I've completely dropped the ball on my weekend beer report. It's Tuesday already, and I haven't even mentioned it.

Not that there's much to mention.

Friday, I stayed home. I was still sick. I had myself a couple of bottles of The Reverend (332) and the alcohol therein managed to do what Sudafed had failed to do - it dried my sinuses up to the point where I no longer feared that I'd drown in my own snot.

So by Saturday morning I was feeling much better. I actually felt like I was going to live. More than that, I felt like I wanted to live. Wonders never cease, huh?

Saturday afternoon, I preheated some empty pizza boxes and filled my house with smoke. So that was fun. I managed to keep the smoke alarm from going off by opening my windows and turning on my ventilation fan. Yes, it was fucking cold.

I think that would be a pretty shitty way to die. Burning my house down because I was too lazy to check my oven for trash before turning it on. Probably get a Darwin Award though.

Saturday night, I went to Rich O's. I sat in the throne with my yummy Wostyntje (229) and talked with MusicalYuppieDude and TremensGirl for a while. I was kinda feeling like a shithead. See, Saturday was the night of BadPickleGirl's birthday party, and I wasn't going. I'd politely declined her invitation.

But I guess the consensus is that I was not being a shithead. I detailed the situation, and the history, to MusicalYuppieDude and TremensGirl, and they both said that I shouldn't have gone to the party. In fact, they both said that I'd been way too nice about the whole thing. So that's good.

My next two beers were bottles of Delirium Tremens (836).

After MYD and TG left, I talked for a while with WomanRepellant, some chick who doesn't have a nickname, and a couple of strangers who'd sat on the sofa. I asked the chick for her opinion on the whole am I being a shithead thing, and she also said that I was being too damn nice.

Since I seemed to be in the mood for asking peoples' opinions, I borrowed one of the stranger's glasses for a bit, and held an informal frame-off. The stranger's frames are a lot like my own frames, just more rectangular than oval. The consensus was that I looked better with the more squarish frames. See, that's what I thought, back when I bought these glasses last year. But SassyGirl had told me that I should buy the ovalish ones. Next time, I'm going rectangular.

At 10:30 or so, I drunk-texted HatGirl. I haven't seen her in a million years. I tried to get her to come to Rich O's, but she declined.

So that sucked, and my mood plummeted.

I went over to Louisville and just basically dicked around for a while. Had a couple Diet Cokes. Talked to EllaGirl for a bit. Talked to the bartenders at The Pub for a bit. Then I bought some White Castles and came home at 1:30 or so.

Let's see, on Sunday I had to work all morning, then I went and drove all over Southern Indiana and Northern Kentucky, then I came back home.

Not that it really matters. I'm just a little surprised. But I found some stuff out today.

You only knew each other for a few months before he joined the Army. And as far as I know, after your fumbling attempts to date, the only times you saw each other were when I was there with you. Shit, I think Eddie was screwing that one chick non-stop for about six months before he left. What was her name? Linda or Lindsey or some shit like that? I can't remember, but she works at my bank now. She did the paperwork for my home loan. She didn't remember me from the old days.

But I digress.

I'm pretty sure that you two never hooked up when I was still around. It must have been after. After I'd left for basic training, Eddie must have come home on leave or something. He must have looked you up, or maybe he just happened to run into you at the floodwall or at some party.

You probably got to talking about the good old days, and something happened between you two. I wonder who made the first move. Probably you, I'm guessing.

And now you've been married for over 20 years, and have two grown children with him.

Pretty weird. But it explains why I never saw either one of you again. Because you were ashamed.

I'm not sad. I'm not even angry. It's not like I just lost a friend and a girlfriend. I lost you both a long time ago. It's just that now I finally know why. So that's good. Mystery solved.

If anything, I'm a little miffed that I didn't get the chance to find out, to be angry, back when it first happened. That's a lesson that, had I learned it a little earlier in my life, that might have sent me on a completely different path.

Plus, I had you first, and that's hilarious to me. I wonder, back in the beginning, when what you did with Eddie could still have been seen as cheating on me, I wonder how many times you called out my name by mistake.

I wonder if you still call out my name, every now and then. You know, just to keep him on his toes.

'Cause he needs to be on his toes. He married a whore, after all.

Did a shitload of driving around today. I just needed to get away from this damn house for a while. Now, I'm thinking that coming back here might have been a mistake, but it's too late now. I'm already here.

Anyway, I know what I want now.

Remember the movie Deep Impact? Near the end, after the small comet fragment hit, there was a huge traffic jam of people who'd been trying to get to high ground. The tsunami was rushing up to engulf them, and Lt. Yar and Attendant Mavek knew that they were going to die. Soon. They faced each other, and they gazed into each others' eyes. So that the last sight that either of them would see would be the adoring eyes of the person that they loved.

That's what I fucking want.

I want to find someone who will love me as I love her, someone who'd choose to spend her last moments gazing into my eyes while I gazed into hers. Hands intertwined. Breathing synchronized. Existing together as one heart, one soul. The world irrelevant.

And, if the world doesn't happen to end when such a perfect moment arrives, well that would be even better.

I got this book about blogging here, and it says that I should write something first thing in the morning. To get it out of the way.

Problem is, of course, that nothing interesting has happened yet today, and I won't be able to recall with any accuracy the events of last night (such as they were) for several hours.

So I could write about the piss I took when I first stumbled out of bed, or I could write nothing.

I choose the latter. You may thank me if you wish. I accept gratitude in most of the standard forms, though I prefer cash delivered by beautiful naked women.

I'm really hoping that this is the last time I bore you with boring dream crap. But this one I can't get out of my head, and I fear that I'll explode if I don't write about it.

You know how dreams can fade so quickly that sometimes you're not even sure that you had them? How, for a minute or two, you can remember them, but after that it blurs and fades?

Yeah well that's usually what happens with my dreams anyway. But not tonight.

Tonight, I remembered. I remembered, and with each passing minute that memory has become more and more clear.

I wish I could say that it was a beautiful ceremony, but I'd only be guessing. I only got to see the end, after all. The part where it was already over with. The part where they kissed as husband and wife for the first time. That part, the part that I saw, was pretty nice.

She was so beautiful in her wedding dress. He was so dashing in his tuxedo. Everyone was smiling and clapping as they kissed. Everyone was so happy for them. I was so happy for them. This had been a long time coming, after all.

Their lips parted, and I noticed that her veil was still down. That's weird, I thought.

She turned to her left to face the crowd, and she lifted her veil, and she saw me, and she looked at me.

He turned to his right and he looked at me.

The pastor, looking oddly enough like Cheech Marin, looked at me.

Everyone in the room turned and looked at me.

It was as if everyone there knew something that I didn't.

As I pondered this, I noticed one of the groomsmen, smiling and smug and fat. He certainly doesn't belong there, I thought. He's an asshole. Why is he up there, and not me?

Because, I reminded myself. She didn't want me to be here at all. Because it would be weird for her. For them. For me.

Everyone in the room was looking at me.

At first, at first I tried to convince myself that it was only because I'd arrived so late. So unexpectedly. So unwelcome. I was the turd in the punchbowl.

I tried to convince myself of that, but I could feel that lie slipping from me like sand though my fingers.

Everyone in the room knew something that I didn't. But I was starting to suspect, and certainty, certainty was the last thing I wanted.

But I was too late. Just as I'd been too late in the dream, I'd been too late in waking up from that dream.

A wise man once wrote that dreams are the result of the brain, trying to make sense of the nearly random firings of neurons that occur during sleep. That the brain will conjure up imagery and sensations that, while not exactly relevant to the waking world, are often a very close approximation. At least if you tilt your head and squint a certain way.

Dreams are not a glimpse into the future. They are psychological manifestations of simple biochemical reactions.

At least, that's what I hope they are.

I kinda wish that I was the kind of person who prayed, because then I'd pray that it was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream. Please, God, let it be just a dream.

I just spent quite a bit of time looking back through my old entries, to see if I've already written about this. I'm pretty sure that I have, but I couldn't find it.

So maybe I'm having an actual original thought. Wouldn't that be something?

Anyway, one of my many problems is that too often I think that I'm more important than I really am. Not to everyone, just to the people who are most important to me.

It's like I think, This person is very important to me, so I must be very important to this person. This is something that we share. We are important to each other.

A while ago, this problem reared its ugly head. I got an email with some very very very disturbing news. Basically akin to a death sentence, metaphorically anyway. And as if the news itself wasn't bad enough, I was one of about ten people who got that same email. I remember thinking, Wow, this news really sucks donkey balls and, more than that, I really fucking wish that she'd told me in person.

I wanted special treatment. I felt like I deserved special treatment. Because she is very special to me, a part of me just assumed that the reverse was also true. Even now, the realization that I'm wrong about that assumption is not something I'm able to accept.

So I'm basically being a baby. I haven't responded to the email. I'm still waiting to talk to her, to give her a chance to talk about it with me in person. It wouldn't soften the pain that this news has rained down upon me, but it might make it a little easier for me to accept, if I knew that it was bothering her even a zillionth as much as it's bothering me.

Look, I don't mind being a nobody to the other seven billionish people on Earth. Another face in the crowd, another address in an email. But to be generic to that handful of people who are anything but generic to me?

I don't like that feeling very much.

Not very much at all.

Plus, I've got this fucking cold.

That's how many gallons of snot have left my nose since yesterday afternoon.

About 700 of those gallons have, thankfully, left through one or more nostrils. But the rest have drained backwards into my throat and sent me into wild coughing fits.

How can the human body generate this much snot? Well it's a fucking medical miracle, that's what it is.

(continued from a couple of entries ago)

After a couple of seconds, I guess a little tiny sense of familiarity crept into my head. I began to feel that I should know who this cocky loud pretty girl was, but I had no real chance to investigate that feeling because that's when her friend finally spoke.

"What are you doing?" she asked the blonde. And then she said her name.

She said her name, and a door inside my head creaked open, and I remembered.

I remembered a party, in Hancock's field, a long time ago. I remembered waking up in the back of my parents' Mercury Comet, wearing only my underwear and a jacket. I remembered digging through the trash on the floorboards, looking for my keys and my shoes and my pants and my shirt. I remembered finding all those things, and I remembered also finding a little blue sock, and one of those hair barrette thingies, and an empty bottle of Jack Daniels, and an empty condom wrapper.

I remembered going to a basketball game at school a couple of weeks later, and being greeted like an old friend by a cute blonde girl wearing a Providence High School Jacket. Being greeted like more than a friend actually.

I remembered confessing that I didn't remember meeting her, being with her, at all. That I'd woken up in the back of my car alone and confused and unclothed. I remembered how she laughed that off, and how she'd said that she'd have to try harder to be memorable the next time.

I remembered that the next time started about fifteen minutes later, in my cousin Jeff's station wagon.

I remembered countless nights after that, sneaking out of my house with my friend Eddie. I remembered that he'd drop me off at where she worked, or to where she lived. I remembered lying on her bed, holding hands and listening to Pink Floyd. I remembered doing a lot of other things in her bed.

I remembered the night she told me that she loved me, and how I'd echoed those words right back at her. I remembered how we started to tell people that we were engaged. That as soon as my basic training was over, and I was stationed at my first base, we'd get married and raise kids and we'd always laugh about how, on the night we'd met, I was too drunk to even remember her.

I remember how everyone said we were crazy.

I remembered how she'd come to the Air Force induction center to see me off. I remembered holding her close and telling her that I'd see her again in a few short weeks, and that we'd be together from that moment on.

I remembered that I'd never seen her again.

Not for more than 23 years.

Until lunch today.

So once I picked my jaw up off the floor, I just looked at her. I had no idea what to say, what to ask, what to feel. She saved the day by doing all the talking. She's been married for a long time. She has two grown children. She still loves Pink Floyd, and she still has most of The Wall memorized. I stammered out that I do too.

She said that I hadn't changed a bit, which was a beautiful lie. I said that she hadn't changed either, and as proof I offered up the fact that it had taken me so long to remember her.

We didn't discuss what had happened, back in 1983. Why she'd moved. Where she'd gone. There wasn't time for any of that, and there wasn't really a need for any of that. We were each others' distant past, and that was all that we were.

As I gave her a hug and said goodbye, I wondered if it would be another 23 years before I saw her again. I wondered if I'd do a better job of remembering her in 23 years. I wondered if I'd even remember my own name in 23 years.

Anyway, I guess that makes it official. I have officially run out of women. Time to dig out that little black book from high school, and start over.

Stubib code-ass wedder.