You Can Find Me In The Club

"This scene is dead but I'm still restless"

We Are Scientists

I'm not what you would call a teetotaler.  I'm more of a whiskeytotaler, in that I will totally finish off all the whiskey in your house if you don't cut me off early enough in the night.  So my shockingly ascetic lifestyle here in Sri Lanka has been a bit of an adjustment for me.  Unlike the East Village, where I lived literally above a bar and seemingly below yet another bar, I have to drag ass about 45 minutes by tuk tuk to get to any sort of nightlife around here.  But last weekend was Halloween, and I'll be a monkey's uncle before I stay home by myself on Halloween. I was gonna hit the club if it killed me.

The world being an ever shrinking electronic village full of overlapping "I went to college with someone you made out with" stories, I was luckily able to connect with a friend of a friend who lives in Sri Lanka not too far from me.  I'm not what you would call smooth, per se, so I basically begged her for a week to drag me out to wherever and whatever she was doing last Saturday night.  She took pity on my poor frowning white face and said she would text later on with plans.  If you've ever waited around for a text upon which your entire evening relies, you too will know the pain of what I like to call the Kübler-Ross Method of Textual Frustration.

Stage 1 - Denial (9:02pm) I started to panic.  I thought, no way am I going to end up alone at home again, not tonight, I totally had set plans and they're gonna be so fun.  I started to draft a text to see if perhaps everything was still a go but put my phone down - no need to sound desperate.

Stage 2 - Anger (9:14pm) Buddha was doing this to me for making fun of his stupid cannon celebration, wasn't he.  This wasn't fair - I'm a fun dude, and when I got a drink with this girl last week we totally had a fun time! It wouldn't be a big deal if I stayed home if that stupid rat wasn't always tormenting me.  God I hate him.

Stage 3 - Bargaining (9:46pm) After a failed rat-hunting expedition and subsequently stomping around the yard to blow off steam, I started getting antsier about the work I should've been doing instead of waiting around.  I told myself "Eric, this is your night off, and if you get to go out you can spend all of tomorrow catching up on stuff."  I'm very convincing, so I totally bought it.  I was gonna protect the shit outa human rights if I got to go celebrate Halloween. Picked up the phone again and crafted a text to check on plans - this time I stopped just short of hitting send - still don't want to seem desperate.

Stage 4 - Depression (10:12pm)  I'm a loser.  This sucks...I'm going to sit at home alone on Halloween while all my friends are going to be out and having the best time ever.  Everyone's gonna have so much fun without me and I'll have to cry into my mac when I look at their awesome facebook photos. Screw sounding desperate, I am desperate - text sent to check on plans.

Stage 5 - Acceptance (10:56pm) Sigh. It's all over...I might as well just face the fact that I'm going to have a crappy Halloween.  I guess I'll go rent and watch the entire Firefly series on iTunes.

Finally I toss on some gym shorts and set down for a horrible evening of self-reflection, and the phone rings.  It's her! OMG OMG OMG we're going out!!!! My metaphorical tail was wagging all over the damn place, and I didn't even mind that I had to put pants back on after going into hibernation mode.  I snagged a tuk tuk as fast as I could and shot up to Colombo to hit the clubs. 

I bought whiskey. I talked to strangers. I played wingman for my delightful hostess when she set her eyes on a friendly Dutchman. And the very best part? I wasn't sitting at home by myself on Halloween!  The clubs were pretty cool, nothing too insane - the usual mix of local dudes hanging out around the edges and a throng of white chicks dancing in the middle of the room all stoked to be on gap year from Leeds or some such nonsense.  We raged until about 4 or so, and I was happy to see that not drinking for a month hardly affected my alcohol tolerance.  The hours pushed on and when my wallet grew light, I rumbled into the parking lot and made my way home.  I'm kind of sad I didn't get to dress up and party with all my friends back home, but hopefully I can make a few new friends here too and make going out less of a big emotional production by establishing a normal social life.

Until then, I can probably count on suffering a few more bouts of textual frustration in the near future.