8:30 AM, today, awake. Not sure why. The room's still a mess. Kelly's hand-me-down bookshelf looms like a giant standing in my room. Gotta clean up. Piss. Brush my teeth. Floss. Rinse my mouth with Peridex. It's Thursday which means it's Saturday which is comparable to waking up on Christmas morning, these days. It's already getting warm outside. Shirtless with my belt unbuckled and the ends dangling down my cargo shorts, I go about cleaning up my room. Thankfully it's somewhat cleared out from the night Iven stayed and I slept on the floor, which reminds me that I'm still riddled with mosquito bites. Only itches when I think about it. At least I'm not hungover after last night's bonfire. I start bagging up my clothes, clearing the floor of my closet. Should do laundry today at some point. Do I really own this much clothing?
We take a left turn where we shouldn't have, missing Kelly's house, and I call her to get directions, again. She waves us down. "Beverly Hills" by Weezer plays on the radio. We get the tour, with plums. She's got boxes and junk everywhere waiting for The Big Move, which happens later this week, I think, and will take her six blocks away. I take one of her tall bookshelves. We load it into the back of Iven's truck and head back to my house. It's 8:00 PM, last night.
10:15 AM, today, I send Ariel a text that tells her I'm going into the theater, that I'll save her a seat. She arrives moments later. I've just finished loitering outside of the Food Court with a Starbucks mocha, watching the Downtown Mall wake up like an old man, groggy and reluctant. Ariel, the comic-book hero aficionado, and I get two tickets to Captain America and we watch Chris Evans meet Iron Man's father and save the world from a red-faced Agent Smith. Pretty good movie. Ariel and I part ways as she speeds off on her motorcycle and I take a leisurely bike ride down Capitol, admiring a farmer's market on The Lawn and soaking in the sights of a city I really have fallen in love with. At home, I continue cleaning. It's now 1:00 PM.
The next time I looked at my watch it was 9:30 PM and the bonfire had drawn another full crowd, with the potential for even more guests to arrive as the last of the color drained from the sky. Iven and Kelly and Julie-Ann and Murphy started the evening. Fast Five played car crashes and b-movie acting in the background. We all smelled like bug repellent, drinking Pabst tall cans and watching the fire-pit flames climb the wall of the metal dryer basket. People started showing up. Samir with his 8-year-plan for a Ph.D from UC Davis (he's halfway done); Daniel (with banana bread) and Alan and Rose (their upstairs neighbor); Brendan and Ashley arriving on a tandem bicycle; Kasha, Tessa, Jenn; Drew and Drew; Robert, making his first-ever appearance; Shaun (his second-to-last appearance) with his new long-distance lady, Chelsea, who seems like a good match for my little Old Soul brother; and Brady and Anna, my neighbors from the Pink Place. I switched the movie to Rango. Eventually we started listening to 90's alternative. People were happy. People were talking. I went through a lot of logs and someone brought cookies, which made a great alternative for graham crackers when someone opened the marshmallow bag. We never ran out of beer while running that bonfire until 1:00 AM without breaking a sweat, with the several all-nighters realizing some of them had work early in the morning.
Iven arrives at my place around 6:15 PM and I click open the gate from my window so he can park behind the fence. This is after a brief after-work afternoon spent writing a chapter in the book and watching Wilfred. We wander over to deVere's and I down two White Russians against Iven's two Tom Collins. Kelly texts me when she gets home and we finish our drinks and leave.
1:10 PM, my stomach's rumbling after getting home from the movie. I need food and Old Soul's the easiest option, plus maybe I could get some writing done in the air conditioning. I say hey to Meredith and Megan, order a pork loin sandwich with an iced mocha, take a seat in the corner and open up the netbook. Cody comes in to start his shift. Jade comes in from a game of chess outside with one of the regular greek-salad-ordering chess guys. She's on a chess binge, so she challenges me to a match and I lose with embarrassing ease. I finish my sandwich in shame. We both have equally aimless afternoons ahead of us, so we get a bottle of wine from Gross Out and, with the intention to read and write in the shade of the backyard, we end up just talking for a bottle's-length of time around the dormant fire-fit. Always nice to fill in the details of characters I know mostly through sixty-second interactions across a cash register. Jade's of Ashland origins with a few moves around the West Coast, settled now in Sacramento with a boyfriend and a cat. Also an unsuspecting fan of Norwegian Black Metal. She shares some of her chess strategies with me, and since I haven't played in a long time, I'm not shocked by the defeat, though it provokes me into challenging her to a rematch back at Old Soul. At 4:15 PM, I win. Checkmate.
4:49 PM, I take a break from rearranging my room and call Jenny. She'll be back Tuesday and we're trying to scheme a way for her to stay with me for her last month of United States residency. Out in Montana, she's making cookies and giggling with her brothers, taking walks to the pond with the puppy and going to Music on Main with her mom. She sent me this postcard.
I miss her. I've been lucky to fill my time with the company of friends. It's really quite amazing to have these days alone and look around to realize I'm anything but. This is something I am beginning to appreciate more and more each day. We say goodbye and at 5:30 PM, I'm finally done arranging my room. Sort of. I've still got a bunch of empty milk crates to do something with.
Brady and Anna come by after they visit the local dispensary and we get stoned around 6:30 PM while watching The Animatrix. Good people. Good time. After they leave, the night is open for me to hang out with myself, do a little blogging, watch a moth bounce around my ceiling, sit in my window and contemplate the complexity of life, my goals, my wishes, my feelings and my laundry.
- Left to Fry
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