Okay so

Okay so

So after a phone call to Naomi's friend Sarah on Friday night, we head out to Bloomington with Nadine and Nicole the next day. We joked that she was probably drunk enough not to remember us. We showed up at her work at the designated time. Turns out she'd left work three hours earlier. The joke's not so funny when you're three blocks from the girl's home.

We make our way to Sarah's place, hoping that she might just be hanging out there before going out. We get there and two guys who don't live there answer the door, one of which has a beer in his hand. You can imagine my suspicion. Turns out he's a brother of one of Sarah's roommates, Julie. Her brother's name is Pete. Julie's boyfriend is the other guy. We'll come back to them later.

Kelly, another of Sarah's roommates walks in a few minutes after we get there and saves the day. She knows where Sarah is. A guy from her work is having a party, and Sarah had already gone over there. Kelly made the tricky call to work (we figured, rightly, that it would work because she was a girl asking for a guy's number, not vice versa), and then left a message on the guy's, Steve's, phone. We stand around making futile calls to both Sarah and Steve. Nothing. Naomi and I decided to just go to a different party with Nadine and Nicole. Now, I was honestly trying to avoid this party. The people there tend to be nice but cliquey. Last time I was at a party there, I felt isolated. Later I felt isolated and drunk. It wasn't necessarily an experience I wanted to recreate this time. Luckily, Sarah called us about half an hour (and a bottle of wine) after we'd gotten there, and we soon headed off for Steve's party.

We got to Steve's after a brisk ten minute walk and go in. The party is pretty happening, and I get to see some of Sarah's friend who I'd met the last time Naomi and I were in town, and I get to meet some others for a first time. All of the girls are the kind of flirty, silly girls that always know how to have a good time. They also know how to make a fella feel welcome. This is definitely an improvement over the last party until...

Almost as soon as we ("we" being Naomi and I at this point) walk in, Sarah blasts Naomi with some awful, awful news; news too personal to be mentioned here, but suffice it to say, it's not news one wants to hear after walking ten minutes in the cold and into a party on a Saturday night. Suddenly I'm losing my grip on our second bottle of wine quickly and often. Five minutes after it was opened it's gone. I'll let you guess where it all went.

Now, Naomi is fine for about twenty minutes. We talk about the news she'd received over a few cigarettes. After a few cigarettes, Naomi feels like something's bothering her stomach. I'll let you guess what. So on our way back inside, Naomi makes a detour to the bathroom. I make for the kitchen for a glass of water.

In the kitchen, a bunch of those flirty, silly girls I was talking about earlier are in the kitchen playing Asshole, one of my current favorite drinking games. Melissa, one of the girls I'd met on a previous visit to Bloomington asks me to sit next to her. I do so, and I start playing her hand. Her hand isn't bad, but it's not great. I know she has a boyfriend, but he's an asshole. I know I'm just playing cards, but Melissa thinks I'm flirting with her. This is why I like coming to Bloomington. I can play whatever game I want, and I come out holding all the cards, so to speak.

Now, Melissa is sitting next to her roommate Christin at the table. Christin isn't a flirty, silly girl. Well, not flirty anyway, and she's got a deadpan sense of humor that kills me every time. She's a great girl, not to say that all of these girls aren't great in their own right, but I'm not sure how Christin came to hang out with them. She just doesn't seem to fit in very well with the others. Here's an example of a typical conversation between Christin and Melissa (Melissa being the archetype for the flirty, silly girls):

MELISSA: Haha, Drew! You're so funny!
CHRISTIN: Shut-up, you stupid bitch. He doesn't care.
MELISSA: Christin! You're so funny!!!!
CHRISTIN: You're a slut. I hate you.

This is why I appreciate Christin. I get more of this same repartee as I sit at the table that night. Eventually Melissa who is, to be fair, a very nice girl, gets on my nerves so much because she's been holding a conversation independently of the game, then telling me what cards to play so I intentionally went out last and stood up to walk away. I was taking up half the seat anyway, but as I'm leaving Melissa tells me I can have plenty more space if I want. I politely decline and walk off.

Now the party was pretty crazy and my memory's not so good, so my chronology's going to be completely off. I apologize for this, but I'll try to still fit in all the highlights, even if they don't make chronological sense.

At this point, Sarah is taking care of Naomi. We go to Bryan's room, Steve's co-host, and Naomi lays down to avoid any movement that might upset her stomach further. We spend a good portion of time in there for the rest of the party. I'll give some bullet points of how we pass the time from this point until we call a cab.

I'm in the line for the bathroom. The door opens, and three girls walk out. One hangs back in the bathroom. They had peed together. Let me make something perfectly clear: they had peed together. Man, I can't stand it when a guy's two urinals away from me in the bathroom even if there are dividing walls. I could never pee again if I had two or three other guys standing around talking to me while I'm trying to take care of business. Luckily the last girl gets her privacy, though, because, as her friend announces leaving the bathroom, "SHE HAS TO SHIT!!" That poor woman: I see her reddened face as she shuts the door, but it serves her right for watching other girls pee.

Adam, Pete, and Julie (you remember them from earlier, right?) show up. With our second bottle of wine gone, I swear I won't open the third until we get back to Sarah's. Like a deus ex machina, these three swoop in with a can of Old Style and swoop out just as fast. Adam, Pete, Julie: wherever you are, that Old Style was for you.

Periodically Bryan, whose room we were using as our makeshift detox headquarters, stops in to check on the stranger lying on his floor. He seems like a geuinely nice guy. He makes sure Naomi is okay; he offers to get her water. All this from the guy looking at the present Naomi's leaving for him in his trash can. In my book, he's either a top-notch guy or a good actor. His girlfriend wants us to think the latter apparently. After every nice thing he says or tries to do, she says something like: "He just wants to make sure you don't fuck up his room!" or "He just wants you to leave!" Now, what she says might be true, but there is a thing that Bryan employs that his girlfriend does not: tact. So, contrary to her intentions, she comes off as a bitch and Bryan seems like a saint to have to put up with her, that filthy, filthy slut.

At some point after we'd called a cab, we try to get Naomi off the floor. We figure a cigarette would be a good incentive to get her near the door. Eventually we succeed, but after we finish the cigarette, Naomi proves hard to keep tabs on. I walk upstairs to refill her water glass. I walk back down, and she's disappeared. After a quick inquiry, I head to a neighboring apartment to see if she's alright in their bathroom. I take two steps in the door, and I realize that the atmosphere in this room is completely different to what is happening just outside their apartment. I walk in and about seven people--looking very comfortable on their nice couch, listening to soothing music, and drinking their beverages slowly--are staring at me. I freeze and ask:

ME: Did a Naomi come through here?
THEM: (pause) Shoulder-length dark hair? Glasses?
ME: Yeah.
THEM: She's in the bathroom.
ME: Cool. Thanks. (looks down at glass of water in hand; looks in the direction of the bathroom; looks back at increasingly alarmed group; backs slowly out of the apartment)

Luckily Sarah walks down shortly after I walk out and carries the glass of water to Naomi. I found out later that I'm the only one of the three of us that made eye contact with the nice folks in that apartment, much less spoke to them. After they come out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, I almost instantly have my hands full trying to convince Naomi that no, the front lawn isn't the ideal place to "lay down for a second." We wait for the cab for 45 minutes before deciding to hoof the seven or eight blocks home. Incidentally, we do finally get a call from the cab company saying that they are at the residence we had vacated seven or eight blocks ago. In fact, we get the call as we're walking into Sarah's apartment parking lot.

So we get back to Sarah's finally. We order a pizza and pop open the third (and final) bottle of wine. Now it's my turn to guzzle a bottle. I believe Sarah and Naomi also had a little. Very little. We're all hanging out in the kitchen with Kelly (you remember her from earlier too, right?) and some guy from her hometown who had come into Bloomington to visit. Pete, Adam and Julie are hanging out in the living room during this time until Julie decided to go to bed...without her boyfriend. As I hear it, he tried to get in about twenty minutes later to no avail. I never heard why he failed.

So in my increasingly inebriated state, I'm picking up the vibe that Kelly's hitting on me even while the Hometown Hero's got his hand on the small of her back. Normally I don't pick up the signals very well, but I figured if a girl has her entire body turned away from her male guest, hasn't spoken to him the entire time I've been there, and keeps laughing and smiling and telling me how cute I am, there's a good chance that she might like me. At the time I just thought it's kind of funny, but I get distracted because about this time the pizza arrives, Kelly and Dude goto bed, and I sit down with Pete and Adam in the living room to engorge.

At some point, Naomi decides that she wants to wrestle because her normal wrestling partner who was supposed to meet us in Bloomington that night didn't show up. Pete is more than up to the task. That is to say, Naomi gets her ass owned. He even "plays dead" a few times to let Naomi pin him. You guys know what I'm talking about. He suddenly and miraculously loses all of his strength even after pinning Naomi 50-60 times. All of the sudden he's on his back. How's it happen? I'll let you in on a little secret: he doesn't need much help for external stories. Getting up, though, that might take some work...go ahead and straddle me as you try to lift me...yeah...that's perfect *yoink* and she's on top.

During all this, I'm getting excited as hell. Why? Not because I'm watching a particularly engaging male/female wrestling match (even though that on its own is entertaining). No, it's because midway through the fight, I realize that Naomi's socks don't match. I'm not talking about one white sock is an ankle while the other's a mid-calf. I'm talking one's white, the other's fucking blue. I start flipping out. I do this for several reasons:

I've had at least one and a half bottles of wine in me. I shouldn't need to describe my relationship between me and my wine to people, but just in case: we're like this.

I found out something about Naomi that I didn't know before. These things are very exciting to me, especially as I'm watching two mismatched feet flying through the air.

Wearing mismatching socks used to be a favorite pastime of mine to piss off my parents as a kid. Memories of me in one red and one striped sock scurrying through the house came rushing back when I saw those blue and white socks streaking across my line of sight.

So finally Pete and Naomi come back to the living room and Pete starts talking about a guy he wrestled and beat in high school that went to the wrestling state championship whose nickname was Ape. Now I don't know how many of us have tried to communicate a somewhat complex story while intoxicated to a bunch of other drunkards at the end of the night, but it's difficult. Case in point, after Pete tells the story, I keep wondering why Pete's high school had him wrestling apes as practice, and Sarah keeps telling Naomi to kick Pete's ass for calling her an ape. I'm not sure who was in the wrong here, but obviously none of us were in the right.

During or shortly after the ape debacle, Kelly walks out of her room in pajamas. She had told Dude that she was getting a glass of water. She tells us that she doesn't intend to go back. Apparently when asked how many girls he'd slept with, the guy replies, "Too many to count." Now, even if this is a true statement, you never, ever say this kind of thing. You always limit the number and always make sure to mention that you cared about every single one, at least at the time. Go ahead and cross "too many to count" off your list right now.

So Naomi and I go out for a cigarette to let Sarah comfort Kelly. We walk back in, and Sarah and Kelly have moved to the living room. We walk in to join them there. Naomi sits next to Sarah; I sit on the arm rest of the chair in which Kelly is sitting. Perhaps you read in a previous post that I cuddled with Miss Illinois on my Saturday. Kelly is the current reigning Miss Illinois. You can see where I'm going with this.

There's talk of putting in Finding Nemo. Kelly hasn't seen it. I say, well we should watch it. Cue the chorus of 'yeahs', and someone gets up and puts in the disc. Now I will admit that my memory is not so good, so I can't remember exactly what happened at this point, but Naomi did refresh my memory of this moment the next day:

ME: So I ended up cuddling with Kelly last night. It was cool, but I'm not really sure who made the first move or how it came to happen.
NAOMI: Remember how you were sitting on the arm rest of the chair?
ME: Yeah.
NAOMI: Well as someone put in the movie, you slid down in the chair next to Kelly. It was smooth.
ME: Wait. I made the first move?
NAOMI: Yeah. You were fucking smooth.
(italics are my own addition)

Yes. I made a move on Miss Illinois. And, word has it, I was smooth.

So the next thing I know, Kelly casually asks for someone to toss her a blanket. Someone does, we end up holding hands under the blanket, and she falls asleep on my chest. It was, if I may, fucking awesome. A nice cuddling is always worth a 45 minute drive, and this one was no different. The perfect end to a great night, and it was a great night despite some hurdles earlier in the evening.

In the morning I wake up on the floor. By myself.

...

That, however, is a different story for a different day. A completely different day, actually, because I'm not at all sure how the hell I'd gotten on the floor. I had Naomi do some recon, and I didn't do anything mentionable to have been made to sleep on the floor, so all is well in the gentleman department. Ah well, a nice boy I am, and a nice boy I shall remain until that fateful day...

night

(Editor's note: I did my best to try and keep everything in the same verb tense. I know I didn't succeed. I just don't want to know about it.)