Retsina

Yesterday, the matted dreadlock guy-on-the-sidewalk was at the bus stop smoking a cigarette.

The grouchy old Norwegian guy who owns the laundromat turns out to be semi-fluent in Spanish. He’s giving this Honduran guy a lecture in Norwegian-accent Spanish about how if you use too much soap in your laundry you won’t get a good rinse.

He likes me, the Norwegian guy. He gave me a cart to carry my laundry in, and all the books that people leave at the laundromat. Mostly they’re crappy romance novels, but I scored a Modern Library edition of The Quiet American.

I hate going to the laundromat, though. Particularly walking to the laundromat. It’s a drag, and it makes me feel like a loser. The best thing about my new place is that it has a washer and dryer and a dishwasher, all for me and only me!

I wonder if someday I’ll be looking back with nostalgia on my afternoons at the Norwegian laundromat.

I had another dream about sex last night—another dream about fucking someone who wasn’t particularly into it. It’s depressing that even in my dreams I don’t have sex with men who wholeheartedly love and desire me. I guess it’s a matter of getting what you expect.

However, I have been sleeping soundly at night without sleeping pills, which is great. A reprieve from my chronic insomnia.

Last night I went to the Greek Fest with L and A. I’ve been avoiding drinking or at least limiting myself to two. Alcohol truly works as a depressant on me. If I drink enough to feel drunk, emotionally I feel like crap the next day. It’s not worth it. I would think L of all people would understand and respect this.

We got a bottle, then two, then three, of retsina. It tasted good to me at first, but gradually it seemed more and more like drinking pine-sol. They kept on refilling my cup, but I didn’t have any of the third bottle. I didn’t get drunk but the retsina made me feel sick. None of the fun and all of the suffering. And the food was only okay.

L got trashed, and I didn’t find it amusing or charming, but rather needy and annoying and dumb. A is nice but we don’t have much to say to each other. He did say he might give me his queen-sized bed, which would be nice if it’s less old and sprung than my current bed, which I bought used (yuck) when I arrived in Greenwood in 1998.

L dragged me out on the dance floor to do some kind of dance we didn’t know how to do. Normally I’m willing to dance to anything at anytime, but this wasn’t fun to me, It was too much like we were drunken boors making a spectacle of ourselves.

We ran into MP with his family and kid and girl-of-the-week. I used to want to warn his girls about him, but they may well know his reputation, and anyway they’re grown and it’s none of my business. The interesting thing about this girl was that she had a steel-grey pixie cut, but she was still hot. I wish I could pull that off.

L was loaded so A drove the Mighty Fury. I think it was the highlight of his night. We went to the Parkway Bakery, where J was playing. L’s idea. But it was an early set. They were packing up when we got there. J wanted us to meet him at Pal’s Lounge. But L wanted to go home. When we were halfway home she decided she wanted to go out some more.

Oy, I sound like a grouch. Let me say that L called later to apologize for being too drunk, at that she is still one of my favorite people, and that I am the grouch here.

Anyway, just as well that we didn’t go to Pal’s. J has given me a perverse lesson in how to keep a man’s attention. He has been infatuated with me for at least three years, despite the fact that I’m never going to give him any and have told him so quite clearly. I used to flirt back, but then I realized I was leading him on, which is, ya know, morally sketchy. Now I don’t answer the phone when he calls (twice in the last 24 hours) and I don’t respond to his invitations. I rarely go hear him play even though I love him as a musician. And he’s more devotedly smitten than ever.

If you don’t know who I’m talking about here and you think I’m being a hypocrite by dismissing the one guy who really is that into me, let me clarify that he is married. Also a bit too old, or let’s say aging badly.

He is the same number of years older than me as the Underage Deejay is younger than me. I think I ought not make a big move on the UD. A little flirting is okay, but if he really wants me he can screw up the courage to ask me out—or if he can’t, he’s too much of a wuss for me, anyway.