Poker & Some Good-God-Damn-Fiction

I love Poker. Even though most of the time I don’t win. See – it works out to be even most of the time. Last week I cleaned up – rolling out of the game with $45 is no joke. I got some dirty looks, but what the fuck ever. This week – I’m out the $20 I brought. So maybe the time before last I lost money, and maybe I’m down if you’re really keeping track. But I don’t give a shit. I like being able to drink a bottle of wine to my fucking head and playing poker with some cool folk. It makes my 12 hour work day that much more earned. Whatever.

I haven’t updated in a while – not sure why. I’m not exactly living it up lately, but I’m also just really burnt out. It’s taken me working 50+ hour weeks to even keep my head nominally above water lately – which is 10+ more hours than I’m getting paid for, unfortunately. But I can’t complain. I don’t work for Denny’s. I don’t go to school. I don’t have a husband or kids. So – points for me!

Speaking of kids – I have to go to a baby shower in a few weekends. WTF?! I don’t know why this is all of a sudden my life. Weddings, baby showers….bullshit. I call bullshit on this. I’m 26. Do people my age and younger actually get married and have kids with enough regularity for me to statistically have to attend this many of these things? Wow. I kind of thought my generation would live up to more than this. Let’s chain ourselves down to the daily grind at the same age as our parents – there’s the way to bridge the generation gap, people.

Doesn’t anyone want to travel the world and stay single anymore? If I meet that person I would consider marrying them in 10+ years - after we were done travelling the world and not having babies, that is.

I am reading the most excellent book. It's slow and it's hard to manuever. But it's poetry makes the effort worthwhile. From "Sometimes a Great Notion" by Ken Kesey:

At the window of her one-room shack Indian Jenny sips her bourbon and snuff and becomes more interested in the moonlit march of clouds. They come trouping in from the sea in mighty masculine columns, and, squinting, she leans bulkily forward to try to make out the half-remembered faces of this army - handsome, handsome and tall they were, an army handsome and tall and white as snow, stretching back over the horizon of her memory.

God damn if there isn't a more confusing, beautiful, powerfully written novel. And I'm only on page 61 of 628. I look forward to the rest of this beautiful mess. It will take me a while, but it's worth it - for prose such as this, it's worth it.

I'm now too drunk to type. So Briana is over and out.

New Jersey

As the tears dry, salt trails make sticky cheeks.
I pour another glass of wine and it stumbles towards my lips.
There is no quiet here - no midnight echoes of crashing waves -
just the kind of heat that drowns
and the cacophony of small insects to accompany.

I try to outrun these silent midnight tears -
perhaps for a moment I find peace -
but they always find me - hiding at the bottom of the glass -
drag me again beneath the wake.
Drunk and hungry - lying in wait - they pounce
when the world is blurry through the looking glass.

No, I have no class.

I have to say that, minus the empty downtown sprawl of Oakland, my walk home is pretty awesome. What it's lacking is a local business in which I can duck to take a pee. See, I have this problem of drinking too much and hopping on the bart to get home. I always pee right before I leave the bar - but by the time I've reached my stop in Oakland, I need to go again. What, I ask you, is a girl to do? I try to walk home - thinking I can make it the two miles to my bathroom. Sometimes I can. Other times I simply have to find a private tree. It's not as easy as it seems. I think I always end up exposing myself to someone - but I'm usually too drunk to notice.

What I'm asking for is simple - for the many establishments with bathrooms on my walk home to stay open just a few hours later. I'll settle for just one placed conveniently about halfway into my walk. This would be perfect. If it served beer or wine, even better! I would buy a drink after using the bathroom - pee again - and stagger home.

This way I can enjoy the reflection of lights on the surface of Lake Merritt and even stop to gaze at the fountains and how they make the reflections ripple in a cool way.

For the love of God a bathroom.

In other news, I just finished an excellent book by Paul Bowles - one of my all time favorite authors - called Up Above the World. I'm going to quote his modest poetry and call it a night.

She rose. "I've got to get something to put around my shoulders. The wind's blowing right on me."

He did not offer to go with her. As she hurried along toward the bedroom, she found herself marveling that she should be able to go on talking while Taylor lay unconscious. It seemed to help prove the truth of a suspicion she had long entertained: people could not really get very close to one another; they merely imagined they were close.

Good Times

It's been a while...fer sure, dude!

How do I put it? I wasn't feeling necessarily inspired to wax poetic on my quotidian existance. It would have gone something like this: my family has invaded my house and I've resorted to smoking cigarettes on the back porch and drinking by myself in the kitchen all alone. It may have been enjoyable to read about (in that "wow at least my life isn't that kind of shitty" way) but not very fun to recap at the end of a handful of dismal days.

However, I have rediscovered my groove. Thanks, in large part, to a fantastic Thursday night drinking session followed by an excellent drunken New Year's Eve. Shall I detail?

Thursday started out looking a bit mellow - Angie met up with Jesse, Fred, Kelsey and I at this horridly SOMA-esque "asian fusion restaurant/lounge" down the street from work. The high point was leaving. We then headed to Hotel Utah - where we talked some shop, ate some decent bar food, met up with a few more cats, and got harassed by the door man to buy tickets to the impending show. I was sort of interested in hearing the folk/indie thing slated for the evening, but I wasn't feeling paying $6 to do so. We bailed, found a cab, and ended up at Amber @ Church & Market. Smoking inside, cheap drinks, and pouncing on a booth occupied by a few fellow Current folk made it possible to ignore the entirely obnoxious hipster scene. I was coerced into taking something called a "stunt man shot". It's just going to sound retarded if I explain it, so if you are dying to know I'll make you take one with me one drunken evening. Angie and I ended up having to cab it home, since we decided we were having too much fun to leave for last Bart. I don't remember much of the evening past the cab ride, which means I drank just the right amount.

New Years went like this: Santa Cruz house party, beer bongs, champagne, kitchen dance party, hip-hop in Jeff's stalker van, toilet whiskey AND champagne, and passing out on the hardwood floor. Good times were had by all - here are the pics!