Nate Beaty's Brainfag

I stink at parties

posted in Home Jabber on January 22, 2006

I have decided I am the most awkward person in a social situation, ever. Tonight I went to a birthday party for a friend of Soon Bok's and managed to first make myself feel like the universal pull for a vast vacuum of all that is uninteresting and uncool, then I bolted to the bathroom and shat, came out, went back in, shat again, then sat down and somehow brought up a mouthful of bile. Ha! Jeeeeesus. Then, to add insult to injury, the realization that I had just released a toxic-scented treasure in the john spread quite vocally across the room and people scrambled to find incense, matches, candles, whatever they could, to battle back the stench that I had given the party. Jeeeeesus.

Jay got out a stack of old, hilarious porno mags, I stuck to the Rolling Stone, and then a story of some fellas applying peanut butter on the Sharpie-adorned ass of a drunk punk who passed out at the last party I attended there, and then unleashing their two pitbulls to lap it up. With photos and movies to boot. Pretty hilarious. Hate to be that kid.

Speaking of passing out drunk, I wondered just how much my social life depended on getting drunk in the last 10 years. Because "hanging out" in Portland invariably involves going to a bar or strip club, or getting some beers and hanging out at someone's house. I've managed to get over the urge to drink in such situations, but I feel like a big stiff clumsy non-drinking humorlous shlub whenever I DO go out. I wondered about being in different circles where drinking wasn't such a focus. Both Soon Bok and I have stopped drinking as much (I'm nearly a teetotaller at this point), and when hanging out together it's fine, but when we go out in a group, it just seems necessary which bugs the hell outta me. Humans do tend to do well with a good dose of inebriation, especially stiff honkies, but I can't partake -- so what do I do? Yoga? Chocolate? Shoot guns?

We saw Brokeback Mountain finally, and both really dug it. It's got some hot gay cowboy sex scenes, and I loved being in a major theater with a bunch of people watching scenes of major actor men making out. Fuck the resurgent conservative nature our country is unearthing (unIntelligent Design anyone?) -- let the cowboys boink. Beautiful Ang Lee movie, and a welcome comeback after the dismal Hulk.

Our first Korean class was about what I expected -- well, a little worse. Not only was it an advanced class, the teacher was pretty awful. He basically read from a paper he handed out that was all Korean, and then scattered throughout this reading, he explained random elements of the language. Then a 10 minute break, then "Ok, pair up and talk to each other in Korean" (which went on for another 15 minutes). "HUH?" I got really mad at this point. I'm used to having good language teachers. I didn't learn anything until the final moments of class, when I started putting together the basic tenets of creating words in Korean, which I figured out myself. Pretty frustrating. But we decided to stick with the class anyway, and paid the $100. Then today we missed the second class because Soon Bok couldn't sleep last night. Doh!