05/27/2006 - 10:34 p.m. | i have had four beers

Last weekend Shelly and I went to Waterloo for her sister's graduation. Although I generally hate the town and find it totally emasculating (in my mind everyone is just thinking I am such a homo and not good at anything and awful and probably not getting my jokes), especially with the backwards country folk activites Shelly and Abby decided to make me partake in (I believe it is to their amusement that they take a person who does like such a thing as firing a gun or murdering a tiny fish or worm and make them do it and laugh about it later in AIM conversations), Saturday night was actually pretty surreal and wonderful. We ended up at some middle aged guy's birthday party, so I felt people were judging me less, and though I had something of a panic attack and couldn't eat, there was an open bar, and I had about two or three thousand tiny, weak-as-hell Malibu and pineapples until I felt downright pleasant. Anyway, at this event, there was a live polka band, which is pretty amusing in any case. I was pretty much too drunk to do anything besides a two step, but that was OK. Have you ever heard of a circle waltz? Like, all the girls hold hands and get in a circle and spin in one direction, and all the guys hold hands in a circle outside of them, spinning the opposite way, and when the music stops, you have a new dance partner whom you have to make awkward conversation with, old ladies and moms and occasionally a nice girl with a soft sweater. No one really explained the thing to me, so it was pretty bewildering, but I guess I liked that about it. I did not like it that the same man, probably a closet homosexual, would always track me down to hold my hand when the men's circle reformed. His hands were so dry and cracked. Anyway, there were pretty trees with white lights (and I do not normally like white lights), and the whole thing seemed cinematic to me, which is probably my favorite form of inebriety. I kicked over a planter accidentally and blamed it on the man with the dry hands. Abby even said something nice to me while we were dancing (I think), something about how I could be a nice, tall escort for girls at a debutante ball. The stupid town gave me poison ivy, and I could not really survive there without some amount of alcohol in me at all times, but it was still worthwhile.