Burnt Sushi

a.k.a Drinking Whiskey with the father of old high school compatriots.

So I finally leave the house on Friday night due to a series of text messages and phone calls that got project 'Rescue Nikki' off the ground. I now realize that I have a serious problem of never having a car and thus not having a ride places. This made sense in SF - but now I just think I must have some sort of genetic deficiency. I mean I used to be the taxi for all my friends now I am "that guy" who is always begging someone to come pick me up.


Anyway...so the rescue party arrives...in the form of a kid that I have known for years. So we head to the Union Brew House and drink and catch up and start plotting the suburbia gathering for the eve. Who do we know lurking in these snowy windy streets and how do we get them out of bed? We manage to round up two other fellas...and head to The Snug (which closes at 11:30 pm - last call at 11pm). So two become three...and PJ, Matt and I having managed to close down The Snug (not that hard) head to Stars to meet up with Mike and now we are 4.

I start to feel a bit creepy because this is the bar where all the folks I went to high school with generally hang out at and I do have that fear of unexpectedly seeing ghosts from the past - so to speak. I also feel that it is a bit incestuous or weird just how long I have known these guys and my other high school friends and how similar we are (in some respects) at/near thirty to our younger selves (at least when we get together). Someone still gets too drunk and we are still forced to drink late night at people's parents' houses...ouch! We do dress better and drink better liquor. Here - I have realization number two...I hang out as the only girl in a group of guys - a lot.

These guys are funny and we have known each other forever so - there is high hilarity looming around every corner. Somehow I end up driving my slightly toasted buddy's car and racing Mike and his truck to Matt's mother's house. The race is funny and I feel sixteen as we zoom by the harbor and the patina covered statue of Paul Revere stares at me and the gazabo that was built near the town center still stands erect and proud (after what 20 years!!). Mike and I are giving each other the bird and yelling nonsense out the window while our booze filled pals smile and laugh - a laugh laced with the unspeakable fear that comes from the knowledge that we are too old to be doing something this stupid and naive.

We end up a four pack (me now happily with a car - a x-mas miracle! - OK I will have to return the car to PJ tomorrow but for now it is nice) in non-urban suburbia calling the father of a kid we went to high school with because we spy him up late paying bills. He answers the phone while we scream into it and we wave and jeer until he realizes what this madness in his earpiece at 2am really is and starts laughing.

This evolves into an expedition of sorts undertaken by my buddy Matt and me. We scale the fence separating us from the late-night bill paying paternal one. I am in heels and get stuck...but luckily Matt is tall and I am little so this just ends up with Matt having to hoist a giggling, heel cladden, slightly upside down me to safety. So this brigade of dumb drunk adults (!?) finally arrives at the door of the (un)suspecting neighbor who finds this experience as amusing as it is and invites us in for a drink.

Bushmills is consumed and I end up staying up for hours talking to our older and wiser friend about Ireland, the ICC, love, getting older and dying. I really like whiskey...but the next day was a bit rough. I am learning some things about life here in the shadows of my past...one of them is that I need to grow up (perhaps). Others are: the real value of love; that people really want me to have a baby (Obviously this makes sense due to my maturity level shown in the aforementioned activities of the evening and what not); that lots of people that I used to go to school with are bald, married and/or have children; and that I have developed the nervous tick of holding my belly (or making sure it is still flat?) while enduring any such attempt to influence me to "move back to New England and have babies". (I got nothing against babies...but 1) I am not moving back to suburbian new england and 2) I would really enjoy being in love if I am going to be pregnant..I am just saying)....

OK - that was the night off from studying...otherwise - I generally do like the last blog said and study a lot - a real lot - a ridiculous amount - and take photos (which has become a full time creative outlet for me).