I don't know why I ended up going to Rich O's last night. I mean, I've skipped the last two Fridays at least, and it hasn't killed me. It's been nice actually. Because I didn't have to worry about being too disappointed if certain people didn't show up.

I don't know why I ended up going last night, but I did. I remember dreading it, both during the drive, and when I was looking for a parking spot. I had to park on Mars, so that was a bad sign.

The place was crowded as fuck. It took me at least five minutes to walk the ten feet between the front door and the entrance to Rich O's proper. Then, when I finally got there, I was blocked by a solid wall of people. It was standing room only in there. Strangers all over the fucking place.

But wait!

My sister's husband Kenny was part of the solid wall of people! My sister Dina was there too! Yay!

They were, as it turned out, celebrating this one blonde chick's birthday.

Anyway, I'm rambling.

After a year or so, I made it through the throng to the bar and I ordered a Brownings Bourbon Imperial Stout (82). I also talked to GlassesGirl. I hadn't seen her in months, so that was nice. Dina and I stood around for a while until some dude left the kiddie table, then we sat there and talked. I decoded a couple of my recent blog entries for her, because I guess I confuse her sometimes.

After a while the strangers left the living room area, so Kenny and the rest of Dina's group took over that area. I eventually moved to the throne.

I ordered another Brownings (98) but I didn't quite finish it.

Oh yeah, there was a smoldering hot girl ordering a growler of Arrogant Bastard, and I went up and talked to her for a while.

She ended up taking a raincheck. Oh well.

After Dina and crew left I had a Diet Coke, then I went to White Castle and then came home.

I woke up at 4:00 this morning, very dehydrated.

I was just struck by a realization.

Clobbered actually.

By something that I already knew, at least on some level. Something that I knew in my head, but something that perhaps I didn't quite feel in my heart.

I live, it seems, for the confusion and the complications. They allow me to obsess over the what ifs and the how comes and the why nots and all those other questions that intrude into my life like cats' paws under a closed door.

I sit here in this chair, and I make excuses. I tell myself that things are complicated. I tell the world that I'm being selfless. That it's not fear holding me at bay, it's altruism.

I surround myself in fog and mystery, because I do not want to see. The darkness comforts me, because I know what the light could reveal. I fear the light.

I live this shell of a life chasing answers that can never be caught. Because I never really ask the damn questions. Instead, instead I theorize and I hypothesize. I conjecture and I postulate and I assume and I interpret.

But I never just ask.

I could ask.

I could just fucking ask.

Today HatGirl sent me a picture of her ear.

I know what you're thinking.

What a strange thing for HatGirl to do!

Yes, well she had her reasons. But that's not the point I wanted to make with this entry.

The point I wanted to make was that, when you print out a picture and lick it, it doesn't taste very good.

So my friend RockGirl is stuck smack in the middle of this Winter storm. You know, the one where Mother Nature flipped me the bird with both hands and gave me nothing but rain while she dumped assload after assload of snow everywhere else.

I sent RockGirl an email earlier today, asking if she was dead.

She didn't respond, so I guess she's not dead, so whew!

Somebody be my damn valentine!

Before I do something stupid.

Please.

I've completely dropped the ball on my weekend beer report. It's Tuesday already, and I haven't even mentioned it.

Not that there's much to mention.

Friday, I stayed home. I was still sick. I had myself a couple of bottles of The Reverend (332) and the alcohol therein managed to do what Sudafed had failed to do - it dried my sinuses up to the point where I no longer feared that I'd drown in my own snot.

So by Saturday morning I was feeling much better. I actually felt like I was going to live. More than that, I felt like I wanted to live. Wonders never cease, huh?

Saturday afternoon, I preheated some empty pizza boxes and filled my house with smoke. So that was fun. I managed to keep the smoke alarm from going off by opening my windows and turning on my ventilation fan. Yes, it was fucking cold.

I think that would be a pretty shitty way to die. Burning my house down because I was too lazy to check my oven for trash before turning it on. Probably get a Darwin Award though.

Saturday night, I went to Rich O's. I sat in the throne with my yummy Wostyntje (229) and talked with MusicalYuppieDude and TremensGirl for a while. I was kinda feeling like a shithead. See, Saturday was the night of BadPickleGirl's birthday party, and I wasn't going. I'd politely declined her invitation.

But I guess the consensus is that I was not being a shithead. I detailed the situation, and the history, to MusicalYuppieDude and TremensGirl, and they both said that I shouldn't have gone to the party. In fact, they both said that I'd been way too nice about the whole thing. So that's good.

My next two beers were bottles of Delirium Tremens (836).

After MYD and TG left, I talked for a while with WomanRepellant, some chick who doesn't have a nickname, and a couple of strangers who'd sat on the sofa. I asked the chick for her opinion on the whole am I being a shithead thing, and she also said that I was being too damn nice.

Since I seemed to be in the mood for asking peoples' opinions, I borrowed one of the stranger's glasses for a bit, and held an informal frame-off. The stranger's frames are a lot like my own frames, just more rectangular than oval. The consensus was that I looked better with the more squarish frames. See, that's what I thought, back when I bought these glasses last year. But SassyGirl had told me that I should buy the ovalish ones. Next time, I'm going rectangular.

At 10:30 or so, I drunk-texted HatGirl. I haven't seen her in a million years. I tried to get her to come to Rich O's, but she declined.

So that sucked, and my mood plummeted.

I went over to Louisville and just basically dicked around for a while. Had a couple Diet Cokes. Talked to EllaGirl for a bit. Talked to the bartenders at The Pub for a bit. Then I bought some White Castles and came home at 1:30 or so.

Let's see, on Sunday I had to work all morning, then I went and drove all over Southern Indiana and Northern Kentucky, then I came back home.

Not that it really matters. I'm just a little surprised. But I found some stuff out today.

You only knew each other for a few months before he joined the Army. And as far as I know, after your fumbling attempts to date, the only times you saw each other were when I was there with you. Shit, I think Eddie was screwing that one chick non-stop for about six months before he left. What was her name? Linda or Lindsey or some shit like that? I can't remember, but she works at my bank now. She did the paperwork for my home loan. She didn't remember me from the old days.

But I digress.

I'm pretty sure that you two never hooked up when I was still around. It must have been after. After I'd left for basic training, Eddie must have come home on leave or something. He must have looked you up, or maybe he just happened to run into you at the floodwall or at some party.

You probably got to talking about the good old days, and something happened between you two. I wonder who made the first move. Probably you, I'm guessing.

And now you've been married for over 20 years, and have two grown children with him.

Pretty weird. But it explains why I never saw either one of you again. Because you were ashamed.

I'm not sad. I'm not even angry. It's not like I just lost a friend and a girlfriend. I lost you both a long time ago. It's just that now I finally know why. So that's good. Mystery solved.

If anything, I'm a little miffed that I didn't get the chance to find out, to be angry, back when it first happened. That's a lesson that, had I learned it a little earlier in my life, that might have sent me on a completely different path.

Plus, I had you first, and that's hilarious to me. I wonder, back in the beginning, when what you did with Eddie could still have been seen as cheating on me, I wonder how many times you called out my name by mistake.

I wonder if you still call out my name, every now and then. You know, just to keep him on his toes.

'Cause he needs to be on his toes. He married a whore, after all.

Did a shitload of driving around today. I just needed to get away from this damn house for a while. Now, I'm thinking that coming back here might have been a mistake, but it's too late now. I'm already here.

Anyway, I know what I want now.

Remember the movie Deep Impact? Near the end, after the small comet fragment hit, there was a huge traffic jam of people who'd been trying to get to high ground. The tsunami was rushing up to engulf them, and Lt. Yar and Attendant Mavek knew that they were going to die. Soon. They faced each other, and they gazed into each others' eyes. So that the last sight that either of them would see would be the adoring eyes of the person that they loved.

That's what I fucking want.

I want to find someone who will love me as I love her, someone who'd choose to spend her last moments gazing into my eyes while I gazed into hers. Hands intertwined. Breathing synchronized. Existing together as one heart, one soul. The world irrelevant.

And, if the world doesn't happen to end when such a perfect moment arrives, well that would be even better.

I got this book about blogging here, and it says that I should write something first thing in the morning. To get it out of the way.

Problem is, of course, that nothing interesting has happened yet today, and I won't be able to recall with any accuracy the events of last night (such as they were) for several hours.

So I could write about the piss I took when I first stumbled out of bed, or I could write nothing.

I choose the latter. You may thank me if you wish. I accept gratitude in most of the standard forms, though I prefer cash delivered by beautiful naked women.

I'm really hoping that this is the last time I bore you with boring dream crap. But this one I can't get out of my head, and I fear that I'll explode if I don't write about it.

You know how dreams can fade so quickly that sometimes you're not even sure that you had them? How, for a minute or two, you can remember them, but after that it blurs and fades?

Yeah well that's usually what happens with my dreams anyway. But not tonight.

Tonight, I remembered. I remembered, and with each passing minute that memory has become more and more clear.

I wish I could say that it was a beautiful ceremony, but I'd only be guessing. I only got to see the end, after all. The part where it was already over with. The part where they kissed as husband and wife for the first time. That part, the part that I saw, was pretty nice.

She was so beautiful in her wedding dress. He was so dashing in his tuxedo. Everyone was smiling and clapping as they kissed. Everyone was so happy for them. I was so happy for them. This had been a long time coming, after all.

Their lips parted, and I noticed that her veil was still down. That's weird, I thought.

She turned to her left to face the crowd, and she lifted her veil, and she saw me, and she looked at me.

He turned to his right and he looked at me.

The pastor, looking oddly enough like Cheech Marin, looked at me.

Everyone in the room turned and looked at me.

It was as if everyone there knew something that I didn't.

As I pondered this, I noticed one of the groomsmen, smiling and smug and fat. He certainly doesn't belong there, I thought. He's an asshole. Why is he up there, and not me?

Because, I reminded myself. She didn't want me to be here at all. Because it would be weird for her. For them. For me.

Everyone in the room was looking at me.

At first, at first I tried to convince myself that it was only because I'd arrived so late. So unexpectedly. So unwelcome. I was the turd in the punchbowl.

I tried to convince myself of that, but I could feel that lie slipping from me like sand though my fingers.

Everyone in the room knew something that I didn't. But I was starting to suspect, and certainty, certainty was the last thing I wanted.

But I was too late. Just as I'd been too late in the dream, I'd been too late in waking up from that dream.

A wise man once wrote that dreams are the result of the brain, trying to make sense of the nearly random firings of neurons that occur during sleep. That the brain will conjure up imagery and sensations that, while not exactly relevant to the waking world, are often a very close approximation. At least if you tilt your head and squint a certain way.

Dreams are not a glimpse into the future. They are psychological manifestations of simple biochemical reactions.

At least, that's what I hope they are.

I kinda wish that I was the kind of person who prayed, because then I'd pray that it was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream. Please, God, let it be just a dream.