Straight No Chaser

Narcissistically Speaking

i asked for limericks, i got limericks. it is nice to be heeded.

when you've got low standards, it is not difficult to create a masterpiece. it's a little harder, though, when your heart's not in it. last night was the first paint party to be organized and executed under the new regime, and the mood was weird. twin brother of the deceased did his best to make it seem like things were normal, tried not to leave us with too much time for rumination. the paper was already laid when we walked in, paint rollers waited by the door for each newcomer, greens and blues and blacks and purples (never any warm colors, we don't like 'em) in tin trays lining the only exposed strip of basementy cement. alcohol everywhere, which people downed immediately. no one apparently felt like being sober, not even for fifteen minutes.

the interesting thing about being the only one sober at a party is that you remember things, later, and you're the only one. i noticed, for instance, that james was in rare form, grief mixed with giddiness; making cocaine jokes that weren't really funny given how recently garrett kicked the habit. garrett, meanwhile, was sexually molesting every female present, taking literal handfuls of paint and dropping them down canyons of cleavage, chasing after them with fine-tipped brushes, obvious erection that no one acknowledged except jacinda. jacinda was uncharacteristically slutty. yasmin didn't stop drinking long enough even to notice that her foot was bleeding. devon and alvin were just as deadly wonkish as they were before college, sneaking off in between shots to read the articles in the floor paper.

i don't have a great time at parties, generally. most of the time i'd rather be anywhere else. same thing with this one. i wanted to find a computer and talk to aaron. go home and get in bed and wait for marcus to call. paint my personal magnum opus and call it a night. didn't happen that way. i mean, close enough. i only stayed two and a half hours, and i did come home with a gorgeous coup d'oeil, but i also wound up with a lot of paint in my hair and, inexplicably, a couple pictures of myself covered in green and dressed in atypical christmas gear. so. not a total loss of an evening. but a messy one.

i was hoping it would be fun for everybody, james especially. it was. i was glad. he needed that.

i am stalling pretty overtly, trying to determine whether and when aaron might return. because, just because. he is kind enough to keep us abreast of things. to titillate us with his wacky goings-on.

i am also. very cold. and not as sleepy as i thought i was, twenty minutes ago, when i told meg i was going to bed. i still will, probably now. and just not stay that way for long, because supposedly tonight's a phone night. i finally mailed marcus his gifts, paid one million dollars for the guarantee that he'd receive them on or by christmas eve, which he probably won't anyway, some weather debacle will fuck everything up and they'll wind up right back on my doorstep on the twenty-sixth. but. it is the thought that counts, after all, and i thought long and hard about each one, and it took me seventeen minutes to make him that snowflake, the one i slipped in with his card, so he has no choice but to adore it.

no call about the card i sent his parents, yet. probably for the best, because i still feel awkward about the phone thing.

giving up, slowly, on aaron's returning anytime soon. perchance i will check back in an hour.

getting sleepy, also.

and anxious to put up my pretty butterfly.

so.

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