Goddamn Middle Name: Updated with Sober Notes

I met Meredith at her apartment between W. 6th and W.9th tonight, the dead zone right? The place that all of us in our right minds avoid, because what's there except shriveled egos and skinny jeans? But apparently enough people go there to tie me up in cop controlled traffic, a clusterfuck of cabs and skinny co-eds running on their stripper heels through the cars, dropping their clutches, and men in collared white shirts standing on the other curbs yelling at them to hurry the fuck up.

Went to a fantastically lovely (watch out, I use the word lovely a lot when drunk it turns out) party at Julie's, a St. Pat's party. Completely forgot to talk to Regina about the Sudan, instead drank green punch and cajoled everyone into smoking and drinking champagne. Met a lovely 26 yr old who just moved here from Williamsburg and hasn't got a clue about how to establish a meaningful existence in the Rustbelt. I mean he's perfectly capable, (He's got the adventure gene.)but only a month in. Cities are a strange thing only a month in. All the boys are mid-20s now, I don't know where the guys my age disappeared to. Probably Chicago. Erin and Julie are lovely girls, their friends were all architects or soccer teammates, and later Meredith and I, driving back from the heights, talked about dorky things we liked, and wearing heels, and living downtown. Oh Heights! Oh Downtown! Oh W. 6th! All the places I will never understand people living, when there are so many other places to live. It's disturbing to sense an existence you can't understand, and driving out of the gated garage, into the apocalyptic mess that is W.6th at 2am, I texted a project partner, "oh this is me when I drunk text I will send you reams of pixels that might mean nothing in the morning, but this! This is what I'm feeling right now! How do I make that happen?" Poor guy. Probably doesn't understand that trying to write something new on command involves being vulnerable in sometimes a horrifically awkward sense, and therefore drunk texts will happen. I end up falling in love with half the world just by trying to find something worth remembering. (This is definitely true) I want to make something perfect so badly that I scar it, and then I want to tell you all about the scar and how ridiculous it is. (I wonder is this is actually true) I just want to be honest all the time about everything, but you all know my name, so I can't. (Totally true, I miss Livejournal and anonymity when it comes to drunk posts. You would hear a lot more about sex it turns out.) What a very long excuse for sending drunk texts. That awful kind of past drunk, where you are sober enough to know better, but riding on the high of the party. The mental drunk stays with you longer than the physical. (I think this whole last part was added to convince my mother I was in fact okay to drive.)

I found a girl's purse on the street, walking lopsided back to the parking garage, and I tried to ask the drunk frat boys in their pressed sweaters and cuffed jeans if they knew the girl whose ID and camera and tampons I was holding, but she was lost in the late night shuffle of hookups, where you run from bar to bar trying to find your friends, I've been there but on much different medication and cock (I don't know exactly what I meant by this, but I had a visual, a vague memory), and on the way out I saw another girl just like her drop her purse in the road too. (like, you could totally make a living just picking up all the purses at 4am on W.6th.) Alexandra Smith, I will try to find you tomorrow, but tonight I just wonder at your existence, and who you might become later, and all the people in the city I have nothing in common with at all. (Also, Alexandra, it's 4pm the next day and I just called your bank to have them give you my number, and you hadn't even canceled the card yet. Which means either a)you think you left it on the party bus, b)you're extremely irresponsible or c)you are kidnapped or dead or otherwise gone. Please don't be dead. Also yes, I totally looked through your pictures.)

Sometimes, like with this run of nonsensical entries (by which I mean boring) lately, I remind myself of that one Dorothy Parker story, but in a completely uncomplimentary way. That one of the Lady's Diary? Where she changes her nail polish constantly and there is always the same troupe of Hungarians? I sound like that.

Also I tried a shamrock shake tonight and it was utterly ridiculously awful, and now I wonder about all of you.

(I got three hours sleep and then went to Andrew's for a birthday brunch for Jere, and Buddy made a pyramid cake and covered it in gold sparkles, with like palm trees and shit. And that new guy was there, which is even more impressive. Hey, meet some strangers at a party, and then when they drunkenly invite you to brunch, actually come despite only having 3 hours sleep himself. I'm like that too, or I try to be. Andrew, Jere, they are too. It's obviously the best way to be.)