02/20/2006 - 4:08 a.m. | if it weren't for me and you, the avenue'd be incomplete

The dynamic shifts wholly when Shelly is not around. Not that having Shelly around is a bad thing, but the safety net she provides of always being around to talk and dance with means I have no real reason to get out there and meet the world. Sure, there might be those awkward points where I�m just standing alone, staring, staring, but all in all it was a good night(s):

Friday I decided for once to get as drunk as I so often promise. If you know me at all, it�ll be like Spritz or Smacko going, �What are we doing this weekend, man?� to which I respond, �Getting blind fucking drunk. I�m talking like �murder a hooker� drunk.� These are the things I say. But usually that never happens (perhaps another side effect of having Shelly around is that I feel I must always remain soberer than she, so that she does not end up raped in a ditch somewheres), and I remain comfortably, if still awkwardly, buzzed. This night, though, big plans! And I�m not talking about my weird ass random trip to Old Navy and Target. No, the drinking began at 6 (alone � frowny� That is not a time one starts and expects to end up unpuking) with a bottle of wine, me resplendent in the knowledge that that alone would get me pretty wasted. Before I got a quarter of the nasty down, though, Spritz says we are going to Perkins to meet with Dank and Zou to roll D&D characters.

Now, I really don�t like being drunk in front of them � or any person who has not been there themselves � but I realize the hole has already been dug too deep and decide to carry on with my descent. Nasty big ass lemonade from Perkins (Perkins! Why! Of all places!), a flask that goes down unnervingly easy, oh, and incidentally I am a fucking mediocre-ass wizard. Glad to hear it.

I come home and listen to what appears to be just a sickening amount of The Killers (frowny frown), finish the wine, and play Freecell until I am getting too far gone to automatically tell which cards are red. I am summoned downstairs, but I believe I quickly realized how sluggish I was and went out into the tundra to get a Redbull. To be spiked, obviously.

On facebook earlier, we�d seen something intriguing about a hobo-themed party, and in my trek to the gas station, I believe I stumbled upon it and stopped by. It was pretty fun, by which I mean they had a barrel of fire blazing, and the chances of me getting hypothermia and dying suddenly plummeted. Fun.

The Redbull was actually a brilliant idea, as it snapped me out of my comatose state and onto the party scene. Andy was at our house for some reason and was coerced into giving us a ride to the party of some girl Smacko wants to bang (I think. That is how it was explained to me).

Now, hopefully you understand my little flowchart by now: If I am drunk enough to speak to a stranger girl, I should not be speaking to any stranger girls. It is a good system that has worked for me a long time, but it did not hold up this particular Friday night. I was on the couch next to some girl, and she looked at me (maybe because I was staring at her � I have bad feelings like that), and I asked how it was going. We can only assume it went downhill from there, but luckily her boyfriend appeared, and I did not try to pull out any game or anything. And by then, my energy was restored!

Yeah, I was pretty wasted, so I don�t remember much who I conversed with, just that I was around doing so. Dan and his new girlfriend were there, for instance, and I said things to them, and I wonder if they were things that people could actually understand me saying. I wonder that about all of these conversations, actually. I never have anything to say ever, and I was somehow a right chatterbox. In intro psych, they talked about these two areas of the brain that affected speech. If you lost the one, your sentences still made sense logically, but would have problems with production (�Wednesday� went� zoo� Nate� monkey��); if you lost the other, the sentences would make have the form sentences are supposed to have, but would lack comprehension (�I visited the egg last salad George and lacked the runny construction signs�). I feel like I could only have been some combination of the two. Charming.

Dustin and his crew were there, and I remember that Dustin and I, occasionally at odds, were on unusually good terms that night, probably because he likes people to be fucking retard drunk. Junior was talking to some chick, and then I was talking to the chick, and then I was going with her to the bathroom to guard the door, ninja-stance style (Spritz followed, and he kept making this *ding* noise that my drunken brain found absolutely side-splitting. So he would be going *ding* *ding* and every time I would spit out my beer laughing, and he would wait for me to try and take my next sip� Incidentally, who the fuck thought I needed a goddamn beer?) Anyway, apparently Junior had brought this girl along, and I don�t know if he thought I was macking on her or what (More likely, she was patronizing the fucking sad drunk clown she thought would murder her), but I think he was pissed at me. Or maybe he just sort of hates me in general, I really can�t tell with any of those people. Anyway, he was trying some competitive bullshit, and as I�ve mentioned before, he is really, really bad at it. He was doing the whole �contempt� thing, but his only real target was the fact that I was drunk. Even in my state, I had contempt for his contempt. �Oh, you�ve noticed I�m obliterated! How cutting of you! Certainly that wasn�t immediately fucking apparent to everyone who�s seen me stumbling around, spouting gibberish.� Fuck, man. There are so many better things to make fun of me for � why you suck so much at it?

I was led to some other party briefly, and in my drunken little tube of a world (My memory of the night is strangely clouded to that of a brown tunnel I would occasionally notice things out of � like a paper towel roll, you know?), I watched as girls gave me eyes left and right. Well, that�s how I saw it anyway, but I was also clearly aware that this was drunken delusion, and that if I did approach any of them, I would be unable to shout anything but madness at them. When I should not be shouting anything at all.

Ducky just called to point out that if Missy and I were to get married, she would Mrs. Missy Walsh. Missus Missy. This was the act of a sober man. A clever observation, but one that seems less and less pertinent with every passing day.

Smacko and Spritz got a ride from Shanks, of all people (Someone explain that one, thanks), but I stuck around with Dustin and his crew because I was blasted and did not want to even start facing the notion of sobering up. The party dwindled, I imagine, and there was talk of heading to Qdoba for drunk food. This was a ridiculous notion, I decided, such a far fucking walk for some tacos, but I was willing to go along anyway. Then we walked out, and I realized that somehow we already were the fuck in Champaign, pretty much across the damn street from the place. It took me a hell of a long time to actually compute this, and then I was just shocked, shocked, that it was the case. I ordered three tacos, and they disappeared without any recollection of my eating them. Damn taco burglars. Next you�ll be stealing my identity to top your delicious purloined chicken things.

We waited for the bus, and I ran into Moller, and I feel bad for the poor guy because I am almost certainly did not leave him alone. He had those mittens that fold open into half-gloves, and I had actually been searching for a pair that day, so I asked him where he got them. About five times. And each time I would forget the answer. I�d remember that I asked, so I�d be like, �Sorry, man � I know we�ve been over this, but where the fuck are they from?� and he would told me, and I still fucking forgot. Yep, that drunk then.

We took the 22 home, and I remember staying on the bus longer than I should have as a result of some social anxiety thing (Glad that still exists when I have lost both vision and memory). So I walked home from ISR, and it was cold as fucking shit. Normally, I can tolerate the cold � I�ve been trained to � but my mental defenses were gone, and my drunk shield was not quite as protective as I hoped. So I called Missy and left her a message that was apparently just me yelling the whole time (�GRRRAAAAHH! IT�S SO FUCKING COLD! WAAAAH!!�) and then she called me back for more of the same. I believe I was almost crying.

So, I finally get home, an angry frozen shell, walk through the back parking lot, and my car is fucking neon green. Wait � what? OK, OK � Andy Quitmeyer, in his infinite wisdom, knows how to exploit a drunk. That�s how he got a 20 dollar McKnight donation out of me one night on the street, and it�s how he got permission to cover my car in a few thousand of the Ignignokt stickers he got free from Adult Swim. Of course, that still leaves him with like 97, 000 stickers to spare, but the point is, my car is a fucking glowing monstrosity. The stickers are apparently pretty easy to remove, but I am rather torn. On the one hand, that is pretty fucking cool and ridiculous, especially since he�s making a choose-your-own-adventure documentary about it; on the other hand, I am going to be a target for every cop in the nation. Also, I�m sure my parents are going to be tres pleased when I arrive home in it next weekend. Anyway, if you want to see it, there will pictures and whatnot floating around eventually; hell, it might even get on TV.

Anyway, I come in the house to speak to Andy about these developments, and there are just people passed out everywhere, lying in piles and piles of discarded sticker backs. Shanks is sitting on the armchair, slowly cutting the corners off the backs for easier stickage, and downing generic marked-down Valentine�s Day chocolates (One box I note has been labeled �EXTRA TASTY�). I consider this for a while (in what I can only imagine was a manic state) and then leave them to it. They finish roughly around 7 and depart for a pancake dinner, which I don�t really understand considering it is the morning.

I wake up � cautiously, fearing hangover � and proceed downstairs to watch The Hitchhiker�s Guide, of all things. Some of Gautam's friends are in town, but besides the fact that they all have loudass horrible laughs that follow each other in a chorus of hellfire, it is only notable in that as I walked downstairs, I bumped into one of them. "Uhhhh," I said. "Did I, uh, invite you over last night?" Because, lord, I could very well have been that drunk. Tebben and Allison stop by, and I am confusingly rude to them; I do not understand why anyone would stop over just to visit us. They leave, and the stupid tiny headache arrives at about the same time. It�s annoying, but I figure aspirin won�t do shit about it, so I continue to eat and drink water until it is time to drink booze again. I figure that will be the best cure of them all.

It turns out it is not, and I am maybe a drink and a half in when I feel the urge to expel these things. Ladies take note that it was not a six hour ordeal involving tears and anticipation and suffering. I sat watching �That�s So Raven,� felt a queer little rumble in my belly, calmly walked to the toilet, and did my business (HORK! It was strangely thick from the prepackaged fried rice I�d made!) Wiped my face, brushed and gargled to get out the chunks, and then proceeded back into the living room to start in on some of Spritz�s gin and tonic. That, my friends, is the puke and rally, and that is what separates the weak from the strong. I prayed that enough junk had entered my bloodstream before it was tossed to leave me loosey-goosey anyway. My prayers� were answered.

Allison arrived, and she and me and Smacko and Spritz piled into the latter�s car to head to the gay bar� Sigh, yes. The gay bar again. I was non-plussed (which is not to say, confused, and more to say, negative�) about the whole scheme. The donuts in the hospital parking lot did nothing to soothe my tumultuous tummy, and I do not like the idea of paying three bucks to get into a place where I know there is no ass to get. I much prefer paying five to seven and being satisfied with the notion that the ass is there, and I am simply too inept to plunder any of it.

This is all girl ass, by the way. Ass ass ass.

So we arrive and stow our coats and of course there are no drink specials � these people have a fucking monopoly on the homosexual scene in town; they could charge 18 bucks for piss in a cup, and people would still pay it. They might actually do that in the back rooms, come to think of it. *rimshot* But the bartender is a right prick, always ignoring me, and I kind of want to rip his lungs out and dance on them. GIVE ME MY CRAN-VOD NOW MAYBE I WILL TOUCH YOUR JUNK IN RETURN

I am wondering for the nth time that night what the fuck I am doing there, when in storm the rest of Allison�s crew: Jasmine, Mel, <3Hillary<3, miscellaneous gay gentlemen. I know, I�m bad, I�m bad, need to remember names � when meeting people, though, I have to consciously remember to develop mnemonic devices, and I was a bit too spacey for that. There were two couples in our party, though, representing both Champaign and Urbana in my mind. Two of the guys together were very fit, muscular, dressed kind of preppy, would no doubt have been a big hit with the girls at Delta Delta Delta or KAMS (that is, if the two suddenly stopped liking dong). The other two (Mel�s brother and �his partner,� I am informed� I am afraid I do not know the terminology well-enough� Does �partner� mean something different from �boyfriend?� Is it like a step up or something? If not, stick with �boyfriend;� the word �partner� just sounds lame. Otherwise, sorry about the whole �won�t let you get married� thing. Frown frown) are kind of awkward and lanky, a lot less sociable. On the dance floor, preppie couple grind hard, grab boobs, and make out (Hell yes, right in front of me! �Bout time I saw some action at this fucking place!); nervous couple bounce awkwardly and look horrified. I can see why no one likes Urbana people. I know I spent all my time talking to the fun ones, making weird eye contact and speaking in broken Spanish (and absently inserting a lot of sign language into my gestures� Cool).

Apparently when Allison had told her friends earlier that she was trying to convince me to go to C-Street with them, there was a chorus of "YESSS" - with elbow-pumping! I have a weird ass fanbase.

The night was spent bouncing back and forth from the dance floor to the bar, trying to ignore Allison just enough that she would not try any advances on me this evening. Of course, it did eventually occur to me that ignoring a girl can often increase interest, but the opposite of ignoring her would be paying a lot of attention to her. Doesn�t seem to send exactly the right signal either, now does it? My foggy brain could not grapple it, so it eventually stopped trying.

Jasmine proclaims herself Queen of the Gays, and if that is the case, I believe I also met her King. Again, do not remember his name, but he was this big fat black bald guy, and he was just like the stereotyped leader big fat black bald gay guy I�m sure I�ve seen in some movie. Hell, the movie probably based it on him, and not the other way around. Anyway, Spritz needed a cigarette and somehow the paper trail led back to this man, who wandered off for like ten seconds and then came back for some poor guy�s whole pack. �I had to suck a lot of dick for these,� he said as he passed them around. Everyone took one but me, and I don�t care what they say � the ladies looked sophisticated, the dudes looked cool, and I was just a big fucking square. Possibly a square without cancer, but I�m gone at 40 anyway. So the King of the Gays has taken bluntness to a new level, and he just starts polling people: He asks Jasmine when she last had sex, he asks Hillary if she�s given blowjobs before (I pointedly look away here� I�m sure it would have been very telling were someone filming my goddamned life). The circle broke before he got to me, thank God. I cannot imagine any question that would result in a helpful outcome.

Anyway, I�ve tried long delaying it in the telling, but there is some happy news: Real, positive steps were taken in the direction of Hillary. For instance, we actually SPOKE. Alone, together! In several instances! For extended periods of time! If you know me, this is a very big deal. I wasn�t even drunk enough to be retarded, if you can imagine! I said possibly clever, pertinent things! It�s a wonder! We talked about jobs and �Arrested Development� and psychology maybe, and I maybe even threw out a compliment so backhanded that it probably did not count as one (She and Jasmine recently got jobs at Hollister, so I said something along the lines of �Awesome! You know what that means now, though, right? Society now officially deems you attractive�� Pause. �Which is not to say that I don�t think you�re attractive�� Pause. �Because I am a member of society. Too.� It�s like I was channeling every bit of romantic comedy awkwardness I�ve ever seen!)

Additionally, Hillary and I danced! In an intimate manner! For multiple songs on several occasions! She would seek me out to dance! Seek! Me! Out! And it was not the weird, standoffish dancing I reserve for, uh, pretty much every girl ever (I am a horrific dancer, all nerves and no rhythm. My respect for a woman�s body borders on crippling fear, to the point where, even if I am being allowed to dance, I remain timid and uncomfortable with her body for fear of ever, ever crossing some sort of boundary of offensiveness. God forbid anyone ever think I am attracted to them). Naw, man � this dancing had some �UGH� to it (the good kind, not the, uh, disgusting diarrheal kind), and it wasn't unidirectional! And while the voices would set in later � that she was probably just drunk (It actually occurs to me that I have not actually seen her, even in passing, in a environment not involving alcohol), that I was pretty much the only straight dancing male in a mile radius � it still hasn�t really stopped making me sort of happy ever since. I felt like a weird little accessory.

See, this is how karma works out, I�m learning. It might even explain some of my masochism� If I go along with bad, stupid ideas � going to a gay bar for the umpteenth time, for instance � the end result will be proportionately equal or better to that bad idea � learning that my weird crush may in fact be a little interested after all, say. (Another of my favorite little intro psych things is the theory that the more time you spend around a person, the more they will grow to like you. Even if they were originally indifferent or sort of even disliked you, duration eventually trumps all. Love that theory, Freud or whoever. Best news I ever heard)

Anyway, this was all thanks in part to the fact that Allison was bombed out of her mind somewhere. She ran off to meet some other people she knew at the bar, I guess, and as far as I can reckon, they just poured gallons of booze down her throat. So, she was out of commission for a good while there � including a hilarious incident where she apparently just walked full speed ahead and slammed into a mirror, thinking the bar was that much bigger, I guess. A sign of great things to come, she came back in full on train wreck mode. Fuck.

Sober, Allison understands well enough that I�m not really interested, I think. Get her drunk, though, and she starts to forget that sort of thing � most sort of things � and starts trying to get all up on that. I do not know how to really handle this � if I were to explain the situation to her, no matter how carefully, it would end in a fucking implosive nightmare � so I instead dance with her in an extremely exaggerated half-hearted manner, giving eyes to everyone around that say, �Lord, I am certainly not interested in this pile of drunk! Even with her new pixie hairdo!� That was a good choice, though, by the way. She got her hair cut in kind of a retro shoulder-length Jackie-O sort of thing, and I do think it works on her very well. But God knows I still don�t want to fuck her.

Boy, I�m such a dick. Let me summarize the last, I dunno, year? Two? I find this random girl, stalk her, get her to like me, promptly lose interest, and then use the fact that she likes me to try and get to one of her friends, simultaneously wedging myself in between her and a friend who does want to be with her. All the while in a relationship with an ultra-devoted psycho from Kansas. I try to tell myself I�m a nice guy, and I often nearly believe it� but then I remember that everyone tries to convince themselves they�re good.

Anyway, I figure I�m on drunk duty for the rest of the night, and for the most part, I�m right. I am struck with one last bit of fortune, though. One of the many gay friends, maybe even seeing my noticeable distress, grabs Allison from me and says he wants to dance with �the Jew Girl� (That�s what they all call her, so either they remember names as well as I do, or they are just the coolest fucking people ever). Momentarily free, I watch as Hillary suddenly drifts back over, and I grab her one last time.

The club has completely degenerated by now. It is packed as eff, everyone flailing; we are up on the stage by the DJs; there are two hot, pushy lesbians fighting for room on the left; three huge-as-hell musclebound shirtless dudes are pretty much fucking the shit out of each other to my right, faces rubbed on denim cock, rotisserie-style fucking with a little dance tossed in; some horrible techno remix of, I don�t know, the Spice Girls, Cher, something is blasting at frenetic volume and pace; my hangover headache has developed into a full-blown migraine I am doing my best to ignore; Jasmine, Mel, and the gay couples have formed this massive mantrain that everyone keeps piling on to; Allison and the one guy are taking turns showing off their nipples; and that isn�t all� The weirdest effect is in the air: It�s not that usual hell fog they�re always blasting at us. Blame the drugs if you must, but I swear it was like thousands of tiny raindrops floating in middair, reflecting the color of the changing lights. I knew it was messed up, even at the time, and stopped to stare for a moment, trying to figure out how the fuck they did it, or even what it really was. Whatever. I turned back to Hillary, and our eyes locked for the first time since we�d been this close. Clearly, if there was any time to kiss her, this would be it.

You know how I roll by now. The moment of the first kiss is carefully selected by me to be the most fucked up memorable event possible. Of course, it could be argued that every first kiss will be memorable, considering how few I�ve had overall, but we still like to keep a twisted �oh shit� factor on the whole thing. Grandpa died? Okay, let�s start tonguin�. And I�ll be honest, guys, this was the most surreal moment yet, so pretty and intense and absolutely out of nowhere and the culmination of some of the biggest things that came out of this part of my life� but of course you know I didn�t go through with it. In my mind, two trains were heading in opposite parallel directions - one going towards a kiss and dating and sex and spring break spent together in the Caymans (of course I know her spring break plans) and staying around an extra semester so we could finish together; the other leading to an awful breakup and a friend crushed and betrayed, friendships ruined, complications on top of complications, another breakup, more messed up lives. You can see why these sorts of things aren�t easy for me now, can�t you? I can�t just clear my head and think of my dong; I consider all possibilities, no matter how far-reaching or unlikely, and the truth is, it always cripples me. I'm well aware I'm blowing things out of proportion, but that's well what I do, isn't it? That's pretty much right there at the top of Nathan Walsh's character traits.

The moment passes, the bar closes. We are shooed out by angry young professionals, and I am back to guarding Allison again. No one else seems all that concerned about her, which only makes me feel more guilty. We walk to the car of the preppie couple, and it is an Escort, and we somehow cram 7 people into it (Make your own joke here � we did). Allison has sunken mysteriously far into the depths of the front seat, and I am splayed out across Mel, Hillary, and Jasmine in the back. I worry that I am crushing them with my bulk. They assure me I am light as a feather. I reply, �That�s because I have hollow bones like a bird.� Apparently Drunk Nate is aware of facts that Sober Nate has no idea about. I actually had to look that up today to see if it was really true. It is.

Cops were everywhere, so we had to keep on the D/L, but we eventually made it back to Allison�s place. I scour my brain for any excuse to keep us all together for a while longer, or even just a reason to walk Hillary to her door, but I�ve got nothing. I try and reassure myself it pays to be a little standoffish. Allison, unfortunately, does have a reason to be walked to her door, namely that she has now reached her depressive stage and suddenly hates all of her girl friends and roommates. She asks if she can sleep on my couch, and I start dragging her like the ten steps she is from her home. �You retard.�

I dump her off inside, have the same looping conversation about advertising 6 times (namely, when is she going to see my portfolio, and how much she wants to fuck her independent study professor�) After telling her �Wednesday� for like the fifth or sixth time, I just run the fuck out and start on my way home. It is not as cold as it was, and I am in a good fucking mood, the kind of mood only a vindicated crush and a mad self-esteem boost can provide. I walk down the middle of High Street, singing �Bel Air� over and over and over.

I try not to delude myself that there�ll be a call or an IM waiting for me when I get home and pass out as soon as I�m able, waking today to work and work and try and not act like I always do when this sort of thing happens. I�m happy, guys, and I am fucking miserable, and I don�t know what to do about any of those feelings. So we sit on them. I read some Harry Potter, drink a few Dr. Peppers, and spend a couple of hours with BillyC, on break from his lifestyle of piracy (Although the coast guard has eliminated his whininess - in retrospect, with his shaggy hair and mannerisms, he may well have been the inspiration for Napoleon Dynamite - they still have not taught him the value of inside speaking voices). I do not want the week to begin, nor do I want it to end, as it�s going to be spent at home instead of here. My time left just seems so limited� I�m worried. Still, I was just recently thinking that our lives have been sort of lacking in terms of college-y drama. So there we go.