Is There Choice?

I hope you don't mind, Ryan, but I loaned Fatty the Tom Robbins Still Life with Woodpecker book. For some reason I can't read much of anything right now. I don't think spring's my season to read. He couldn't sleep that night. He'd read 3/4 the book while I was trying to fall asleep in the other room. I'm the kind of empath who can pick up other people's headaches. That night I shared Fatty's insomnia. Sometimes it's a curse caring too much for someone.

In the morning Fatty was recounting a passage in the book. He likes that Robbins flips reality and makes the reader consider the alteration of things we normally take for granted. Flipping.

CHOICE

Take this word. Write it on a full sheet of paper with a fat marker. Capital letters please. Turn it around and hold it in front of a mirror. In its reflection, upside down, you still have CHOICE.

That just blew my mind.


Wednesday was Dirty's birthday. She turned 36. For 5 months every year we are the same age. I took her to the sister restaurant of the Cheer's Equivalent, my place of employ, for 2 reasons: 1) I get a deep discount 2) everyone on staff is our mutual friend.

Dirty's Impromptu Birthday Crew
The Comrade
Dirty, the birthday girl
Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend
My Robert, a Mensa smart, very hot, young gay male who has had great difficulty finding a suitable partner in crime
Doyenne Kim, our sometimes fearful, sometimes fearless leader of both establishments
Ian, whom I used to make out with but like much better at a distance
Rob, Ian's best friend whose daughter is Ian's godchild

Dinner was fantastic from start to finish. It was made even more extravagant with Doyenne Kim's gift of cracking a $100 bottle of wine. Dirty was surrounded by 4 men. 4:1 is a good ratio at this stage of her life; she needs the attention of men right now. She's missed having a significant other in her life. There is something about the vying and the ridiculousness of men falling all over themselves that delights us girls sometimes. The Doyenne is with Militia Man, the fella who hates, more than anything in the world, to be shot at. I am with Fatty, but my Fatty wasn't with us that night. It was Dirty's night. He was still deep in my heart though.

After the birthday candle had been blown out, there was a suggestion our next station should be the out of district bar called Laide. It's an overtly sexy bar done in masculine greys; the runway entrance is flanked with headless body moulds in bas relief; the bar is horseshoe shaped with photo negative sized pictures of pornographic images collaged in black and white, a theme which continues onto projected Betty Paige skin flicks on the wall and the look of pre-cumming on the mature bartenders. There are semi-private make-out booths where it is not unusual to find random cavity searches. I kept my arms folded and my legs closed.

At the bar was another Ryan. Super Tall Ryan. Super Tall Ryan is the ex-boyfriend of Paula, the one who said on the topic of oversized areolas "bologna belongs in a sandwich, not on a girl's chest". Paula the one who received 14 bunches of daisies by my friend Ian with no word of thanks, but one word of lambasting. Paula. Paula. Super Tall Ryan? I told everyone he was 6'5". He asked me to instead say he was 6 and Sexy. Can you shed some light?

Super Tall Ryan: There are 2 sides to every story.
The Comrade: True, true.
STR: Apparently he was calling and texting a lot. Like 50 times.
The Comrade: I suppose the truth lies somewhere between 3 and 50.
STR: And she's nuts.

Super Tall Ryan recounted a night when he had come home rather late. Paula Bologna Tits had stuffed all of his earthly possessions into black garbage bags where they laid stacked, patiently for him, in the lobby of his mother's apartment. One night only. Then there was the time when she attacked him with the vacuum cleaner. He still hasn't forgiven her that one.

STR: Any little thing will set her off.

In the background, various conversations were had at the bar and the surrounding examination booths. Rob, Ian's best friend, with wife and child safely tucked at home, was bouncing from girl to girl, jumping unannounced and uninvited into conversations. Close talking. Inappropriately touching. Just the girls. Me.

I've never met Rob before.

The Comrade: Rob. You're going to have to back the fuck off me.
Octopus Rob: What do you mean?
The Comrade: What do you mean, what do I mean? Stop touching me.
Octopus Rob: I wasn't. I was just rubbing your back.
The Comrade: That's not my back, dude. Now fuck off.

He bounces underred to Dirty.
Then forgets and bounces back to me.
All members erect.
By this time I was by the entrance flanked in body moulds.
Ack was on his way out.

The Comrade: [as the Octopus is draped all over her] Ack! Can you take this guy out, please?

Ack mock slaps the Octopus with a stupid hat, made stupid by logos covering 90% of its area, I'd received from an event once worked. He wears it everywhere. A cranium billboard. 5 mock cloth slaps and he's gone.

Reason #1 why I am no longer married to Ack.

I pushed the Octopus off me and headed back to sit with Dirty and my lovely Robert briefly. Robert felt icky. Dirty was visibly shaken. Everyone had his/her own experience with the surrounds. With the Octopus. Each of them was unique, but thematically equal. Lude, overtly sexual and slightly terrifying. We'd decided the best course was to leave. Just one more cigarette, though.

Sitting in one of the open booths, no need for semi-privacy or otherwise, Ian, my excellent friend approached me, drunk.

Ian: What is your problem with my friend Rob?
The Comrade: He's a letchy fuck and I think you should take him out here now.
Ian: Fuck you! He's my best friend!

Fuck you's flew for 5 solid minutes. My voice came straight from the bowels of the Earth. I was gutteral, juggular, booming. The rest of the table was silent. Silent night. Holy... crap.

Zero back-up.
Again.
Though received expressions of earnest love and appreciation from Dirty later.
Nobody wanted to rock the boat.
Everyone else understood Ian's relationship to his best friend,
His relationship to his god-daughter.
Others had to work with him.
Best to maintain the peace.

Fuck that.

After Ian and the Octopus left I burst into tears, adding, "It's hard loving somebody." An hour prior to the 5 Minute Fuck You Workout I had expressed to Ian how important he had become to me. Of course I understood protecting a friend's honour, but my understanding stops when that friend is behaving like a uncivilised, lecherous beast.

The next day Ian called for clarification.

The Comrade: You didn't understand so you launched into a fuck you session with me?
Ian: [with lightness] I was really drunk last night, sorry.
The Comrade: I will not accept that excuse, Ian. I get drunk. All my friends get drunk, but we don't turn against our friends selectively.
Ian: Honey, Rob didn't understand why everyone turned against him.
The Comrade: Well, I kept telling him that night, Ian. If this is some behaviour he has, he should really check that.
Ian: No, this is really weird. Rob's not a touchy guy. I think he must have felt really comfortable with you guys.
The Comrade: Oh, he was comfortable all right. Sitting at the booth at the end of the night were 3 other people you trust. 2 out of the 3 have never complained about the attention nor the affection of men. You have never seen me lose it, but you made your accusations without any knowledge of any fact.

I was in the middle of my tirade, reinvigorating gutteral and juggular, when Ian got called off with work-related duties. He promised to do a follow-up call to both myself and the Octopus.

I'm still waiting.

Fatty: I wish I'd been there. I would have turned his body into one of those bas relief bodies in the entranceway.
The Comrade: You're the one for me, Fatty.


Dirty: I wish I could have said something, but I couldn't. Don't you ever change.

I don't think I could if I tried.
You can flip me, reverse me, turn me inside out and my choice is never anything but the same.