Ah, my father’s home. The place where I was raised. My old bong is still hidden in a corner of a closet somewhere. The majority of my record collection is collecting dust. Old friends still haunt these streets. At any moment a face from the past might hurl a rock through my window in an attempt to get my attention. The lights from the vacant parking lot across the street have gone out. Blackness outside the window. This town is a ghost.
The members of my family continue to make this the absolute worst trip back east I have made yet. These first 32 hours have been both upsetting and disillusioning for a host of reasons I will not explore here because this is not a LiveJournal, and you don’t give a shit. Luckily, good friends and hard liquor make the experience more tolerable. In a darkly comedic way, I laugh at my ability to be completely unable to just relax and have a good fucking time. It just won’t happen. Not ever.
I went to Wegman’s with my mother for lunch today. It was, by comparison, the “lightest” hour of my trip to that point. Everything preceding Wegman’s was arguments and emotional bullshit. The buffalo-style chicken finger sandwich tasted sweeter than ever. As excited as I was to come back here and gorge myself on pizza and home cooking, I don’t have much of an appetite. What’s worse, the simplest fucking thing — getting a haircut — turned into a surprise psychological analysis. I sat down expecting to talk about Atlantic City and blackjack and shit, but the conversation was a bummer. So self-absorbed and lost in my own bullshit have I been, I completely forgot that tonight — not next Monday night — was Lindsey’s big art/fashion show at Webster Hall. I made slightly-last-minute plans to bring Ian and Jon to the event. I was able to procure a vehicle and made it into the city in good time. Found parking right on the corner of Spring and Thompson. Jon offered me a shot of Jameson, which I was not going to turn down. Ian met us and we walked together to the event. We talked mostly about what all men in their mid-twenties discuss: music, silly things retards do, and anal sex.
Lindsey and Sam looked great, and were both in high spirits. Donny was there, as was Lindsey’s sister Lana, and some of their friends. Lindsey’s photographs looked cool on display, and…well, there was an open bar. The vodka drinks were free, mostly watered down, and even after double-fisting several rounds of drinks I felt only slightly buzzed. The “fashion” part of the show was a disappointment. The models were not model-y enough, they looked stupid, and one of them was doing a weird interpretive dance that made me want to punch her in the face. I’ve never seen a woman with an “outie” bellybutton try to model a shirt/dress before. It’s distracting. I made some new friends with my quick witted comments about how the anorexic girls at the party weren’t skinny enough, and the dye-job black-haired chicks should switch from heroin to coke because they looked as bored as their runway skills were bad.
Once the last girl took her last bow, all the lights in the room went out and shitty dance music started buzzing from all the PA speakers in the room. I decided to run to the front of the room and start dancing on the runway/stage in an attempt to show-up the models. I think I succeeded. I got some strange looks from the crowd, so my dance only lasted maybe 20 seconds. Then I said goodbye to everyone I’d met, Sam and Lindsey, and departed.
The best thing about driving back to Jersey after a night of forgetting why the hell I hate myself so much is getting to eat greasy diner food while you sober up. Broadway Diner in Summit was where many episodes of The Best Podcast You Have were conceptualized. I met Ken and Katie there for a late-night feast of eggs, potatos, waffle fries, grilled cheese, a toasted corn muffin, and chamomile tea. The worst thing about driving back to Jersey after a night of forgetting why the hell I hate myself so much is getting to sit in your childhood bedroom writing a shitty blog entry while listening to Secret Name and wondering what the hell you’ve done to deserve this.
