Easter Bitch

Easter weekend was not at all as eventful as the past week has been (framed by my unexpected "reunion" with Narc last Sunday and the "revenge sex" with the Stallion on Thursday). I didn't take care of myself properly though, even though I knew a bit of a sore throat was coming on, and now I am stuck in a lot of pain. I can't swallow at all and so I've scheduled a doctor's appointment for later today, in hopes of securing some antibiotics.

Anyway, after my long sleep on Friday night, I went to the opera with my mom on Saturday. We had a nice time. There's nothing like extreme Italian Romanticism to restore order to the soul--at least to my soul. There's a certain humanistic comfortable familiarity, if that makes any sense at all. I was especially enamored with Pagliacci. The only caveat of the afternoon--my mom decided to ask me about my "love life." Because she's worried that I'm not "settled," she started making suggestions about how to meet a "nice boy." (While I admit, I'm not too skilled in that department, I did not feel like having that conversation with my mother).

Anyway, after the opera, I headed back to my place to do some work and to try to attack the overwhelming mess that has accumulated in my apartment. I couldn't help but think and rethink the whole situation with the Stallion and with Narc. I'm sick of feeling used and criticized. I'm sick of feeling like all of my kindness, loyalty, intellect and talent counts for nothing for the guys I'm engaging with. So I made a second "New Year's Resolution." (My first one, made upon the new year, was to work on my physical health. As you know, it's sorely needed. So far, my only major victory in that arena has been quitting my "medicine.") But here's my second resolution for 2005-- I want to be more of a bitch. I don't mean that I want to start being mean to people, but I want to be a little more self-righteously assertive. When people make ridiculous demands of me (as in--"it's 4:30 in the morning, and I know you have to work tomorrow, but come here and fuck me because I say so," I want to be able to tell him to "fuck off," and mean it. Or when someone tries to have really violent (and painful) sex with me, while telling me that my friends at Cheers are all against me, I want to be able to say "get the hell out of my bed and out of my house," instead of letting him comfortably sleep in my bed while I'm exiled to blogging in the living room.) Anyway, it's not in my nature to be very assertive/agressive, but I figure that it's a good goal...

While I was puttering around, cleaning up my house, I talked to Sunshine on the phone for a while. (Finally making use of those free weekends!) I was waiting for VJ to arrive for our "girl's night out." VJ got here shortly and we caught up on the events of the past week. She had taken a cruise out of Miami the weekend before, and I hadn't really spoken to her all week long. We ordered in some Chinese food, watched Law & Order SVU and made our plans for the night. Anxious called and I talked to her on the phone for a while. I hooked her up with BulgarianGuy's phone number, and asked if I could give hers to him. She agreed.

VJ and I headed out early--around 10:00 pm or so. I didn't feel like going to Cheers after the strange incident with the flirty Colombian, and the stuff that the Stallion told me. So, I asked if she wanted to go to Joshua Tree--a place known for it's post-collegiate party crowd. It's a little frat-boyish for me, but VJ and I look for different things in our nightlife, and it's much less of a "meat market" than Sutton Place (where she wanted to go last week), so I figured it was a good compromise.

On the way over there, we passed by Cheers. I waved to the bouncer through the door. He stopped us to chat.

"Hyde, did you meet up with your friend who was here the other day looking for you?"

"This friend?" I asked, gesturing to VJ.

"That's her!"

He was clearly into VJ and told us to come into the bar.

"We're going out to meet boys," I said. "We're going to try our luck elsewhere."

He challenged us to meet a boy who would "treat VJ as wonderfully" as he would. It was kind of cheesy.

IrishBird popped her head out the door to say hi.

"Not welcome! Not welcome, here!" she said, laughing. "You too are just too rowdy!"

"It's okay," I said. "We weren't planning on coming in here anyway."

I smiled, but inside I was pissed because she hadn't returned my texts from the night before. I contemplated making it my "bitchy moment," but I couldn't do it.

Anyway, on to Joshua Tree!

When we got there, we found two seats at the bar. A really creepy older woman was standing at the bar nearby, just starting at us. She had her hand tucked into her jacket and a menacing vacant look on her face. VJ swore that she was about to pull a gun on the place. They were playing retro-'80s videos on two large monitors above the bar. VJ was dancing. It was a lot of fun. Some guy came over to talk to VJ, but made some sketchy comments, and she had to ignore him for a while in order to get rid of him. She has a pretty low tolerance and got very drunk fast. At one point, she went to the bathroom and while I was leaning over to scan the crowd for her, I caught the eye of the two guys on my left. I started up conversation with them , and when VJ came back, she joined us. One of them was really into her--I could never clearly hear his name though--Chad or Chet or something like that. The other one was a 7th grade math teacher, whose first name I don't recall. I was mostly talking to him. I asked the boys if they wanted to do a round or two of shots. They bought us rounds of Jager. VJ didn't do hers though. I don't know how much I ended up drinking at that place--maybe 6 jack& diet coke's, 2 shots of Jager and 2 shots of vodka? In any case, I was still in a place where I felt like I had to keep an eye on VJ and make sure that she had water and stuff. I don't know how necessary it was, but it was good for me not to let myself go completley.

VJ's ex-boyfriend was in town for the night, and left her two funny messages. The story is way too long to go into here, but the bottom line is that I used to be friends with him in college (in fact before VJ really knew him), but he and I had a falling out back in 2001. I haven't spoken to him since. In fact, there's a lot of animosity there. He wanted to convince her to meet up with him though, and when she said she was hanging out with me, he left her messages saying "I would love to see you and Hyde!" (Yeah, right...)

Anyway, at some point I must have reached my tipping point, because the night gets blurry after that. We headed back to Cheers; I remember thinking that my cell phone was lost, and panicking about it. I remember seeing the flirty Colombian and brushing him off, trying to make that my "bitchy moment," but I don't think I was sober enough for it to come off well. The "bitchiness" I'm hoping to obtain includes the aura of being in control. At one point, I couldn't find VJ at all. When I finally found her, she was laying face-down across a bench in the back of the bar, fast asleep. I have no clue what time it was. I woke her up and told her that it was time for her to go home. I insisted on putting her in a cab and told her to call me when she got home. It's funny though--I don't remember doing that AT ALL. So there I was--so drunk that I was in blackout mode, yet I was still trying to take care of her! (According to my research, there are two type of blackouts--"en bloc" and "fragmentary." Usually I get fragmentary blackouts before the en bloc ones set in.)

I was majorly concerned about my lost cell phone though. I left Cheers alone and got a cab back to Joshua Tree, where I worked my way through the crowd and asked the bartender if anyone had found it. I only have partial memory of that. (Fragmentary blackout, I guess.) VJ told me, the next day, that she had seen my cell phone at Cheers and had told me so, but I guess I couldn't absorb that fact, or couldn't remember it. (It's weird how alcohol impaires memory. I read a study in which intoxicated subjects could recall information immediately after its presentation and even keep it active in short-term memory for one minute or more. They could also recall long-term memories formed prior to becoming drunk, but beginning with just one or two drinks, they started to show impairments in the ability to transfer information into long-term storage. I guess if she told me about the phone, I forgot about it just an hour later.)

Anyway, the search for my cell phone at Joshua Tree was obviously a bust. I went back to Cheers, where PumpedUp had located the phone and gave it to me. That's about the last thing that I remember.

The next morning when I woke up, I had a text from Narc (sent at 7:31 am). He wrote:

Just got home, have a great Easter with the fam!

Well, that didn't seem right. How would he know my Easter plans? I checked my outgoing calls.

Sure enough, the record was revealing:

3:20 am: 1 minute, 16 second phone call to Narc
3:32 am. 1 minute, 5 second phone call to Narc

I'm sure that we didn't talk, but rather, that I just left him drunken messages.

Ughhhh!

And where was he that he was "just getting home" at 7:30 in the morning? Was he with another girl? Is that what he was trying to tell me?

Shit.

I wrote back to him:

Happy Easter to you too. Maybe we can catch up some other time...

Why I wrote that, don't ask me!

By Sunday morning, I was feeling really crappy and run down. VJ showed up at my place at around 9:15. She had left all her stuff here the night before, but hadn't picked it up because I sent her home in a cab. I had an awful headache, and my throat started to hurt on every swallow. I tried to refresh myself and wear something nice for Easter, but I had no time to shower, and just felt grimy and drunk. I picked up my usual hangover breakfast (gateorade, coffee, and something absorbant) and headed to the train station.

LilSis and JBC picked me up in Bayside--that's where my stepbrother is staying now--at a Children's Hospital there. He is really doing better each time I see him, although it's still impossibly hard to see him like that. He has some new tricks though--he raises his hand to cover his mouth when he coughs and he tried to use the blanket as a tissue. Best of all-- the other day, he opened his mouth and swallowed on command! And when his girlfriend came to visit him on Friday, he moved his arm to put it around her and played with her hair. He hasn't done that with anyone else, so it had to be deliberate. He was really tired yesterday though. Apparently, there had been a crisis earlier in the week. His pain-killer patch had fallen off, although nobody noticed it. (Basically, they have him on an equivalent of morphine). He developed a crazy fever and was sweating profusely. Then he started having frightening seizures and foaming and salivating at the mouth. Everyone panicked until they realized it was symptoms of drug withdrawal. They put the patch back on him, but it takes a while to kick in. In the meanwhile, he was flailing around so much that my stepfather had to stay the night and stay awake 16 hours, holding his hand and making sure that he didn't injure himself. (Remember--it's a danger for him to hit himself in the head because he's missing a big chunk of skull). By the time I got there this weekend, the drug patch was back in effect, but he was clearly physically exhausted from the difficult week. It's really hard for me to see him like that. I don't know how to act, or what to say. I usually just sit there holding his hand for as long as I can.

My mom and BigSis showed up, along with my aunt, uncle and grandpa. I was there from around 11:00 to 2:30. Then we headed back to my parents' house, to pick up my stepfather and brother-in-law and head to my cousins' house for Easter dinner. My sister finally had her finished wedding album (the wedding was back September, 2003), and we all poured over the album in the car.

My stepfather is Italian (born and raised on a farm outside Rome) and he has a huge Italian family. It's so nice doing holidays with them because the family is large, loud and boisterous and the food is AMAZING! They've got all sorts of treats floating around like homemade wine, homemade sausages and fresh pasta (made from scratch). The wine they make is crazy-strong, though, so I didn' t partake in any yesterday, given my sore throat and hangover. My step-cousin (who hosted the holiday) and his wife just had a baby in the fall. The baby is so incredibly cute that I can't stand it! I loved playing with him. I have such baby-cravings all the time. They haven't been so bad lately, but last summer and fall I was majorly afflicted. I mean, given my life, and where I am in my head, there's no way I would ever have a baby any time soon, but that doesn't get rid of the desire for one. Yesterday, I held on to him for as long as I could and it was so nice. The whole holiday was bittersweet though because everyone's mind was on my stepbrother.

BigSis, Bro-in-Law and I headed back to the city around 7:30 or so. My stepfather drove us to the train on his way to visit my brother in the hospital. Back at home, my throat started to hurt more and more. I just felt so run down. I fell asleep around 10:00 pm, and I'm definitely sick now. I just hope the doctor gives me something and that the antibiotics kick in before my voice lesson on Wednesday. We'll see what the doctor says... My appointment is in two hours or so...

later...

-Hyde