two-twenty

this is what two martinis and a train ride will get you, on a friday, minus tip | alex

So I just bought my first iPod. Not that that has anything to do with anything, excepting for the fact that it has completely and totally changed my life for the better. Seriously, it is like the best $400 I have ever spent. And, as I quite literally said to the clerk at the computer store when I expressed this same sentiment while purchasing said iPod, I have spent money on some pretty fucking good drugs in my life (Hi Mom!). I would say, in honor of Uncle Grambo, that it was the apogee of all disposable income spending adventures, except for the fact that in order to qualify as a disposable income purchase I think you need to actually have the money on hand necessary for the purchase. This one was all about BankOne Visa, baby. Heh. I’ll bet they regret the day they gave yours truly a five-figure credit line… wait a sec… they’ve jacked my interest rate like eight times since then… hmmm.

Anyway. This is not about iPods. IPods are here incidental. This is about states of mind. Today went something like this for me: I woke up around 9am with a medium-sized hangover and an attendant headache. This was due to the fact that after a very pleasant p:dof-related event last night I decided to meet up with a friend to play pool and listen to the uber-extensive jukebox at Hi Fi (ex-Brownies) . We played eight ball against a couple of total losers who, inexplicably, kept beating us despite our clearly superior pool-playing skills and taste in music. I should here mention that these two rather unattractive Europeans (think: the worst of Benelux) were hanging out with two really-trying-too-hard hipster wannabe girls. We’re talkin’ ultra-low-slung-jeans-with-the-studded-belt, artfully-aged-tee-shirt, totally-un-post-meta-ironic-trucker-hat-wearing beeyotches. This made me quite honestly wonder if someone had stolen my idea of opening a hipster hooker franchise. The idea is that you would be able to hire a girl who would not only, uh, service you, but, much more importantly, would spend all evening with you in the hipster hangout of your choice making you the envy of every beautiful emo boy in the place. Side benefit… every one of the boys there would go home at the end of the evening and spend literally hours wondering how you got the girl of their dreams, and then they would write about it on their LiveJournal and you could read about it the next day. It’s sort of like the closest a man can come to being multi-orgasmic.

Anyway, when I woke up this morning with the aforementioned hangover, it suddenly occurred to me what I should have said to the one of those hipster chicks who I ended up in a short-lived conversation with. I should have, very seriously and all deadpan, asked her why her girlfriend was wearing such an ugly baseball hat. I would have said, “It’s like those hats that farmers wear. What’s up with that?” She would have looked at me kind of funny, wondering if I was serious, but I would have held my incredulous expression. “It’s a trucker hat,” she would have said. “Well, sure, I guess truckers maybe wear them as well as farmers, but how does that help explain why your friend is wearing one? It’s really unattractive,” I would have said. “It’s a TRUCKER HAT,” she would have rejoined. I would continue to play dumb until she was finally forced to either walk away or explain the whole trucker hat phenomenon to me, as she understood it (hopefully the latter). Next time I am presented with this situation, I am most definitely going to take the plunge.

Right. So perhaps you can understand that when the above is one of your first waking thoughts, the day is going to be a good one. I got up, made coffee, had a sesame bagel with chive cream cheese, and read an article in the Times about seniors having robo-sex in Japan. Then I went to the gym, where I witnessed two freakishly fit people engaging in some sort of bizarre mating ritual involving tossing medicine balls back and forth, patting each other’s tummies as they did sit ups, and rolling their hips suggestively whenever such an action might in any way be semi-reasonably associated with the exercise they were engaged in. This creeped me out, but I was safely cocooned by my iPod and was thus impervious to their aggressively creep-inducing vibe.

Next came a much-needed shower (more because of the drinking than the exercising), and then it was off to lunch with an ex-girlfriend who I had not seen in some time. We went to Rare and ate rather delicious hamburgers (mine had caramelized onions on it, because I strongly believe that whenever one is given the opportunity to add caramelized onions to anything one absolutely must). I learned, quite out of the blue, that she had recently become engaged to her very nice Dutch boyfriend (sorry about the earlier Benelux comment. I didn’t mean you. But you of all people should know what I mean). We drank several martinis in honor of our “business lunch”. About halfway through my second one it occurred to me that she was the first of my ex-girlfriends (as far as I know) to get married, or at least engaged. This actually made me feel sort of happy in a grown-up kind of way. Or grown-up in a happy sort of way, or something.

Then I found myself on a train on my way up to Newport, RI for the weekend to do something sailing-related (this means nothing to 98% of you. For the remaining 1.5 people, perhaps you can understand how this, combined with the recent hints of Spring weather, would only add to my already burgeoning mood). My belly had a warm vodka buzz, I had a beer in front of me and my iPod’s earbuds were nestled comfortably just where they should be. For some reason I cued up stellastarr*'s Somewhere Across Forever. As Connecticut rolled by, smoothed out and softened by a thick fog, and the goofily upbeat guitar kicked in, I realized that nothing all that great had happened today. Rather, my day had been suffused with an unfamiliar feeling: unbridled optimism. I was at once happy and seized by the oddest thought: this is probably close to how people like Lindsay Lindsayism and Sarah Ultragrrrl feel all of the time. God bless them, I thought. God bless them every one.