Most of the other patrons took notice and nodded. Everything was quiet again. Pedro didn't bother wiping down the blood with the rum rags he had; never did. Nice to know what the reception committee'd be like if I couldn't hold my liquor. I tanked my load and chased it with some author none of them had ever heard of.

And as the moon rose high and the scorpions scuttled around the moaning outside, an act of God got off its horse. Rain poured. People inside looked to one another in vague interest while mouths moved. There were a few extended mumbled bitchings as the power went out. Several candles and a free half shot later, the night and clients dragged on much the same way they always did. You came here to slowly die on the wide end of a narrow cup. No one thought twice about it.

That's what we liked about Pedro's. Some enjoyed it in pairs, some in drive-by groups decked with cowboy boots and enough sweet juice to get a donkey to bang them. I drank alone; I stayed for the atmosphere. I didn't add much to it, but the headless skeleton of Mexicanisto's old piano man made up for most of us. Winston swore he could hear it playing sometimes. It set the tone.

I ended up driving home on the wrong side of the road, half out of zoning out and whatever else. I shot my wad over a dead chick I wanted to marry once and fell into a coma.

Today felt like 3 day warmed up apple pie with a scoop of headache. The sun is high overhead. No point in editing night photography when all you pick up are highlights.

My DVD still hasn't come by mail. 1st class ain't what it used to be. Either that or an asian somewhere is dutifully not living up to Western stereotypes.

Little to note, really.

On saturday I went over to Brian's place for awhile in the afternoon. We talked, played some poker for the fuck of it, then headed over to Drew's after I asked him to call over. And over at Drew's we played Mario soccer repeatedly, listened to music repeatedly, and talked semi-incessantly. We put up a plastic sheet gazebo that wasn't meant to field rain, anchoring it with twist ties. Around 6 the signal came up to leave for food and give them a chance to clean up. Brian stayed to play soccer. I think he might've left 15 minutes prior to the party starting at 9.

So I ate, worked on some photos, screwed around online, then got dressed. This was a "pushing the envelope" party, so I costumed accordingly: all black clothing, short tucked in on one side, pant legs rolled up to my knees to show off brown socks, a bright-red tie on a hanes t-shirt, a stuffed hamster tucked between the neckline and tie to my neck, a green cocktail umbrella sprouting from my crotch. Oh, and I wore my shirt and pants inside out with boots on.

I got there at 9. No one really came until 9:40. Things were altogether dead and none too thrilling. Erin did show up after not too long. Always a pleasure seeing that one; either forbidden fruit or just really hot fruit, either way. We talked some about the generalities of summar working. She said she "definetely" wanted to do coffee for tomorrow (sunday) but had been too lazy to reply. I mentally shrugged. She'd brought up the original idea so it was far less adventurous of me than it could've been.

I bid everyone goodbye at 11:00, telling some I was going to the Inferno to dance and, I guess, not telling others shit according to them (i.e. the people that might've wanted to go). I was bored, I needed to dance, and I wasn't about to miss another night at the club over a social occasion. So I went back home, got out of my asschaps of a costume, converted to goth mode, then headed out.

It was sizeably full for 11:20. I didn't have time for an entrance strut so I siddled up to the front bar, mainlined liquor in 30 flat and waited to the end of the track. A guy who was all smiles and black came up to me. His hair was very spikey.

"Why aren't you dancing?" You could have parked half of Manhattan rush hour on that smile. I told him I never go in on the middle of a track. I just had a thing about it. He lingered for a moment, or I imagine he did. Some sort of thing about potentially introducing myself. I didn't bother. I stopped going to the Inferno expecting to meet anyone long ago.

And sure enough, I started in as the next song started up. The 'King of the queen DJ's' was spinning. She has three letters as her alias. Her actual name is Tattiana; met twice, talked once, and all forgotten to her with the phenomenon of club memory. Then again DJ's are a special breed of soulless creton; if they ever talk about anything besides music or the people they fuck, count yourself lucky. I'd have thought she spun last saturday for Leather and Lace, but I guess you could feed anything to fetish night and they'd eat it up. I'm not at all impressed with human suspension, but a grad wants me to take them to see it. Several want me to take them period.

So most everyone was doing the scary chains and spikes and oversized boots Goth thing. I'm a hanes t-shirt, slacks, and old black combat boots sortof guy. My excuse is I don't need to look like a hot topic catalog to dance my ass off. But I was still getting over a cold so I had less power than I usually do. I still have no idea how much of a tool/fool I look like sometimes, but it's fun, I like it, and its fun to people watch the other regulars.

Around 2am I finally bailed out before the night closed. My ears were ringing. If I could smell at all I imagine I'd was wearing an ashtray. I slid along home slow as ice. I saw Liz from Tat's party bopping down the street at one point, but I was very heavily in an old school Godspeed You Black Emperor mood, so I didn't bother. I got home, sat in my car for 5 minutes vaguely feeling like life should end, headed up, listened to GYBE, and figured I needed some human contact or I was going to get massively depressed and sit in my shower in the dark with the water running for an hour.

So I headed back to the party at Drew's, to see if anything was still there... (see part 2)

(But before I leave, I just got back a 2nd draft from my advisor on my manuscript. I always get angry when his criticisms don't really match what I actually wrote. Yes, I 'eyeball' graphs to see if there might be group differences, but he missed the point of exactly why I do that. Experiment-wise error rate is NOT trivial. I'm personally and professionally sick of seeing biomedical researchers list off their stats section like it was unimportant. I guess I'm just supposed to run with the herd on this one. And he wants the methods and results of four big experiments compacted into two large sections each. I do not like the idea of 7 pages of straight stats results. But what he says goes and I have to take it. So here I go to re-shuffle most of my paper and re-write up to 1/4 of it.)

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