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."

Post-Weave Consciousness

Tonight Lydia and I went to the FOUNDRY which is basically a grungy hangout with a bar and a bunch of couches and art everywhere. Television sets abounded, and the crowd was real chill and friendly and welcoming. It was like being in Pittsburgh except the people, we'll call them British yinzers, seemed far more involved, whether they were students or working artists or just hangers out. I guess they didn't seem as grungy retarded (not to be confused with lovely retarded) in that caring-is-for-sellouts, my-bubble-is-better way. That's to say the exhibits had agendas, and those agendas were relevant to the world beyond Old Street.

WHAT AN IDEA!

I met Shepherd, who wants to do a project where he covers a wall with weave, but he wasn't sure if it was too offensive. "The more offensive, the better!" I told him, then showed him my shaven head, which he proceeded to massage with veneration. "I should take pictures of you!" he said. I'm down, and not just because I'm a narcissist, but because my participation is precisely in tune with the message he wants to convey. "I HATE WEAVE!" he shouted while a guy named Sam rocked out some blues guitar from inside a house made of trees.

Tomorrow I'm going to the squat (which made the front page of today's paper) to learn how to protest-dance.

And now, a poem inspired by Shepherd and Romeck, the writer:

Get that weave out your hair so your brain can breathe, girl
Get that weave out your hair and go see the world, girl
Get that weave out your hair
Throw that weave in the air
And say, Holla back, jack
Weave will not hold me back!

Pissborg

It’s important that I write this, so that I can look at it and try to decipher it.

As Michael Bluth says, “You certainly have a type."

While Pittsburgh seems to shrink, the job market corrodes and academia seems to expand and swallow me. Thus, I hole myself into this triangle, where the going is good, the sun never shines, and life is comfortably…comfortable.

I get why some people never leave Pittsburgh: because they can get away with being dirty losers (type 1) or, as a local entrepreneur told me, “big fish in a small sea”.

But the Steel City is hardly a sea, more a tributary, and the fish are more like shrimp. I learned this from my first college boyfriend and the company he kept. While at first I was entranced by his hipster entourage, the more I saw those people, the sooner I realized that most of them didn’t even have vocations. A lot of them were crusty and lame, and only in their little 412 micro chasm were they important people—to themselves. And while I’ve since learned to respect the music his band makes, I’ve also learned that it’s really easy to be a star amongst idle and inert hangers-on.

The factors that allow a young person to sustain himself in Pittsburgh are simple: low cost of living, ease of alternative transportation, and prevalence of college-aged fellow travelers. You can buy a house for less than $10,000 and fix it up, ride your bike everywhere most months of the year, and buddy up with kids you went to elementary school with—and never ever leave. For some, this is a respectable living, for others, this is a choice of immense economic reward, and for me, I’m really conflicted as to when to say “When”.

Two roads diverge in this yellow wood—attend graduate school at Carnegie Mellon and get a Master’s in Professional Writing. Then, make thousands more dollars when I enter a job market that, hopefully, will not be as dismal. This is option 1. Option 2 is, move to Hollywood and write for TV, the bravest and possibly most suicidal thing I could do. But this is something I know I could do. I love TV; TV raised me. What’s more, I write well, I’m damn creative, and I’m funny. And right now, if anything, people need to laugh. They need their faith in good television restored, by renegades like Tina Fey, and equally ambitious young bloods like me.

But at the end of the day, you gotta chase that paper. And at the end of the night, you’ve got to be happy. So somewhere around cocktail hour, you must strike a balance between profit and joy. Alas, Pittsburgh.

I certainly have a type.

Pittsburgh By Night: No Shirt, No Shoes, No Toga

And that was how I met Tyler. Along with Mike, Andrew, Jim, &Meredith. Only the strong survived!

Around 3 the crime mob--some in toga, others convinced they could not cross the threshold--walked to Ritters, where we continued to embarrass ourselves. Sat in the back room I didn't know existed beyond the greasy fryhole known as Ritters Diner. This big table next to us blurted out, "I love Times New Roman!"

We walked back to Chris's and at 4 am techno was blasting from an unknown source. Then we all had coffee and went to bed.

The best nights end at 5 pm the next day, like this one.

Notes to self:

-Times New Romanian

-Ritters-Carlton

-Mike's lifelong dream: "to see Enya live."

-You're not above sharing a twin mattress on a floor surrounded by wonderful people.