New Day

Okay, today is a new day and I am going to officially "move on" in my life. (What do you think, guys? Can I do it?) I've got a lot of school work to do, Hammer is coming back to the city and my mom and sisters will be here later this afternoon to go see a documentary about Emmett Till at the Film Forum. I managed to stay in last night after 2:00 and actually get a decent night's sleep (which for me is anything over six hours). As such, I don't want to be blogging about Narc and drugs and booze later tonight and to be brought back to that mindset.

So, here's the stuff I wanted to catch this blog up on:

My Fight with Narc on Monday Night (8/22):

On Sunday night I slept at Narc's house and hung out there the next day until around 4:00. When I was leaving, I mentioned that I planned to go out later that night and he said to call him-- that "maybe he'd join me." As I already mentioned in my End of Summer post, he called me and said he had been having dinner with a friend nearby and would meet me at Cheers in 20 minutes. (That was around 10:30 pm).

Well, to keep a long story short, he met me at Cheers. BarMan was on duty and didn't give me a hard time at all about bringing Narc around. NDN stopped by for a few minutes and chatted it up with us about plans for his upcoming date. Narc was moody and seemed depressed. I asked him why.

"It's just ModelChick," he said. "Whenever I'm with her, she just sucks the energy right out of me." (ModelChick is an ex-girlfriend of his).

"So why did you see her?" I asked.

"She had tickets to this rehearsal, part of the Mostly Mozart Festival for tomorrow morning, and she thought I'd like to go, so I went to see her mostly for that."

"Oh."

"So, I thought I'd sleep at your place tonight."

"My place? That's fine. But Narc, I'm not going to be out all that late tonight. I have a lot of shit to do tomorrow."

"I don't want to be out late either. This thing is in the morning. And I'm sick of sleeping through things. Lately, it seems like I sleep through everything. Remember, I even slept through the opera when we were supposed to go!"

Uh oh... Narc just made a BIG mistake. Don't tap into stored up hurt and anger with me! It's playing with fire. I can pretty much go into denial and "scrap" everything, but I do that by not dealing with those things. Then, if someone brings it up later, even if it's months later (as in this case), it's like opening a door and finding a fresh wound. No healing at all. When he brought up the opera, I started to see red.

I smiled at him bitterly.

"Oh, that's right! The opera... Weren't you supposed to make that up to me? Didn't you apologize for 'breaking my heart' and promise to take me to that dance show?"

"What?"

"Yeah, back in May... We were at Yaffa's."

(When I'm not drunk, I have a mind like a trap. I posted about that converation on May 24th.)

Now we were both kind of edgy and pissed at each other. Narc and I were both drinking doubles in the big pint glasses, and BarMan was joking around with us. I mentioned that I always wanted to call JerBer, but never did.

(JerBer is a guy who's always around the bar on weekends. He's a young kid and a great singer and pretty good friends with BarMan. I once mentioned to him that we should hang out and sing, and he agreed. But I never had the guts to follow up because I don't want him to think that I'm hitting on him, and it is kind of strange to approach someone like that. After that, every time I saw him while drunk, I made a similar comment. Recently, he actually gave me his number, but I still hadn't called, so I told BarMan I was thinking about it.)

Anyway, BarMan laughed and said that I should call JerBer, but that he was afraid I would corrupt him. We all had a good laugh at that, but I could tell that the comment pissed off Narc.

After that (when Cheers closed), Narc and I went to Manchester where we hung out with Sean Duffy and then when Manchester closed, we headed to FuBar. I don't remember much of the night after that. I only know that I woke up the next morning in my own bed and by myself.

Here's what I've since pieced together:

Narc programmed the jukebox at FuBar; I wanted to go home and go to bed, but he refused to leave before his set played. We were both kind of irritated with each other anyway; I threatened to leave; He said he hates when I get like that; I actually left. I left him there! Damn, he must have been upset with me!

The next day, there were two messages from him on my home phone:

Sent at 3:18 am:

Hey, Hyde. Your phone picks up pretty quick there. Um... Well, you know this is the Narcissist. And I'm sitting here at FuBar still. And you know what-- I wanted to say soemthing. And I'm going to say it now. This is all really stupid. I want to hang out with you and I want to talk to you and want to do all these things with you, but you keep getting all histrionic on me and it's sucky and I don't like that. I love it when we get to hang out and talk, but I hate it when you go all funky on me and just run off, and that's sucky. Anyway, my set was supposed to come on 10 minutes ago, but I'm still waiting for it, so... I'm going to be die hard and I'm gonna sit here and wait for my set. So I'm sitting here at FuBar and waiting for my set a few blocks up from you, sipping my Jack and Coke and smoking the occassional cigarette and uh --

(Then the message gets cut off. And I have to ask, what's with his vocab in that message? "sucky???").

Sent at 4:02 am:

Hyde--get the FUCK up!!! Oh shit... Whatever. Anyway, I'm heading back down. I thought I'd crash at your pad tonight and then go to do my Lincoln Center obligatory thing tomorrow with a friend of mine but you are not there, so... Alright. I'll go back home and we'll figure it out. Bye.

And that was that...

BarMan's show on Tuesday night (8/23):

BarMan had sent me a text on Monday afternoon inviting me to hear him play at CBGB's gallery on Tuesday night. Unfortunately, I had no one to go with. I racked my brain to come up with someone, and I finally remembered that girl Pati--the one I met the night before I went to D.C. I decided to give her a call. I called her at around 6:00 and left her a message telling her the show was at 9:00. She called me back an hour or so later and agreed to go.

"I just have to pick some stuff up first," she said. "You know what I mean..."

"No, what?"

"Um, E and some other stuff."

When I hung up the phone with her, I was feeling pleased that I had reached out to a sort-of-stranger, and it had paid off. In a particularly bold moment, I decided to call JerBer as well. That one was a strange conversation. He didn't know who I was at first and I had to remind him that I'm the girl who's always drunk at Cheers saying that I'm going to call him. I think he was a little shocked. He said he's busy until after Labor Day but that he'd call me after that. Then I asked him if he was going to BarMan's show. I told him I'd be there with a friend of mine.

"I don' t know," he said. "I was going to, but I still have some stuff to do tonight."

"You should come!" I insisted. "So if you do, I'll see you there..."

Pati and I had agreed to meet at my place at 8:30 and then head downtown together. I went over to Cheers to wait for her and to chat with IrishBird. When, by 9:00 she wasn't there, I wanted to head down by myself. I called her and told her to meet me at the club.

When I got to the club, JerBer was coming in right behind me. We said hi to each other and BarMan greeted us both. It was strange to see all these people outside of the context of Cheers. ThursdayGirl was there with her brother and a bunch of friends, and PumpedUp was there with SN, the bouncer. I bought myself a few drinks and parked myself at a table waiting for Pati.

When she got there, she told me to come into the bathroom with her. She had brought a tab of E and split it in half. I hadn't planned on anything of the sort because I knew I had my choir audition the next day, but what the fuck. I'm impulsive, so I took it and that was that. We bumped into BarMan coming out of the bathroom and I introduced them to each other. He gave me a sly look, as if he knew what we were up to, coming out of the bathroom together.

At one point, I introduced Pati to PumpedUp and SN. She told me that she had only been at Cheers twice. The first time, she got so drunk that SN wanted her to leave. The second time, he didn't want to let her in because he remembered the first. PumpedUp over-rode him on that occasion. So to smooth things over, I introduced her to SN as my friend. I think they must have been laughing that the two drunk girls had found each other and become friends.

The music on the program was all mellow singer/songwriter stuff. BarMan was really good, and as I started to feel the effects of the E mixed with alcohol, I just had to tell him so. When he came off stage, I grabbed his hands.

"You are so fucking talented!" I said. "I am so fucking impressed!" (I was feeling very affectionate)

He thanked me and laughed.

The Cheers crowd started to empty out a little after BarMan played, so Pati and I decided to head back to my place (which invariably means "medicine" if the trip is made in the middle of a party-night like that). She thought it would prolong the feeling of rolling. Good enough excuse for me!

Back at my place, we instantly bonded as if we were old friends. We talked and talked and talked about anything and everything. I usually don't open up to people quite that fast, but we had really good friend-chemistry. By 1:00 am or so, I was out of stuff and we had done a lot. (She does something weird, I have to add--she likes to empty cigarettes, restuff them and smoke them. I'm not so into that idea. It seems too much like smoking crack.) Anyway, I knew a comedown was about to ensue and didn't want to deal with it.

"Wanna go out for more drinks?" I suggested. "That way, we can drink through the comedown."

She agreed and we headed back to Cheers. PumpedUp had returned there, and it was pretty empty. We gossiped with him and IrishBird about that crazy night spent with Crys (the crystal meth dealer). They must have known we were fucked up on something. I think PumpedUp found it all very amusing. We also saw BulgarianGuy there. He was pretty drunk. So when Cheers was closing and the two of us were clearly heading out, he asked if he could join us. I agreed.

The three of us headed to Manchester where Sean Duffy was on duty again. But as Manchester was closing (around 3:00 am), I sent Narc a text:

Hope you're not staying mad at me from last night...

Right on cue, he called me back. We were already heading to FuBar.

"Hyde! Come down here!" he demanded.

"I can't, I'm with friends."

"Ditch them!"

"I'm not going to ditch my friends!" I insisted. "But I will come if I can bring them, and they agree."

"That's cool."

"What do you have to drink there, though?"

"Red wine okay?"

"Hold on, I'll ask..."

I asked BulgarianGuy and Pati if they wanted to go down to Narc's for some wine and chit-chat and they agreed. So we all piled into a cab. This was so fucking surreal---a collision of worlds! When we got there, Narc was pretty drunk himself and had a small bag of blow out on the table.

From there, things get blurry. BulgarianGuy fell asleep on the couch pretty fast. At one point, he had to go to the bathroom and was literally crashing into walls. I had to take his hand and lead him there. I told him I thought it was time for him to go home, but honestly, he was too fucked up for that. So we gave him a pillow and a blanket and he fell asleep in Narc's enormous sofa chair. (Later I checked the bathroom and he had missed the toilet and pissed on the floor. I cleaned it up, though, before Narc could see it.)

Narc and Pati and I stayed up talking for hours. He was being a real asshole--ignoring me and flirting with her. It was almost as if he was doing it just to make the point that we are not a couple. We talked about all sorts of stupid life isues and metaphysical stuff. The kind of stuff people like to talk about high. Of course, the subject of love and family came up, and Narc gave his same old spiel being all bitter and negative about family and love. I talked about lasting love and he said there was no such thing. I told him how much I still love B, and I think that upset him. I also told him how important it is for me to have kids one day. I don't think he liked that topic either.

Anyway, at 7:00 am I started to freak out because my audition was less than 12 hours away and it would take a really long time to come down off of everything I had done that night. I told them that I wanted to go to sleep.

"I guess I'll get going, then," Pati said, gathering her things.

"No! Stay here and talk to me," Narc protested. "Stay and talk."

"But Hyde wants to go to bed."

"So let Hyde go to bed. You and I can stay up for a while more."

"No," Pati smiled. "You two probably want to do your thing. I don't want to be a third wheel."

I could feel tension radiating from Narc. He so didn't like that this girl thought of us as a couple, and that she had stayed oblivious to his flirting the whole night. I mean, honestly, though? What did he fucking expect? It reminded me of how he flirted with Anxious in front of me the whole evening on the day before Valentine's Day. Anyway, I shot her a look, and she insisted on leaving.

"What's going on here?" Narc asked, "Some kind of secret girl code?"

After she had gone, Narc and I crashed to sleep. I didn't wake up until 2:30 the next afternoon and I kissed him goodbye.

Back at my place, I got back into bed and tried to nurse myself into shape for the audition. I was burning up with a fever and couldn't eat a bite. I took four tylenol and stayed in bed until the very last moment. Then I just put on my best game face and pretended that everything was fine and that I was completley healthy and robust. It was enough to get me through the audition, because as you know, I got in!

The Rest of the Week:

After my audition on Wednesday night, B and I went for dinner and to see 2046 at the movies on the West Side. He stayed over my place that night and I tried to sleep off all of the debauchery.

Thursday night was the major Narc trauma. I was exhausted on Thursday. Exhausted beyond belief, as I still hadn't fully recovered from Tuesday night's activities. I took care of a lot of business, though, going over to my teaching office, picking up my class lists, etc. I also began a new project--printing out my entire blog! (And it's DAMN long!) I want to keep it all in three ring binders as well, should anything ever happen to blogger. Anyway, I probably should have gone to bed early that night, but I didn't. Something led me out and back to Cheers.

I don't really want to talk about that night here. One strange thing though--I bumped into JFig again! (You can read about her here.) Then, at around 2:00 am I went down to see Narc. We hung out at the Tribeca Tavern and met a 21 year old Mexican kid from Arizona who's currently on 2-weeks leave from Iraq. Back at Narc's place, chaos ensued. It was a lot of sex, a lot of violence and a lot of tears. He called me some pretty awful names (whore seemed to be one of his favorites) but alternated that with declarations of love and tenderness. He wouldn't let me sleep until 7:00 am, and so I only got 2 hours of sleep that night. (I had to meet my sister early the next day). I'm surprised I haven't gotten sick yet.

The next morning, I called him and left him a message telling him that I left my shirt at his place, and that his behavior the night before was "unacceptable"-- that he had crossed the line. He returned my call with a casual-sounding message at around 6:00 pm on Friday:

Hyde, it's Narc. It's Friday. It's about 6:00. Um yes, I have your top here. Call me back. We have a lot to talk about. I'll talk to you in a bit. Bye.

I didn't plan on responding at all. I didn't plan on conacting him ever again. But last night, as you know, I got a little drunk and ended up texting him. I already put this in my last post, but at about 2:00 am, I wrote him the following message:

Could you just leave my shirt w/ your doorman by Mon? I don't think we have anything to talk about beyond that. Lol always... -H

(WHY oh WHY did I add that "Lol always"??? I'm a sick, sick girl!)

And so that brings me to today. I need to MOVE ON. And like I said, today is a NEW DAY. I'm going to try to stay sane and keep all of this in perspective.

Hope all of you had a better weekend than I did!

-Hyde-