Despertar

december 31, 2008

At midnight, we were finally heading toward the climax of the insufferable Yes Man; Jim Carrey was prancing around trying to get the girl in an irritating noless universe, and I was trying to stay awake long enough to make it back out of the theater. I looked really good, that night (gray tights, black suede boots, short short black skirt, tight heathered blue tee for color), so I wanted to spend more time out of the dark than in it.

Justin wanted to hit a bar, so we did. Most of our friends are still at their respective homes for the holidays, so it was like a whole different world, the same bar we normally congregate at after a school event but totally full of strangers. People who are probably the same age as us but who look like real adults just because they aren't students.

We bought drinks (rum and Diet, Amaretto sour) and played five dollars worth of Buck Hunter. I'm terrible, of course, and even though Justin fancies himself a pretty good shot, he hit several cows on accident, as well.

We bought more drinks (rum and Diet, Stoli Razz with Sprite and cranberry) and I told him about the debacle that was the ball, how the camera crews picked up every embarrassingly minute dirty-laundry moment, from my brother's verbal spar with the sixty-something coordinator to the noise disturbances emanating from the afterparties upstairs in the hotel rooms. I caught myself drunkenly whining about how tired I am of my elders warning me about the dearth of marriageable black men without offering up suggestions for getting around it. I expected Justin's eyes to glaze over, or worse, an argument to pop up, but it didn't. He is amazingly insightful, a remarkably good listener.

When it was time for me to stop talking, however, his eyes did wander up toward the football game airing over the bar. He told me to scoot closer, showed me a beautiful play, explained to me about why more coaches don't coach their players to fake field goals and take runs instead, the way the Ravens did the other day.

I peed four times in about an hour. Justin peed twice, and, the second time he got back from the bathroom, we started up a conversation about whether or not the average man is able to stop his pee flow once it's started. I contended that, yes, men are able to do that, which I know because, whenever my brother and I are both at my parents' house and we share a bathroom, I'm treated to the sound of his musical start-stop-start-stop trickle at the end of every pee. I know he does it on purpose, because he's done it ever since he was a kid, and back then, he used to giggle, doing it. Diddle-doop...diddle-doop...diddle-doop. I made the sound for Justin.

He said that was ridiculous, that no man can stop his pee flow without causing himself tremendous discomfort, and that he knows this not from eavesdropping on a relative (which I guess he was hinting was creepy of me), but from the actual firsthand experience of peeing through his actual firsthand penis.

The bartender last-called in the middle of this discussion. We ordered one last round of drinks (rum and Diet, watery Cape Cod [but I didn't complain because I was already dangerously swimmy around the eyes and throat]), downed about half of each one and started the walk home, still arguing about pee. It was two in the morning by that point, so Justin called his brother, posed the question. "You remember Shannon that you met this summer?" he asked, and the brother, who was high, said no. I felt bad at first, and then I didn't. We only met that once, and mine isn't a really memorable name, and he's always high and has his own life with his own problems. It's fine if they don't have heart-to-hearts about me every five minutes. "Well she says that" blah blah blah about pee, and ultimately the brother agreed with me.

We put a wager on it. If I ask Chad, and he says I'm right, Justin has to come see Notorious with me on the day of my choosing.

My apartment is like a whole different world without Valerie in it--she's gone back to New Jersey to be with her family for the holidays, and then she'll be in London all next semester. I thought about suggesting sex on the living room floor, balanced on the ottoman, the couch, or any of the newly available places in my half-empty apartment, but my room has the best TV, so that's where we ended up. Still talking about pee. Justin went to the bathroom and gave it another shot, and came back reporting that he could in fact stop peeing after starting, but only if he squeezed tightly with his hands. Which wasn't what I'd been contending at all.

We turned on CNN and had loud, clumsy sex, which is unusual for us. He kicked over a lit candle and I had to disentangle myself, frantically reach down behind the bed to make sure nothing was on fire. When I surfaced, he was waiting with that look on his face, that vulnerable, needy look, which made me think of Writing.com and something I'd once said about an erect penis being a symbol of vulnerability. Easing back into things, I thought about Caroline and Rod.

It was kind of rough this time, so it kind of hurt, but it was a good hurt. Afterward, I wasn't lying when I told him I expected to be limping into 2009. He laughed it off with nice jokes, a la South Park, but he was proud of himself. He told me I look great right now, that he can tell, about the Pilates. That turned me on to the point where, despite my incredible soreness, I wanted to do it again.

I fell asleep instantly after the second round, and stirred awake around five to find him rummaging for Advil. "Headache," he said, just that one word, and I knew the night was over, for better or for worse. Headaches completely incapacitate him, and even when they don't, they make him so unpleasant to be around, I sometimes want him to leave anyway. I stumbled out of bed and helped him look for pain relievers, and when we ascertained that there were none in my apartment, including in the giant heap of stuff Val had accidentally left behind, I offered to run next door to CVS for him. He said no, he was just going to go home and pass out. We kissed, for New Year's, and he left.

I stripped the bed and fell asleep on my bare mattress.

I jolted awake sometime later and realized I hadn't told my parents I was staying out overnight. That's the thing about being home for the holidays: It's hard to adjust those child/adult boundaries, hard to sneak away for grownup fun without feeling pressured to sneak back home, later. But my parents live forty minutes from my apartment, and I had had no intentions of driving that far with that much alcohol in my system, not to mention still kind of humming from sex, so this is where I was, awakening to the sun streaming in between my curtains, no idea what time it was because my phone had died at the movies. I dressed as quickly as possible in whatever I could find, which happened to be the previous night's skirt and a giant basketball T-shirt, and ran downstairs to drive home.

In the car, I discovered it was only seven o'clock. I'd imagined it was hours later, that I would have tons of explaining to do when I walked in looking like a scarecrow.

People were still asleep, so I went upstairs and went back to sleep on the twin bed that feels less and less like mine.

At three, when I woke up and went downstairs, my parents yelled at me for not calling the night before. I defended myself with the very logical point that, when I'm not staying home, I never call home to tell them where I'm sleeping or what I'm doing. They insisted it was different, that parents always worry, that you don't just not call when you're expected at home. Fine.

I went further downstairs and found my brother in the basement, playing Xbox with his friends. I tried to strike up a conversation, but my brother, who is entering a phase of extreme arrogance and faux wisdom in these months before his twenty-first birthday, was an asshole to me, so I went back upstairs.

I played some Sims. I hadn't mentioned this, Jenn, but I fucked up my old neighborhood, so I've got a new one now, and I'm almost caught up to you, generation-wise. I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed about that. It's a good set, though.

I read some Writing.com journals.

I took a shower and realized I was more sore than I had realized.

I thought about my plans for ringing in the new year. I was invited to two house parties and a thing at a bar in Adams Morgan, but I was fairly hungover and thinking about bagging it. Justin had plans with some out-of-town guy friends, which was why we'd made a point of going out the night before.

It snowed for about ten minutes, the wind blowing so hard it was blizzard-like from the window. Around six-thirty, the wind knocked our electricity out.

The six of us (me, my parents, my brother and his two friends) wandered around in the dark for about an hour, lighting candles and making light of the fact that we kept bumping into each other. Around seven-thirty, I realized our heat had gone out, too, and that it was getting too cold for our cockatiels, who are supposed to maintain something approaching tropical body temperatures.

My mom and I called my grandmother. She said we could come over and bring the birds.

It took an hour of planning and half an hour of execution to get those stupid warm-blooded birds safely from the lukewarm house out to my waiting car without letting them freeze in the interim. They fluttered around inside the cage and I tried not to think of things I had read about birds having coronaries in times of extreme panic.

We drove to my grandmother's house and went through the same thing again, carrying them from the car to the house.

I plugged in my phone and realized I had a million missed text messages, including several from my parents, wanting to know where I'd been, the night before. Whether I was coming home.

And one from Justin: "Sorry for being so cranky at the end, head really hurts."

I texted him back, "Didn't even notice, hope your head feels better, see you in 2009," talked to my grandmother for a few minutes about ferns and fell asleep on the couch.