thediastema's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I love you to despairport I pulled the usual "fashionably late" stunt arriving at Dimples and Dinah's Den of Iniquity. With a deep inhale, I muttered "just DO it, Erin" and let myself in. I greeted Durwood, Jedediah, and a couple others in the living room. I then headed to the kitchen where Dinah furnished me with booze and Dimples was fawning over Pelican's last-day-of-finals headache. Relief washed over me as I noted the absence of certain others. I was soon chatting with an eloquent gaggle of friends-in-law and finding myself the obliging subject of other people's "fake candid" shutterbuggery. I poured a continued stream of 99 Bananas and OJ down my throat, and I soon found myself prematurely pie-eyed, leaning against a similarly-jovial Dinah on the black futon. "Sssssssso, Erin," she slurred, her pupils big enough to receive softballs. "How'ssss your love life?" I can say this from experience: when you have a boyfriend, you lose all sensitivity to the plight of the infrequently-rogered. I merely shook my head and said something to the effect of, "It's dead." "Really?" To her credit, she made it sound unfathomable. "Yeah, it's a no-go." "Zeke will not stop asking about you." I groaned. "I know. I'm trying to figure out how to let him down easy." Tempted by firewater to dance on the knife edge, I indulged her. "Okay, tell him the truth: that I am hung up on a dweeb." "Ooooh, you are?" Now, next to me, Ed McMahon would have looked like the president of a Victorian temperance league. Just bear that in mind. "Yes, yes I am, and it will never ever happen." "What's his name?" O. That. "It's not important." "Jedediah?" "Nope." "Durwood?" "Nope." "Bob?" "Who?" "Just anybody named Bob?" "No! Look, let's just -- I'm not gonna -- even if the -- we shall call him 'Paul.'" "Paul?!" "Not that that's his name." "But why Paul? Paul's such a sissy name!" "Good, it'll do fine." "Erin, just tell me!" We were interrupted by the movement of people through the room. We acquired a third party on the futon, a robust redhead, who got us talking about the time Durwood cried at Phantom and, no, not the Andrew Lloyd Webber one, and gee, I hate Andrew Lloyd Webber, and somehow this led Dinah to a brilliant idea. "Erin! Next time I have sex, I'm going to call my boyfriend 'Andy' just to see what happens!" Sex + bitter irony X potent potables = hysterical = "What a brilliant idea!" Dinah turned to me and tried to tame her perverted grin. "You do it too, okay? You have to promise, the next guy you sleep with! You call him Andy, too!" I howled. "And no fair cheating. His name can't be Andy!" "O, no fear of that!" I cackled. ~~ I'd decided I was in about the right shape to put down the glass for a while, and another friendly acquaintance was asking me for my news. Probably it was Jed. I don't remember. That's how much chemistry we have. Anyway, I had no real news, and I said so, and right about then, around the corner, I heard Dimples greeting a late arrival by name. My stomach lurched. I approached the happy, ever-touchy-feelier couple with a sickly-sweet effervescence that would put cherry Alka-Seltzer to shame. I looked into Peg's eyes, ignoring the blond guy wrapped around her. "Hey, you two!" I squealed, plastering on a maniacal grin I'd not worn since my drill-team days. About-face! I excused myself to the washroom, where I experienced the diuresis of the 99 Bananas and wasted some time fixing the girls' toilet paper spindle. (It had been feeding away from the user. Tragic.) I washed up and returned to the eyewall of the hurricane. Dimples was now shitfaced as well, and soon the two of us were dorking around at the coffee table with the likes of Jed, Pelican, Peg, and the Yuppie. (Ah, yes, the Great Love Hexagon from Hell, reunited.) Pelican had thrown a few shots on his headache, and it seemed to help just a little. Peg and Yuppie were making babies, more or less, but somehow still paying the rest of us so much attention that we couldn't hate them for it. I did my best to ignore Yuppie, talking to Peg and Dimples, cracking rude jokes. Booze had made me delightfully numb and bold, which meant affected gregarious required little effort on my part. When Jed made a funny but politically-incorrect remark about Idaho, Peg announced with an amused, mock-offended "Hey! I'm from Idaho." (Surely the most cosmopolitan Idahoan on record. No lies.) "What part of Idaho, again?" I asked between guffaws. "Boise," she said. Dimples chimed in, "Hey, I'm kind of from there!" I seized upon it. "I ate at a Dairy Queen there one time, so we're practically sisters." Yuppie was laughing, but I didn't get a good look at his eyes. I think this time it was another three minutes before Yuppie and I were at it again, flinging back and forth carved-in-stone inside jokes and well-researched character attacks on one another. He apparently finds it really amusing to get me angry. "When she gets angry, it's hilarious. It's like a comedy routine!" Yu-huk, yu-huk, yu-huk! I can't remember, but I think this is the remark that prompted me to tell him to "Go to hell" right in front of everybody. I was smiling when I said it. Dimples busted out a game of Taboo, and had some trouble actually organizing teams. Peg and I took turns annoying the piss out of Yuppie with the buzzer. We found ourselves amusing as hell. We're becoming allies. This could be a problem. I know it's true, because when Dimples extended the invite to Peg for all the summer parties while Yuppie's in Italy, Peg seemed delighted at the prospect. I stuck the buzzer in Yuppie's ear, and Peg and I exchanged pointy "Tch!" salutes. With winks. It was like I couldn't help it. After their departure, around the time my sister and her posse crashed the event, Dimples took a survey. Seriously. No, seriously: "So, do we like Peg?" Unanimous yes. I added, "I like her so much it hurts." I know Dimples didn't get it. I know. ~~ Sidekick Boy and the Anarchy Gang absconded with me on a long drive to western Utah, then back and all the way to Emigration Canyon. It was neat heading east as the sun rose, but the effects of sleep deprivation manifested themselves when someone's utterance of the word "airport" got Rose and myself into a fit of uncontrollable giggles. We repeated "airport" for about half an hour until it started sounding like something we made up. Appeased, we branched out. "Look over thereport!" "Whereport?" "You know who Sonny really loved?" "Who?" "Cherport!" "You know what my favourite kids' show of all time was?" "Careport Bearports. And you know, in this light, Sidekick Boy looks a little like Selma Blairport." "That's not fairport!" "I just mean, you know, his hairport. His legs are hairy, too, but on them, he can use Nairport." From the driver: "O, my god, you guys are RETARDED!" Of course, this just made us laugh harder. "I just feel so bad, I mean, sitting here on my derriereport. I could be doing like I did in high school, travelling the world and seeing musicals -- like Martin Guerreport!" "I'm sorry. I can't help but stareport." "What is WRONG with you two?!" "I know, this canyon's so scareporty. But if we get a flat, it's not like he doesn't have a spareport." I kid you not, we went through every possible rhyme for "air." We were home around 6 a.m. ~ETK 03:21 - 03 May, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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