Hey Adam!

Another work party last night at the house of another of my bosses.  It was a much larger party that filled his very large house and spilled over to the decks and patio and pool than the one the night before.  I am not good at parties, to shy to interact appropriately, too aware that if I am talking to someone, I am not talking to someone else.  It astounds me that people who you've just seen at work will shout out, "Hey. . . you!" like they haven't seen you in months, like it is a big surprise to see you at all. 

"What the fuck, I'm still in the same clothes you saw me in this afternoon," I want to say, but of course. . . .

One prick that I don't like at all who is especially liked by top administrators was standing with a buddy of mine just as I walked to the outdoor bar.  I have had fantasies about shouting out, "Hey you bald fuck, get over here," grabbing him in a headlock and rubbing my knuckles too hard on the top of my head while shouting out playfully, "you. . you. . . you. . . ." 

As I walked up, he said, "Oh, wow. . . you lost all your hair." 

My hair has been quite a topic of conversation since I cut it.  People come to identify you with one look and so. . . .  Many people have not liked it at all. 

"Yea," I said, "while they had me out doing my knee, they decided to cut my hair, too." 

"Looks like they just put a bowl over your head and. . . ."

I was too quick, perhaps, like a trap door on a metal spring, like a snake taking a frog.  I grabbed his head and began patting it, not with my knuckles as I had imagined but with my fingertips.

"At least I have some hair," I said not even issuing forth "motherfucker!"  I hadn't even had a drink yet, and in truth I was already feeling low. 

It wasn't a good start for me, though.  Walking to the bar, too many people greeted me.  One fellow, an engineer who still lives with his college roommate like a frat boy starting pushing some awful specialty drink called a chocolate pretzel on me. 

"Oh, no. . . I can't drink those."

"Come on, wild man, do a shot."

"I hate sweet drinks."

"Don't be a pussy," he said. 

I started pushing my way  through the crowd to the bar yelling, "Fuck that.  Get out of my way motherfuckers. . . a drinker's gotta drink." 

At least I got my "motherfucker" out of the way.  I spoke it, though, in the high-pitched delivery of Duchovny in "Californication." 

People were pulling me this way and that to say hello, to get me to join a conversation.  What the fuck, what the fuck, I thought.  I just wanted to go sit in a corner for a while and watch the show. 

"I smell the smoke of marijuana," I yelled.  "Who's smoking marijuana?  There, it's coming from over there!  Ruth!" 

The careful and decent people were looking around wide-eyed saying, "No, no, that's not marijuana," but I wanted to extricate myself and could think of no better way. 

"Marijuana," I said.  "That's what makes me so goddamned fast!"  I was recalling a wonderful piece written by Hunter Thompson about Jean-Claude Killy.  It worked.  I saw my path. 

The smell wasn't marijuana of course.  Nobody at that factory would take such a chance at a corporate boss's party.  The smell was coming from the smoke of a fire in one of those outdoor clay chimneys.  It wasn't drawing right and smoke was pouring from both openings. 

"How's that possible?" I asked.  "Seems like you'd have to have air coming in from someplace.  This is madness." 

I sat down next to a woman I know and like.

"When are we going to Cuba?" she asked.  "We've talked about going for a long time." 

"As soon as we get our permits from the U.S. Government.  We can go for any of a number of reasons, but we'll need a contact there to sponsor us.  I mean, we could take down condoms to hand them out to the poor and call it a medical supplies trip!  It could take a while, though."

"Well. . . where can we go quickly, then."

"Mexico.  It's quick and fairly cheap.  We can go for five days and have a blast."

"Let's do it." 

The smoke had gotten out of control and people were moving away now. 

"I've got to get away from this smoke," my friend said and followed the crowd.  I waited long enough not to get caught up in some sort of migration that I didn't want to be in, then went a different way. 

On an isolated patio, I saw my college roommate sitting with another of our kind, uncomfortable misfits who'd rather be "among the throng, but not part of the throng."  I, however, was interested in none of it, and did not care to be among the throng at all.  It was dangerous for me, I knew.  Nothing but trouble lay that way.  This patio was the best route of escape as it was only a few feet from the road. 

"I need to go," I said.  "I'm getting weird." 

Just then the fellow throwing the party came out.  Soon there was another crowd.  I smiled and made my way to the kitchen where I ran into the friend who wanted to go to Cuba sitting with three of her girlfriends. 

"Oh my god. . . come here. . . look at your hair."  One of the pretty women was running her fingers through my hair.  "I LOVE it!" 

I looked at the other two uncomfortably.  "She's rolling, right?  She's done some Molly?" 

"Where are we going in Mexico," my friend asked. 

"We can fly into Mexico City, spend a day or two, then take the bus to Oaxaca."  I pronounced it "Wahaca."  Another of the girls sitting there laughed and corrected me. 

"Owaka," she said.  "It's pronounce "Owaka." 

"No it's not."

Just then a fellow who works at one of the other factory sites owned by the corporation tried to squeeze through the narrow passage I was blocking up. 

"Hey, man, I haven't seen you in a long time!"

"Yea, they don't let me come over there any more.  They told me I was banned." 

"Really?  You cut your hair.  Why?  I liked it better long." 

I turned to the girls.  "See," I said.  "Most people don't like it." 

They all said they did. 

"There you go, man.  The People have spoken." 

Then he started telling them about his own hair for some reason, saying that he used to have it long.

"Down to here," he said holding his flattened hand at the top of his shoulder. 

"That's really something," I said.  Why do people do that?  "We all used to be different, I guess.  Hell. . . I used to date girls!"

I turned to my friends.  "I'll bet my hair is discussed more at the factory than any other fellow's." 

"Without doubt."

"What color is my hair now?  Am I blonde?" 

Laughter all around. 

"I gotta go," I said.  "I really gotta go." 

"Well let's fly to Mexico," said my friend definitively. 

"Yea. . . to Wahaca!" (link).

I was almost to the street when someone called my name.  It was the same fellow who caught me leaving the party early the year before. 

"Are you sneaking out again?" he asked.  He was a foreman for another division, a right wing conservative with a wife, two kids, and an ambition to rise up the corporate ladder.  In spite of it all, I liked him.  I had mentored him when he got the job, and when I kidded him, he always laughed.  It is the most endearing characteristics a conservative can have, I think. 

"I've got to get home.  Early day tomorrow and all of that." 

Still, he caught me up in a conversation about work.  The entire time, I was inching toward the street. 

"O.K.  You coming to work tomorrow?"

"Of course. I'll see you there." 

Driving home, I thought of all the stupid things I'd said, all the mistakes I'd made.  Why can't I simply shut up, I wondered?  It certainly must be genetic.  I thought about standing in a room doing a Groucho Marx imitation, placing my knee in somebody's hand as I screamed out lines to the Margaret Dumont stand in: 

"I could dance with you until the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows till you come home. . . .  Remember men, we're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did!"

Etc. 

It was early, of course, when I walked in the door.  Everything was as it was before which is not to say "good."  I was still suffering from the troubles of my times.  My time. 

"Revel in your time," Q had quoted in our conversation earlier in the day.  I sat down at my computer and went to his blog.  And there I was. . . misrepresented as usual.  Well, I thought, I do that all the time.  It is good fun.  Anybody who was at the party tonight would not remember anything the way I will write it in the morning.  As Q says, I have to be the goofball hero. 

I did say some of the things in his post, though.  Sixes will make you happy, but we all want eights.  You can have an eight if you have a lot of money and a prenuptial agreement.  You can have a nine if you have the most money and not much of a heart.  But if you are a silly romantic full of emotion. . . .  We all know that story.  Pretty women get more attention than anything in the cosmos.  That is why the book of Genesis was written.  It is nothing more than an explanation of things, an inevitable cautionary tale.  When people ask me if I believe in the Bible, I say, "Just Genesis."  They think I'm joking. 

I did, too, say the part, too, about happy couples.  They seem to enjoy just being with one another and acting out the rituals of life, Thanksgiving, vacations, Christmas, the mall.  They have children and watch "A Christmas Story" together.  Right now they are decorating the house with Christmas lights and picking out a tree.  They fill the sidewalks and the hallways.  I don't know, maybe they are the happiest people in the world. 

People like us, though. . . what is it we seek?  We read too many books of the wrong kind, fiction rather than self-help books, poetry rather than instructional manuals.  We've tried to look too deeply and surely thought ourselves too special.  And if you are like Q or me. . . we demanded too much. 

Some of the other shit he said is made up, but I do have quite a collection of panties. 

And he is right.  One of them in his marriage was far too pretty for the other.