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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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The Demon Who Corrupts Your Children
So here's one of the things about being 32 and in college: Many of your friends end up being way, way younger than you are. Take as an example Mel, rockabillybabe, whose 22nd birthday party I attended last night. At a bowling alley. A bowling alley with a bar, thank god. Because if there's anything that makes bowling bearable, it's liquor. Lots of liquor. I've never been bowling that my bar tab didn't approach and, in many cases, exceed $100. But last night, you ask, what was the total for last night? Well, that's kind of a naive question. You have to remember that it was a party for a woman turning 22. So, bearing that in mind, what should your first question rightfully be? Right: Were all the party guests old enough to sit in the bar? And the answer would have to be: Why, no. No, some of them were too young to sit in the bar. Which meant that we had to sit in the bowling alley proper and so there was no cute little bowling alley bar cocktail waitress who came obligingly around to ask you what you wanted to drink, competently handled the interaction between you and the bartender, and then obligingly carried those drinks all the way back to your table. No, instead of this well-oiled system being put into action on my behalf, I had to go and fetch my own drinks from the bar. And a fetching Sublingua (why, do you really find me fetching?) is not a truly happy Sublingua. Also, I'll bet you're wondering: Was there cake? Why, yes. Yes, there was cake. There was a store-bought chocolate cake complete with little toy dump trucks to haul the chocolate frosting around. And were there ice cream bars to go with it? Why, yes. Yes, there were ice cream bars to go with it. And since the party at the bowling alley got started so late, we ended up bringing the cake back to Mel and Mel's x's house to eat. While we watched cartoons. And drank tequila. Okay, well, not many of us were drinking. Actually, only four people drank. But before I tell you about that, let me back up a bit and tell you about the party guests. There were eight of us: Mel, her boyfriend x (who just turned 22 a couple of months ago), one of their roommates Jordan, and a gaggle of girls: two Jessicas and a trio named Kerry, Terry, and Sherry (Kerry and Terry are twins). And me. And I was, of course, the oldest. And being the oldest, I'd like to impart a few bits of wisdom I've gleaned from my experiences partying with people in their early 20's: First, get used to feeling about seventy when you're with this crowd. "How old are you?" asked Mel the first time we went out drinking together. "Thirty-one," I answered. "You carry your age well," she said. "How old are you?" asked one of the Jessicas politely the first time I met her. "Thirty-two," I answered. "Oh," she said, trying carefully to repress any hint of a facial expression while giving a kind of slow nod, "That's cool." Second, get used to feeling like a pervert. Now, it's perfectly normal to think you're going to hook up at a party, right? Right. But when you're partying with young adults--that is, adults whose ideas of party games are still fresh with donkeys and tails and not, as they come to be, assholes and tail--well, the hook-up game is not so cool. Plus, these kids are very, very hot--because they're so damn young, and nothing major has had a chance to go wrong yet. Their bodies haven't yet told them that an all-Dorito and vanilla Coke diet is no longer a possibility. Their fresh young faces don't betray a slew of nights spent sleeplessly quantifying the amount of existential angst in the universe. So they're all still pretty damn cute. x, for example, is at the very top of the Friends' Hottest Boyfriends list--which is not laminated, thank you--catapulted there by a deadly combination of soft turquoise eyes and a hard body. And the K/Terry dimer? Nineteen years old, beautiful, and, as are nearly all teenaged women, insecure as hell. In other words, relatively easy pickings. (So keep your hands in the car at all times, please. It's the only way you'll be able to respect yourself in the morning.) Third, you may be able to drink them under the table, but they bounce back a lot quicker than you ever will be able to again. x didn't start drinking until nearly 11:00, then he had a few very large rum and cokes and started saying that his face was getting numb. I suggested that a few shots of tequila might help. And, when he agreed, we did a few shots of tequila together. (I had had nothing else to drink but didn't even feel the shots, laying them down as I was on a stomach full of chocolate cake.) And then, a bit later, when he was laying drunkenly, beautifully, on his back, at my feet, holding onto one of my boots, he called me an "instignator." No, wait, he called me an "instinator." No. Wait. I'll get it. He called me an "instigator" because I had encouraged him to get even more drunk than he already was. I have to take Max to work now. I'll finish this up in a bit.
More lies:
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