and started trying to join the conversation.
We were talking about the punch and the holidays and how much alcohol there was on the table and how punch at holiday parties is a good thing, when he said, "That doesn't matter, anyway. You don't want to be happy, you just want to be numb."
The three of us went quiet and surprised and awkward and he continued to natter on, oblivious. The one girl turned away, and my friend and I filled up our cups again with punch before leaving the kitchen.
A big guy with three children came up to explain how everyone has squiggly antennas above their heads, and when you move your head around while you talk, the antenna wiggle, frantically trying to communicate. He gave us a long monologue about his personal beliefs on art and shock value and overt sexuality and how there's a context and maybe you shouldn't go topless on the street but it's stupid to get upset about breastfeeding -- though every woman he's ever talked to has said it's the most intensely intimate experience of his life. He talked about seeing the birth of his children, and how now there's nothing frightening about the vagina, he's seen it all. It's the same one man monologue that I've heard a thousand times before from drunk guys at parties, but his was actually interesting.
Waiting in the upstairs kitchen for the bathroom, we started talking again about those goddamn eighth notes and triplets and the indignity of it all.
"We are over the hill," I said to Casey. "We're ruined now."
A woman with a bleached blonde pixie cut and an accent that genuinely sounds like someone doing a parody for a snooty British person (but apparently is her authentic New Zealander accent), whose name was - I am not even joking with you -- ZooZoo, asked suspiciously, "How old are you?"
"How old do you think we are?" Casey asked.
"I am too drunk to care to guess," she said.
"I'm 26," Casey said. "She's 25."
"I'm 26," I corrected.
"Oh, yeah, just," she said.
"Not just."
She was counting down how long it had been since my birthday, when,
"Young women," Zoozoo interrupted, holding a martini glass, "you don't know anything. When you're thirty, you can do everything with everyone." And then she turned to the man that she had brought with her and told him they were going downstairs for another drink.
Did she bring that martini glass with her? The rest of us were drinking out of plastic red cups.
"Cinnamon bun," one of the guys who lives in the house said, tapping on his thighs in time with the syllables. "Cinnamon bun. For eighths and triplets."
"Is that actually it?"
And then he separated it out and did one hand at a time and it was it.
"Thirty-one is great," he said.
"So it's going to get better?" I asked. "We've got something to look forward to?"
"No, your late twenties suck, but then, you turn thirty and --
"You give up," I said.
"Well. Yeah." He started tapping on his thighs again. Cinnamon bun. Cinnamon bun.
I took the bus home because the subway was closed, sat down and said to Casey, "I have to get my apartment cleaned in the next seven hours, christ."
The kid sitting in front of us turned around and said, "I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I just had to tell you, you don't have to clean your place."
"I do," I tell him. "They're bringing me a couch and they can't put it down on top of all the popcorn on my floor.'
"They could." He laughed, "Is there a lot of popcorn?"
"Yes."
"You can't clean when you're stoned," he said.
"I certainly already know that," I assured him. "You think it's going to be a good idea but then--"
"You start thinking, I wonder what's happening with all the food?"
"Yes," I said. "And then you have even more popcorn on the floor."
The kid had one of those black metal-punk type jackets and a sweet face and he was very drunk and giggled a lot.
"Sometimes I have to clean my room," he said.
The couch came this morning, and is perfect except for this little run on the seat, like the fabric has a scar. It's not noticeable, and you can turn over the cushion to hide it completely, but I emailed the company anyway:
