Margarita Night, Extreme Version

First of all, let me say it again: Thanks, all of you. Your support is much appreciated. I’m doing fine, at the moment, with the aid of a very small dose of methadone to quiet the weirdness. I won’t say I haven’t thought about doing heroin at all, but I haven’t done it, which is what matters. I’m sitting here bundled up, eating a leftover pork chop and watching _The Thorn Birds_ , and everything is pretty much normal, or what passes for normal  around here. In other words: I’m fine. Wiser, but fine. So, now that we’ve got the Big Awful Confessions overwith, on to more interesting and fruitful stuff.

Last night was Margarita Night with the Girlies. I think I’ve mentioned this particular little ritual before; I’m a relative newcomer, but most of the parties involved have been my friends since childhood.  Until last night, the core group has been Debbi, Cowgirl, Rita, and me.

I’ve known Debbi since she was four and I was five and her grandparents lived across the street from us. She lived down the block and so we walked to school together, slept over at each other’s houses, etc. I think because she was a year younger, I never really considered her as my “best friend” but really, looking back, she sorta was.  We spent a lot of time together, but there was a lot we didn’t know about each other—we were a pair of little stoics, and so it wasn’t til we were much older that we could piece together the stories of each other’s lives.  

Cowgirl—so nicknamed for her love of all things cow-themed—I’ve known since we were ten. We met at a summer day camp run by—get this—Opus Dei. My mom had just become active in the local Opus Dei group, and they ran a day camp for young girls where they taught us home economics, all the Martha-Stewart-ish skills a moral young woman would need. I didn’t know then what I know now about Opus Dei, of course; I remember being miffed by all that prayer and confession, and I was grossly creeped-out by the priest they had us confessing to, but I did enjoy the field trips and the cooking lessons, and there were a lot of fun people in my group. One of them was my “best friend” at the time, who I’d roped into attending with me; one of the others was Cowgirl.  After day camp was over, we fell out of touch, until she and Debbi became friends in high school. Weird, how small the world is.

Debbi and I stayed in touch through high school; it would have been stranger if we didn’t, since she lived just down the street. She was popular, really, maybe not in the traditional sense, but she had a lot of friends—her group from her high school, and the group she was part of from my high school. Her next-door neighbor, Don, was in school with me, and we travelled together on the train. And pretty soon there was Stephanie, who was dating Don and who Debbi hated; there was Gino and Darius and Zara, who formed a core group with Debbi and I during senior year which we called the Vampires. And after we’d gone off to college and the Vampires had gone their separate ways, in a breakup fueled by the constant sexual tension and flirtation between various group members, we still kept in touch, but not nearly as much.  

Then Darius introduced me to JP, and after a pleasant autumn full of more sexual tension, things went really wrong really fast. JP and I had become friends, but I wanted more and he wanted my roommate. We were both strong personalities and had a facility with words, which on one February night led to an argument for the ages. Afterwards, factions were formed—JP on one side, me on the other—and everyone picked their allies, and the parties at JP’s house went on without me. And among the people who went to those parties was Debbi. I saw this as tantamount to treason, and we stopped talking. She sent me a card about a year later, when she heard I’d gotten married, but I never acknowledged it.

And then JP died. She came to the funeral, and we reconnected, and a few days later I called her. For the rest of that winter, and the spring that followed, she and Cowgirl became my constant companions, and I will never forget them for that. They kept me sane through the worst days of my life. We would go out for dinner, or hang out at my mother’s house or at Debbi’s parents’ house; we did craft projects and watched movies and laughed like idiots, and I honestly think in some ways they saved my life. Afterwards I would go home and drink myself to sleep, but I wasn’t getting high and I wasn’t killing myself, and in the winter of 1995, that was an accomplishment.

I went off to North Carolina that following summer, and then I came back and got into my old ways, and then CR came along, and Debbi and I talked occasionally. Even after I cleaned up and got my shit together, we didn’t really hang out. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see her, but Debbi lived on one end of the world, in a little apartment in the suburbs where the buses didn’t run, and I lived at the opposite end of the city and had no car. We’d see each other about once a year, maybe, and have long phone calls every month or so to catch up.

And a few months back, she invited me to Margarita Night for Cowgirl’s birthday. It was like old times—me and Debbi and Cowgirl and their friend Rita, and we ate and drank and laughed like loons and wrote down our most profound observations for posterity, just the way we used to. It was so much fun that we did it again the next month, and the next. At the last one we decided to make it an official monthly event.

We’re quite a crew, we are. Two pagans/Wiccans, a Roman Catholic, and a skeptic; one married, two dating basically useless men, three  with non-hetero tendencies and one of whom hasn’t had sex since she was in her early 20’s. One with a house, two with apartments, one living at home with her parents. Two radicals, a Republican, and one politically apathetic. A travel agent, an occupational therapist, a tech geek, and a bookkeeper, bonding over alcohol and delicious food. How could we NOT have fun??

Well, last night was a little different. I really didn’t want to go; I was feeling kinda low, and tired from staying up too late the night before, and I really just wanted to go home and flop in front of the TV and relax (since LJ is out of town this weekend.) But I’ve learned that sometimes when I have to force myself to go someplace, that’s when I have the most fun.

I got to the restaurant and it was a mob scene, and when I found parking I glanced at my cell phone and found a text message from Debbi telling me that the restaurant had lost our reservations and there was a 20-minute wait. I met them in the line, and Debbi told me that Rita wasn’t coming. And not only that, the other girl who WAS coming, Mara, was bringing her husband. “To GIRLS’ Night!” Debbi said, outraged at this breach of decorum.

Best breach of decorum EVER. And no, it’s not what you’re thinking; but this guy may be inadvertantly responsible for making Debbi and Cowgirl and I very, very rich.

I was prepared to dismiss him as a bit of a jerk, especially when he stopped the waiter in the midst of our usual pitcher-of-margaritas order to nitpick about the quality of the tequila. To me, tequila is tequila and furthermore, those pitchers are plenty expensive already, without anyone getting uptight about good vs. better. But I wasn’t going to argue the point, and anyway I’d just met this guy and it didn’t seem prudent to make a judgement yet.

So we drank for a while, and nibbled on chips, and ordered our food. And as usually happens, we referred a lot to history. “Remember the runes?” I asked Debbi and Cowgirl at one point. (One year, Debbi and Cowgirl and I had conspired to make a set of homemade, woodburned runes for Debbi’s boyfriend at the time. Despite our best efforts, they actually turned out well, but the making of them was a source of much hilarity, involving tools and a lack of both knowledge and coordination. It was quite a scene, is what I’m saying.)

“Runes?” said Mr. Husband, with a perplexed look. “I don’t know much about…I mean, what are runes?”

And so Debbi explained that they’re a fortune-telling tool, generally made out of wood or clay or some such, with symbols on them, and…

“Oh,” said Mr. Husband. “So you can’t eat them, huh.”

“No,” Debbi said. “Unless you made rune cookies, or…”

I looked at Debbi and Debbi looked at me, and we both got that “holy shit, that’s an amazing idea” face. And out of my wallet I grabbed my business card, the one I got for the bakery, and passed it around the table to much admiration.  From there the plan just blossomed….and so I now have two partners and a new focus for the bakery--(removing name here for security purposes. Paranoia can be fun) We started with rune cookies and went off into breads and desserts and all sorts of ideas. Debbi’s got all sorts of knowledge of herbs and the like, and I can bake almost anything, and Cowgirl’s got the business sense—and there’s nothing like it out there.

And then Mr. Husband paid the whole tab, thus cementing his standing as an Honorary Chick, so all in all it was a productive night. And also free, which is a good thing.