Schnaaps and the City
Oh, god.
This would have been better if I'd written it six hours ago, when I was still actually suffering, but I had other things to do then.
Sarah and I went out dancing last night, to a gay club called Faces in downtown Sacramento. Good club, surprisingly big, with a smoking area and at least four bars. Lots of fun: we got there around 11 and stayed until it closed around 2, and had a bit to drink inbetween.
Now, I'm not a big drinker. I generally have plenty of fun without resorting to alcohol, and when I do resort to alcohol I run into walls and bone-bruise myself, so it's not such a great idea. But I screwed up my back, and I was, to put not too fine a point on it, looking for an alcoholic painkiller. So was Sarah, in fact, 'cuz she screwed her back up too. So a couple of peppermint schnaaps shots later, we were feeling pretty good.
I had another one. Mistake.
I do hangovers really, really well. Not headaches, but queasy stomach and general paleness and illness for days on end. Can't vomit, no matter how much I'd like to; my system doesn't work that way. So when I drink, I have to grind my way through the whole hangover process. Okay, I've accepted this.
The thing that I always forget is that alcohol accelerates my heartrate. I can't _sleep_; my heart goes a zillion miles an hour, and just when I think I've got it calmed down, it goes zinging off again. The rest of the hangover wouldn't be so damned bad if I could sleep it off, but nooo, my body won't let me do that. But I never _remember_ that part of it until it's too late.
So I'm writing it down this time so I'll damned well remember. Heart jackhammering at 3am, body sweating, unsleeping mind random-associating while I try to relax my feet, my hands, my shoulders, slow my breathing, slow my heartrate, and there I am just on the edge of sleep and WHAM! It starts all over.
This, for the relaxation of a couple inhibitions whose lifelines are so short they don't stand up to a dance beat. Who _needs_ alcohol? Two drinks. I'm cutting myself off at two drinks from now on; I just _don't_ need the sleepness night or the roiling gut from a beverage that doesn't do much for me anyway.
Now that I've sworn off alcohol, let me get to the good stuff: the club.
There were a whole god damned lot of beautiful people there, I tell you what. Jackson, particularly. I gotta assume his name was Jackson, 'cuz it was tattooed in gothic lettering across his really, really great shoulders. Oh. My. God. Sixteen kinds of illegal, I tell you what. Six foot and a bit tall, bald, goatee, nice warm brown, shoulders and waist and hips and oh my _god_. And he could dance. He was with a woman -- a transvestite, Sarah suspected -- and let me tell you, she _knew_ she had a catch there. That was one smug bitch. And I cannot blame her at all. Not at all.
There was a short fat goth woman with long hair and only one button that would stay buttoned on her shirt, the one right between her breasts. She danced with a drink in her hand most of the night and she had a brilliant smile and threw her head back and laughed over and over again.
There was a black girl with glow-in-the-dark butterflies in her hair and a minidress that her girlfriend kept trying to drag back down. Butterflies was having more fun than the girlfriend, a tall Asian girl with dreadlock-like braids.
There was a guy in a tank top who brushed by me and we got in a chest-thrusting contest, somehow precipitated by his comment that he just couldn't compete. He might have been the one who, later, when I slipped past, trailed his hand across my back and arm; I turned around and we smiled at each other, and I could feel that mine was this rather silly soft pleased thing. Gay, straight, bi; it feels good when someone wants to touch you.
The dance floor opened up a circle when a non-vocals piece came on, and a handful of guys took turns dancing and breakdancing.
An unbelievably cute white girl, taller than me, with short curly hair and wide dark eyes, was with a smaller blonde in a red tanktop who took a while to look like she was having fun.
A tall guy in the hall outside the bathroom came up while I had my hands over my head, holding my hair up while I waited for Sarah. He tickled me under the arm and I shrieked and put my arms down. "No, no," he said, "put 'em up, I have to tickle you," and for some reason I did. And he tickled me again and I shrieked again and we both laughed.
An extremely drunk boy, a little shorter than me, who put his head together with mine and we sang at the top of our lungs. Then he stepped on Sarah's foot and apologized profusely as only the very drunk can.
A _really_ short black guy with very short hair and a trail of circling designs shaved into it could really move, and I spent a while grinning at him.
Dance lesson next to us, an older, very mannish white woman with a slightly younger woman who was trying to get her to feel the beat. They weren't together; the older woman had a partner there whom she danced with most of the time.
A fat girl in a shirt that said, "All the chicks hate me."
A late-arriving pair, one in chaps and a little black leather cap, the other with his shirt unbuttoned over his rounding tummy; the first guy was wearing a t-shirt that said, "Yes, that's my final *@#%$^& answer!"
A kid of some interesting ethnic mix who was cute but would have been cuter if he hadn't very, very carefully waxed or plucked his eyebrows to exactly two thirds of their original length. They stopped where the arch should have been.
Tens and tens of others. I just love watching people dance. And we danced and danced and danced ourselves, until finally staggering home and collapsing, though not, I fear, to sleep. At least not in my case.
I could do that every damned night of the week.