Despertar

june 14, 2008

At midnight, I was still at the Rockit Room with Iris and a bunch of our other coworkers, watching Justin from Marketing play lead guitar in his soon-to-be-disbanded band. It was a pretty amazing time. The other performers were all a little more soulful, a little less poppish, than Justin's band, so it was a nice variety. I was experimenting with different drinks, talking the bartender into taking me on a tour of everything he knew how to make that involved peach schnapps. His repertoire was pretty limited, so I settled into Amaretto sours and got happily drunk.

Iris did the same, and by one o'clock, we were both desperate to leave. Rachel gave us a ride home. I sat in the backseat and got really antsy as we drove over the Bay Bridge.

Sitting in the backseat of the car, idle, made the alcohol hit really hard. When I came in, I could barely turn off the burglar alarm with its complicated four-digit code. I threw my stuff down in a pathway toward the bed, stripped off the pinstriped dress I had worn to work Friday and fell asleep. That's why I didn't post Mark's reminder.

I had the weirdest dream, about taking some sort of tantric sex class with my boss and his wife, whose name and face I know because he talks about her all the time.

My phone buzzed at four in the morning. It was a string of text messages from Chris, who was still out with his friends, getting drunk. I was annoyed enough to throw my phone at the wall, but I didn't, I stupidly read each text and returned my phone to my side to fall instantly back to sleep.

My phone buzzed again at five. It was my subletter, calling with a question about the Comcast guy who was supposed to come equip my apartment with wireless internet. I think the subletter had forgotten we were in different time zones. Again, I was incredibly annoyed, but again, I didn't think to turn my phone off or switch it to silent mode.

My phone rang five more times over the next two hours. I was in that weird, hazy phase of sleep where, each time, it was still possible to drift back off, so I wasn't too resentful of the interruptions. When I finally woke up for good, it was going on eleven o'clock. I opened my eyes very tentatively, expecting to be severely hung over, but no. No headache, no dizziness. Just a dry mouth and an incredible need to pee.

After I peed, I proceeded to settle into the bedroom, which, as it turned out, would remain my location for the rest of the day. Except to shower, use the bathroom and to heat up some food, I didn't once leave the queen-sized bed, didn't once turn off my laptop or open the blinds or anything. After the shower, I changed into jeans, read some Follow the Leader entries, realized my scoring notebook was in the other room and decided to come back to them later.

I watched the whole second season of Arrested Development, while sort of tokenly trying to finish The Impossible Quiz. I played The Waitress, thinking I only needed to break 24,389 points to earn the site record, only to discover, after I hit 25,000, that the actual high score is somewhere in the hundred thousands. Which sounds really lame, but knowing that, and knowing I'm better now at The Waitress than I was in college, makes me really, really want to beat the high score.

I heated up the remains of my vegetable tempura plate from Thursday night. I talked to my mom and my grandmother, who praised me endlessly for my ability to remotely solve their technology issue. ("Okay, now go around behind the computer and make sure the printer is plugged in.") I talked to Aaron online; I emailed Justin; I talked to Meg (who is home, finally!!) and commiserated with Tina over the fact that guys are assholes.

I watched more Arrested Development. I talked to Meg again. I planned what I was going to say to Chris on the phone, when he called.

He finally did call around nine, but I was deeply engrossed in the Julia-Louis-Dreyfus-is-carrying-Jason-Bateman's-baby-or-is-she? plotline to answer the phone. I called him back a couple of hours later.

We shot the breeze for a while, talking about our respective drunken Friday nights, our resultant lazy Saturdays. I told him about my dad's overbearing Father's Day request ("Please write me a detailed email describing everything you've done in San Francisco since the day you left"), he laughed and sniffled on the other end. I asked whether his allergies were flaring up, and he said no, he's just been feeling under the weather since the heat got so bad on the East Coast.

I got a little anxious, thinking maybe it wasn't very kind of me to drop a bombshell while he's sick. My intention, see, was to break up with him, the consensus among friends being that it's fairer and less douchey to do that now, over the phone, than to string him along for the next five weeks and do it instantly when I see him in person, especially considering his birthday is the day after I get home.

I decided, as he was sneezing into the phone, that I would have to do it in increments. When our conversation was winding to a halt, I said, "Hey, so, I wanted to talk to you about something I thought of the other day, when you were saying you didn't feel like going out because you don't want to make me feel uncomfortable about your talking to other girls."

He got very, very quiet, and audibly nervous.

I said, "I just want to be sure you're clear that I have no real expectation of exclusivity right now. Until you said that, I kind of assumed we were both still free to interact with other people, and stuff."

He said, "I don't feel restricted by you. I'm used to only dating one person at a time. That's how I like it. I don't even know how you can focus on two people at once. Um, but, I guess I didn't realize that's where your head was at."

We went back and forth that way for a long time. He said, finally, "Well, whenever you're ready to be exclusive, you can let me know. We can still go slow. But I think you're worth waiting for."

For some reason, I felt better after we hung up. Now that I've written that down, I feel worse.

Meg and I talked again, for the third time, this time about our Father's Day plans. She was making a poster, and I was staring at a blank Word document, trying to will myself to get started on my dad's essay, which, I forgot to mention, was subject to a ten-a.m. deadline.

We hung up, I finished writing. I read some of the Follow the Leader bonus entries. I decided I felt a little self-conscious about the chartreuse/livid/portal requirement, but that it made it marginally more interesting than the prompt itself. Chris texted at some point to ask whether it was okay to refer to me as his girlfriend. I texted back, Not right now, drank a Smirnoff Ice and fell asleep spooning my laptop.