I am...Bergen West

Over the weekend, Jenny Boe and I went on a spontaneous road trip. She thought that Duluth sounded fun for a weekend trip, so we loaded up the Yaris that I rented after my first attempt at getting to Minneapolis failed when my car died on the highway. We booked a room through Hotwire, and headed north singing at the top of our lungs. We were inspired by our Yaris, by our fictional identities as travelers from Jackson, Idaho (which we later discovered actually exists) and by a bumper sticker we saw on the road that encouraged drivers to practice random acts of awesome. 

We got to our hotel and went to the desk to check-in. The employee at the counter was courteous enough to ask if we preferred a specific location in the hotel. Did we want a room near the pool, on a lower level or perhaps on one of the upper floors? "Let's get high," replied Jenny Boe, thinking of the view. I giggled. She giggled. The guy checking us in smiled, and asked us to excuse him for a moment. He returned from a back office with a paper for us to sign, legally binding us to pay two hundred dollars if we smoked in the room. Once we got to our quarters, we stashed Jenny's case of beer, my Captain and our wine in the mini-fridge. Jenny Boe cut to the chase and started talking logistics. If we brought back guys, someone had to take the shower. That was the only way. This inspired our brainchild, a public service initiative to "Bathe a Hippie." We were full of good ideas.  

We decided to call my cousin, Christina, who lives in Duluth, to see what she and her boyfriend, Chuck, were doing that night, and to get advice from a local about which bars are good. This was a fantastic idea. She told us about a bar with a band that she said would be a combination of hippies and hip-hop. A perfect combination for Jenny Boe and myself. I took to calling the event the hippie-hop, and could not wait to get my hands on a loofah and my first victim. 

After we got to the hippie-hop, things start to run together in my pickled brain. I remember several trips to the bathroom and Jenny Boe pointing out how many people in Duluth drink Mike's Hard Lemonade. I remember describing the crowd as, "a little something for everyone," but also that I wanted to see my cousin. When she texted to say that she was at Quinlan's and that there was still blood on the sidewalk from the stabbing there a few days earlier, we jumped into the next cab. 

When we got to Quinlan's we found Christina and Chuck. I also spotted this guy that I remembered seeing earlier standing in the rain smoking a cigarette. Christina saw me pointing him out to Jenny Boe and informed me that he was Vincent Cadillac, a local musician. This inspired Jen and I to come up with aliases. We were inventing fictional lives, after all, weren't we? Jenny decided to use Vincent Cadillac's successful formula, and came up with Pablo Ferrari. My cousin helped me come up with Bergen West, but when guys asked I couldn't remember it. I think that defeats the purpose of an alias.  

The night was one of those beautiful blurs reminiscent of riding a merry-go-round. I remember a lot of it, but found out the next morning that I didn't remember everything. This realization hit when I told Jenny Boe in all seriousness that someone stole my money. The conversation quickly snowballed.  

"I know that I had some money left," I told her, miffed. 

"Annie. Remember those twelve Captain and Cokes you drank? And remember how you calculated that you had enough money for eight? You do the math," she said.  

"Why does my nose hurt so much?" I wondered out loud. "Did I hit it on something?"

"Yeah. Your cousin's hardwood floor," she said. 

"How did I do that?" I asked. 

"You fell." 

"I did?"

"Yeah. During the dance party."

"Oh, God. I don't remember that. How did we get to her house?"

"We took a cab." 

"Where did I sit in the cab? The front?" I asked, hoping that this would evoke some memory that it actually happened.

"No, I sat in the front. You sat in the back with your cousin and Chuck," she said, "and you told your cousin that she had to sit in the middle between you and Chuck because when you get drunk you sometimes get frisky." 

"Oh. My. God. I didn't," I pleaded.

"I wish I could come to your Christmas."

She filled me in on other details. Like that I kissed a really gross guy and a couple sorta gross guys, and that the really gross guy was rubbing my back in a disturbing way, but I seemed to have liked it. I covered my face with my hand, because I knew who she was talking about, and told her that I was too mortified to look at her. Thankfully, I was still drunk as she was telling me, so it was a little funny. She asked me if I remembered the black guy from the bar and his girlfriend. I informed her that he told me that said girl was not his girlfriend. "Well, she was calling you a bitch from across the bar anyway," she said, laughing. 

I am not sure how I feel about the impression that I made on my cousin and Chuck. I know that I pissed off their cat, Toonses, because I distinctly remember him hissing loudly and swiping a paw toward my face. I am relatively sure that, if anything, I showed them too much affection. But I had twenty-three years to make up for. Now that I know how much I like them, I really hope they still talk to me after this. Plus, Jenny Boe wants them to find her a soul mate. 

I puked on the car ride home, because I always get car sick if I ride in a car (or drive, and let me tell you, that was not pretty) after a long night of drinking. Jenny Boe just laughed at me hysterically, rolled down the window and tried not to gag. This, in turn, made me laugh hysterically and puke simultaneously. "We get closer every time we hang out," she said. I smiled. It was the best weekend of my summer by far.  

Perverts and Creeps

Last night I went out. On a Monday. In Rochester. I don't think I need to explain why my expectations were low. Although, as Meghan and I approached the first bar, I thought of a memorable night there which happened on a Monday last summer. I remember that it was a Monday, because going out on a Monday feels weird. The patrons are older, have more liver damage, are either perpetually belligerent or perpetually catatonic and are considerably more desperate than your average weekend crowd. The upside is that ordering a drink is not like being on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. It is, however, an environment where it is wise to have a man with you upon arrival. For obvious reasons. Statistics show that it decreases cases of sexual harassment exponentially. My friend Brandon wouldn't come because he had to work at five the next morning, so Meghan and I were on our own. We walked in, counted seven people and headed out the back door without even buying one drink.

We went across the street to my roommate Jenny's favorite bar and grabbed a booth. At first, it was pretty lame. The guy in the next booth was trying to get us to join him, but he was denied and Meghan and I immersed ourselves in girl talk. A random guy stopped at our booth, interrupted us and tried to start a conversation. He was either too drunk to notice, or too obtuse to care that our body language was anything but inviting. He asked to sit down. Being the passive-aggressive creatures that women often are, we allowed him to join us, but attempted to get rid of him by appearing to be completely uninterested in anything he had to say. It was lost on him. He thought we were shy. That is when I decided to acknowledge his presence and speak. I told him that I most certainly was not shy, hoping that he would infer that I was simply bored. He kept talking.

It turned out alright because he ended up being bait. Bait Boy knew this kid that I wanted Meghan to stop because she recognized him from work. She wouldn't do it, even though she knows I have a weakness for black guys. But divine intervention put this guy right at our booth when he stopped to talk to Bait Boy. He joined us, and we found out that he possesses beautiful eyelashes and the ability to make a conversation a lot less boring. When we were talking about Meghan moving to the south side of Chicago, and me going to South Africa, Bait Boy informed me that South Africa has the highest rate of car-jackings anywhere. I was less than fascinated by this tidbit of information. I told him that they also had the highest incidence of reported rape in the world. His mind was still on the car thing. He said, "But I guess that you won't be bringing your car there..." To which I replied, "Yeah, but I will be bringing my vagina." This caused Eyelashes, whose attention seems to wander occasionally, to take notice. "Vagina? What about your vagina?" he asked. Meghan said, "She's taking it with her to Africa." He said that he hoped so, and that he didn't realize it was a snap-on. Later, when we were talking about street smarts, and I said that I had them, he laughed and said, "I don't know too many niggas sittin' in the hood sayin', hey, 'Let's go to Africa tomorrow.'" Point taken. Later when Bait Boy mentioned an after party attended by himself, a guy that worked for him, Meghan and me, we made our escape. We pretended to go to the bathroom and headed for the back door. Eyelashes ended up walking eleven of the twelve blocks home with us. When we were in a well-lit hospital area, he said goodbye. We agreed later that he was the best thing to happen to us all night.

When we got home, we decided that we should go to Perkins. We had plans to go to breakfast in the morning, but it was pretty much a craps shoot as to whether I would get up for it. So we decided to go then. When we were eating, a group of Middle-Eastern guys who had been at the same bar as us walked in. I had chosen to wear a shirt that made my boobs look absolutely fabulous, and I asked Meghan if she ever wondered what Muslim guys, especially ones from other countries, thought about American girls. Take us for example. We went out by ourselves to a bar where we sat with men that we didn't know. We let a stranger walk us to a home where single girls lived without their parents, and where I changed into a shirt that revealed my boobs. Then we went out at three in the morning to get breakfast that we didn't cook, with money that we earned ourselves. While we waited for our cab, one of the Arabs went out for a smoke. As he passed, he told me that there was a spot. "A spot for what?" I asked. He replied, "For you to sit," and pointed to the empty spot where he had been sitting with his friends. This was one of several uncomfortable encounters with that particular group of men, in addition to those with another man who was sitting by himself doodling drawings on his napkin that appeared to be Schizophrenic in nature.

Finally, our cab came and I was excited to see that Dick was our driver. The two of us go way back. All the way to a slutty cop Halloween costume the night my camera got stolen. He has driven me on several occasions since. I told him that he was my very favorite driver because he didn't creep me out. I asked him if I could request him when I called for a cab. He informed my that was against policy. He gave me his private number, and was adamant that I not tell anyone. If he discovers this blog, I will probably end up in a river somewhere. He ran me through the procedure for bootlegged cab rides, like it was a CIA operation: I call him on the special number and he tells me how long it will be. If I don't want to wait I call the cab company's legitimate number. And he is off on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Wow, Dick, pretty heavy shit you're bringing me into. Could you run me through that procedure again, but more slowly this time since it's sooooo remarkably different from the regular way that I would call a cab? Then he asked me for my number, and I told him that I didn't have a phone. He told me again not to tell ANYBODY that he gave me his private number. Congratulations Dick, you now rank right up there with the cabbie who asked to see my underwear, and the one that shut off the meter a few blocks early thanks to my two best assets. The cab company must have a quota for creeps and perverts. However, judging by the rest of the night, they don't have a monopoly on them. It was an interesting night, but I think I will stick to going out weekends.