the Girl Goes Out
Ok, since becoming NOT a bakerygirl, I haven't gone out a lot. Well, ok, I wasn't going out then either. At least not where there were drinks and music involved and all that.
When my dear friend Cyn very sensiblely pointed out that I wasn't going to meet people curled up on the sofa in my apartment watching DVDs of Buffy th Vampire Slayer, I decided she had a point and went with her to see a band called the Fabulous Janes, which she assured me would totally cheer me up.
Let me say that for pure uadulterated fun, the Janes *were* Fabulous. They do covers of all the songs you remember the words to- some whether you wanted to or not- with a punk spin and are just generally a great entertaining time, as well as being good musicians.
They were playing at some place in the burbs which neither of us had ever been to. I am completely lost once you get past the city and don't know the west suburbs at all, but with Mapquest we made it out there with plenty of time to spare.
Turns out they were playing at a North Beach Club, which is this sort of bar/dance floor/bowling alley/ volleyball club, with two giant rooms filled with sand and volleyballers in addition to the more bar-like areas. They also- for the record- served the tiniest mixed drinks known to man. Since I don't drink beer, it was a good thing I drove, because otherwise I might have been disappointed at how little actual alcohol there was in my so-called drink.
Dear Readers... is there anything like a night out? I felt weirdly out of place, but in my current insecure emotional state, I couldnt tell if it was just because it wasn't my sort of place and I *was* out of place, or if it was just me feeling like Donald Sutherland in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' where the pod people all start wailing and pointing their arms at him, denouncing him as 'NOT ONE OF US!'
Cynthia pretty much made me get over that though. Thank God for our friends, huh? And, oddly enough, thank god for the big bachlorette party next to us, which came complete with little plastic penises to fit on all their straws so that everytime someone took a drink it looked like- you get it, right? Aunt Susie must have LOVED that!
But the penises were not even the real entertainment of the bachlorette party. It also included the one tremendously drunken woman everyone DOESN'T want attending their festivities. She was in her forties, with long blonde 20-something hair, and she got herself so incredibly plowed - on those tiny drinks, I might add-that it was, well... incredible.
Just when Cyn and I would think someone HAD to wade in and cut her off, she would knock over another giant glass of beer, or go up to some random guys and chat with them until they convinced her to reach inside her pants for...? not sure, didn't want to find out.
As for the guys themselves... let's just say that the tribe of young white men in plaid button-down shirts drinking lots of beer and behaving stupidly as if this is 'Girls Gone Wild Cancun XI' is alive and well. I am sure during normal daytime hours these guys are perfectly ordinary men. But there was something about the ambiance, the drunken bachlorette party, the sand, maybe? It drove them all in strange and unatractive ways.
The sand was kind of interesting. For the club floor, they took the vollyball area not in use and rolled carpeting over it. I had worn jeans and high heeled boots, nothing outragous. But I spent a large portion of the night trying not to turn an ankle, since the pitted surface of the carpeting made everyone lurch like a pegleged sailor, and dancing could be accomplished only by planting my heels firmly and sort of swaying around without moving my feet. Pumas for sure, next time.
The opening band were actually a tribute band to- the BoDeans, of all things. Now, ok, I can't say I don't like the BoDeans, because I can't even actually name one BoDeans song, except someone told me they did the theme song to 'Friends' which I didn't really watch, but hey, could anyone have lived in the US in the past, say, five years, and NOT have heard *that* at least once or twice?
That said, I think the BoDeans do a lot of sort of tuneful guitar-y kind of songs with guys singing in harmony and um, they weren't bad, but really maybe the BoDeans just sort of have ONE song and rearrange it around a lot? I couldn't honestly tell, with apologies to any BoDeans fans reading this. Maybe the sand just really played hell with the acoustics?
Anyway, this band was actually not *bad* or anything. They were all competent musicians and at least one guy had a really powerful voice. And I wondered, at what point do you decide you are just not going to make it as a *band* band, and instead decide to go for the steady gig of tribute band? And how do you pick who to trbute? Do you just admire the BoDeans profusely? Or do people keep coming up to you and saying ' Man, you guys sound just LIKE the BoDeans!'?
Cyn feels that neither of these views are correct and that in fact only a deep deep love and idolizaton and desire to emulate their idols would produce a BoDeans tribute band. She may be right, and at any rate, we did pass a relatively painless 40 minutes or so with them, which even involved some scattered applause and singing along, particularly from the bachlorette party.
Next came the girl who sat with us and got to the 'sloppy love of strangers' phase of drunkenness and kept hugging Cyn and I- also grabbing Cynthia's boob, which was pretty funny- and saying ' I LOVE you guys. I just LOVE YOU. I never like girls, but I love you!'
We patted her back and smiled at her and when she got to passing out point, we told her boyfriend to take her home. Turns out they had rented a room at a hotel across the street with the plan of getting 'totally shit-faced!' so they left somewhere in the second set. By this time we were up near the front of the stage dancing- well, ok, SWAYING- and after a while someone tapped me on the back, and it was the boyfriend back alone.
"Is she passed out?" I asked him, thinking he was kind of a jerk for coming back- but hey, if she is passed out, she isn't going to care, I guess.
"I don't know!" he yelled back over the music.
*blank look from me
"What do you mean 'you don't know'? Where is she? Not still here?"
"Nah, she's not here! She's fuckin' drunnk! I don' wanna deal with that shit- she's fucking drunk!"
*more blank look
"Well, yeah, but where IS she? Did you take her to the hotel?"
"Well, yeah, but she got out of the car!"
"What do you mean, 'got out of the car'? Where? On the highway? Is she passed out in a ditch somewhere??"
After a few hoarse shouted minutes of this, he managed to convey that he had gotten her to the parking lot of the hotel, she had gotten out of the car, and, pissed off, he revved up and drove back over to the club alone.
Ok, and here, is where I in my little glass house should not be casting stones. Because I did not leave the club to go and walk the nearby stretch of freeway or drive around hotel parking lots and see if I could find this girl.
I admit to being somewhat concerned, but decided if they had made it to the outside of the hotel, she must be ok, right? Ok, it is sad what fun cover music and cold weather will make us convince ourselves of sometimes, I admit it. But I was relieved the next day NOT to find any mention of women in their 20s dead in the ditch in Downers Grove. The boyfriend, sensing my disapproval, wandered off and I kept dancing and singing along with punk-flavored covers of things like 'Jack and Diane' and 'Don't Stop Believing'.
Come on, Dear Reader. Don't give me that look. *You* have all the words embedded in your brains too, and if you were there, you would have been singing and swaying staggeringly right beside me, I promise you.
Anyway, the band was great and I danced- without moving my feet, granted- and had one guy hit on me, telling me I looked 'amazingly hot' over and over and asking me what my favorite teams were-(um,hmmm?) neither of which was a huge turn on, but hey, it's nice to be noticed.
More confusing was his reaction to my age, which was to say 'no way!' several times, followed by the oh so flattering, ' But you sooo don't look that old!' After a certain point, even my female vanity finds that a tad offensive. After some of that 'dancing very close to someone else who is not actually dancing *with* you', he moved on to someone else. I was sort of glad- I'm sure he was basically a decent guy, but just not what the no-longer-a-bakerygirl needs.
Hands down, my favorite person of the evening - other than the oh so fabulous Janes and the always amazing Cynthia- was the ladies' room attendent. Surrouned by drunk girls with low rise jeans and stressed out hair tracking sand in all night long, she remained a bastion of calm, despensing paper towels, chewing gum, hair spray and tampax to the tipping and non- tipping alike.
Cracking jokes the entire time, making little comments- when I tied my hair up in the back to cool down, she said
"Oh now, girl! Dont TELL me you are gonna put up all that pretty hair!?"
I found myself much more flattered by that than by the 'amazingly hot' comments earlier. When a toilet stall got plugged up in a NASTY way, she was a drill sargeant, getting everyone in a line against the wall and going to the door and yelling out *basso profundo*
"WE DOWN TO TWO STALLS HERE, LADIES! THAT'S TWO STALLS FOR ALL OF US, SO LETS KEEP THE LINE MOVIN, AND *NO* TAMPONS IN THE BOWL! AND YOU-" this to another employee hurrying by-
"GET ME A MAN! I NEED A MAN WITH A PLUNGER AND I NEED HIM NOW, UH-HUH!"
When she came back in, we all clapped and she nodded and said,
"Ladies, you got that right! They got to be good for SOMETHING, right?!?"
I tipped her lavishly both times I was in and took a Cherry Blow-Pop to dip into my watery margarita. Getting home at 3, I took a shower to wash the smoke out of my hair, hung my smokey jeans by the back door, took some advil and went to bed.
By noon the next morning at the bookstore with Cynthia- my other very part time gig, have I told you all about that, Gentle Readers?- it all seemed but a passing dream.
So my little foray out into the world again went pretty well, even if I did feel like I was visiting someone else's nightlife world. But it did make me feel like I *could* go out to a nightclub again. Just that next time I am going to shoot for less sand- but be prepared for anything.
xxxooobakerygirl-no-longer
When my dear friend Cyn very sensiblely pointed out that I wasn't going to meet people curled up on the sofa in my apartment watching DVDs of Buffy th Vampire Slayer, I decided she had a point and went with her to see a band called the Fabulous Janes, which she assured me would totally cheer me up.
Let me say that for pure uadulterated fun, the Janes *were* Fabulous. They do covers of all the songs you remember the words to- some whether you wanted to or not- with a punk spin and are just generally a great entertaining time, as well as being good musicians.
They were playing at some place in the burbs which neither of us had ever been to. I am completely lost once you get past the city and don't know the west suburbs at all, but with Mapquest we made it out there with plenty of time to spare.
Turns out they were playing at a North Beach Club, which is this sort of bar/dance floor/bowling alley/ volleyball club, with two giant rooms filled with sand and volleyballers in addition to the more bar-like areas. They also- for the record- served the tiniest mixed drinks known to man. Since I don't drink beer, it was a good thing I drove, because otherwise I might have been disappointed at how little actual alcohol there was in my so-called drink.
Dear Readers... is there anything like a night out? I felt weirdly out of place, but in my current insecure emotional state, I couldnt tell if it was just because it wasn't my sort of place and I *was* out of place, or if it was just me feeling like Donald Sutherland in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' where the pod people all start wailing and pointing their arms at him, denouncing him as 'NOT ONE OF US!'
Cynthia pretty much made me get over that though. Thank God for our friends, huh? And, oddly enough, thank god for the big bachlorette party next to us, which came complete with little plastic penises to fit on all their straws so that everytime someone took a drink it looked like- you get it, right? Aunt Susie must have LOVED that!
But the penises were not even the real entertainment of the bachlorette party. It also included the one tremendously drunken woman everyone DOESN'T want attending their festivities. She was in her forties, with long blonde 20-something hair, and she got herself so incredibly plowed - on those tiny drinks, I might add-that it was, well... incredible.
Just when Cyn and I would think someone HAD to wade in and cut her off, she would knock over another giant glass of beer, or go up to some random guys and chat with them until they convinced her to reach inside her pants for...? not sure, didn't want to find out.
As for the guys themselves... let's just say that the tribe of young white men in plaid button-down shirts drinking lots of beer and behaving stupidly as if this is 'Girls Gone Wild Cancun XI' is alive and well. I am sure during normal daytime hours these guys are perfectly ordinary men. But there was something about the ambiance, the drunken bachlorette party, the sand, maybe? It drove them all in strange and unatractive ways.
The sand was kind of interesting. For the club floor, they took the vollyball area not in use and rolled carpeting over it. I had worn jeans and high heeled boots, nothing outragous. But I spent a large portion of the night trying not to turn an ankle, since the pitted surface of the carpeting made everyone lurch like a pegleged sailor, and dancing could be accomplished only by planting my heels firmly and sort of swaying around without moving my feet. Pumas for sure, next time.
The opening band were actually a tribute band to- the BoDeans, of all things. Now, ok, I can't say I don't like the BoDeans, because I can't even actually name one BoDeans song, except someone told me they did the theme song to 'Friends' which I didn't really watch, but hey, could anyone have lived in the US in the past, say, five years, and NOT have heard *that* at least once or twice?
That said, I think the BoDeans do a lot of sort of tuneful guitar-y kind of songs with guys singing in harmony and um, they weren't bad, but really maybe the BoDeans just sort of have ONE song and rearrange it around a lot? I couldn't honestly tell, with apologies to any BoDeans fans reading this. Maybe the sand just really played hell with the acoustics?
Anyway, this band was actually not *bad* or anything. They were all competent musicians and at least one guy had a really powerful voice. And I wondered, at what point do you decide you are just not going to make it as a *band* band, and instead decide to go for the steady gig of tribute band? And how do you pick who to trbute? Do you just admire the BoDeans profusely? Or do people keep coming up to you and saying ' Man, you guys sound just LIKE the BoDeans!'?
Cyn feels that neither of these views are correct and that in fact only a deep deep love and idolizaton and desire to emulate their idols would produce a BoDeans tribute band. She may be right, and at any rate, we did pass a relatively painless 40 minutes or so with them, which even involved some scattered applause and singing along, particularly from the bachlorette party.
Next came the girl who sat with us and got to the 'sloppy love of strangers' phase of drunkenness and kept hugging Cyn and I- also grabbing Cynthia's boob, which was pretty funny- and saying ' I LOVE you guys. I just LOVE YOU. I never like girls, but I love you!'
We patted her back and smiled at her and when she got to passing out point, we told her boyfriend to take her home. Turns out they had rented a room at a hotel across the street with the plan of getting 'totally shit-faced!' so they left somewhere in the second set. By this time we were up near the front of the stage dancing- well, ok, SWAYING- and after a while someone tapped me on the back, and it was the boyfriend back alone.
"Is she passed out?" I asked him, thinking he was kind of a jerk for coming back- but hey, if she is passed out, she isn't going to care, I guess.
"I don't know!" he yelled back over the music.
*blank look from me
"What do you mean 'you don't know'? Where is she? Not still here?"
"Nah, she's not here! She's fuckin' drunnk! I don' wanna deal with that shit- she's fucking drunk!"
*more blank look
"Well, yeah, but where IS she? Did you take her to the hotel?"
"Well, yeah, but she got out of the car!"
"What do you mean, 'got out of the car'? Where? On the highway? Is she passed out in a ditch somewhere??"
After a few hoarse shouted minutes of this, he managed to convey that he had gotten her to the parking lot of the hotel, she had gotten out of the car, and, pissed off, he revved up and drove back over to the club alone.
Ok, and here, is where I in my little glass house should not be casting stones. Because I did not leave the club to go and walk the nearby stretch of freeway or drive around hotel parking lots and see if I could find this girl.
I admit to being somewhat concerned, but decided if they had made it to the outside of the hotel, she must be ok, right? Ok, it is sad what fun cover music and cold weather will make us convince ourselves of sometimes, I admit it. But I was relieved the next day NOT to find any mention of women in their 20s dead in the ditch in Downers Grove. The boyfriend, sensing my disapproval, wandered off and I kept dancing and singing along with punk-flavored covers of things like 'Jack and Diane' and 'Don't Stop Believing'.
Come on, Dear Reader. Don't give me that look. *You* have all the words embedded in your brains too, and if you were there, you would have been singing and swaying staggeringly right beside me, I promise you.
Anyway, the band was great and I danced- without moving my feet, granted- and had one guy hit on me, telling me I looked 'amazingly hot' over and over and asking me what my favorite teams were-(um,hmmm?) neither of which was a huge turn on, but hey, it's nice to be noticed.
More confusing was his reaction to my age, which was to say 'no way!' several times, followed by the oh so flattering, ' But you sooo don't look that old!' After a certain point, even my female vanity finds that a tad offensive. After some of that 'dancing very close to someone else who is not actually dancing *with* you', he moved on to someone else. I was sort of glad- I'm sure he was basically a decent guy, but just not what the no-longer-a-bakerygirl needs.
Hands down, my favorite person of the evening - other than the oh so fabulous Janes and the always amazing Cynthia- was the ladies' room attendent. Surrouned by drunk girls with low rise jeans and stressed out hair tracking sand in all night long, she remained a bastion of calm, despensing paper towels, chewing gum, hair spray and tampax to the tipping and non- tipping alike.
Cracking jokes the entire time, making little comments- when I tied my hair up in the back to cool down, she said
"Oh now, girl! Dont TELL me you are gonna put up all that pretty hair!?"
I found myself much more flattered by that than by the 'amazingly hot' comments earlier. When a toilet stall got plugged up in a NASTY way, she was a drill sargeant, getting everyone in a line against the wall and going to the door and yelling out *basso profundo*
"WE DOWN TO TWO STALLS HERE, LADIES! THAT'S TWO STALLS FOR ALL OF US, SO LETS KEEP THE LINE MOVIN, AND *NO* TAMPONS IN THE BOWL! AND YOU-" this to another employee hurrying by-
"GET ME A MAN! I NEED A MAN WITH A PLUNGER AND I NEED HIM NOW, UH-HUH!"
When she came back in, we all clapped and she nodded and said,
"Ladies, you got that right! They got to be good for SOMETHING, right?!?"
I tipped her lavishly both times I was in and took a Cherry Blow-Pop to dip into my watery margarita. Getting home at 3, I took a shower to wash the smoke out of my hair, hung my smokey jeans by the back door, took some advil and went to bed.
By noon the next morning at the bookstore with Cynthia- my other very part time gig, have I told you all about that, Gentle Readers?- it all seemed but a passing dream.
So my little foray out into the world again went pretty well, even if I did feel like I was visiting someone else's nightlife world. But it did make me feel like I *could* go out to a nightclub again. Just that next time I am going to shoot for less sand- but be prepared for anything.
xxxooobakerygirl-no-longer
posted by ReesieKitty at 10:01 PM
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