there on the street in the dark on a Friday

I was stuck late at work on a Friday. That mad Randy was screwing up some project with two people from upstairs breathing down his neck. One of the upstairs people was a hugely obese woman with a mean face, painted like a clown. The other person from upstairs was the assistant to the woman, a downy young blond, a really young looking girl. Randy was trying to get the nasty clown bitch to get a drink with him after work. She shot that down instantly, and he ends up asking me in front of them, if I want to get a drink. "Hey Howell, wanna get a drink at Russia H0use?" The other two are listening to my response when I say, "Hmm, okay." I was instantly resigned to this fate. It was a Friday after all,,, so I might as well let things get strange.
Randy, this rickety, old, chain-smoking, womanizing, South Carolina shyster, was putting the works on the Russia H0use recently. He was doing freelance design work for them, really milking it. He claimed to have an open tab at the bars. It was awkward to walk into this nice place with all of these Russians and internationals there. I have experience with Russians and their whole thing, this meant that it would be worse than usual hanging out with Randy. I could see these people knew him and could tell what they thought.
I had him order me a vodka martini, dry and straight with olives. When it arrived it was enormous. He was instantly acting in his jumpy, loud, confused way, talking about the waitresses and other females in the room, being an obvious dirty old man. I could read the sincere disdain every woman there had for him, in their foreign disdaining way. Everyone there was inwardly laughing at him and he had no idea.
He told me he wanted to go back to work and check on the project that those upstairs people were working on. He got up and left, supposedly to go back to the office. As far as I knew, he went to smoke some crack. He was always like this, he could not hold still for a minute.
When he came back he ordered another shot, his beer was still on the table. I was drawing when he came back, I still had plenty of martini left. I got him to talk about his work. I asked him about the freelance work he was doing for this place, and how much he charges etc. He told me he charges 90 bucks an hour. He said it used to be 140 but no one would pay that much these days.
He now wanted to go upstairs so he could flirt with the third floor bar tender lady. We got up and walked to the corridor and he rushed past the concierge girl up the stairs. She, exasperated, chased him saying the upstairs wasn't open yet. We ended up in the front bar room with an American barman. He was unfamiliar with Randy but instantly got the act and humored him, carefully keeping track of the tab. Randy was on his second or third shot of Maker's Mark with a beer in his hand asked what this bartender's favorite vodka was. He pointed out the most expensive, something filtered through lava rock from Iceland. Then he pointed out some other type of vodka, a better value at ten dollars a shot. Randy wanted to try that one. The bartender asked him if he wanted a shot of vodka while he had a shot of whiskey already in front of him. He did. I was just a bystander, involved with my sketchbook, and tried to stay out of it. By the time I was through my martini, some women came in to the small bar room and Randy started talking too loud about how "the one his age was hot."
This was only the beginning of the weekend.
I took off out of the front door onto Connecticut Ave., jaywalked smoking my pipe, expecting to take a cab, but suddenly was in the walking mood and lost my feeling of cold with all that warm in my lungs and belly. I decided to walk. I texted Shands to see if he was home. I told him if so I would come take that painting of mine off his hands. He was home, wearing a white tee shirt in a hot and empty apartment. All of this stuff was packed except the pile he was taking with him. The bookshelves were empty but I did not feel sad. I did feel sad was to make someone part with art that I didn't want to carry home. I asked him if he couldn't just stick the painting on top of the pile in his storage space. He seemed all about that plan. I was happy to keep it off my hands. It would be hidden from the world for at least two years, but at least I wouldn't have to take care of it.
In the end I was talking very loud in the empty apartment and noticing this I was ready to be on my way. He had to get ready for dinner w/ Sweeney and I took out again on foot, not carrying a giant painting. The next house I found myself approaching down T street was Ram-Jam's. Keeping with the loose mood I texted him to see if he was home. No answer as I kept walking and some ways after his house I came around a corner and discovered a girl on a step, smoking a cigarette on a stoop. The girl spontaneously said "Hey." I looked at her and said, "hey." and kept walking, but instantly wished I had stopped. I felt like we were spontaneously in love, there on the street in the dark on a Friday. Ramino texted me back. He was like, "COME OVER." and I decided that was a good enough excuse to turn around and see if that girl was still smoking. She wasn't. I walked on to Ramino's place.
He was watching Star Trek First Contact, and I watched it with him while we smoked from his pipe. I was astounded at how shitty this Star Trek movie was. I remembered that I had liked before. What was the world coming to? hahaha
I was soon back to my sketchbook and making small talk about Manifesting. I wanted to talk about what was up with self hypnotism and how it tied into drug use, especially marijuana. Rambo, being uncomfortable with serious conversation, humored me as best he could while watching Start Trek out of the corner of his eye.
Eventually Grant arrived with Debra and they brought champagne which he instantly started feeding me. Debra was fresh back on a visit after recently moving to New York where she had been hired part-time to work for an artist there, in his workshop. We got her to talk about that. She had started with this guy as an unpaid intern, buying his groceries and doing his laundry. Everything she did for this guy pointed to him being a megalomaniac asshole. For instance when she was buying his groceries he had all these demands like the apples had to be just a certain shape etc. The studio where he had all of his operations was divided into sections and the interns were not allowed to be in the areas where he worked or lived, so she had rarely seen him. Finally she had an audience with his cuntness and he told her that everyone liked her so much that he was being forced to offer her a part-time job without benefits which she wholeheartedly accepted like she had been blessed by a saint.
This guy's whole thing was that he reproduced retro electronic equipment replicas using wood. It was gimmick art that apparently was big enough to support his whole operation. It wasn't what I would call art, at least art that is worthy of being worshiped over. It was just some artsy gimmick who's creator had enough bullshit power to be accepted to the High Art world. He had an art assembly line run by these women that he had working for him. The process involved wood burning and he had a head wood burner from Eastern Europe that decided to try Debra out one day on a wood burning project. Apparently this guy came in and found Debra working on one of these projects and got angry at his wood burning manager woman. He said to her, "Have you completely lost your mind or is this girl a genius?" What a fucking ass, like tracing his crappy schematics with a wood burner takes genius or as if he should treat people like that in reference to his crappy gimmicky art.
Well, Debra was acting like this artist she worked for was a gracious god. She had replaced Grant in her heart with another misguided idea about another arrogant loser. It all figured. Meanwhile she's poor, living with her parents and commuting forever to be a slave girl to this mad Caesar artist cunt.
I was well twisted and decided to take off though Grant wanted me to stay but admitted he was going to try to get everyone to stay in and do coke and drink all night and not go out to the show at the Velvet Lounge. I could tell he was going to hijack these kids' night and didn't give a shit to be involved in it. I wanted to go out so so I stubornly left again onto T street and on foot once again.
When I excited the door of J-Ram's place I was instantly shit talked to by a car load of kids in an Audi sedan at the stop sign. I heard, "Fuck you fucking pussy" from them and got hot but ignored it, confused. I walked down to the street and they turned the corner to come near me. I heard them say, "fucking faggot." and I ran over the sidewalk and jumped into the street, drunk enough to walk right up to their car, ready for a fight or whatever, but then instantly realized that it was Shands and Sweeney and two other kids. I was like oh damn, "Hey guys, oops, I was about to kick your car." I was feeling the fool to not have recognized them and getting all irate. To my defense I was cross-eyed by that time having followed a giant martini with weed and champagne on an empty stomach, not only that, but leave it to Shands to greet a friend with insults, as a joke. Fuck him anyway.
I hardly remember the walk home. It must have given me a sinking feeling having had such high hopes for the evening but being trashed at 10 pm. I made it home however, after a mile and a half, and made a sloppy dinner of peas carrots and tofu in wraps. I then went upstairs and immediately passed out for an hour. I woke up at 1am but strangely hadn't lost hope in my evening. I decided to shower, get dressed and texted Fluke. To my lovely amazement he said he was at a huge party across from Velvet Lounge. I had missed the show there, but it looked like that area was still in the card. I triumphantly boarded my bike and rode into the night at 2am.
I locked my bike up outside of Velvet and walked into a crowd on the curb across the street. I recognized the door guy and got right in with warm handshakes. Fluke baby was right, it was a big party, big and dark. It was a cavernous empty office space, probably new and never rented thanks to the recession. The only light was some strobe and spots behind the DJ's that shined in everyone's eyes. I eventually became aware of some of the people around me being familiar. Some guy talked to me who I didn't recognize until I saw his girlfriend later. I recognized her. He was kind enough though to point me in the direction of the beer but it took extra time to find a used cup that I had to wash in the sink.
I found Fluke many times, greatly appreciative of his familiar presence, but there were others there that I was pleased to discover in attendance. One cute girl I'm facebook friends with came up to me, trashed and hot, and we actually held hands for a while as she talked to me. She wanted to dance and I went with her but she was very touchy and grindy and I was disconcerted about her. We eventually ignored each other probably because she thought I was aloof, but I was actually intimidated by her hot straightforwardness, and I knew she wasn't my type anyway.
They danced, I danced, we danced, everyone danced except Fluke who I occasionally caught site of working the crowd in his quiet way. When it thinned out we came back together and looked around, sizing up the room. I asked him what he thought about the girls on the couch, he said he felt fine about them but knew they all had boyfriends. Since it was coming to 4 am we were both ready to leave anyway and gathered our riding gloves and hats outside the door watching the girls all leave. Some other guys we knew stood with us.
I watched a sharp eyed, dark haired girl put a cigarette in her teeth and light it with one hand. Her other hand was in a sling under her coat. I pointed the girl out to Ozid, the Jewish jerk gigolo. I'm like, "look, Ozi, a one-armed girl, that's your type!"
She looked like she was missing her arm with her coat sleeve swaying as she walked. All looked on. I said, "that one armed stuff is the goods. Very Parisian prostitute." I was trying to reference Tropic of Cancer. I continued as if Henry Miller, "They appreciate the exoticism of dismemberment."
Fluke asked, "Don't you mean Persian?" We all laughed. No one really knew what I was talking about but everyone thought it was funny. I left them and crossed the road to in the cold to get to my bike.
Blocks later, I realized the one-armed sexy street walker was dead ahead of me. I saw her ahead and making a strange decision I crossed to her side of the road. She heard me rolling down the sidewalk and stepped aside. As I passed her I said, "hey, a one-armed girl!" I stopped and she said, very coolly, "actually I have two arms." I said, "that's cool, I'm into that too." I asked her if she wouldn't mind some company on her walk. I ended up walking and talking to her for a number of blocks. We discovered that we both lived in the same hood and in group houses. She was really cool and hot, but I left her there after a while. I guess not wanting be clingy, I let her on her way. But not before she stopped me because we hadn't introduced ourselves. She said her name was Julia and took the end of my gloved fingers with her good hand. She was wonderful for 4 am there on the street in the dark on a Friday (early Saturday).