At around 10:00, my cell phone rang. I expected it to be Joe, but saw “Donna” on the screen. She was calling my number after seeing they I’d called twice yesterday. I’d called on the way down trying to remember the name of the little town in Pennsylvania that her mom’s side of the family is from. Gilberton.
I SSSed, and headed over to Einstein Bros Bagels on Piedmont Avenue. I ordered an egg frittata bagel, which consisted of a pumpernickel bagel and an egg and cheddar cheese omelet on it, and a cup of coffee. I made the coffee half plain and half vanilla hazelnut.
I sat at a round table with high chairs in the corner of two windows, enjoyed my breakfast, and worked on my homework. I read two research articles for material to include in my “individual project” that I’m doing for ENG 512. Then, I worked on the flowchart that is going to be the “meat of the matter.”
Joe called a little after 12:00, and said he’d meet me in about an hour. I told him that I’d wait there for him if Bobby would drop him there, which he did. When he arrived, he ordered breakfast, and I had another bagel, this one with only some light cream cheese on it. I must have had four cups of coffee during my time there, which is way more coffee than I ever drink in a day.
Joe and I got back to the room at about 2:30 to find that our room hadn’t yet been made up. We called downstairs, and they said that because we had our “Do not disturb” sign on the door at 10:00 when the maids came around, they just marked our room off for the day. I’ve never heard of that before. They said they’d send someone up if we wanted, which we did.
Joe and I went for a walk while they cleaned the room. We stopped at the OutWrite book store, where I bought a refrigerator magnet and a postcard for Robert. The magnet says, “Despite years of personal development, she still became her mother.” The postcard was of Whoopi Goldberg lying in a tub full of milk. Only her face, her hands, and her feet are sticking up, black against the white milk. I found it very funny.
We walked to Piedmont Park, which was nearby, and then stopped at Blake’s, a bar, on the way back. Joe had a Margarita, and I had a Bloody Mary. We sat at a round table with two high stools in the windows, which were opened out to the sidewalk, and people-watched.
On the way home, we decided to go ahead and get something to eat since it was 5:00 then, and we had to be at Bobby’s by 7:00. We ate at a Mexican place, where I had the most delicious entree. It tasted like scraping the cheese off a piece of pizza with the cheese being about a quarter-inch thick. Delicious!
Back at the room, Joe showered, and we left for Bobby’s at about 7:15.
When we arrived, a man we didn’t know answered the door, and two women were at the karaoke machine singing. They were rather large women, and they couldn’t sing at all. Well the one less than the other. But, at once, you could tell they loved to sing, knew they couldn’t sing, but were having the time of their life. Turned out the guy answering the door was David, Lydia’s husband. The other guy there was Shannon, Lisa’s wife, whom everyone often referred to as “Sha-nay-nay” during the night. Bobby came from the kitchen, and invited us back there to get a drink.
So, Lisa works (or worked at one time) with Bobby. Lydia met Bobby through Lisa and Lisa and Lydia hung out while both their husbands served 7 months in Iraq. I’m guessing they ate a lot together while the guys were gone. It did occur to me to wonder what the guys did together while they were gone, though there were no stereotypical signs of them being gay.
They had some great appetizers: meatballs, a sausage and cheese dip (which was delicious poured over the meatballs), chip and (onion) dip, chicken nugget type things with a BBQ sauce and a honey-BBQ sauce, those pinwheels stuffed with a cream cheese mixture, and some finger sandwiches (chicken salad? or maybe tuna salad?) with the crusts cut off them.
We ate and laughed and drank a lot. Everyone did karaoke, but me, but finally, they put on Harper Valley PTA, and I stepped up to the mic after the two girls had totally slaughtered the first couple of lines.
They put on one song that has the fastest words in history in it, and each of them took a turn getting up there trying to sing it, which was pretty funny.
After that, they played a karaoke game, where the six of them each took a number, and then one chose a song for four to sing, two chose a song for five, and three chose a song for six, and vice versa. Joe chose, “Strokin” for Bobby, and Bobby chose, “I Want Your Sex” for Joe. David had to sing a rap song with filthy lyrics, which was just hysterical. Just watching his eyes light up when the words flashed up on the screen was priceless.
Joe and Bobby did another hilarious song about cats; well, sort of. It was a duet, where Bobby sang the first verse, and Joe sang the second, which built on the first, then Bobby again with the third, which was tacked on to the first two, etc. It went something like:
(Bobby) I found a little kitty in the rain, and I picked that little thing up.
(Bobby) Wet
(Joe) I found a kitty in the midday sun, the poor little thing was hot.
(Joe) Hot
(Bobby) I found a little kitty, and his hair was all shaved off.
(Bobby) Bald
(Joe) I couldn’t sell the kitty so I gave it away, free.
(Joe) Free
Too funny. We were all cracking up.
Shanaynay told this joke:
Okay, Lydia, there’s this mute, and he goes into a store to buy some sunglasses. He can’t tell the salesperson what he wants so he points to the sun and then to his eyes, and the salesman says, “Oh you want some sunglasses?” He shook his head up and down excitedly.
So this blind man goes in next, Lydia, show me how you think he should indicate to the salesman that he wants some sunglasses.
Lydia thought about it for a second and then took her hands, made little circles with her fingers, put them up to her eyes, and said, “I don’t know, like this?”
To which Shannon said, “Actually he would just say, ‘I’d like a pair of sunglasses please.'”
We all cracked up, including Lydia. Those girls both had those infectious, cackling laughs.
It got to approaching 10:30, and David and Lydia said they had to go as David had to work in the morning. I took the opportunity to ask Bobby for directions to Hoedowns from his house. Joe went into the kitchen, spoke with Bobby, and came back to tell me that he’d said, “You go with John. Then, with David and Lydia gone, Lisa and Shannon will probably leave shortly after, and I’ll meet you guys at the bar.
This surprised me, and perhaps Joe a little, too, as earlier in the day, Bobby had said he wasn’t going out tonight. We went with the plan, got to Hoedowns between 11:15 and 11:30, and BObby showed up a little after midnight.
I did a few line dances: Midnight Waltz, Reggae Cowboy, the Electric Slide, and Dance. I did a two-step with Bobby to “The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia (Reba’s version), which played after the famous video clip from Designing Women. He complimented my on my follow ability, and on about the third time around, I saw Adam Brackman on the side of the dance floor!
We both squealed like girls, and I ran over to talk to him after the dance. I hadn’t called him about doing down because I thought he had stayed in Tulsa for the weekend for their G&L Film Festival. But, as it turned out, that’s in two weeks. So, it was just a delight to see him.
We left Hoedown’s at about 2:00, and went to The Eagle. It was just okay there, no great time. I remembered being there the last time, sitting on the stairway that leads to the upstairs, which was roped off, but every once in a while someone went up there. Last time someone said they thought they let only members up there, and that there was probably sex going on up there. I sat on those steps the last time, and this kid came and sat next to me, and started talking about Tina and something else that I had no idea about. I later found out that Tina is some form of crystal meth, I think, something like that. He wanted to borrow 10 bucks from me, I remember that, and he didn’t get it.
The lights came on at 3:00, and we went outside. Bobby asked us if we were interested in going to an “after party,” to which I said I didn’t care one way or the other, but Joe couldn’t make up his mind. While we were standing there deciding, these three guys came up to us, two of which seemed like a couple, and the other one blatantly let Bobby know he was interested in him. They wanted us to go to the Waffle House with us, which I know I didn’t want to do.
I guess Bobby got tired of waiting for us to decide, so he said to Joe before crossing the street with those three guys, “I’m going to my car, call me on your cell phone, and let me know what you’re going to do.” We were kind of taken aback by him just leaving us as we didn’t know where the after party was or even how to get back to our hotel from where we were.
We went behind the bar, got in my car, decided we’d just go back to the hotel, and Joe called Bobby to tell him. No response; his phone went directly to voice mail. And that’s how the weekend ended. Bizarre.
While we were on the corner, I had asked Bobby which way the hotel was, and he’d pointed over to these towers in the distance, the kind with red lights on them to let planes know they were there. So we headed down the street toward that direction, and fortunately after two or three major intersections, came to Piedmont Avenue, on which we turned right, and eventually came to our hotel.
It took Joe a little while to wind down. After he stopped talking to me, I was out like a light.