This semester is getting off to a rollicking start. The past 5 nights in a row have been filled with debauchery, drunken or otherwise. Last night takes the cake. I started with a couple of beers at dinner, moved onto wine at girls night, then went out and had more beer, finishing the night with a shot. All in all not a ton of drinking, just enough to keep the brain lubricated and the action interesting. There were some highlights of the evening:
1. Girls night was fun...wine, snacks, hair dye, gossip...fairly old-fashioned, fairly fun.
2. Girls night was interrupted by a boy we all know...he brought beer, discussed skin care, made us laugh, taught us how to throw a decent punch (I, of course, already knew), and read aloud from the Cosmo monthly soft-porn fiction section.
3. The boy and I went to a local bar where we saw his very very very recent ex (as of 5 hours earlier) standing outside having a smoke, so he grabbed the hood of my coat, turned me around and pointed me back uptown where we went to the quintessential Columbia College bar. Upon entering the bar a couple of sketch older guys offered me a seat with them at the bar and a drink, telling me that I am a "very sexy lady." I declined, gestured to my very skinny male friend and said I had to go meet him. They said that they would save the seat for me, but they left. No loss.
4. We ran into one of the girls from girls night hanging with her boyfriend and his posse, whom we also know. We chilled by ourselves though, and didn't hang with her, despite the fact that we were hanging with her the rest of the night. When she and her boy left, we hung with their friends for the rest of the night, and that's where the evening got interesting.
5. That bar closed, so we went to a very very different bar...from dark wood, cheap beer, and undergrads to velvet walls, wine, martinis, and apparently a lot of really gay men.
6. After sitting down at the velvety bar, one of the guys we were hanging with, whom I met first semester as we sat next to each other in Torts, turned to me and asked me whether I was a member of Outlaws, the law school's LGBT organization. I started laughing and said no, not at all. He fell all over himself apologizing, saying that he thought he saw me talking to a girl from Outlaws and assumed I was a member...that he tends to remember people here by who they hang out with. This was a totally lame excuse as I don't even know the girl he was talking about, so I said, "Yeah, a lot of people get confused because of the short hair." He went to great lengths assuring me that that was not the case, but I know better.
7. A few seconds later a big drunken gay man fell onto a bar stool, knocking it over and several others over, chasing off the man he'd been talking to, and winding up falling into our seating area. The three guys I was with by this time were all straight, but one of them started flirting with this guy. Very very funny, very sad, very wrong. I shouldn't have laughed, but I couldn't help it. Then the drunken gay man saw me and started hitting on me in the way that all gay men hit on me, telling me how fabulous I was. Only this drunken gay man thought I was a lesbian. Told me that New York was not a lesbian town, that there needed to be more fabulous lesbians like me, and got agreement from all the other guys I was with of how gorgeous I am. The guy who initially asked whether I was part of Outlaws said, "Yeah, she's beautiful." I think he was just trying to make it up to me for being confused for a lesbian twice in one night.
8. I got one vital piece of information last evening. I thought that someone might be interested in me and just not telling me about it. I didn't know how to handle that. It doesn't look like it's going to be a problem. I think I am not the mystery woman of which he spoke. I should be less cocky when people tell me things like, "There's a girl I'm interested in, but I haven't told anyone who it is."