Brunch, Bowling, Blood, and a Biting Lesbian.

Yesterday started out so innocently.  I woke up early, put the finishing touches on the roast I had cooking overnight, and other senseless acts of domesticity.  The sun was shining, and it was absolutely beautiful as I walked the two blocks to church.

All in all, the sort of morning that would find me singing a duet with Mr. Bluebird, if I were of a much more dubious character.

After church was the Young Adult Brunch, like I attended last month.  Basically, the young adults get together and go to "brunch" (it's at 1:00 - I don't think it counts as brunch anymore, but whatever) to just hang out and talk and eat.  It's a good group.  I think I may be the token fag.  There are no other gays that I've noticed yet.  There was one guy I thought might be gay until I met his fiancée.

We had brunch at a place called M. Henry's.  I ordered the Pumpkin Pecan flapjacks.  Sweet Mother of Deepak Chopra, those were GOOD!  And everyone else enjoyed their choices, too.  And I met a girl named Andze.  Or, if you can't handle that, Krystal.  She's from Cameroon, and apparently, "Andze" means "vegetable."  When she left, I said "Goodbye, my vegetable."  Apparently her brothers call her "vegetable" all the time.  She said I made her laugh too much.  I've only ever gotten that from my favorite cousin, and from Meg.  Both of whom make me laugh too much in return.  I think Andze and I could have great fun together.

I also discovered that this Young Adult thing is actually much more structured than I thought.  They actually have a little leadership committee, and the monthly brunch is organized monthly on a rotating schedule.  Which means, if I stay involved, the responsibility of planning the brunch could fall upon me one day.  Fortunately, there are countless restaurants not too far from the church.  One of the guys commented that we could probably do this every week for a year and still not go to the same place twice.  He might be right.  The benefit: I will discover a LOT of restaurants.  I think my next brunch with Meg will have to be at M. Henry's, if I can convince her to come to the Far North side.  Secretly, I'm going to aim for a Saturday brunch, since our past few brunches have been on Sunday.  Unless she wants to go to church with me, of course.

That's one thing I'll say about EPC.  I'd happily take anyone with me who wanted to go.  I've never quite felt that way about a church before.  I loved Northminster, and was thrilled when Dad went with me on his visit last June, and would love to go with my Mother or Sister, but I never quite thought I'd be taking friends there.

Anyway, I didn't go home after brunch.  Instead, I headed down to the HRC Equality Bowl, at a bowling alley that was involved a CTA transfer and a twelve-block walk (twelve LONG blocks).  Excepting my longing for Target, this is the only time I sorta wish I had a car.  I was the Registration chair for the event, so I sorta had to be there.

While we were setting up, a guy asked me what was going on, and I explained it to him.  He indicated that he might come back, which was fine by me.  When he did come back, he said, "Hey, I can't stay and bowl, but I wanted to ask you if you'd like to go out sometime."

Blink.

Well, it's been a while since I heard anything like that (not the bowling, but the asking-out part).  I was shocked, and surprised (yes, the two can co-exist), so all I could think to say was "Yes" and I gave him my number.  He responded with his business card.  I have no idea what type of business it is, but it looks like it's definitely blue collar.  But hey - he has business cards, so that's a point in his favor.  Aside from that, I don't really know much about him.  I'm not sure if he's anything anywhere near "my type", but when you're thirsty, you'll drink water from just about any source (not Wet Kisser, though.  Ew.  Besides, there's a difference between someone asking you out and someone just hanging on you).

Another side factor is the fact that I think I might be developing a crush on someone else.  However, the individual in question is somewhat removed from the spectrum under which the vast majority of my crushes have fallen, so this particular situation will require further scrutiny.

With being a Registration God, I didn't have the opportunity to bowl, nor did I register (or pay) to do so.  However, to throw a little financial support toward the endeavor, I did buy a few raffle tickets, thinking it might be nice if I won a little $25 gift certificate or something.

I instead won something with a value of $1,099.  A free one-year membership to the gym.  The same gym, in fact, which still has not yet opened its location near my apartment.  This means they have not yet charged me anything.  So, I've contacted them asking if I can just apply the membership once they open the Edgewater location.  Am awaiting a response, but I don't think it'll be an issue.  If it is, I'll just cancel my pending membership, and then go to the Andersonville location (which really isn't that far) and sign up with the certificate I have.

But wow - a free one year gym membership!  That totally rocks, and is a HUGE blessing, as I can really use that $50 per month elsewhere right now.

Probably an hour before the bowling was over, a character walked into the bowling alley.  Now, my inherent powers of observation, as well as my experience as a front-line teller/account services rep have given me the ability to size up some people pretty quickly, and I could tell that this guy seemed to be a bit off his rocker.  Crazy in a Toothpaste Sandwich kind of way.  He was wearing what appeared to be a skort, and some sort of sandals or slippers that were hard to see in the black light, but appeared to be of a feminine persuasion.

He and I found it difficult to communicate.  I couldn't understand what he was asking, which was okay, since he couldn't understand what I was answering.

At one point he comes back to me and shows me his pinky finger, the tip of which has a vibrant and ghastly white glow under the black lights.  He then informs me, "I sell my blood as often as they'll let me."

Blink.  Blink.

BLINK!!!

God bless my performing arts degree, my Southern disposition, and my ability to rise to almost any occasion.  I'm pretty sure that through the combined efforts of those three forces, the pure terror I was experiencing was not completely obvious in my face.  It wasn't obvious to him, anyway.  He kept talking.

He managed to approach me yet again while I was talking to Matt and Jen.  I was able to slide away from that one and leave him with them.  That's when we learned that he was married.

*shudder*

At one point, an obviously drunk lesbian walked up to me at the registration table, caressed my face, and kissed my cheek.  I said, "That was nice.  So who the Hell are you?"

Well, as I indicated, I had walked about 12 blocks from a train station to get to the bowling alley.  However, I wasn't particularly comfortable walking back that distance at night.  So, I asked Matt how he was getting home.  He was catching a ride with a lesbian couple he knows.

Well, the three lesbians were all drunk (I'm not completely sure how the third lesbian fit into the equation.  She was not involved with the couple to my knowledge.  I think she was a friend or neighbor).  While two of the lesbians went to the bar to argue over the bill, that left me and Matt with the other one, who happened to be the one who kissed me earlier.  Matt introduced us, and I said, "Yes, we met earlier when you kissed me."

Lesbian: "Oh, Well I'll kiss you again!"

So, I let her kiss my cheek again.

Then, Matt had the audacity to say, "Oh, well, it doesn't count if you just kiss on the cheek!"

There wasn't even enough time to glare at him.

Lesbian decided that not only was she going to kiss my on the lips, she was going to french kiss me.

Note: I only kiss straight girls.  This is because straight guys won't kiss me, gay guys don't seem to want to, and I'm scared of pissing off a lesbian's partner (besides which, a modest number of lesbians seem to dislike gay men).  Straight girls, it seems, have no trouble kissing a gay guy.  Especially after a drink or two.

Well, I wasn't wanting to French kiss the lesbian.  But she was going in for the kill.  I clamped my lips shut, as Matt realized (too late) what was happening.  The lesbian is a bit of a rough kisser, so she actually managed to bite my chin in her inebriated attempt to kiss me.  Kinda hard, but not enough to leave a mark or do any real damage.

Eventually, we managed to all get into the lesbian couple's car.  Matt ended up driving, because the three lesbians were all too drunk to do so.  They were loud; they were rowdy; they were raucous.  And Matt was horrified.  He kept looking at me in the rearview mirror and mouthing, "I'm sorry!"  I was trying pretty hard not to laugh, honestly, because the situation was so far beyond my control and experience that I didn't know what else to do.  Besides, I knew I had a Story in the works. 

They dropped me off at a Red line station.  When Matt gets home, he calls me to apologize profusely for their behavior.  "I've never seen them so drunk before!" and "All I could think was 'he's so sweet and they're being so awful!'"  I assured him that I was amused more than anything else.  I'll give him a call tomorrow to discuss the aftermath, and Other Things.  Because Matt is fun.  For those of you with impressively short memories, Matt and I hung out together on Saturday to work on this Equality Bowl and geek out over similar interests.

I did have fun with the lesbian biting tale today.  As various at-work friends came by the office, they asked about my weekend, as is typical in a polite professional environment.  I said it was crazy and busy and crazy-busy.  Some of them responded with a "What happened?" type remark.  Well, I didn't want to blurt out, "A lesbian bit me." for all to hear.  So I wrote it down on a little post-it note and passed it over to them.

You get some amazing reactions that way.

I also managed to work it into a conversation with my boss.  She shook her head in the "Why do I even bother talking to him?" way.  It's safe, I promise.

Caroline's response to the Biting Lesbian portion of this story: "I'd act surprised, but this IS your life we're talking about."