yeah for wedding days, yeah for drinking nights (sometimes)

everytime i go back east, i'm reminded of what i've left. i'm not talking about individual people. i'm reminded of those too, but i'm talking about the simple things like green trees deciduous trees and rain. they don't have those here. at least not in the quantities to which i've becomed accustomed over the past 10 years.

but it's the people that put a smile on my face the most.

yeah for wedding days
the wedding itself lived up to expectations. i thoroughly enjoyed myself. and i can't say i cried, because i didn't. what's the point? the bride and groom have seemed like a bride and groom for so long, so it's not like i was losing a friend all of a sudden. it left me with a very comfortable feeling. in a good way.

yeah for drinking nights
thursday night when we got to NC, we met the groom and a couple groomsmen for a few drinks. i had 8 while reminiscing of a most amazing time in Vegas at the bachelor party. wedding eve(?) i met up with everyone after the rehearsal dinner for a few drinks. i had 5 while spending a lot more time talking and less time drinking, and that's not so bad. wedding afternoon was the reception. since when do people dance and not drink? and i never got to the point that i was a pain in the ass drunk, and that's always a good thing. wedding night i was all set for more relaxing with a couple friends at a bar or two...

(sometimes)
unfortunately, things happen and you don't always get what you want.

you know how when you get one of those white drinking straws with the paper wrapper on it and you open one end of it and kind of pound the straw on the table squishing the once 10 inch wrapper into a single inch and you put it on the table and then dip your straw in your beverage of choice and trap a small amount of said beverage in the straw through a vacuum caused by your thumb or finger or whatever you put at the other end of the straw and then slowly drip eversosmall amounts of your choice beverage onto the previously mentioned squished straw wrapper and watch it twist and grow and you call it a caterpillar or a worm or something else fun until it doesn't twist and grow so much as writhe until you oversaturate it and it can't hold up against the added weight of those eversosmall drops of beverage ultimately leaving a pulpy mess on the table where once your healthy growing caterpillar once played?

you know those?

that's what i saw saturday night.

except the drinking straw is how my friend used to be, the wrapper is who they've become, the thumb or finger or whatever is at the end of the straw is their significant other, and the beverage is their relationship.

i've never seen someone so upset (angry), upset (sad), upset (frustrated), upset (crazy) at the same time, or at least not all in a 2 minute interval. and it's always bad when the bouncer comes over and asks if everything's ok because someone's just walked in off the street, stormed up to where you're sitting, start yelling in someone's face, and knock stuff out of their hands, followed by more yelling until the welcomed intrusion.

knowing they're not gonna make things any easier as the night wears on, we decide to cut the night short and hopefully make things better by grabbing some food. i'm pretty sure it didnt help. in any case, it was the easy way out...for most of us at least.

it's come in spurts, these drunken outlashings, and that bothers me. but at least there's an easy answer as to why it happens...he drank a lot. what i can't understand is how she can sit there, first ignoring him trying to wait it out hoping it will go away with a blank stare into her cigarette, followed by the forced smile and the first hint of a tear, and then the lips tighten together trying to keep the smile intact but quickly turns over in exhaustion, and any facade they put up is instantly shattered, and you can only think they felt trapped in their seat for a million reasons until she finally gets up and walks away. only to return. with a smile. and a hug. and a kiss. and it never happened. the last five minutes vanished. disappeared. and that bothers me more than any drunken stupor ever could. when it's obvious you're letting someone else hurt you but you think it'll make things better time and time again, it's no longer sacrifice, it's glutton for punishment.




- posted by yeah...about that... @ 6:55 PM