thediastema's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Springing forward. Kicking and screaming, that is. Pretty sure I'm not confabulating this. For weeks, during every phone call, Dimples has mentioned someone we shall dub "Peg." "Yeah, Peg was going to come too, but she cancelled. It sucks, you two would really get along." "Peg might come tonight. She's a lot like you. You'll like her." "Have you met Peg? I forget." You can see where this is going, can't you? Chickadee has a name, at last. And sure enough she was at the party on Yuppie's arm. And worst of all, I really, really like her. I got in the door to Dimples and Dinah's Chateau of Decadence at around 10:40 p.m. Standard Time, still rattled from an ugly altercation with an overstuffed theatre donor earlier that night. The first face I saw was the oblong one I'd been hoping to avoid. He greeted me, I greeted the room, Dimples entered from the kitchen, she greeted me, I greeted her, I bolted for the washroom and got myself together. On my way back to the action, Dimples equipped me with a Polygamy Porter, which I quickly put to work on my nervous system. "Isn't Peg hot? I didn't even know they were a couple! God, she's hot!" "I know!" (Were we, so to speak, praising Breanne?) "Hot!" "I know!" Let the record state that I have an "I know" that means "Isn't it great? Let's keep discussing it!" This wasn't that "I know." This was my "Discontinue twisting and remove dagger from my torso" version. But they sound the same. So for a while we both extrapolated on Peg's hotness. Actually, when I find people attractive they don't normally fit a denotation of "hot," and I think this is true in Peg's case. She's short, slim (but hourglassy), and has pale skin, brown eyes, and highlighted hair. Wait a minute. And it works. It's cute. Generally speaking I covered my nausea with great aplomb. (Beer is exceptionally useful in this capacity.) I left the two of them to their chess game (he won; she forgot how to move the bishops) and their own beer, and I found myself yakking with a group of guys (including Jedediah, Pelican, Durwood, and this Cabbage-Patch-faced kid I used to see at karaoke). We discussed a bunch of awful things, like poetry. I also recited the lyrics to my all-time favourite poem, "Be My Girl -- Sally" by Andy Summers. The guys feigned admiration. Dinah approached our circle, just feet away from Peg and Yuppie. She crouched down on the floor, already showing tipsiness throughout her 98 pounds of Indian beauty. "Erin! Okay!" she gasped. "So this guy who's a friend of ours totally thinks you're hot." "Dinah...no." "Yes he does." "Zeke*, right? From the party in January, right?" "Yeah." "No. He saw Maura. He means Maura." "No, he means you!" "Okay, recall if you will. Maura was wearing my jacket, doing impressions of me..." "Okay, maybe it was...look, we'll find out when he gets here tonight. You can just take a look at him and..." "No." "But..." "No." "Just a look!" "I've seen him." "And?" "If he were cute it would have been memorable." We went on like this for some time, and then I got back to the guys, and discussing whether the esgargots I ate last summer counted as a true abberration from my vegetarianism. I maintained that they did. Durwood, a hardcore vegan, agreed. The other guys insisted snails aren't really animals. Yuppie turned around from the chess set and simply said, "They're molluscs." I really wish we'd never met. So I hit the washroom again and took hold of a Corona Extra, the Polygamy Porter having run dry. Zeke came in, and Dinah pointed him out to me, whispering in my ear, "Well?" I assessed his long brown hair and fake vampire fangs. I assessed his guitar playing, which was at least as bad as my own. I looked Dinah in the eye, insulted. "Dinah?" "...no?" "No!" By around midnight Standard Time, I'd hit the washroom once again and returned upon a chitchat between Dimples and Peg. Yuppie was immediately adjacent, serving as furniture for Peg and playing someone else at chess. (You can fill him with beer and this is still his idea of party behaviour.) We discussed literature, pop culture, vibrators. For his part, the blond one seemed glad we were getting along. Pelican came over to provide surreptitious moral support. He was the only person at that party who truly knew I needed it then. We all talked about the theatre. We talked about Al's mum's boobs. We talked about Peter Pan's Playboy wax. We talked about the night Pelican came to work having ingested an entire tray of "special brownies." We talked about how I got hired there. Pelican hinted he'd heard on the grapevine that Ginger is leaving. I refused to believe it until further notice, but I damn near passed out from the ensuing hyperventilation, and had to lie on the floor with my legs propped up on Pelican's shoulder. After a few minutes, I felt something small and hard strike the gap between my chinos and my polo, where the fluorescent whiteness of my stomach was exposed. I jerked upright. It was the badly-deformed cap from Yuppie's beer. He was smirking at me from across our newly-expanded Polygon of Bad Karma. "GOD, you always pull this CRAP!" I said, chucking it at his collarbone. He giggled. Within fifteen seconds we were arguing heatedly over who started the War of the Corn Syrup. It took a while. At long, merciful last, my ride arrived -- Sis and Sidekick Boy, both of whom were drawn into the madness before they could draw me out of it. I gave a few hugs. I shook hands with Peg and then Yuppie. It's the first time we've ever acted like physical contact was normal. I went out with Sis's people, all of whom coccooned me pretty well in my shellshocked state. I invested in a pack of German cigarettes. At four a.m. Daylight Time, I came home and cried in my bathtub. I'll be okay eventually. When I am, I'll let people know. Until then, if one more person asks, I am going to lose it. ~ETK 13:29 - 06 April, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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