The big screen finally lit up. We got to see movies about tornadoes, love serums and credit cards that charge 4% interest daily. We got to hang out in a hot tub on the roof of the hotel. And we got to drink at a gay bar tonight. Christ, I feel so out of place here\u2026<\/p>\n
We all met in the lobby around 10:00 and headed out to get some breakfast before the first movie started at noon. It was called \u201cCustomer 152.\u201d The main character filed for bankruptcy, then received a credit card offer with a 4% interest rate. He used it to buy a $6000 car when his broke down\u2014upon receiving his credit card statement, the fee was for over $33,000. He called the company and tried to clarify that the total amount should have been $6120 (which pissed me off\u2014that\u2019s 2% interest instead of 4%, dammit!) When he couldn\u2019t pay the bill, some people came and broke his fingers, then got him liquored up\u2026 when he woke up the next morning, a hooker and his best friend were dead inside his house and his (broken) hands were covered with blood. He ran outside screaming, then got hit by his own car.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the movie continued to show criminal charges being pressed, a flashback of when he was 12 and seen in front of a girl who had drowned in a kiddie pool, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia\u2026 overall, it wasn\u2019t very good. The movie wasn\u2019t bad enough to walk out of, but it definitely wasn\u2019t good. (Of course, the only time I couldn\u2019t bring myself to finish a movie was watching Martin Lawrence perform stand-up comedy\u2014I had to turn it off after it was only halfway done.)<\/p>\n
The next movie on that screen was \u201cS.C.I.E.N.C.E,\u201d which I really liked. Parts of the premise were kinda cheesy\u2014Neil, a young inventor, developed a liquid microphone and the CIA wanted to either get it or take it from him. More parts were pretty awesome, though. My favorite scene was in a martial arts dojo, where he was meeting a girl who offered to go on a date with him. She wanted him to hold onto a pad so she could get in a quick workout before they left, so he stood there as she took a couple punches and kicks at it. \u201cWas that so bad?\u201d \u201cNo, not really.\u201d \u201cOkay, this time I\u2019m going all out on it.\u201d When she came up and kicked the pad, the camera angle switched to the side and showed Neil literally flying across the room and slamming into the wall before collapsing.<\/p>\n
After that, us five WaZoo members got together with the guys who worked on that movie and we all headed out for lunch. Bob wanted pizza or Chinese afterwards because in the movie, there was a guy delivering pizza who actually worked for the CIA and had a gun in\u2026 that container delivery guys put pizzas in to keep them warm. Matthew has a GPS, so he used it to look for Chinese restaurants and found one called Che-Ching Restaurant. (I think that\u2019s how it was spelled\u2014I just know that we pronounced it like the noise people use to sound like cash registers opening up.) Once we got to that particular address, though, we discovered an Indian restaurant in its place. Dunno if it sold out or something, but we opted to wander a little farther to find something else.<\/p>\n
What we found was a large family market. It had a food court filled with a variety of small restaurants (which included both pizza and Chinese), so we ate there instead. After lunch, Matthew grabbed some chocolate from a little booth as the two of us headed back to the hotel while Mike, Stephanie and Bob went to the theater to watch that tornado movie along with a couple others films after that.<\/p>\n
I figured that since I\u2019d been here for so long (this is<\/i> Day 2), I should head up to the roof and check out the swimming pool and hot tub. Yes, they\u2019re open-air on the rooftop of the hotel. (As a side note, I noticed this last night and again when I changed clothes in the bathroom: the lights don\u2019t turn on all the way when you flip the switch. They start out kinda dim at first, but after about thirty seconds or so, they start getting brighter. In other words, they give your eyes time to adjust to the light instead of blinding you if you have to take a pee in the middle of the night. Just one more example of posh\u2026).<\/p>\n
The hot tub and pool weren\u2019t that much different than any others I\u2019ve used, though the view was spectacular from up there. You could see smog in the distance in every<\/i> direction\u2014it was awesome. During the few hours we spent up there, we met Tom, a guy from the U.K. who\u2019s here with his father for the musical portion of the festival, and some woman whose name I can\u2019t remember. What I do<\/i> remember is that she\u2019s Australian, she works with the film festival (she asked if we were going to New York as well) and she told us we\u2019d been nominated for Best Comedy Short. Dunno if we\u2019ll win or not, but either way, it\u2019s a credit we can include in our promo packages.<\/p>\n
Now this is the part I\u2019ve been debating with myself about for an hour or so. I\u2019m trying to decide whether I should just describe what happened in general terms or whether I should turn it into a short therapy session for the sake of everyone involved. I figure that if I fill in all the cracks, it\u2019ll make a more complete picture and maybe be therapeutic as well. Or at least garner me some pity points. If you\u2019re not interested, just head back to the outline in the first paragraph and move on to another entry.<\/p>\n
See, we started out by going to The Cat Club tonight, which was advertised as the location of the after-party. I got a kick out of that place just because I\u2019m turning 28 in a couple weeks and I got carded at the front door. People have thought I look old for my age since I was 15 or 16 (back in the day when I could buy dirty magazines if the gas station cashier didn\u2019t ask for my ID), but tonight, someone apparently thought I looked a lot younger. Sure, it\u2019s funny, but I\u2019m not entirely sure whether it\u2019s a good thing or not\u2026<\/p>\n
Once we got inside the club, it was loud<\/i>. There was a small area upstairs that had some couches and stuff like that\u2014we had to go up there to get out of the noise a little bit and be able to hear each other talk, but couldn\u2019t hear much more than that over the music. Needless to say, we didn\u2019t stay there very long (some members of the group were a little old for that sort of atmosphere). So we left and decided to do a little walking around to check out some other clubs. I don\u2019t recall the name of the one where we stopped, but the guy in front sounded like a stereotypical gay man telling us to come on inside.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a big deal initially. I got a Coke while the others got whatever alcoholic drinks looked appealing to them (a few more things I can\u2019t recall the names of). We also ordered some nachos to share and were having a pretty good time. There was plenty of joking around and, well\u2026 it was a gay bar. Lemme just say that it felt really strange being the only one at the table who was allergic to pot (it gave me a headache whenever I smelled it at college), the only one who didn\u2019t drink and the only one who wasn\u2019t checking out the guys around where we were sitting. But that wasn\u2019t the bad part.<\/p>\n
It got worse when we headed downstairs towards the exit. We were all standing around the same table, but the others started going around and doing their own thing. That\u2019s when it went from being kinda strange to pretty uncomfortable. Perhaps that comes from being extremely shy when I was in high school, something I guess I haven\u2019t grown out of entirely. I mean, I\u2019ve always been more comfortable in small groups. The parties I\u2019ve enjoyed the most have involved fewer than 20 people or at least no more than could fill up one person\u2019s apartment.<\/p>\n
When something gets bigger than that, I usually latch onto someone as a kind of safety net. At my friend Clay\u2019s graduation party, I got there and pretty much hung with him the entire time\u2014when he wandered somewhere, I followed him. Clay was cool with it and probably appreciated it as well, given that his mom organized the party and he didn\u2019t really know a lot of the people who\u2019d been invited. Still, if I\u2019d been left to my own devices there, I probably would have headed home pretty quick. Tonight, I was standing around a table in a gay bar and the others were off doing their own thing.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I should add another quick story that might clarify things a bit further. I attended a Halloween party last year (I knew very few people there and didn\u2019t realize that so many of them were gay until later in the evening). I spent a lot of time sitting on the couch\u2014I\u2019m a people-watcher by nature\u2014but while I was standing around a couple times, there were a few guys who stood next to me and rubbed the small of my back. I didn\u2019t jerk away or anything (mostly because I was freaked out by the situation), so it kept happening. At one point, I was talking with a group of guys and because of the way we were standing, I was essentially pinned against the wall. Once again, I wasn\u2019t panicking in front of them, but my guts were flip-flopping all over the place.<\/p>\n
It was a lot later that night when some of the guys realized that I was straight (quite a few of them were disappointed by that fact\u2014the host of the party said a lot of people were interested in me). I couldn\u2019t bring myself to tell anyone outright that I wasn\u2019t comfortable with what was going on, so they had to figure it out on their own and I got to suffer in silence. Okay, maybe it wasn\u2019t suffering, but I hated<\/i> that aspect of the party while I was there.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t have anyone to act as a safety net that Halloween, which might have helped me tell people I was straight or the person with me might have done it him or herself. At the gay bar, it was the same thing. Some of the guys there were making eye contact just a little too long, shaking hands and holding my fingers for a moment afterwards\u2026 I was creeped out. If I\u2019d had a WaZoo person standing there whom I could talk with, I imagine I would have been fine. I felt perfectly okay upstairs\u2014our waiter and a majority of the other people were obviously quite open about their sexual preference\u2014but once the party broke up, I got to flounder around on my own.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to say that I was completely relieved when we finally left, but I wasn\u2019t. The effects have been lingering since then (thus, the difficulty in deciding whether to spill my feelings about everything or just describe the events as objectively as possible). I spent half an hour playing solitaire after writing the first paragraph, I went and sat out on our patio for a little while\u2026 it was a lot like when I was hanging out in some friends\u2019 dorm room at college and they broke out the bong. I panicked as soon as they lit it up (not realizing at the time that I was allergic) and said I had to go. I walked out through a cloud of smoke and made sure to breathe out as I walked out the door so I wouldn\u2019t inhale any of it. After that very brief event, I took a long walk around campus and spend a really long time brooding about it afterwards. I don\u2019t know why these kinds of experiences linger with me for so long, but they do. They linger enough that it\u2019s about 5:40 in the morning here and I\u2019m still writing this blog entry.<\/p>\n
So we eventually left the bar around 2:00 and had to walk up a nice, long hill to get back to the hotel. I can honestly say I\u2019ve never led a group of drunk people anywhere before, but we had to get back and I was the only one of us who was completely sober (though some were in worse shape than others). We all got back and headed to our respective rooms and I got thanked for sticking it out at the bar. That\u2019s how I know I\u2019m a good actor\u2014I can smile and nod at the bar and do the same when someone thanks me for doing it, but there\u2019s still a part of me that ain\u2019t happy right now. I\u2019m glad that everyone enjoyed the evening and I thought that most of the night was pretty cool, but being at that bar without a friend right there to be a safety net\u2026 maybe I should just think about that newspaper ad for Strap-On Samantha with her jelly tonight. That\u2019ll give me a good case of the jitters, which will probably take my mind off everything else. Especially \u201cCustomer 152.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The big screen finally lit up. We got to see movies about tornadoes, love serums and credit cards that charge 4% interest daily. We got to hang out in a hot tub on the roof of the hotel. And we got to drink at a gay bar tonight. Christ, I feel so out of place … <\/p>\n