Where to begin? A lot of emotions came up last night.

So we (Alex, Maria, Josh, Katharine, and I) were going to a The Muse concert last night. Cris is way into The Muse, so I gave him a call about it on Monday. Didn't call me back; I called him on Thursday before we were going to go, and he said, I'm in a hurry right now but I'm going to the concert Maybe I'll see you there.

Alex meets me at my house, Maria comes a few minutes later. Maria... She is an incredibly gorgeous, exceedingly inconsiderate person. That's pretty much that.

We pick up K and Josh (her boyfriend) in San Francisco. Earlier on the phone, K mentioned that Josh thinks well of me. Of that I am happy, for I think well of Josh.

When we get to the line, it is LONG. Long, long, long. Our friend Matt has been holding a place for us. And lucky as we are, we find that when the security guard says, "The cutoff line is here. All you people past that, you are not going to get in. I'm serious; you should go home now,"--we are ten people past that cutoff line. So we assume the security guard is doing his job and underestimating, and we stay. We stay for a long time.

While we wait, we're just talking, hanging out. Josh likes me. At a certain point, he goes, "I'm sorry--this just feels right," and putting his arm around me, says, "Can I do this? Is that alright?" I'm like, Yeah, sure. I figure, he loves Katharine, likes that I'm a good friend to her, and likes me a little too, and that's all good. Katharine's okay with it too, so we're okay all around.

Upon K's suggestion, I give Cris' cell a call to see if he has a good place in line (so that if he doesn't, he can come join us. I wouldn't presume the other way around.). He's like, 'Oh, we're up here by the front. pause. I don't know if I'll see you in there tonight, but I hope you have a good time.'

Sigh. He wasn't looking forward to seeing me at all. So I didn't push it. Sucks when you just know it's not gonna work out.

While we're standing in line, we're swigging from a flask bottle of Chivas Regal whisky. Prime time. Katharine is speeding towards the land of drunk. She has to pee, so I'm like, alright girl, let's go find an alley. The closest one goes around to the back of the venue, and there are a few guys hanging about back there. I thought I could sense danger, but they were decent enough. They thought we were cute and we chatted for a minute. Katharine was obviously drunk, and she Totally thought one of the guys talking to us, named Ollie, was Really cute, and she kept inviting them to come back in line with us. I was looking at her like, Girl, you are crazy. We were walking back down the alley, out towards the line, and she drunkenly screamed, OLLIEEEEEEE! Oh, man. Why do I always gotta be the shepherd? Anyways, I too was attracted to this Ollie fellow, but more because he seemed like a very decent guy. You know, decent. I turned back to see if I could get his number, and he was like, "I'm not giving her my number." I said, "No, for me." He looked at me and hesitated, but I guess he didn't believe me, or he was just turned off by Katharine's drunkenness, so he just said, "--I'm sorry, no." "That's cool. You guys have a good time tonight."

But I was thinking, Sigh. How likely is it that Katharine will get drunk and cheat on Josh? I mean, he is here with us and she is screaming some other guy's name.

We are back in line waiting. Josh resumes holding both me and Katharine. And there are times when he's really got his arms around me. I feel a little weird because this is kinda beyond the bounds of 'We're especially close companions because we like each other and we both love that girl.' It's kinda beyond that, but Katharine's cool, and he's cool, so I'm like, okay, I'm cool. But I get this uncomfortable feeling that they're both not good at being committed to people.

That's uncomfortable for me because in every case I want love to triumph and it's not really fun watching impending unhappiness. I know these things happen, but because I wouldn't want them to happen to me, so I don't want to see them happen to other people. Eh.

Anways, we've been waiting two hours now, and though the line has moved, it is obvious (to me) that we are not going to get in. The police are riding the asses of the security guards because there are too many people outside, and they consequently keep telling us, "You're not getting in! Go home!" I don't like making people's jobs unnecessarily difficult. The situation is that we're not getting in to see the band; aside from the guards' words, empirical evidence of distance suggests that. Let's not make villains of them; let's go have fun. Finally, the others come round to my point of view, and we go.

We pile into my car, and pick up some liquor from the nearest store. We decide that we're headed to Blakes, a club in Berkeley. On our way there, we turn the car into the OG DebaucheryMobile. It's ghetto fabulous. Alex is mixing coke and brandy in the back seat, which we pass around in styrofoam cups. I, being the driver, do not partake, but certainly enjoy this highly unprecedented and illegal spectacle. We are bumping the music and basically having a grand old time, in an MTV kind of way.

We get to Blakes, and there's another, albeit shorter, line to get in. So we're waiting, and Josh has his arm around my shoulders. Except that it's more around my neck, which I don't really dig. It sorta forced my head down and felt more like a headlock than a fond embrace. I was starting to feel just like some girl on his arm, but I was reluctant to be like, hey, get off me, no more. A woman comes walking down the line spare changing, and she says to us, "I'm not going to lie to you. I just want to get a beer. I'm just looking for a quarter to help me get drunker than I already am." Josh says, "Hey, so are we," while I just shake my head at her and say sorry. Josh's arm is tight and uncomfortable around my neck, and my head is severely bowed, and I'm trying with my hands to get his arm into a more comfortable position, but he's doing what he wants. He's drunk. The woman catches my eyes and holds them, and she looks into me, shakes her head softly and says to me, privately, "You're a good person. You don't need this. Just don't go in there. You don't need these people." Josh drunkenly shouts into my ear, "This is good lovin'! This is good lovin'!"

What the woman said shocks me, and what Josh said utterly turns me off, and all of a sudden I get this terrible feeling that I don't belong here, that I am doing myself a serious disservice acting this way. That I am become, for this moment, a creature far below and totally unworthy of the person that I normally am and try to be. I am suddenly and deeply unhappy, and I guess it all shows on my face when I turn to Josh and Katharine. He's like, What's wrong? What did I say? I say, "Nothing," but I'm telling him, silently, that I just don't want him touching me right now. Katharine's like, "Are you okay? Tell me, what did he say?" And I'm like, Nothing goddammit, everything's fine, leave me be. Which only serves to convince him, and her, that he said something horribly wrong. He's like, Tell me, Baby I would never want to say anything to hurt you, Tell me what I said, and she's trying to hold me and keep him out of it, saying, It's okay just tell me what he said, You can just tell me. This is totally overwhelming. I just wanted to deal privately with my small unhappiness, and now it's become this big dramatic thing where Josh is upset because he thinks he's offended me, and Katharine's upset because she thinks Josh offended me, I'm not exactly sure why I'm upset either and now Alex and Maria are asking me what's wrong, and really I just feel badgered and unhappy and I'm thinking, Oh my god why can't people just leave me alone. I start crying because I'm confused, I don't know what to say, this is too much for me. (In retrospect, what I needed to do was just push away, step back, and say, "I am not here right now. I will see you guys in a few minutes." And sit on the curb with my back to them.)

The crying girl is ushered in. Blakes is loud, crowded, sweaty, bumpin, and does NOT lift my mood in the slightest. Katharine's like, ugh, I don't like this place. I take Katharine to the bathroom, and attempt to stop crying while I do my best to explain to her why I am upset, but it doesn't entirely come across. I also mention that I'm a little bummed about Cris, just in case that's a handier blameless explanation for her. She still thinks it's Josh's fault, and explains that he has a past, this is how his insecurity manifests, he's drunk, didn't mean to hurt me, and she's sorry he made me feel that way. I'm becoming fine, and I just think, 'Hey, as long as she understands that I'm not mad at anybody.' We go back out and spend some time at Blake's.

At some point while we're about to leave, I'm sitting with my head on Josh's shoulder, and he says, "So Katharine told me you were only kind of upset at what I said, and it was partly because you're not here with anybody--but I don't know why you have to think that! You're beautiful! Believe me, if I weren't here with Katharine, I'd be here with you. You're beautiful, I don't see why you have to be down on yourself." It's not about whether or not I'm beautiful or if I'm with a boy, but that's how this guy comprehends things, so I just listen and tell him that that's really not what this is about. He says, "Then I don't know what it's about." And I nod. If he's convinced that it's either about him or because of how I look or because I want a boy, then he's making too many assumptions to know what's really going on. It would take me forever to explain. So I don't. So long as he understands that I'm not mad at him.

So to sum up: Lot of drunk drama. Me feeling like being a teetotaler for a while. Cris case closed. Josh and Katharine aren't the best couple after all and things will be fine when she leaves him.

---

And for the most part, my friends are childishly inconsiderate. Alex and Maria slept in my living room last night, while I shacked up at Katharine's, and they did not have the decency to put away the blankets before they left. It is the littlest thing, but it just shows a lack of respect for a person's space. I would understand if the blankets were already on the floor, that they would leave them there, but they took them out, unfolded them, and left them on the floor and couch. It makes me respect them a little less. They are people who do not think about the ways in which they inconvenience others. It makes it just that much harder for me to be friends with them, and makes me that much less inclined to do them the favor of letting them sleep in my house. I don't want to feel that way. So I wish they'd just clean up after themselves. Like kids, I tell you. It's like I'm living with kids. When this happens, it makes me wonder if I shouldn't just find new friends who have that basic decency in them. That's totally irrational and overexaggerated, but I'm impatient for them to grow up, and it's like I'm living with kids.

1:27 p.m. 2004-05-07�