october 23, 2000. a fragment of hysteria, presented as exhibit A I would write, but I'm too sick with rage. I spent half the day writhing around in medium to mild stomach pain, half the day trying to maintain a positive demeanor. And it's all blown apart for an argument about stamps for chissakes. I now find, two hours after the original argument, that my beloved husband has merely been waiting for me to emerge from the office to hit me with a few more rounds of the same one line argument he'd tried before. I have lots of different ways to refute, and every one seems to bring us farther from consensus until I find out that he just wasn't paying attention to me in the first place. I now wonder what the bloody point of arguing was for him, and can only conclude that he just wanted his own way. I feel so lonely in this strange cold land. I feel so lonely that my heart could stop, so lonely that I might in fact die. Over stamps. What a life. So. I suppose you want to know what the bar was like on Saturday night. It was fun despite itself. We showed up at 9:30, just as I was instructed. The place was dead. No, let me paint the picture in finer detail: the staff outnumbered the patrons. The décor closely resembled a cafeteria. And the dj was playing Tracy Chapman. I believe they call that "fucking dead" in the OED. I was livid, not to put too fine a point on it. There I was, in my black slips and striped stockings, wearing my french spy makeup and carrying a purse (a purse for crying out loud!), and there was nothing going on. I had been promised education students, but there were none. There were just the Boy and I, grimly trying to snatch optimism from the jaws of memory. You know where this is going, right? We started to drink heavily. That's where this is going. People started showing up when we were into out third pint. The dj started spinning what I tend to think of as house, but I was drunk then and I'll always be lame, so I won't swear to it. As more acquaintances from the department drifted by and the edges of my vision began to blur, I started to have a good time. Now I know that when they tell me to go to the Axe drunk, I'd better do it right away and save myself some existential angst. (Do you want some proof that it was a weird, inebriated night for me? Okay: they played "The Humpty Dance," and I enjoyed the selection. What's happened to me, Dave?) By the time we got home, we were drunker than we've been in ages. On the way to bed I sloshed the Brita around the kitchen, unable to pour a straight line into the glass (gravity was my enemy). It was kind of pleasant, though. That is, until the sunlight came in the curtainless windows, and we began to prepare for church.