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More Ruminations from Richter's Today is the perfect day for lunch at Richter's. I felt icky this morning to begin with, and then, one of the brighter users in my office pissed me off by refusing to use her brain for half a second to understand why a USB flash drive (for which people have been screaming for ages, and of which I finally just got approval for the purchase of three) would solve her problem FAR more efficiently than burning a CD, so I signed out and walked out the door without a definite return time and with my messenger bag. After a little frustrated wandering through the streets, I landed here, to nobody's surprise. I've ordered my Cajun chicken sandwich (comes with chips, crisps to you lucky fuckers in the UK), and have begun my first half-yard of Harpoon Summer Ale. I'm not typically a huge fan of summer ales, but today being a summer day (however humid and overcast), it seemed the perfect answer. I plan to have two or three half-yards, so maybe later I'll switch to the Guinness I originally intended. This place is the perfect respite, haven, solace from a day like today, from a week like this, now, thankfully, for most intents and purposes, over. The miserable hack of a reviewer for the local free rag gave our Cabaret a rather scathing review, though he included major praise for our Sally Bowles (She IS brilliant.), and a line which I took, though it probably was not intended as such, as a severe insult ("with a solo pianist plodding amiably through the score"). My response, which will never be sent to him: "Dear Motherfucker: I am anything but amiable, and under NO circumstances do I plod. Eat my ass." Whatever. Fuck him. The show's entirely sold-out, and the night he reviewed was opening night, which was actually the first full run with tech, and we were all understandably a bit uneasy about whether the set was actually going to work or whether we were all going to sit there for extended periods of time in darkness with our thumbs up our asses. Other reasons why this week sucked? Yesterday, I was fucking itchy. You know the kind of itchy I mean. And then something, when I got out of the shower, probably that self-defence mechanism that's popped up over years of shagging, if we figure on average, there's a new partner every other week, and that's probably a low estimate, at least 26 new people per year, kicked in and I decided to examine myself rather closely, and found -- oh, yes, once again, for the first time in years (I think the last was in fall of 2000 -- the result, I believe, of fucking a married man and one of his friends?) that I have crabs, pubic lice, the least serious, probably, but one of the most transmissible, certainly, of sexually transmitted diseases. The worst part? I didn't even fuck the person from whom I think I got them. There are three possible options, though. Most likely: Last Friday night, after the show, I went to Patrick's house party, after taking off my makeup and fashioning my once-again-longer-than-I'd-like-it-to-be hair into a faux-hawk with this American Crew Fiber stuff that gives lots of hold but no stiffness, changing clothes, and burning a mix of fairly current faggot dance music for the host. For about the first hour or so, I talked to the usual suspects, flirted and generally looked sexy, 'til I managed to get myself introduced to the cutest boy there. He stands 6'5", is currently a hotel manager, was a collegiate swimmer, is 22, has beautiful blue eyes, and stared way too long when one of his friends talked to me, then held my hand for about 10 minutes longer than was necessary when we were introduced. (Now, I'm sitting here listening to the chefs, who are sitting right next to me, talking about making French toast with vanilla extract and heated molasses. Yum.) We talked quite a bit, and eventually, we started snuggling, and I gave him a back massage, and we made out, and we decided we should leave and went back to his place, where we determined that while we both wanted to fuck each other, we should hold off 'cause we wanted to get to know each other better, so we spent the rest of the night snuggling and sleeping, and occasionally waking to make out. In the morning, we showered and exchanged phone numbers. I phoned, twice, and left voicemail. That's the end, according to my rule regarding phone calls (I'll call you twice, usually within the space of two weeks, and if you don't call back, you get deleted), so I deleted his number from my phone. Trouble is, I think he's responsible, which really sucks 'cause on Tuesday afternoon, I had sex with an up-and-coming theatre figure who just finished the graduate program at UCSD, who was one of the youngest staff ever to be hired by the New York City Opera. He's hot, he's a great fuck, he's apparently brilliant, he's got a partner, and he's going back to California in a few weeks to work on a revival of a certain Broadway show from the 70s, and he's apparently as much of a hound as I am. Mmm...And he's possibility number 2 of where I got crabs. Possibility #3 is that my costume pants, which itch me mercilessly, are dirty. That strikes me as unlikely, considering the short life-span of pubic lice. Oh, my, I'm drunk, and I'm going back to the office like this, after I go home and put on the crab-killing cream. (My doctor rocks the house; if I know what's going on, I call her and ask her to call in a prescription, and she does it -- Permethrin, in this case -- Her receptionists know me, too, and generally just ask me to spell the generic name of the drug and confirm that Doc will know what it's for.) I'm watching Lindsay Davenport at Wimbledon now, and remembering how Jane and I were going to go to see a match, but we never did. My heart sinks. I await a half-yard of Sierra Nevada, the third half-yard of the day -- Guinness was #2. And it comes. Sierra makes me happy. Beer, good beer, anyway, in general, makes me happy. This place -- have I sung its praises before? When I arrived today, I sat next to a table half-full of English folks ('cause if you're going to be British in this town, this is the place to do it, the owner's German name notwithstanding). If there were a proper British pub here, this would be it. It could even pass for Irish, except that service is so fast, and the concoctions that come from the kitchen (a tiny, corner, smaller than what I had in Paris at 20, boulevard de la Bastille) are so amazing. The walls are dark wood, square panels, adorned with Guinness-brewing cartoons and Yale crew memorabilia from days LONG gone by. (There's a heart-wrenchingly hot boy in a backwards NY Yankees cap sitting at the bar, drinking, tragically, only a pint of something very pale indeed and reading this sorry town's latest no-count free entertainment rag. He's got very nice arms, and what, though seated, appears it might be a sculpted marble ass, and I want to grab him by the bill of his hat, drag him into the bathroom, and suck his cock, though "That's a thing I'd never do.") Much as I love this place and its rustic charm, I have GOT to get back to England. I remember, only vaguely through an alcoholic haze, an establishment which I believe was in or very near to Exeter or Exmouth. It seemed a quite large, old, red brick house in the middle of a field -- or a golf course, perhaps? And it was late June, and I'd swear that Jane and I were there with Liz and her roommate at the time (I loved them; they really WERE Edina & Patsy, practically). (A late middle-aged woman with positively awful hair and overweight, wearing a white t-shirt with sequined strawberries and plaid polyester trousers walks in with two men and orders water with lemon. I want her dismembered. She's even more horrific with her glasses, perusing the menu with a scowl -- It's a pub, bitch! Get over yourself!) I'm fucking watching Wimbledon. I'm sick. I want to be there. With her. "I want to wake up where you are. So why don't you slide?" Indeed. I'm thinking lately there's someone there I want to hang with...Maybe a group of people, actually...and get absolutely rat-arsed for weeks on end and menace all polite society with homicidal and obscene talk...and maybe action. It occurs to me that my recent expression of choice for when I'm feeling at the top of my game is "homicidal," as it's a synonym for "killer." It's a source of some confusion, though, as when I'm feeling really awful and angry and wanting quite honestly to kill, I'm also inclined to say I'm feeling "homicidal." Is any of us really ever what (s)he seems? I certainly think I am, though I don't always share it. It's always a bit disconcerting to realise you've spent more on booze than on food at lunch ($21 booze, $7 lunch, $7 tip). r
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