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It's five years ago, March 17th, dayton, Ohio. I'm sharing a house with a good friend-- really, I'm living there while she houses her clothing and cat while she enjoys her boyfriend's place in Middletucky, Ohio. (But the truth is that living here has saved my life. I'm not always good at showing my appreciation.) I eat about a meal every other day, in part because I can't really afford to eat, in part because I'm in the middle of a relationship that's on its way down, and fast. my eating habits are neither helped nor hindered by my weird tendency to smoke pot for lunch and half a pack of cigarettes for dinner.
In the meantime Ruthie (the room-mate) and Lance (The Boyfriend) have gradually, within the context of their happy, loving, mutually respectful and ultimately satisfying love affair, have each gained about ten pouns apiece over the last few months.
I'm jealous. So jealous that I can envision them, many years from now, holding each other overlooking a farm someplace in ohio with their cat and their dog and their three children, Lance in his office typing away at some journal and making the world safe for the Internet revolutionaries, Ruthie on the phone with her poets and writers planning, undoubtedly, a kickass writing party out in the middle of that fied. The kids are as robust as he is and smile as warmly as she. in the meantime I'm a sallowed-out drunk who tries every day to re-enact the feat that Dylan Thomas died of, only I swear I'm incapable of having my liver explode. So jealous in fact that I have to wait for them to be together, in the living-room of the house, in front of the refrigerator framed like the red-headed Idols of American Gothic, to look Lance dead in the eye and say
"You know, when couples get along they get a little softer. it's funny: as you two have been together I think I've given you all the weight that I lost."
We're in the middle of the living-room, next to the refrigerator and I can see the wall-calendar. It's the tenth. One week till everybody's Irish..
Which, incidentally, Lance really is. not only is he Irish, but he's 6'3", 215 lbs. and apparently very, very touchy about his weight. I'm five-foot-six, 125 pounds soaking wet, and (again) I eat once a day.
Flash forward to the 17th. St. Patrick's Day. By this time I've forgotten the whole thing. i don't remember the conversation because I've spent most of the last week brooding over something else. i don't know-- the end of a relationship, building a show I probably won't see through to the end--- anything except my backhanded, unintentional insult. Lance and ruthie and I meet at the house at about seven and begin drinking right away. i have no idea where the girlfriend is, and frankly at the time I don't give a shit.
We go first to a place called the Dublin Pub. (http://www.dubpub.com/index2.htm) It's a big joint for Dayton-- lots of loud, laughing folk crowding the narrow, long bar where drinks are slung by big, burly Irish-looking men dressed in black. The guiness is discounted and the jameson flows out of their bottles like the Nile to ancient egyptians. Lance and ruth know something I don't. We drink-- Lance challenges me to match him.
After the third shot of Jameson and the fourth glass of Guiness Lance offers to pay. i lose count of what else we drink, but after a while even the Jameson starts to taste good.
Now it's midnight and we go back to the house. It's dark, yellow, misty. I think I'm carried inside, though All that I really remember is the burn of bile in my stomach and the lurch through the living-room, into the bathroom where all the guiness and Jameson paste the bathtub. I can hear lance chuckling outside and Ruthie's silent.
I'm hung over for three days. God damn it I'll never talk about an Irishman's weight again. |
hahahaha!!!
Written by Guest on 2007-03-23 20:25:41
i miss ruth and lance! |
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