Epic Night

It was an epic night. We didn't get to sleep until after 4:00 a.m. I hadn't done that since Saturdays in the Bahamas, when I'd get to work at 4:00 a.m. and stay up around the clock with the boys in the Square, drinking all the free rum I could handle and talking shit about Geoffrey Rush.

Last night I was with three of my oldest, dearest friends. Red, from Florida, my host Brick, and the only friend I've ever had with tattoos inspired by Wagner's Ring Cycle, Fritzie.

We started at the Holiday Club on Sheridan, its faintly Rat Pack-era décor overpowered by a club DJ in one room and an online jukebox in the other. Our waitress, a cheeky brunette sporting rimless glasses and a pendant in the form of brass knuckles, kept us good and liquored-up. We commented on sexy people and not-so-sexy people. We played The Black Crowes' "Hard to Handle" on the jukebox—the good old days for Brick and me. Fritzie regaled us with tales of his new ladylove, a huge hulking hairy flight attendant who had formerly been a cop. Turns out Fritzie and I have the same hand fetish. The mere sight of Mr. Cop-cum-Air-Floozy's giant man-hands turns Fritzie into a gushing girl. While I have yet to meet my personal Hand Waterloo, I have frequently had another experience in common with Fritzie—in the wrong hands, this body closes up quicker than a suitcase full of divorce clothes, and it's all I can do to keep from screaming "Your hands look like a little girl's," as I back nervously away, never again to speak to the owner of the offending appendages.

At any rate, Fritzie and I shrieked into hand-fetish heaven, jabbering tipsily about the importance of the shape, size, and appearance of hands (the importance of being earnest we could neither of us care less about). There's nothing as fun as having a friend who not only understands and appreciates you but is actually moved by the same impetus. Especially when it's a weird impetus. This must be how a masochist feels when s/he meets a sadist, or when a pair of dirty-panty sniffers meet each other over a pile at the Laundromat.

With all the talk about hands, Fritzie was compelled to inquire whether I was reading palms again. Of course I was. What better way exists to carefully examine someone's hands long before you get to the morning after and realize you've made a horrible, horrible mistake? I read Red's, and whatever I said about what I saw in them prompted him to say "When you find the man who likes Woody Allen movies [one of my many new pre-requisites], tell him exactly what you just told me and he'll be yours forever."

Damn it. I wish I could remember what the hell I saw in that palm. It must have been fan-fucking-tastic.

Tragedy struck once we left the Holiday Club (how many times have those fateful words been uttered, I wonder). Red ushered us to Cullens, an Irish-themed yuppie scum bar too close to Wrigleyville for comfort. Red said he could die happy there, but I just wanted to die, period. It was full of thirty-somethings clearly still in contact with all of their Greek siblings from college, wearing the latest in non-cutting-edge fashion. Boys in bad haircuts and vertically-striped button-downs (untucked for that relaxed, I'm-not-at-the-office look), expensively groomed and flawlessly normal girls hiding their bulimia breath, doubtlessly carrying secrets about youthful college sexcapades with disgusting future up-and-comers just like those they were now attempting to marry by way of a drunken hook-up. The horror.

By that time I'd had three Cosmopolitans and Red had urged a beer on me. He wanted to play "Have you met my friend," which he's sure will net me dates or at the very least practice after my years off the market. He thusly introduced me to some yuppie named Mike, who, it had been confirmed, did like Woody Allen movies.

Mike was a suspicious fellow (yuppies are suspicious toward any who aren't wearing this season's easily identifiable label) and had large, dark nostrils that flared too high on the sides of his nose, making him look like a cross between Mr. Bean and a snapping turtle. I asked him what was the last book he'd read, hoping he didn't read so I could turn disgustedly away and go to the bathroom, which had been where I was headed before our introduction. He had read something, but it sounded non-fiction and boring, although thankfully enough, left-leaning. A vision of our future together flashed before my eyes—clearly that future was already dying. Him with his boring book on the economics of baseball and me wrecked after an afternoon of writing followed by an evening of pain-soothing Scotch, wanting to do Karaoke MacBeth...Crate and Barrel whiteware smashed on the perfectly restored original hardwood floor, tears, a fight over who gets to keep the Hummer, who gets to keep the Shar-pei.

Last call sounded and we left soon after, each in our cabs. At home, Brick and I got into our pajamas and waltzed around the kitchen baking freezer-pizza and chugging water to prevent brain-dehydration (the common wisdom being that dehydration, not over-indulgence, is the cause of hangovers). I crawled into bed with him for a few minutes for warmth before Juanito got home from his job slinging booze at a Mexican drag bar.

Yuppies or not, it's great to be back in the world of People My Own Age. Even if they don't like it, at least they know—from firsthand experience—where I'm coming from.