April 19–20, 2002 — Is it safer now?

I made it home from my work party a few minutes ago. I surprised a lot of people by going at all; I’m trying to avoid saying no to invitations as often as I’d like to, even though it’s hard sometimes. The first time I made a conscious effort on this front was when Jeff and Amy invited me out for New Year’s Eve, and I ended up meeting Kerry that night. So I was off to something of a good start. Tonight was a bit different, but I guess I still don’t regret going. It was educational. If nothing else.

Everyone met at the smoothie bar and started drinking right away. I had a couple shots of pineapple juice from the juice machine before we left because I don’t like getting drinks at bars, not even non-alcoholic ones. (Non-alcoholic drinks worry me, and I start to get paranoid, thinking that someone made a mistake and gave me a drink laced with alcohol that I can’t taste because they’re so good at making alcohol taste like other things these days.)

I stuck to chewing gum for the rest of the night.

Leaving the smoothie bar, we went next door for shots. The shots were called “blow jobs”, and the girls picked them up with their mouths and mostly drank them without using their hands. The boys tried the shots, too, but refused to pick them up with their mouths.

(Lots of the employees from next door are regulars at the smoothie bar, and two of them acknowledged me while everyone else was getting shots. I’m only a few steps away from being an integral part of Toronto’s gay village, as I see it.)

Then we went to a gay bar and watched a drag show.

Something about a bunch of straight kids and their boss going to see a drag show irked me. It seemed a bit voyeuristic and awkward. The MC noticed us and commented, “A bus must’ve dropped them off at the door. ‘Let’s go an see the faggots! It’ll be just like Disney World!’” Then she (he?) invited a bunch of the girls on stage and gave them free drinks, so I guess there were no hard feelings. Though I still felt a touch out of place.

The highlight of the visit to the gay bar was a man who claimed that his stage name was Dallas and who was enamoured with one of the drag queens. During “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”, he stuck a five-dollar bill to his forehead and crawled onto the stage. We were encouraging him. He acted very embarrassed about the whole thing, like he could never do any of what he did without plenty of alcohol in him. He seemed like a very nice person.

Meanwhile, Laura had brought Sarah and Jeff along for the night, and it was nice to see both of them again. I don’t know that I’ll see them much anymore since Laura and Jeff are moving to Ottawa for the summer and then to Australia in September, and Sarah’s going back out East.

Sarah makes me smile; she can see the good in pretty much anything, and she’s one of the least cynical people I’ve ever met. She’s not in school anymore, either, and she asked me if I was happy. I said that I am sometimes, and a lot more often than I was last year. Most of the time I think that that’s enough.

I made it home a bit after 12:30 am. My goal had been to be home for midnight, and I almost made it.

Mostly, though, the night drove home the fact that Kerry was back within range of public transportation, but that I was at gay bar watching a drag show instead of seeing her for the first time in a month. (I couldn’t have really visited anyway — she’d just moved home that day, after all, and she had plenty to do. But it was a depressing thought nonetheless.)

I’ll just keep hoping for next week, I think.

Jumping back to Friday, I woke up and started work on Internet stuff right away. I did that until 2:30 pm, when I’d promised myself a half-hour of JG Ballard short stories before leaving for work.

The story I ended up reading was called “Chronopolis”. It was about a society in which time was strictly regimented and regulated between classes so that a person could only watch TV or wash dishes or use the phone at certain times as selected depending on their social standing. Time was eventually destroyed in a revolt, and clocks and watches were banned; only alarms were allowed, ones that sounded to wake workers up in the morning and to indicate when lunch started and ended or when the workday was over.

I’ve become more and more obsessed with time and I feel so guilty whenever I’m obviously wasting it. I wouldn’t want to live without clocks. I’d never get anything done.

After my thirty minutes of reading, I went to work.

Work was pretty normal. I was working with Laura, and I felt mostly alright with the world. I’ll miss spending time with Laura and Nathan when they move back to Ottawa.

It feels like everyone is growing up and moving away, and I feel like I’m stuck behind. When high school ended, I knew that I’d still be able to see the people that I wanted to see. But now it seems like more and more people are leaving and starting on their way into the real world.

I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.

For now, though, my room smells a lot like laundry detergent because of all the damp clothes hanging from my walls, and I’m going to bed. In a few hours, I’ll wake up with a headache and wish I were somewhere else. Then I’ll go to work thinking about how desperately I need a couple of days off.