Escapism into Tapas

We're at a bar one night. There's a band that's gonna play a set in the next few minutes. It feels like its Hoobastank but when I see them it is not (and why would Hoobastank be in Texas anyhow?) and I don't know what the band's name is but the excitement is still there and the crowd is anxious to let the music wash over them. People with drinks and wafting cigarettes stand in their cliques mingling, talking?, or maybe just being. Probably patiently letting the inebriation set into their veins.

I am with my two best friends Carrie Bradshaw and Maragethe Von Trotta who both came in from New York to be with me tonight (the darlings!) but Margarethe has to leave for Munich this weekend for an upcoming film collaboration. We'll call it an early night, we promise.

We wait as the band sets up and I notice the lead singer who has a big fluff of curly hair and I like him. Our eyes meet and I smile which makes him smile which makes me smile even bigger because of his smile that matches mine. We realize we've stared at eachother too long and I shy away and busy myself with the stirrer straw in my vodka Red Bull.

Carrie tells us about how her and Samantha have had a falling out because she caught her having a blow job in her office and ran out and Samantha is hurt Carrie judged her or was Carrie mad that Sam came to her book party with a layer of skin missing because of her chemical peel....And then Maragarethe asks Carrie whether there is too much sex in the city or too much city in the sex? Carrie rolled her eyes to ignore the topic as if to say she'd heard that dime a dozen question over way too many cosmopolitans before.

Maragethe told us about a recent screening of her movie Rosenstrasse at the university and she's tired of the wishy washy Americans who think she's a radical feminist or an anti-semite and she's just tired of the bureaucracy of it all in the movie industry and wants to dance just dance on screen, why can't they just let her dance?

I focus my eyes on the lead singer as he begins the set and I smile once again and my heart flutters. The drummer begins and slowly the ensemble blend into a racy mix of beats. Suddenly the music has stopped and the lead singer scribbles something on his palm and jumps off stage and runs towards me. He opens his palm and I read the scribbled black on his sweaty skin. It reads, "Hi, Annie, do you like tapas?"

I nod and we make a drink date after his set. He runs back up and resumes his play.

Carrie and Maragethe look at me in astonishment. But then conversation ensues like nothing has ever happened. Has a musician asked if I liked tapas before and my two girlfriends find it commonplace now? I don't recall this ever happening. And I question whether or not I really do like tapas? What are tapas again...?

They ask about my plans after graduation and I cringe at the question because does anyone ever know? I'm not so sure, I say. I've gone through so many answers my mental filedrawer is completely deluged. A ask my mental secretary to please retrieve a viable answer and the little gnome limps to the cabinets, scans through the files and takes out a paper that reads WRITING IN GRAD SCHOOL. I smile, "Maybe writing in grad school."

But so many others seem to have their heads screwed on straight and here I am making tapa dates with curly haired guys and talking about feminism....or was it chemical peels? I forget.

But then I realize I have to take my best friend home because he has an assignment due tomorrow and he is stranded at my apartment and he has no car. But what about Curly Hair Guy? My best friend will be furious at me because plans always seem to change. But then again I seem to lose to always watch him win. But wouldn't he understand. I would wait for him if he met a big bosomed girl at a club. But then who's to say when it comes to these things?

The band is good and the crowd is loosening up as the night gets older and the alcohol is flowing through their bodies. I light up a cigarette and remember I have a sore throat and this would probably prolong my ailment. But I've already started one so I can't let it go to waste.

All of a sudden I'm sitting in front of Curly Hair Guy and we're talking about the simple things that strangers talk about and he asks me questions about school and my writing and I ask him questions about his formal vocal training. He laughs.

I realize I haven't felt this way in so long and I've wanted this feeling back under my skin and I couldn't wait for it to seep into my bones. But then Curly Hair Guy has vanished and so have my girlfriends (did they leave without saying goodbye?) and now all the other people in the bar are no where to be seen and the smell of cigarette smoke has been replaced with jasmine incense.

Shuddering because my window was left open and it had started raining, I awake from my slumber and shut the window. I curl back into my position on the couch and see that I had left Season 3 of Sex in the City on and I click the television off. I contemplate whether I should go back to sleep or work on the assignment for European Studies that compares the filmic strategies in Von Trotta's Rosenstraße versus Die Andere Frau.

*sigh* It's been such a long day.