Friday night, I had time to kill between rushing happily from work (oh what a long day that was!) and tentative plans I made with Banana. I wrestled with going home to grab dinner and drop stuff off, but I made a trip to Target for some cheap gloves and then wandered down to Dumbo for a nostalgia trip.
Strolling down hill from Sands, I got hit by a memory wave. The first time I'd gone there and I ended up on a very long walk from Hoyt because I didn't follow the boy's directions. How I made the trek from the bus every morning on the way to work. How the giant condo building went from a lot to scaffolding and glass to this lit up thing casting a wide shadow. I really gaped at the new drugstore at the base. The only one in the whole neighborhood. I was even tempted to buy something because I was so amazed. I passed one of the guys from the deli I used to buy my ham, egg, and cheese on a roll. He asked me where I'd been and I said I worked in Midtown now, but was popping in for old times' sake. We exchanged goodbyes and I said thank you, it's nice to be remembered and we shared a smile before walking in opposite directions.
I slid up to the bar to order. The bartender is newish, but I've seen her in there the past couple of random trips that way. I ordered a hot toddy and found myself in conversation with one of the old timers before sitting on the bench and letting my hands and body warm from the liquid. An after work crew had taken over most of the back and I smiled at the memories of being one of them. Later sitting at the bar, I met the owner for the first time and told him that the place meant a lot to me over the years. I had some weird flashback to drinking in there with the boy and having our knees touch sending all sorts of currents through me. It's funny that it's taken so long to actually allow myself to have good associations to him again. Maybe I am really putting that shit behind me.
I strolled out of there, 2 toddys down and happy. I wandered over to that place I go nowadays and chatted with the friends there for a while. It's changing before my eyes too: serving food, a party bar writeup in a local magazine, and now a wall knocked down to make it bigger. I'm trying to encourage myself to not be weird and emo because it's dumb to be nostalgic over...last week. I've been getting frustrated there because the last prospect to get me excited in a while has gone MIA and tracking him down through the connections is a bit overly complicated. It's making me a little wistful which annoys me. But it's just not as fun to drink hot toddys alone.
Saturday, I actually tried to change that and met a new friend over drinks in the Slope. I've been trying to hang out more this way lately. I guess I'm getting a little burned out on spending an hour trying to get home from the bar. We ended up making friends at the bar and helped compile the crazy/jerk scale for men and women. The worst for a woman's behavior were being Cameron Diaz in Vanilla Sky, Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, or Lorena Bobbitt. For guys, sleeping with your friend, sleeping with a relative and/or a man, and leaving a pregnant woman shit out of luck. The normal baseline for a person was a 2. The sociologist in me was interested that the woman's list was called crazy and every number after 5 had something to do with violent acts (a drink in the face, which I'm not familiar with at all, was a 3) and the rest with temper/jealous issues. The men's list all boiled down to cheating and/or majorly screwing you over. I got it posed to me earlier where would prolonged deception about paternity go on the women's list. I gave it 9, a 7 if the truth comes out early. It was an interesting way to pass the time.
This weekend I was very proud of myself for relaxing to the point of ridiculousness. Saturday until about 8pm was spent either in or very close to bed and today wasn't much better. I'm super well rested for a change. It was so worth it.
