So the weekend during finals, I decided to take a break from the shitty-ness that decided to engulf me and head home for the weekend, and by weekend I mean saturday night, Sunday morning because I was too down/exhausted to head out Friday night. So I get home Saturday evening and then Loveseat calls me up and tells me he’s hanging out with his brother and a few people and I should come out. I drop my stuff off at home, chill out for a bit, and then head back out. We wound up at this party in this cramped apartment down in alphabet city. The theme was "grunge vs. gangstas," which you could tell was a lousy theme cause nobody bothered to follow it, besides four girls who i'm pretty sure were the ones in charge of the party. My excuse was that i didn't even know there was gonna be a party tonight. I kinda half expected it though. From my years of chillin with couch i've found that a night on the town means exactly that, a night that usually winds up at somebody's crib drinking beer. I'm not complaining...though my original intent for the night was to give myself a headstart on the shit load of work that had been dumped into my lap the day before, i couldn't possibly stay in the house all night. "Back by Midnight" i kept telling myself, though i probably should've remembered that i'm really bad at sticking to my convictions.

    but I digress....so we're at this party and the fact that no one of knew that it was a theme party gave us a great conversation opener with the four girls in costume. Old hip hop songs are playing in the background, the same background music from my younger years. I know the rhythms, the beats, but the words escape me. I was never one for lyrics, it's the music that gets me going. Although i have to say, being one of the two black guys there (the other guy was the older couch's friend chappelle), i kinda feel bad for not knowing the lyrics when everyone else clearly did. I always feel bad for not knowing all things black, but that feeling usually goes away...especially when there's alcohol involved. The crowd’s your typical lower east side crowd. I’m pretty sure there were a couple of musicians in the house, artisans, free spirits. I don’t really feel a connection to anyone, so I pick an empty corner in the house and I stay there, junior high school style. The party goes on, I’ve finished my first beer and I’m feeling pretty good at this point, but still, I’m not where I want to be. I make my way to the fridge. They’ve got 40s, Coors, bud, and the six pack of Brooklyn that I bought. Not wanting to be the kind of guest that brings his own cake to a party just to eat it himself, I grab a Coors and head back to my corner.

The party goes on and I chat up a 26 year old lawyer. I kept expecting her to add “student” every time she said that she was a lawyer cause clearly I’m new to conversing with people who are established in their field. She seemed pretty cool I guess, her red denim jeans are pretty much the only thing that sticks out of my drunken memory of her from the night. Wasn’t exactly feeling her at first, but the fact that she asked me what I wanted from a corner store run and actually got it for me (Twizzlers in case you were wondering) gave her bonus points. We pretty much hung out for most of the party…long after my midnight deadline.

We ended up leaving around 2:30 in the morning, and although I didn’t close by getting some sort of contact info, I felt kinda good about myself as the Paddington of old would never have been that social in the first place. Your boy has grown up, maybe not in the places I would’ve liked to have changed, but it’s progress none the less.