Far Out Son of Lung...

Friday with Bong, Blow & Wilson

My phone rang on the drive over, it was Leighton.
"Hey man, uhm, I think I need to warn you."
Ok...
"See, when I was in college we did some pretty stupid stuff, but I think I've grown up since then. You know, I act like a 25 year old now. But some of my friends, well... they haven't grown up yet. They still think they're in college."
Obviously, this could shape up to be an interesting evening. Excellent.

I'm not normally the type to go out for an evening at a pub. Normally, I'd have a fairly laid back night with friends, and I have not been drinking any alcohol for the last two and a half years. I never had a problem with alcohol, nor did I have a strange addiction. I stopped drinking because I was always on the motorcycle and the last thing I needed in my system was alcohol when I was on the SV. After the racing accidents last year I stopped riding for a spell but didn't resume with the beer simply because I was working my ass off to get in shape for cycling and just didn't feel like spending the money. Recently, I decided to put myself back in the nightlife scene.

Seeing as how whatever it was I had been doing to meet a nice woman and turn her into a girlfriend wasn't working, I decided that it was time enough to start getting myself out into a new crowd and see what happens. Over the last 12 months I've managed to date any number of cyclists and triathletes, all of whom were either 30+ years old and divorced with kids, or possesed some flakey personality trait that created all sorts of fun issues like, "Oh, and by the way, I already have a serious boyfriend", or some such thing. As such, Friday night was a little different.

Friday afternoon I emailed Leighton and Derek to see what was planned for the evening. Leighton sits directly behind me. Emailing someone that is 3 feet away carries with it a certain degree of fun that can only be appreciated when you are bored, want to go home and need a beer. Derek had already planned a quiet evening with his Fiance, but Leighton was in the mood for a brew.

Steve Blow and his wife have a nice little place on the M streets and it was there that I met Bong, Blow, Nate, Hal and two women that I cannot name because I wasn't paying enough attention when I was introduced. That, and I'm bad with names. Standing out in front of the house when we rolled up was Nate. Nate has a problem. Actually, Nate has a variety of problems but at the moment he's on the phone and it seems like one of those terse discussions where the person on the other end of the line thinks he's one place, when he's actually somewhere else. I figure its a girlfriend that he's blowing off for the evening, but no. Its his grandmother.

"Do you gamble?"
No, I don't play cards.

We walk around back and I'm introduced to a variety of people I would not expect to see sitting together on a Friday evening. There were the two women, Hal (very gay), Blow (the owner of the house) and Bong (exhausted, slumped in a chair), Nate (very redneck) and ourselves. Leighton reminds me of me from say, 4 or 5 years ago. The reason I say I wouldn't expect to see them together is because I hadn't anticipated such an ecclectic group. Nothing against any of them, they were all great. Aside from Nate peeing off the deck (while we all sat there) it was a pretty normal evening. After being treated to quite a few stories about the night before, Leighton and I decided to head over to The Corner Bar to meet up with another friend of his, though his name completely escapes me. He works for Blockbuster and does some sort of marketing. Outside of that, I know nothing. A free round of drink (thanks to two random chics at the bar) later we're winding through the crowd looking for his friends. We find them, and nothing memorable happens.

All of this is, of course, fluff. I just needed something to write about.

posted by GreSam @ 10:19