OHMAGOIN

It started with Happy Hour.

Friday crept by in the most vile way and I dove into a frozen Cosmo right after with Nuni. Chris and Johnny showed up from Philly. Evan and Sarah showed up from Polish Hill. Some of their friends and friends' brothers came...Who's Wild Card? Drew and Chad came. We all sat in the lounge which looked like a harem. Boys reluctantly enjoyed frozen Cosmos ($3).

We ended up back at my house and wilded out for a bit, dancing to "Single Ladies" natch. Some people went out and for some ungodly reason I woke up at 5:30 on Saturday morning and couldn't really get back to sleep. Dropped in on Koko, who was wheeling around her kitchen like a baby invalid, made plans to see LIL WAYNE NEXT WEEK. We brunched in a courtyard underneath old drooping trees. Then Chris chauffered Johnny and me around town. We went to Avalon where the Dollar Sale was happening. I got 12 things for $12, including a perfect bougie little vintage suede purse with a gold tone metal frame. And a lace nightgown/dress for pacing/lounging in my new apartment. After that we did an impromptu tour de hood, Friendship, stopped off at Paul's CDs in Bloomfield and got tea.

Table for 11! Huge round table and lots and lots of wine at Abay, food was so good as always and it was so much fun to go with 11 people. And to see Pete and Tyler again! We get so crazy together..We take the party back to my house and throw down loud and hard with about 15 people. Zack and Yooni (whom I see once a year even though we have the same friends) stumbled in wasted around 1:30. Zack has a bottle of rum in his pocket. Tyler starts trying on the clothes from Avalon, thinks he's so cute. He also tried to proposition Johnny and me, hard. We made a huge circle in the living room, Koko with her bum leg wielding a wine glass on crutches. Hobbling out of the room, "can you grab my wine?" Hahaha, everyone becomes floppy and hilarious until it's 3 and I'm retreating to my bedchamber and telling Zack to "let yourself out whenever".

Sleeping in on a Sunday when you don't have to work Monday--delicious. Doing that until 1--the way forward. Took it reeeeeeeeeeeeal easy, played dress-up with wigs and glasses at Nuni's. Screaming and dancing as always, found our alteregos. Watched The Real World with pauses for commentary (this season is scary). WHERE'S AYIIYAH? My gays whisked me off to margaritas and Mexican food so we could dish, and dish we did. Sometimes you need to kick back and rip on everything and be inappropriately loud.

Then Johnny and I found ourselves at Howler's for the whiskey social. It was really cozy and warm and everyone was happy to be around one another, singing to bluegrass and bein a yinzer. What a robust weekend. So much love. We're all really happy to be here.

"So those are my friends."

Stay Out MY MART!

Nuni, Koko, and I found ourselves rubbing elbows with the postwork gay set around 7 last night. There was a soul singer there. Only mildly uncomf but we'd already resolved to embarrass ourselves.

Doing voices over $3 Long Islands. Koko and I were Lindsay and Sam Ronson, especially her with her kitty sweatshirt!

We met so many characters on the short walk to/from PLCB loveshack. In Unimart:

"I wonder who's gonna be the next Michael Jackson."
Lady: There won't never be another.
"Miley Cyrus? WHEE HEE!"

Mind It Races

It took me until 6am to shut off my brain last night. There are so many things I've come to realize recently and I'm stirring! For one, I still cannot grasp the reality that Koko is coming here then to Amsterdam where I will turn 21. I can't imagine a better birthday present.

Tomorrow I register for my last fall semester at Carnegie Mellon. Sad. I need to be back in yinzer land. Stomping the gravel, running across bridges, laughing while horiztonal. Now that there's only 1 week left in Easter Break, time seems to be picking up speed. In 3 weeks I'll be done with exams, packed, ready to go on my vacation. And to the beach! The freaking Cote d'Azur!! And then back to London for what I expect to be a sad week, then to Atlanta for 1.2 seconds then to Pittsburgh--my love! Drew's living at my place for the summer, so that means the roof is on fire.

And I've finally sorted my next year's apartment dilemma. I'm living in a studio in Cathdral Mansions (on the same floor as Rex!!) and Koko and Drew are living across the street in Fairfax. Let the good times roll. We're going to groove out North Oakland!

Below are some works from my sister's leading man, whom I learned of in a life update e-mail that made me smile around the face.
Courtesy of Marlon Sagana Ingram.

As for the near future, going on a picnic with BU friends tomorrow. Writing up my presentation for oral exam today.

I feel alive! I wrote my boss telling him to please give me my job back please, and applied for some freelance writing gigs in Pittsburgh. I seriously feel like the next 4 months are a love song to me. 21, Amsterdam, Koko, France, parents, Pittsburgh, summer! Senior!

So here it is, my trajectory of jetsetting:
London>Oxford>Amsterdam>Paris>Lyon>Avignon>Nice>Atlanta>Pittsburgh>San Francisco?

What's next? BRAZIL!

___

My last dream was about a baby horse (colt?) walking out of the ocean and only 2 other people saw it happen and we all looked at each other in awe. Rebirth is a trip.

Action!

This was a weekend of extremes.




The Le Corbusier exhibit at the Barbican Gallery was EXTREMELY thorough and inspiring and it made me miss Pittsburgh and my archie droogs so much. A lot of the pieces were on loan from Fondation Le Corbusier and they included postcards to his friends, sketches, plans, scale models, drawings, furniture, built art, paintings, and best part was that everything was in French so I had a little ticklish moment in the museum. Makes me yearn for Paris again, as does a certain message from a special friend. It was super cool to see how Le Corbusier translated his appreciation for utopian socialism into his design for the Centrosoyuz headquarters in Moscow, a design that was realized in 1928. All in all I kept making sex sounds because his works were so damn sensual and trippy and it was a mindgasm.

And the area where the Barbican Gallery is, in proper London, is SO WEIRD. It's like being in 1984, the book. Or the Soviet Union.

Then that night I shelled out 7 quid to see where the least attractive people in all of London (&maybe all of Great Britain) rub up on each other, where balding businessmen go to score poon. So gross. But I'm probably going to back there in May to see Clem Snide, so...

Anyway that was a bust, but Saturday was much better. First I met Lydia, Sarah, and Johanna at Broadway Market in Bethnal Green, a place I would not want to be alone at night. But I realized I like rundown sort of shady areas during the day because there are certain lonely elements that make for interesting images, such as:

After Broadway Market I went with Sarah and Jo to Primark at Oxford Circus. Big mistake. Worst timing ever; the place was like if H&M and Forever 21 did meth and got into a catfight. Nothing short of hell on earth. My anxious mess left after about 10 minutes.

Then in the evening we were invited to Martin/Anders's place for drinks, an outing (inning?) which inevitably finds us still at their apartment when the sun's coming up, Martin turning to me and asking, "Sooo what should we do? Should we go out? Get some bears?" This time the Norwegians were actually outnumbered! I met a Frenchman named Basil who said I had a great accent (merci) and an Italian named Mateo who actually had an American accent and was so typically Italian. As in, contentious, pompous, emotional, etc. However, he was a great singer and gave Martin a boygasm with his guitar playing. At 5 a.m. I ate a ton of egg whites and tried to make people jealous, but no one was really interested in the egg whites, just me.

Woke up at 1 to a text from Sarah so I met her on Brick Lane, where we accidentally went into a supersized opium den/coffeshop/bar. We ate burgers and lounged on the couches while the DJ played reggae and dancehall tunes from Jamaica. The event is formally called 100% Dynamite and the place, Cafe 1001.
After a while we got depressed from looking at all the gorgeous men and their slightly less gorgeous girlfriends. Makes me hate London a little bit and worry about how I'd make friends if I came back here to live/work. Oi vey.


Somehow I managed to exhaust every second of this weekend doing something enlightening or funny or just stupid, so London, cheers.

Note to self:
-Write this story
*Mistaken for something of monetary value, a suitcase full of film reels gets stolen from a departing film crew in Morocco. Filmmaker(s) return to try and get it back. Adventure!

Hell on Earth

That title best describes the process of obtaining a Visa to enter the UK. After numerous phone calls, faxes, e-mails, and fruitless correspondence, I am to receive my passport tomorrow.

I was supposed to leave yesterday.

So I'm going to the airport on Saturday to beg British Airways to let me on a flight. If that doesn't work out, then I'm not going to arrive in London until the 17th, after the first week of classes. Luckily UCL people have been unconditionally nice to me.

I'm all packed and ready to get the hell out of here. I live near Buckingham Palace but I'm going to switch to housing closer to UCL in Central London. No complaints either way.

But first, a recap of 2008:
-roll 6 deep
-"THAT'S THE LIFE!!!" *honk* Lauren the suburban tourbus driver
-The suburbs are not blc-friendly
-"RANCH, PLEASE!" -Meghan @ Steak and Shake, I cried.
-Rachel's "list of the best things ever"
-future MILFs at Lauren's
-KSmith devirginized my mind with her pornographic prose

How fun is my life?