Chapter 336: Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)

8:36am. Friday, October 8, 2010. The scene opens on our hero, Jason, awaking from an alcohol-fueled stupor. He is in a very awkward position on the couch in his living room, all the lights in the house still on, last night’s makeup smeared all over his face, a dying cell phone lodged somewhere between the cushions of the couch. He is still fully dressed from the night before and dripping in sweat, due to some sort of issue with the air conditioning in his apartment. There are Taco Bell wrappers on the floor around the couch and he quickly realizes that he forgot to drink any water before passing out. He slowly rises from the couch and drags himself to the bathroom to urinate and get a look at what a mess he imagines he must be. He turns on the light and gets a look at the state of his bathroom – there is an empty wine glass sitting on the sink, dirty clothes sprawled all over the ground, various makeup products and brushes covering the counter space and some sort of strange, unfamiliar substance stuck to the bottom of the sink. Once he sees himself in the bathroom mirror he realizes that he is actually much more of a mess than he had expected. He even finds a small cluster of acne on his chin, likely brought on by the lack of facial cleansing before bed and sleeping in his makeup. This is all a very sad, dark scene. He knows immediately that he needs to take care of all of this before it gets too late. He quickly takes a Clean & Clear Makeup Dissolving Facial Cleanser Wipe from their package and removes all of his makeup, washes his face with his daily facial cleanser, removes last night’s jeans in favor of something much more conducive to living in the temperature in his home at the moment – “basketball” shorts and a tank top. He picks up the Taco Bell wrappers from the ground, as well as a few other stray pieces of trash that were left laying around from the night before. He considers going back to sleep and dealing with it all later but decides it would be a better idea to drink some water to try to ward off his usual hangover symptoms, which actually seems to have worked, and sits down for a minute to reflect upon the night that led him to this moment…

Now, I’ve never actually sat down and detailed one of the nights out that Rachel and I have because I always seem to do video blogs those nights because I am too drunk to sit down and right. As a matter of fact, I am really proud of the restraint I showed in not doing that last night. There is a certain amount of tradition that Rachel and I have developed for our evenings out that should definitely be documented, I think. So, now is a good time for that. Before I go into that, though, I suppose I should share a bit about Thursday as a whole. Thursday was a pretty average day. It was a good day, in a lot of ways, just as I had determined it would be on Wednesday night. My work had a weird little “theme” day, asking everybody to dress in “business attire,” so I threw on a long-sleeved button-down shirt and a pair of black slacks in the morning and did a very toned down, natural looking makeup look. It was so natural, in fact, that I actually got asked by a couple different people whether or not I was actually wearing makeup. I was very proud of that because I know that for many people, women in particular, makeup is all about appearing to not be wearing any makeup and I had never really done it that way before. It was nice to know that it is a look that I could pull off successfully. I also got told that I looked like a heterosexual, which I was considerably less proud of. It was my sister who said that, so I took it with a grain of salt. Work still had weird vibes but I made it a point to shove those vibes aside and just have a good day any way that I could. I dealt a little bit with this boy who I have a crush on who is on one of the other accounts. He has always been really elusive but he seems to be paying me a lot of attention lately. We are on similar break schedules and I catch him looking at me in the smoking area sometimes, even when we don’t end up talking to each other or anything. It is quite possible that this doesn’t mean a thing but it is definitely something that I am going to keep my eye on moving forward to see if something develops from it.

There was one thing that happened at work that I thought was really interesting. As I was getting ready to leave the building yesterday evening with my sister’s girlfriend, who has been driving me home for the past week, this woman from another account came running over to us. This is a woman who I have seen around the building for a long time now, although I only remember actually talking with her once while she was still in the midst of training – she and a couple of the other women in her training class stopped to compliment my makeup, which happens every so often at work and is something I am used to. I didn’t really think much of it beyond that. Still, ever since then, we say hello to each other anytime we pass in the building or whatever. I was quite surprised when she came running over to us on our way to the elevator. She handed me a little black box and said, “This is for you.” I immediately recognized the logo on the box: NARS. NARS Cosmetics is one of the more high-end brands of cosmetics, probably most famous for their Blush shade called Orgasm. This is a brand that I had never actually tried out before because it is VERY expensive. Also, I have a certain amount of brand loyalty to Stila and, in general, if I am going to spend more than I should on cosmetics I am going to spend it on Stila products. I’m never sure what to make of people wanting to give me things, except to be grateful. It was just so out of the blue. Inside the little black box was one of the NARS “The Multiple” multi-use cream stick products in the most gorgeous shade – Mustique, a very soft, shimmery peach that is perfect for highlighting. I was really excited and grateful to have received this product but I also know that these things cost something like $38. I assume it is just something that she bought for herself and wasn’t happy with and it was really sweet of her to think of me to give it away to. I wore it last night as a highlighter and it gave my skin the most gorgeous, soft glow. I absolutely love it.

So, last night… I had made it a point not to make plans for last night because it was the first night that my Mom was going to be home after her week away and I wanted to spend some time with her. Unfortunately, I got a text from her during the day that said that she had gotten sick as soon as she had gotten back from Michigan, (which I’m sure has something to do with the drastic change in climate,) and she had called in sick to work. She initially said that she planned to come home later Thursday evening but as the day wore on she took some medicine that made her pass out and wound up just staying up there last night. So, when I got a call from Rachel at 9pm and told her that my Mom was not actually coming home and she offered to come hang out with me I immediately took her up on it. We had initially made plans to go out to TOTI’s on Friday night but now Friday was the first night that my Mom was going to be home and I kind of wanted to spend that evening with her. I have to go down to Fort Myers on Saturday and wouldn’t really be able to go out Saturday night and I have to work Monday morning, ruling out Sunday night. As we discussed this, we finally just said “Fuck it, let’s go out tonight!” So, 20-30 minutes later Rachel was at my house and our “going out” rituals began.

In general, Rachel and I are both people who are interested in trying to save money on drinks when we go out, which is where our first ritual comes in – the “pre-game.” The “pre-game” basically consists of whipping out the alcohol here at my house and having a good number of drinks before actually going out. Rachel will normally have beers, or make weird shots out of whatever I have in the house, while I will simply drink a bottle of Verdi. Neither of us drinks enough to be really shit-faced or anything like that but enough to get a little bit of a buzz going beforehand. This was the case last night, except that I didn’t drink the whole bottle of Verdi because I was too distracted with doing makeup. The next part of the ritual consists of doing makeup for the evening. Recently this consists of me doing portions of Rachel’s makeup for her and doing my own makeup. Last night I did a really gorgeous shimmery bronze and blue look using Stila eye shadows in Wheat, Golightly, Mystic, Espresso and Kitten. I absolutely loved the way this look came out. Then I did a little contouring on my cheeks, temples and jawbone and used the NARS The Multiple for highlighting, which gave me a gorgeous, glowing look. I completed the look by using L’oreal Endless Platinum lipstick in Sandstone. I felt gorgeous when I left the house. On Rachel, we did a really simple, fresh-faced look using only Stila eye shadows in Kitten and Espresso and the Stila Convertible Color in Peony for the lips and cheeks. It was a really good natural look with just little touches of shimmer. Makeup time usually consists of a soundtrack, as well, and this was the case last night, as well. My makeup soundtrack for the past few days has consisted of only two really old records – Paula Cole’s “This Fire,” and Jennifer Love Hewitt’s album “BareNaked.” I’m not sure exactly what it is about these albums but I have been really drawn to them both lately.

Since our going out plans were kind of spur of the moment and we started really late, we didn’t wind up leaving the house until around 11:30pm, then had to head back to the house because Rachel forgot to put on mascara and wasn’t going to be able to function without it. All the way to TOTI’s we did another of our little traditions, which is jamming the fuck out to pop music all the way there. It’s always a variety of different types of pop music from different eras and stuff but there are definitely some staples. Ke$ha is absolutely always played. Robyn pretty much always gets played, as well. The main staple in this whole thing, though, is what Rachel and I have dubbed our “party soundtrack,” which is Katy Perry’s album “Teenage Dream.” We always make sure that before we get out of the car to go into the bar we have, at the very least, listened to the song “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” because it is simply the best party anthem ever. In fact, we normally make it a point to play that song just before going over the bridge to get to the island so it is the last thing we hear before we go in.

Once inside the bar, we basically just park ourselves at the bar and spend whatever time we spend there drinking heavily and talking shit. This was the case last night, as well. Thursdays are really nice there because they have $2 wells, and it is another way for us to spend less money on alcohol. Unfortunately, the bartender on Thursday night is not the greatest. He’s fun or whatever and he’s got a really great ass, but the bartenders on Saturday nights are the ones that we really like. Rachel particularly likes one of them… in a sexual way. He is super ambiguous and really sexy in an offbeat kind of way and we both get a kick out of him. The Thursday bartender actually kind of pissed Rachel off last night and she has vowed never to go back on a Thursday night. Next weekend we already plan on going on Saturday night because it’s been a few weeks since we have seen the Saturday bartenders and we need to ogle that guy again. The place was also much more crowded than it normally is on a Thursday night and I had some weird drunk guy who kept falling into me and then asked me whether I was drinking a Roy Rogers or a Shirley Temple. I have never heard of a drink called a Roy Rogers. This whole exchange was a good cue that it was time to leave the bar. Another good cue that it was time to leave the bar? The fact that I was fucking shit-faced. I was drunk to a ridiculous degree and it seemed like a good time to get out of this place. So, we left and jammed to more pop music all the time. An “on the way home” tradition we have is listening to Britney Spears’ song “3,” because it is just perfect and really fucking fun to sing along and car-dance to. We stopped at Taco Bell on the way home and picked up some food, as well as seeing a sign on their marquee thing that said, “XXL: More than your mouth can handle,” which I got an inappropriately large laugh out of. Then it was back home, where I ate my Taco Bell and then pretty much immediately passed out on the couch.

Then I woke up. There is stuff to report about today already but I will save that for my actual Friday blog, since this is technically the Thursday blog. In the meantime, my bathroom is in desperate need of some tidying up. Also, we finally called maintenance and, after a two second long visit to the apartment, the air conditioner is working again. So, things are looking much better than they did when I first woke up this morning. Magically, I don’t really have a hangover – nothing like I have the past couple of weeks, which is a REALLY good thing. So, it is time go face the rest of the day. I don’t really have much of anything planned for today, except hanging out with my Mom. So, don’t look forward to a super fascinating blog this evening, probably, but there will definitely be one. Have a good day!