In which there’s bowling, Halloween, gigs, sex, cooking, file size, debt, and the end of DST.

Every Friday there’s a company meeting. Management shuts off the phones for an hour and a half and we all eat lunch and get up to speed on various new policies and whatnot. Last Friday, however, instead of having a meeting we all went bowling. The whole office! And there were monetary prizes! They paid a dime per pin and five bucks per strike; I got $40 for bowling two games. It was pretty freakin’ bitchin’.

On my lunch break, I showered at home and grabbed my tambourine and my lead book and my makeup. I did my face while sitting at my desk and talking on the phone with customers. Shouldn’t my skin be clear now that I’m old? At 8 PM I clocked out and KJ drove me (and my bro, who tagged along to have a few beers) to Dayton.

I walked into the bar and ordered a cocktail and a Gardenburger right off the bat. The gig was a throw-away; we had a sub drummer, only one guitar player, a chorus machine, and a list of bar covers. I only sang about half the night.

The rest of the time I crowd-watched. Between sets, I was sitting outside on the ledge along the front of the building, smoking a cigarette. A drunk boy approached another boy in drag – he was dressed as a girl for Halloween, with fake boobs and a hairy chest – and looked up his skirt. “Aw,” he said, “You’re wearing shorts! Where’s that twelve-inch cock!” The one in drag skittered back, laughing. He was bar tending at the Elk’s next door and wasn’t quite drunk enough to be comfortable getting groped.

“Oh come on, now,” I observed. “You’d probably have squeaked like a girl if he’d been going commando, dude.”

The drunk boy turned and eyed me. “Well, yeah.” Then he marched right up to me, thrust his groin in the general direction of my face as he straddled me, and then he sat right down in my lap. He waved his cigarette. “Do you have a light?” he slurred.

A girl behind him said, “You have your lighter in your hand.” The drunk boy moved his hand behind himself so I couldn’t see it. “Light?” he repeated. He was dressed entirely in brown, my favorite color, but the skin around his eyes and mouth looked older than it should have. Party boy. Lots of mileage.

“Of course I have a lighter,” I said, and dug in my pocket for it, the pocket between my leg and his left thigh. “Let me get it for you.” He squirmed in my lap. He was so drunk he dunked half his cigarette in the flame before he got it lit. “Nice Zippo,” he mumbled.

I slapped his butt. “Nice ass, baby boy,” I said.

He giggled and made a vague nuzzling move with his head toward me and then got up to sit beside me with more grace than I’d expected. He pulled out his cell phone and made a call. It went to voice mail. “Your drug dealer’s not answering,” I observed.

He looked at me, terribly serious in the way that only very drunk people can be, and announced, “I am the drug dealer.”

“You’re adorable,” I said, and went back inside to sing more cheesy shit. The crowd, much to my surprise, stayed all night – in spite of not seeming to particularly like the band – and got drunker. I got drunker too. KJ and Jay sat and watched and wondered what the fuck they were doing there. My new boyfriend Baby Drug Dealer groped me a couple of times; asked me what I was doing later; even came up to the bandstand to say, “Play something really awesome now.” Later, I saw him asleep with his head on a table as we were schlepping gear out.

In the interest of full disclosure, I also saw a drunk girl’s right nipple. She told me I had great tits and complained that having kids had made her fat; I told her she was gorgeous. She showed me her Victoria’s Secret bra; a guy she knew asked for some nipple and – what the hell, we’re standing on the street and we’re drunk and it’s Halloween – she brung it. She was blonde, so the nipple in question was the palest of pinks. Yes, it’s true: all the cool stuff happens to me!

After the gig, Barefoot’s loaded van didn’t want to go home. I spent some time lying on the floorboards shoving a 4-inch copper wire jumper into a slot next to a fuse but the thing still wouldn’t shift out of first gear. He parked it at the cop shop and rode home in the Buick with us.

I wasn’t in bed until three in the morning, but I did get $100 out of the whole deal. And a boy in my lap. And a Gardenburger!

After fewer than three hours of sleep, KJ got up and went to work at nine. I felt really bad for him… but not so bad that I didn’t just roll over and go back to sleep until noon. He came home on his lunch hour and drove me back to G’ma’s. The weather was gray and overcast and rainy and really quite autumnal, so naturally I had a big huge pot of veggie chili ready when they (he and my bro) got home from work at a ten after six.

After gorging on chili, Kaje and I went to his place where we drank cocktails and watched trashy BBC America shows for awhile on the couch. Then we went to bed and ravished each other and passed out. Yay orgasms!

Sunday we slept in. I slept even more in than he did; he got up and made coffee and breakfast. (Best. BF. Ever. He can find the button, he never nags, he runs his own goddamned errands, AND he cooks.) Then we went for a Sunday drive and visited Walmart and the Asian food store on Issacs where I bought salad roll wrappers and sushi vinegar and a few other items in preparation for the arrival of my bento box next week. Sunday evening I went home early and realized that my iPod is now incapable of holding my entire music library… which means I need a new iPod. A nice new 120 gig iPod classic should probably hold me for a few years, but I don’t really want to buy a new iPod just yet. I want to buy a new laptop.

But first I want to pay off my surgeon, my dentist, and that personal loan I got from my mom to move out here (the Loan formerly known as The Great Exploding Jeep Debacle). I’ll be doubling up on payments to them these next couple of months and will then be down to simply paying my debt reduction program; I’ll be able to double-up on that as well.

Eh. Debt. Whatever. If you’d ever seen one of my student loan statements, you’d know I’ll be in debt until I die anyway so what the fuck.

Oh, yeah, so then the clocks were adjusted an hour. DST is over and we’re back to good old Standard Time. I hate DST. I hate starting it, I hate ending it, I hate adjusting my clocks an hour twice a year. Fuck DST. Seriously. It should be abolished, and if I have time later (pun intended) I’ll write to my representatives and demand that they abolish it. Again. (They never do.)

Overall, though, I’d have to say this Halloween beat last year’s hands down. Job, paycheck, gig, a BF, friends, and a stable life. No evil Uterine Monster, either. It’s nice to be a real girl. Too bad boredom and familiarity are setting in again so soon; I really do have a terribly short attention span. Or maybe it’s just the season change. Hurumph.