The Awkwardness

I have a talent.

I can shove my foot pretty far into my mouth.

Once, at an internship, the intern manager got everyone together to tell them that if they were in the kitchen, they could be heard by everyone in the nearby cubicles. And he stared right at me while me said it. And I replayed, in horror, every conversation I'd had in the kitchen where I filled all the other interns in on office gossip.

I've gotten better at it. Applying the general rule of "don't talk shit" to my life has actually been pretty great for a number of reasons. First and foremost, obviously, it seriously cuts down on the amount of shit people talk about me. But a close second is that I don't get caught by the people I'm (no longer) talking about.

But life being what it is, I have of course found new and embarrassing ways to make an asshole out of myself. Case in point: this afternoon.

I met someone last night who was obviously more interested in me than I in him. There's nothing wrong with him, objectively, but I didn't exactly spend my morning practicing my signature with his last name in some middle school delusion. He texted me to set up a time to hang out this week and I told him I was always too tired and usually too busy to do much during the week, but if my weekend freed up I'd let him know.

Then today, on my way home, I passed by about ten bars. I hate walking home from work, because I have to walk through downtown Westwood, which is pretty much the greatest place ever to be if you love alcohol and clothes and you have unlimited money. Unfortunately I'm only 2 for 3 there, so I usually end up in a huge internal struggle which goes like this:

"You can't afford to go to the bars."

"Just one drink. Barney's has #3.50 beers all day every day. Surely I can afford that."

"Can you have just one drink?"

"No, but I can definitely just have two. And besides, there's no food at home, so I need to go somewhere for dinner, and I might as well have a beer with dinner..."

Often this struggle ends with me going home to eat a muffin (which is pretty much all I have at the house, thanks to the kick-ass IT guy at my old job who went to Costco and bought me my favorite flavor muffins in bulk as a going away present) but not being very happy about it; slightly less often, this struggle ends up with me going to a bar for a burger and a beer and walking out of a different bar at midnight, hammered, with five new friends and a singular level of dread about the rapidly approaching workday.

Today, in an effort to mollify my inner alcoholic, I stopped at Whole Foods to get an Arrogant Bastard. Enough to give me a solid buzz, but I could get my solid buzz at home without spending $25+ tip. And then Whole Foods had a sale on Ed Hardy wine - which I didn't even know they had - for $5, which was too good to pass up just for the humor value of a luxury clothing brand selling cheap hooch, so I picked that up too. I didn't even have a basket, I was just double-fisting it in the store on my way to the checkout.

When I saw the guy I just blew off. Actually, more accurately, he saw me. Which is probably worse. He saw me, walking through Whole Foods, alone, at 6:30 in the afternoon, with enough alcohol to make a frat boy impotent. After I told him I was too busy and tired during the week to do anything or go anywhere. So my options were to admit I'd been lying to him, or tell him I'm a lonely alcoholic ... which are not mutually exclusive, of course, but it's not the kind of choice I like to make.

last night i gave myself a concussion

Saturday nights are becoming kind of my unofficial black-the-fuck-out nights, because I spend all day Saturday bored sitting alone in my house and then even though I always tell myself I'm not gonna go out drinking, I do, because I do not know how to be alone for more than an hour and drinking is a great excuse to see people.

So I called my friend who just moved out here from New Jersey and he said he'd bring me to his friend's house to play beer pong and we got there and I walked in the door and I saw this guy who looked just like my old friend from the rowing team, five years ago, and then I was like holy shit that is him and so I said "Holy shit is that you?!" and then I looked at the guy standing next to him was another fucking guy from the rowing team and we had one of those it's a small fucking world moments and we took pictures and I drank a bottle of wine by myself in under 30 minutes while playing beer pong and this was, you know, just the pregame.

And then we went out to the bars and everyone let me order for them so we just did rounds, and rounds, and rounds, of tequila shots, and there's not a whole lot of memory after that so I'll skip to the end:

When we got home I was so drunk I fell off the toilet and landed on my head and gave myself a concussion.

last night i got mugged by a woman

So I went out in Santa Monica and had a fabulous time and met loads of cool people and then I decided to go home because I had to be up at 5:30 for work and I do not function well the day after drinking unless I get serious sleep time.

And then I got on the wrong bus because I was drunk and I had no fucking idea where I was which in retrospect is really funny because I got there by bus in the first place.

So then I got off the bus and started talking to this woman who was standing at the bus stop and asking her what she thought I should do and she said, "Take a cab," and I said "But I only have $20" and she grabbed my arm and when I'm drunk I'm really conceited so I thought she was a lezzer but then I looked down and she had a knife and she said "Give it to me," and so I did, and she didn't take my phone or my credit cards so I wasn't really that upset (but probably the drinking helped with that).

And then I flagged down a cop car because that's what you do, you know, when you're the victim of a crime, and the cops just laughed at me which honestly is what I would do too if someone told me they had just been mugged by a woman.