When we last left off, me, C, my sis, and moonshine had stayed up until 6am or so, partying at a huge dance club, even though we had all wanted a pretty chill evening. Somehow, we were able to get our second, third, and fourth winds (it was the red bull and vodka) and party the night away in full C2C style.
Saturday, December 3
Woke up at 10am out of habit. Looked around. Went back to sleep.
Woke up at 12pm. Looked around. Chattered. Went back to sleep.
Woke up at 2pm and finally decided to get up. We turned on the UT – Colorado Big 12 Championship game and watched as the Texas Longhorns creamed Colorado, 70 to 3. Pretty awesome.
By the time we were ready, the winter daylight was already slipping away. Night was fast approaching, and we hurried to enjoy what last few moments of sunlight we could have. One big difference between NYC and SF in the winter? It’s fucking cold in NYC.
We walked through Chinatown, and found this famous soup dumpling place. I think it was called Joe’s Shanghai (I’m sure my sis will correct me if I’m wrong). We sat at a community table w/a hodge podge of other people: two girls who approached saying something stupid like, “sharing is caring,” and an old Chinese man who looked pretty distinguished. He was a talkative one, and before we knew it, he was showing us the proper way to eat the soup dumplings (according to him, they were the best in the world) the way his grandfather had taught him to eat dumplings. We all became BFF.
Afterwards, me,C and the sis roamed the streets of Chinatown, then Little Italy, and then Soho, doing a little bit of shopping. We went to a fashion market type thing that was held in an old gymnasium. Kind of cool, but we didn’t get anything. Then began our search for someplace to eat dessert. We walked for the longest time, until we finally settled on a place that sold ice cream waffle sandwiches. Scrumptious!
Back in the hotel, we decided to rest. In other words, we were still so tired from the night before, that we easily fell into bed and slept for another hour or so. By around 9pm, we went to Lombardi’s for their white pizza, and then back to the hotel to get ready to go out.
We didn’t have any specific plans. C knew of a few people in the city who were going out that night. Again, I must admit that at this point, I highly doubted my abilities to party. I was fading fast, and kind of wanted to return to the bed. By some weird coincidence, the club that C’s friends were at happened to be literally right around the corner from our hotel. That was the first sign that this was going to be our night.
Happy Ending was a pretty incognito little bar. From the outside, you would never know what it was. Only the doors were marked w/a logo etched into the glass. We went in and surveyed the place — upstairs and downstairs – and then finally found C’s friends. Once again, I thought I was going to pass out (I pretty much was on the verge of puking the entire weekend, so it was nothing new) but C convinced me to keep drinking. And so I did.
There was a strange ebb and flow with the club. At one point, the place was completely packed with people that you could barely move. And then it would clear out. And then more people would arrive. C’s friends left during one of these waves and we were left standing alone. I didn’t see anything too impressive in terms of the opposite sex. Actually in terms of the same sex, but whatever. I looked at C and said, “I will not be satisfied until we find someone to hit on us.”
Ask and you shall receive. We downed our drinks, checked in our coats, and committed ourselves to hanging out at Happy Ending until the end of the night. The moment — and I mean moment — we walked into the upstairs bar/lounge area, some guy approached me and pulled me away from C and twi.
I was a bit apprehensive. Okay, a lot apprehensive. First off, I’m not into facial hair, and he looked as if he had a small dog dying on his mouth. He also had about 90 layers of winter wear on AND was carrying this huge bag. I should have escaped but it was C2C, and in the spirit of C2C, I decided to entertain every interaction.
He asked me if he could buy me a drink like 900 times. Finally I obliged. Our conversation basically centered around him telling me that I was hot, which, even if I believed that to be true, is not really something I cared to discuss all night long. From a girl’s perspective, it just sounds like a line, whether or not he was actually sincere about the comment.
“The moment you walked into the room, I noticed you.”
“Oh, really? Why’s that?”
“Because you just have this air about you. You’re…nevermind this will sound cheesy.”
“Just tell me”
“You just seem so confident. I like that.”
“Oh, ok, I guess so.”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Sure, why not.”
“No nevermind”
“Well you cant bring something up and then not say it”
“You’re really beautiful. Theres something special about you”
(sorry I asked)”Thanks?”
He tried holding my hand almost immediately, and I’m sorry, thanks for the drinks, but I don’t hold hands. Then he asked if he could kiss me. I don’t think it was that blatant, but I said, sure, kiss me on the cheek. So he gave me a peck on the cheek and then he just ogled some more and then I saw that C and my sis had found a booth and were sitting down, so I pulled myself away and asked Fidel if he wanted to meet my friends.
He said no.
I pulled him towards the table anyway.
We sat down, and the other guys occupying our seats got up and left. I introduced everyone to Fidel, and scanned my brain for a way to let him off easy. (btw, he was 27, a film person, and looked very much the arty part–thick rimmed glasses, messy hair, whole 9 yards). out of nowhere, Fidel starts kissing my shoulder. Actually it was more like he made out with my shoulder before I could squirm out of his grasp. The look of horror on both C and Twi’s face is not something i think I will ever forget.
Finally I thought of something. I turned to Fidel and asked,
“Hey, do you remember my name?”
He shot me a blank look. I knew we had him.
Of course C and Twi were playing along perfectly. They said, “Let us help you. We’ll give you a list of multiple choice answers. If you guess the right one, you can stay. If you don’t, you have to leave.” He guessed wrong.
At that very moment, a group of guys that my sister had apparently been making eye contact w/the whole time came in for the kill. They sat down at our table. Introduced themselves, and like clockwork, Fidel got up from his seat and left. It was the perfect “kamikaze” move — send in an annoying guy to warm up the girls, and then anybody who comes after comes out smelling like a rose.
We were enthusiastically receptive to the 2 new guys at our table. Later, twi told me that she had been eyeing them the whole night and that she had thought they were cute. I didn’t really get a good look at them, I was just so relieved to have some other boys at our table who were funny and sweet and sarcastic and all-around fun. Strangely, one of them looked a lot like my ex – X2 – not the most recent ex. (Btw, on the subject of exes, I should mention that I called SCB to see if he wanted to do brunch. What followed was a series of excuses so pathetic, that I didn’t even listen to the entire message. DELETE and move on. Lame.)
Another of my favorite games to play with guys is “guess our age.” They guessed completely wrong, thinking we were 21-22. Because they guessed so low, I deduced that they must be barely older. Yeah, they were about 24 or so, and were shocked to hell to find out we were in our upper 20s. They had graduated from Univ. of Wisconsin pretty recently and their friend from Seattle was in town visiting.
Soon after introductions, another friend arrived and sat down next to me. Then, like sweet little boys, they asked if we wanted anything to drink. We all went for the cheapest (and most lethal) thing on the menu – the cowboy special – a shot of whiskey (in a cowboy boot) chased by PBR. Gross. We all took the shot and became BFF.
I kept asking the one guy who looked like my ex to dance. Whenever a song came on, i would say, “so…how would you dance to this.” And then he would get up and start dancing. Very cute. And silly. That’s hard to find in older guys b/c they tend to take themselves way too seriously.
In short, this group of guys had a ton of energy, and it was so infectious. When 4am came around, I realized I had to act fast. I whipped out my camera and aimed it at one of the boys and C. “How about I take a picture of you 2 kissing.” To be honest, I did not expect C to take part in my shenanigans…but…she did. And I was amazed as fuck.
This begun our kissing spree where we kissed a ton of boys until the club closed and we were forced to go outside, where it had just begun to snow. On the way out, we ran into even more boys – some from Texas – who I trash talked – and some others who were being flirty and trying to get a piece of us (hey, when youre back, youre back). At 5 am, there were still a ton of people playing in the snow, throwing snowballs, being silly, and well, kissing. Lots of kissing going on. And not just with the three boys we picked up at the bar…
And so, since I have an agreement with those involved to lock away the details of that night in a memory vault, I will quickly sum up what happened next…
We all went up to our hotel. We partied until 7:30 am. Everything was very innocent. We ended up all crashing in the room. One of the boys left. And we ended up snuggling with the others.
I kept trying to give them the hint like, “hey aren’t you guys getting tired.” In my last effort to get them to leave, one of them said, “shut up and cuddle with me.”
And what can I say. It was c2c after all. So we cuddled for what remained of the night/early morning. It was a very strange feeling to fall asleep next to someone again. It felt both very comfortable and nice, and very…distant. There was a dissonance from that physical feeling of comfort and the realization that I barely even knew this guy. He was also very sweet in a way I had forgotten guys could be – getting the blankets when I was cold, kissing my eyelids and my cheek throughout the night, holding my hand and kissing it – little things like that that are gentle and tender and a far cry from what I recall from previous relationshps.
The whole thing felt very surreal. The most real part of the night, for me, came when me and my boy woke up at the same time in the middle of the morning. He told me some inside joke – something about something that had happened earlier that night – and I just started cracking up. Then he started laughing. And there we were, at god knows what hour, sharing this moment of laughter that only he and I will ever understand or find funny. That is the memory I hope that stays with me. Those few moments of laughter that made me feel like I was actually connecting with another person again.
Morning came, and we had to check out. The girls were all up and ready while the boys were still sleeping. Twi finally flicked on the lights and they woke up, groggy as ever, with the cutest smiles on their faces. They got up, but were taking their sweet time finding their jackets and hats.
“Thanks for letting us crash at your place.”
“Sure, anytime”
They hung around a bit longer, kicking up the rug, as if they didn’t want to leave and didn’t quite know what to say.
“I’m getting kind of sad,” one of the boys said.
We all responded with, “Awwww…”
“Why are you guys being so shy all of a sudden,” my sis asked. It was true. They were being very sheepish.
“Come here and give us hugs”
So we hugged our boys and still they lingered. Outside the door, they thanked us again and said they had fun. Then they just stood there, not sure what to do. Finally, one of them got the courage to ask, “do you guys come to new york often.” I lied and said that we came all the time. This seemed to open the door for a phone number exchange, which they were very very eager to do. In fact, they almost seemed releived that we exchanged numbers.
Then, after a few more moments of lingering, we waved goodbye and closed the door. What a fucking crazy night.
We spent Sunday hungover, or at least I did. I could barely eat (again). We met up w/Moonshine and went shopping down in Rockefeller Center/5th ave area (we no longer had the strong desire to go ice skating) ending up at FAO Schwartz where C and I shared the most expensive ice cream pot pie ever.
And so, by the end of C2C, we had accomplished just about everything we had wanted – we got to eat ice cream, go shopping, and kiss a lot of boys. By the end of the weekend, I think my grand total was something like 7 boys? And as I mentioned before, things definitely did not work out the way I had anticipated – Little Flake didn’t show up, my ex SCB flaked, Moonshine couldn’t hang with us – all these things. But it was all these things that made it one of the best weekends I have ever experienced.
C2C05 not only lived up to expectations, it exceeded them in a way I could never have planned. And finally…finally…I became 100% convinced that life, that being single, that anything – was as good as I decided/made it out to be.
I truly believe that.
