the dud

It was ashes in the mouth. Burning trash. The scent left on the sheets after he spent the night and then you fought and as he left you knew you'd never see him again. The crumpled letter you found one day too late.

In other words, last night was a dud.

The dud is when you're flush, you're dressed in a magic combination of clothes that fits, flatters, and doesn't bind, and you're alert and ready to party- and then the night just lays there like a dead octopus in your bed.

Yesterday I had to work from 5 AM to 2 PM, then I went home. I was super bitter about giving up my Friday night since I had to work the next day at 5 AM so the plan was that if I woke up at midnight or before I would text around and see who was up and wanted to go out.

I didn't want to do the whole dress -and -high- heels window- shopping thing, so I just put on this tee shirt, which is white with a design of black and white photographs of all these heads- a monkey, a baby, a dog, James Dean, Jesus, etc, all wearing a Soviet Era space helmet, organized in rows of about 5x5. I originally bought it for Antony but I just fell in love with it and kept it for myself. It's very 1970's America- it looks like something that you'd see on "That 70's Show", so naturally I had to have it.

Anyhow, this awesome shirt:
and I went for a stroll over to Phillies to meet Veron and "the client" (he was first on the scene so he won the lottery) This sounds sort of bad, but I was hoping the client would be an American (I told this to Davie and he nodded sagely and said what I thought was "so you could get laid" and as I reinserted my liver which had promptly popped out in the ensuing cough, I realized he had said "so you could RELATE"---thank god!!, which was true. I was even thinking "maybe he'll be from Rochester!!".) but he wasn't, he was from Hyderabad, India.

Super, super sweet guy...totally boring. Married and the type of person who's delighted to find sugar- free mints on his dinner check, he was a pleasant conversationalist which was good since Veron, the person who invited me was totally engaged in laying over the pool table, singing along with the band, and hitting on the women at the next table.

My big boss, Shah, was there also, sucking mournfully on a White Russian
(!!!--see Big Bang Theory for a hilarious take on how some Indians are oblivious to the "femininity" or "masculinity" of drinks), at the far end of the bar, and rather obviously tired, having just blown in from a two week vaca. He was alternating between sneaking food off Veron's plate and wandering around trying to get a signal for his phone and looking worried, so he was useless, or close enough to it for horseshoes and hand grenades.

So me and good old Hyderabad had to make do, generally sharing our observations. He was genuinely entertaining, with a refreshing lack of the jackal grins and backslapping that most clients have. He told me a very funny little bit about being mistaken for a Pinoy that had me laughing. He does bear a passing resemblance to your average Pinoy, except that his skin is light mocha, and he doesn't have the uptilted Asian eyes that Pinoy do. Also, when I saw him the first thing I thought was "An Indian!? Oh, man, bummer!"

So, if someone who occasionally can't recognize people she's been introduced to can see that this guy wasn't Filipino, he can't look *that* Pinoy. I think some wishful thinking may have been involved on the part of the agents who were gabbing away at him in Tagalog. His face as he imitated himself baffled and cornered was very funny.

And a good damn thing too, since I was more than a bit steamed at Veron, a person who had spent the last few weeks doing everything in his power to insinuate himself into my life in a sort of personal way (and who would NOT drop it when I told him I was seeing someone, and it was private. He didn't get it out of me, despite his promises to take it to the grave. I told him "I'm not embarrassed or whatever, it's just that he and I made an agreement to keep it between us and if I told you I'd be deciding for him too, not just me, and that's not fair to him. Just take my word for it I'm all set on the dating tip for now.") was acting like I was "tagging along", despite the face that I very well knew he invited me for "prestige" reasons.

I may be overstating it a bit, but I was angrily bored as the band (naturally) warbled away with their own five piece band version of "Club Can't Handle Me"(thereby rendering all conversation either null as it was swallowed in the noise or horribly awkward as you were caught shouting "...ten whole inches!" in the pause between verses).Veron seemed totally content to shoot billiards and swan around like some sheik, leaving me and Little Lord Fauntleroy to make small talk.

The thing is, last weekend he was there making it rain 100p for every song he requested, and now the staff all call him by name, and call him from the stage, etc. To me this is the cheapest, most transparent kind of "fame" in the world, but it seems to turn most men's heads. It's just so tragic. I wanted to shake him and yell "THEY WANT YOUR MONEY, YOU BIG LUG! THEY DON'T CARE ONE BIT ABOUT YOU!!" as he confessed that he was "known" at this club and he was "a bit of a favorite", hanging his head in a show of faux- bashfulness as the band gave him shout-outs. I mean, this is a country where they fan themselves with your money (as compared to the states, where at drag shows they let the dollar bills fall to the floor, or put them somewhere in the costume acting like nothing happened.) Poor dumb lout.

So I texted Ankit, who was recuperating from a stomach infection and going crazy at home, and he blew in with Vickram, and then ! the two of them slouched against a pole all the way across the room. Sigh. I could see what kind of night it was turning into.
When *Veron* pointed them out ("Hey there's your friends from [other company across the street from my job?"] I was stunned. "Uh, I invited them!" I yelled over the thumping bass of a swing version of "Poker Face" (which was followed by the Tom Jones monster- hit "Sex Bomb"- sigh.)

I went over there, giving Ankit the "uh, what the heck?" face, and was immediately sorry. Ankit has a way of communicating common to Aquarians (myself included) that's part facial movements, part telepathy, and totally opaque. Good luck figuring it out unless you're on the same wavelength. Sometimes we are and he'll make a complex series of little moves: pushing out his lower lip and giving me a side look and rolling his hand around, and I know exactly what he means, but tonight he was stuck on another frequency and finally I got it out of him; he was "pushing off" any second since (shocker) bars are boring when you're not allowed to drink. He was seconding Shah's motion by moodily sucking on what looked to be a screwdriver (at least it had juice in it...) and being there obviously under duress.

"Just get me out of here!" I pleaded with Ankit. The problem was that Veron was willing to blow the Popsicle stand, but we had to wait for Shah and Madame Bovary to come back from MacDonald's, where they went to fetch Cyrus and get some food and then they were coming back. Veron had brought "The Package" and couldn't desert him- "45 minutes, they'll meet us here and then we'll go to Skytraks" he promised.
"Just text Shah!" I begged. But Veron had found his true love in a pair of bimbo heels and short shorts and was perfectly content to drink beer, show off his brand new (and *dreadful*) tattoo and generally make a nuisance of himself. He was, I told Davie later, a magically awful combination of over- the- top (bouncing along to the music, making exaggerated faces at the cue ball, hollering across the room to a wincing Shah, etc) and totally boring (let's put it this way: Man of The Hour, a stranger, was a better conversationalist than Our Hero.).

Anyhow, I chucked back my drink, extremely grateful that Ankit was wanting to leave, (after Veron and Ankit had a conversation in a mixture of vernacular and English, clearly about business, a sort of pose and flex that naturally made me feel the most like a trophy wife I've ever felt in my life) and was hit with what I thought was the parting shot from Veron "You can go with them, it's okay." Oh, CAN I? Thanks, your highness.

Well, what happened was Ankit took a seat across the bar in the two seconds it took me to settle up, and proceeded to become totally absorbed in the billiards table himself, watching it was like TV and bitching about his restricted life in very, uh, graphic terms ("I can't do ANYTHING for the next ten days. I feel like less than a man" He moaned, leaving me to wonder exactly what he had been up to prior to the infection. Thankfully this topic was skirted around, and whatever "anything" was, I was left gratefully in the dark), generally making himself just as miserable a companion as Veron. Vickram is someone that, if you found yourself seated next to on the subway, would not panic you, but nor would you be happily ensconced in conversation with either. In other words, a crashing bore.

After about 45 minutes of fruitlessly watching the door for Shah (my plan was to kidnap the extremely pliable Cyrus and make for somewhere else ANYWHERE ELSE), Hyderabad, and Cyrus, I packed it in. I kissed Ankit's cheek (he gave me a distracted, 1950's grey flannel suit "bye, dear") as I got my purse and made my retreat, having finally seen the writing on the wall.

On the way home I ran into Matt and AK (getting out of the same trike, having squeezed in together in the car, how cute!) and Matt genially listened to me bitch about the debacle that was my evening, and added his own squeeze of lemon about Veron (remarks redacted!- basically he's no huge fan either) and then surprised me by giving me a little hug (it's always nice when people soften up around you) and toddling off to get his hair cut and meet up later with his "other half" (who was going to meet Lovely).

This has happened before. I don't know how or why, but sometimes it's just not "on". As Davie puts it "It's off. It's off. It is just off, man!"

The one redeeming thing was that the moon was full, and as I walked home, I saw that the clouds had given it a corona, which shimmered with color similar to the oily puddles you see in parking lots- something I've literally never seen before. A small comfort as I dragged myself, broken in spirit but ever hopeful, home to bed.