Well, it was an interesting weekend, to put it mildly.
Friday night, I went up to The Corner Pocket in Citrus Heights to hang out with Debbie for a bit. Later in the evening, her husband showed up, so we talked for a while. This was nice, as I haven't seen him since Lorelei was out here visiting.
One thing I like a lot about The Pocket is that the employees are (mostly) really nice. And they’ve got lots of pool tables, though I rarely play there. My biggest complaint about the place is that the music is too loud, and usually shitty. More often than not, it seems like the employees are the ones feeding money into the jukebox, and so there’s lots of distortion-heavy rock that takes little talent and all sounds the same. Not even really good heavy rock, mind you, but stuff that’ll be forgotten in five years. (Yes, I know that’s subjective.)
Kim (not sure of her status there… manager?... owner’s girlfriend?) and I talked about beer. We clearly have different tastes. I mentioned that their selection of draft brews was just awful. It’s the standard Coors, Miller, Anheuser-Busch crap, plus a hefeweizen, Guinness, Fat Tire, and Coors’ Blue Moon. I might be forgetting something, but that's the gist of it. And of those, the only one I’ll drink is Guinness. Now, they do have one tap that rotates. Not long ago, it was Skinny Dip, from New Belgium, the makers of Fat Tire. (I find Fat Tire way overrated, honestly. It’s not bad, but not something I’d choose from a given list.) Kim thought the Skinny Dip tasted like ass. I rather liked it. And on the flip side, currently the tap is being used for something else… I’ve forgotten the name. She loves it. I think it tastes very much like Samuel Adams’ Boston Lager, which is probably my least favorite S.A. offering. I suggested pretty much anything from Lost Coast brewery, and she mentioned that they used to carry their Downtown Brown. Used to??? Why on earth would you stop carrying that? That’s an awesome beer. Their Great White is very good, too. (Though my favorite is their Raspberry Brown.) At any rate, I don’t expect to see anything there from Lost Coast, or anything really good.
Instead of going straight home afterwards, I went grocery shopping. I like the fact that there are no crowds at Safeway at midnight, but the shelf stockers really should be more considerate of customers. Three times, aisles were totally blocked by them and their wares. Customers shouldn’t have to ask them to move their stuff in order to pass by, in my opinion. This is just another example of what I see as a deterioration of customer service in all sectors.
After getting home, I played City of Heroes for a while and didn’t go to bed until about four in the morning. (Yes, I find that just as pathetic as you do.)
Despite this, I got up before noon on Saturday and ran some errands. One of these took me to BevMo. And no… I didn’t get out of there spending less than $75. What is it about that place??? The lame thing is I didn’t even go there to buy any alcohol. I just needed some additional bottle stoppers, and didn’t feel like paying five bucks each (or more) for the fancy schmancy ones at Target. I have a few, but they’re already in use. At some point, Lilith and I will have our mead sampling night. And since I don’t expect us to drink four bottles of mead between us, it might be nice to be able to cork ‘em back up.
Yes, I did finally hear back from her on the no-show from last weekend. Seems she was involved in a freak household accident not long after we talked. I won’t go into detail, but it involved a snagged skirt, a child’s wooden alphabet letter, bare feet, and a fickle futon frame. Oh, and lots of pain. The rest is for your imagination.
Speaking of Lilith, she was a living canvas during Second Saturday. Her friend, Kevin Mason, is an artist who paints people. And I don’t mean portraits. You may have seen work like his before… he’ll paint a backdrop on canvas, then paint a person’s nude body to blend right into it. Take a look at his work over at http://www.thepaintedbody.com. Saturday, he was at the Smith Gallery on 11th Street, and as you might imagine, the novelty of watching a naked person being painted brought in quite a crowd.
For this session, Lilith was painted completely black. Well, truthfully, he doesn't use paint. He uses theatrical makeup. Much less hazardous. So she was completely black, and on this he painted silver stars, a comet, etc. She was against a similar black, starry backdrop, which also had planets. Eventually, he blended her into one of the planets by painting rings on her and positioning her just-so. It was very cool.
At one point, I was speaking with Kevin’s wife, and I jokingly said, “So if someone wanted to buy the original, do they just get to hang her on their wall?” Instead of laughing, she yells across the room, “Hey, Lilith… Cardigan wants the original, so you’re going home with him tonight!” Lilith just smiled and winked at me. Then she said, “Hey, you signed my books… I’m already your bitch.”
Um, okay.
Speaking of books… Kevin’s going to paint my book covers on the backs of Lilith and his wife, and they’re going to parade around the State Fair during my appearance there. Way cool!
Before the show, I’d gone over to Temple Coffee for an iced latte. It was nearly 100 degrees, still, by evening, and I was parched after the walk from my apartment. So I lounged there for a bit, and found myself thinking the girl behind the counter was cute. And then I checked myself. Dammit! ladyluck was right! I do have a thing for baristas!
Cybergal and a friend of hers were also at the show (she took the photos that will later be sold and posted online), and at one point wanted a coffee. I directed them over to Temple, and they really liked it. Temple’s on 10th & K, in case you’re local.
I went back there after the show, too, and this time got a hot beverage. Awesome. Possibly the best coffee drink I’ve had downtown. Some of the other patrons of Kevin’s show were there, and I got to talking with them. One of them was a kid (actually 20, but looked like a brown-haired, 16-year old Corey Feldman) who was drinking tea. He was sitting near me, and we talked about tea. Then he brought up wine… and I neither like wine nor know much of anything about it.
At one point, he’d mentioned going to conferences. When he mentioned them a second time, I said, “Sorry, what kind of conferences are we talking about?” He paused, then, as though he didn’t want to tell me. (Of course, you don’t mention conferences, even in the abstract, unless you actually do want to talk about them.) He demurred a bit, saying that I’d probably never heard of them. Mentioned some initials that meant nothing to me. Now, in my head, a thought was forming. At first, I thought he was going to mention “the lifestyle,” as swingers call it. But no… I didn’t get that vibe. As a poly person, I’m used to being cautious about mentioning my own lifestyle to people, but I was getting an even weirder vibe from this kid. No, I thought. Don’t tell me he’s into…
“Furries.”
To my credit, I kept a straight face, and nodded. If you have no idea what he meant by “Furries,” look it up. I’m not going to spell it out for you.
“The media always focuses on the really weird and unpleasant members of our society,” he said. And I was thinking, “What is the non-weird side of that?” He also claimed that 20% of our society are Furries. I wanted to say, “Oh, bullshit.” But I tactfully said, “Uhh… really? That seems pretty high to me.”
“Well,” he said, “I might be exaggerating a little, but I know it’s more than 10%.”
Again, bullshit. But whatever.
Let’s just say I’m glad he and his party left not long thereafter, because I didn’t really like the direction this conversation was heading.
Sunday morning, I went to the poly coffee meeting in Davis. There were five of us. Conversation revolved quite a lot around guitars and shoes. Don't ask me why.
Afterward, I didn’t do much of anything. Honestly, my day went rapidly downhill. I was feeling very despondent over my job, and overwhelmed by the difficulty of a career transition. But as bad a day as I was having, Lorelei was having a worse one.
She called and we talked for about ten minutes. And I realized that this couldn’t be one of our standard talks. Talking to her as a friend (or ex-husband) wasn’t going to help her. So I decided I needed to walk the talk. I needed to talk to her as I would to a coaching client.
Two hours of talking later, she felt like she was in a bit of a better place, though it’s just as likely to have been the Xanax. However, a few hours later, she called back, and it was like I was talking to a different person. Something, I guess, really clicked. She started talking about how she was now looking at things, and it was like she’d undergone a radical shift in her thinking. (This was one of the main things we'd talked about - changing how things affect us simply by looking at them in a different way.)
She said the “coaching session” really had helped her, and that she could definitely see me doing this for a living.
After that, well... my day wasn’t quite so bad.
beer
