Hangover #4 (and [4x3x2]+1=25)

25.

Yep, yesterday was my birthday. And this is going to be a long post because I’d like to remember these details later.

About this time I should be having what I believe they call is a quarterlife crisis. This has yet to be seen. I have the feeling that if you’re reading this you’ll have seen it coming and may be amused at when that does occur. When or if it does occur.

People who know me well enough know that I like to imagine my life as a metafiction where foreshadowing is a mechanic of the story. Of course, nobody can really tell the future, but sometimes, it’s fun and easy to suggest foreshadowing via literary conventions. It’s also fun for people to imagine their lives told in the form of art. Life as a book. Life as a movie. Life as a concept album.

I bet you do it, too. We all do.

Anyways, I should probably detail yesterday’s happenings. This has been, by far, the strangest birthday I’ve ever experienced. Stranger than that one birthday which involved a peculiar white powder and a rolled up dollar bill.

We won’t get strung into that. What we are getting into is explaining why yesterday was one long string of strange.

It began with a brunch with my family that took us to the Alcove, the same Alcove with the onion donuts mentioned in the last hangover post. In my family, our usual birthday tradition is to go out to sushi. We changed gears this year because it was my idea to go the Alcove, possibly because I was hungover. It didn’t occur to me until later on that I associate the Alcove’s food with hanging out with friends or coworkers while recovering from these hangovers. So at least having the part about having a hangover was right - but seeing my family at one of these tables where I had recovered from drinking stirred something in my head. It was a weird connection and it just didn’t feel quite right. I mean, it was fine, but it was putting together two worlds that until now had completely independent contexts. I do not associate my immediate family with the rest of the LA spots I frequent. And I wonder why that is. In fact, I can’t picture them outside of Eagle Rock and Pasadena even though I know very well they have the capability to be in different parts of LA.

At least the food helped with the hangover. I think that was most of the point of that part of my day.

The next thing that was weird was kind of a minor detail, but I’ll write about it anyway. I went to pick up some software at my local music store. And nobody recognized me. Well, not at first. My hair has grown an entire half foot since the last time I bought anything from there, so when I gave my credit card to the guy behind the counter, he paused, looked up, and said, “Oh, Nico! Shit, your hair got way long, I didn’t even recognize you.”

Yeah. Apparently.

Another more minor detail was walking into American Apparel before heading out to work at the bar that night. Usually those workers are pretty apathetic and let me do my thing. But upon walking in there, every single visible employee looked straight at me and the company I walked in with. And no hello. Just an unsettling stare. So we browsed for a minute and left. That has not happened before, but I really only know the night staff. So maybe the day staff is just awkward. Or maybe I’ve done something offensive? I don’t purport to know anything about the customs of hipsters.

Then came work at the bar. The show itself was good, so that part went swimmingly. Getting to see a bunch of bands I’ve known for a long time, some of whom I hadn’t seen in ages, play specifically for my birthday show — that was actually a real treat. I was especially excited to see Milk:Blood since we’ve been bands together before, and ever since those projects we’ve been musician colleagues. I’ve broken so many guitar strings on stage playing alongside that guy. Ah, the nostalgia that comes from camaraderie.

So the music part was fine. Really appreciate all the musicians who were able to make it to the show, even the ones who I couldn’t fit on the bill but who have been regulars for some time had showed up. It was a really good feeling to see that kind of loyalty to the venue.

Also, I got really, really drunk. Hell, it’s a birthday, right?

Only, when work was closing is when the strangeness started. That bartendress I talked about a few posts back got into what I believe was a scuffle with our bar owner. My brother heard something along the lines of an argument or an insult exchanged between them in passing. Something completely out of this girl’s character. Or maybe there’s more to her character than she let on. Either way, we didn’t get involved and during the whole thing nobody made eye contact.

Weird.

And during the ride back, my brother and I talked about how weird the day had been. Recounting everything that happened up until the bar argument (or, “bargument”, as I like to call it) we then marveled in a stupor at what was my 25th birthday. We just kept filling the silences with the words “weird…” and “huh…” and “wtf?”, and either scratched our heads or let the weight of the confusion be heavy enough to tilt our heads to one side. Okay, for me that weight would probably be all the drinks I had. The point is, the pauses in our conversation were that of perplexity.

And then, during one of those pregnant pauses, a car hit us.

Thanks to my brother’s understanding of handling a car (for which he thanks Gran Turismo) we didn’t get knocked off the road, but considering how the other car was going much faster than we were, and on the tiny and winding freeway that is the 110 North in Pasadena, I’m surprised we didn’t lose all control and skid head long into a guard rail. And there was minimal damage done to the bumper of my brother’s poor Saab, but I have to remember that that thing is a freaking tank. So much of the damage must have been sustained by the douchebag trying to take a sharp 110 freeway curve at 90+ mph with a shitty car.

It did give us a scare, though. We came out of it unharmed, and my brother got us back safe and sound. But the adrenaline that came with wondering if there’s car damage, strung together with the anger of lack of closure because we weren’t able to encounter the person responsible for hitting us, is what finally pushed me to stumble into the bathroom and throw up as an appropriate culmination of 4 consecutive nights of drinking heavily.

And in that respect, taking 4 nights of drinking to actually get me to throw up is kind of like catharsis from this whole journey. The release of emotion. Only for me, it was more of a release of bile. And some chunks of what used to be tempura.

Or maybe catharsis itself is like throwing up. I like that better.

Oh, and as for the birthday itself, I did get a pretty cool present.

Parents: What do you want for you birthday?

Me: A strings section!

Parents: Okay. Wait, a what?

And the crazy part? I got one:

What was that about foreshadowing, again?