Canadian Bacon

Eccentricities abounded in this bristling pastiche of metropolitans. Tables lined the right of the venue with amber lights oozing up along the walls of this dark lower east side scene. The waitress had long, wavy black hair and a backless dress. I spotted the table with our neighbors to the North by a fierce aroma of cigarettes and high pitched “ehh’s” and “yahh’s.” The five beers I’d drank at my apartment before arriving proved essential in order to withstand the dull, tasteless conversation flowing across the table. Something about a girl’s job and what she did, working with “two full departments” and managing human resources…you know something along those lines. There were bright spots though. The sister of my only acquaintance at the table actually had an attention rousing past and sense of humor far beyond that of the two gentlewomen sitting across from me. Regardless, as I heard tales from Lebanon, France, and regretfully, Toronto I quickly ordered a drink, a touch of bourgeois class with a Stella, the everyman’s elite. I smiled persistently and drank constantly.

Predictably it was mid drink when I noticed some odd gender arrangements in the near corner of the bar. My friend mentioned to me that the entire corner had been rented about by a party of seventy. Looking over I audibly questioned what kind of party it was if they didn’t even have any girls. Of course, my question answered itself as I scanned the party and fell upon a graphic make out session taking place in a not so private area between two of the guys at the party. “Good for them” I thought, they’re already enjoying the night and it’s not even eleven. When I turned my gaze back to my party I realized half of them had left the table for their fifth cigarette break, each returning with a refreshing fragrance of incinerated toxins.

The entire time I was trying to decide whether the nausea induced by the stench of cigarettes was enough to keep me from being attracted to this fascinating mutt of clashing cultures, curly brown hair, and a sizeable chest. Her case certainly wasn’t helped by us needing to be so close to each other to speak at the next bar that I actually felt my own heart rate slowing from the residual nicotine on her breath. However, again the conversation we did engage in proved to be that hard to find mix of limit pushing punch lines and harsh observations of lesser beings around us. As we each watched in shameless entertainment as some twenty something in a long sleeve button down with the top three buttons open and half a bottle of gel in his hair approach one of the girls we were with, the human resources one, with an obvious intent to “pick up.” We enacted the conversation among ourselves dubbing his own lines with those of our choice, a very possible blog entry in itself as we leaned forward listing an assortment of disastrously dumb and unattractive pick up lines. Without going through the entire array I can tell you that “So, what are you drinking and can I buy you your next one.” As well as “You’ve got really great skin, moisturize?” did come up as distinct possibilities that if nothing else deserve further study.

After more drinking, some choice music and accompanied poor dancing I ended up waking between two girls, neither of which had been introduced up to that point in the night. There was, it seems, a distinct shift in which I went from lucid and partially appropriate, to blacked out and mildly offensive. Luckily I entered that transition only after reuniting with some long lost friends and leaving the group I had been with earlier. To avoid any misconceptions, there was no sex involved and the sleeping arrangement was completely consensual.