Friday, July 10, 2015

Loring Park Episode #53: So Sioux Me

Previously on Loring Park (Adjacent) ...

Jakey and Jared moved to their new home across town.


June was such a busy month! Summer is meant to be that way, I suppose. We are enjoying our new house and new adventures. I ended up bonding with the upstairs neighbor, but she moved. I am hoping for frat boys.


***

I had a nervous breakdown.

Before you all get nervous and worried, I should specify that I did it in the parking lot of a hospital, where I was going to have my butt looked at. I had stayed at my mom's house the night before, and she didn't wake me up. She had no reason to wake me up because the appointment was at 2 P.M. and I am 28.

I called to get my appointment delayed by half an hour. When I showed up there I was bordering on being late. Also, I wasn't wearing any underwear because I was staying at my mom's house, and I was worried about being sweaty. This was a big deal because they were going to be pulling my pants down.

I walked into the medical center in Maple Grove, realized I didn't know where to go, walked back to the parking lot, called my mother to yell at her (as if that would somehow solve everything), then sat on a bench and kept bawling.

A nurse in a yellow sweater walked by and asked if I was okay. Since this place also had an oncology center, she assumed I had received "bad news". There was no bad news. I just had to have my asshole looked at and I didn't know where to go in this big building, and I overslept, and my phone never works and that's why I can never make an appointment with a therapist and Lord knows I should be on Xanax by now ...

...She very calmly walked me to my appointment, up two floors to an elevator and dropped me off at the station. I realized I didn't have my wallet but they let me sign in anyway. After the appointment was done, my wallet was on the outside of my car but nobody had stolen it. God is real, children.

Yellow is the color of calm and all that is real. Rosie O'Donnell has written essays about yellow, how it was all of those things that fame took away from her. I tweeted her about the nurse. "Nurses r the best," she wrote back. My mother is a nurse. This is perhaps not a coincidence.

***

The next Friday was pay day, and I reunited with my friend Julie! She was on her way back from a business trip in San Francisco and she and her boyfriend Adam came to my house for Thai food. "Did you know you live just 3.7 miles from the best Thai restaurant ever?!" she exclaimed. They were delayed, which was unfortunate, since my parents were at The Saloon to help my friend Greta in her fundraiser for an AIDS bike ride.

After a few glasses of wine, we headed to The Saloon where I just missed my parents! This is the life. Adam was generously buying me a few drinks, and next thing I knew I felt the need to change shirts with everyone.



 It was all fun and games until I lost my keys. Even though I wear them on a lanyard and I get made fun of for that all the time. I cannot have nice things. I didn't notice they were gone until I was in the cab with Julie, Adam, and a boy with a bun. Then we had to bang on the door and wake up Jared, who was not a happy camper. I wasn't a happy camper, either, but then me and the boy with the bun went, erm, camping. We, um, pitched a tent or two.

"How old are you?" I said while we were making out.
"24," he smiled. "How old are you?"
"Like I'm gonna tell you," I said, and then I took his pants off.



The next morning when you're naked in front of someone is rather liberating. Julie and Adam left in his car, and Julie let me drive her car to work. (And we had to drop off my trick. Who lives above a coffeehouse. My very first hipster. I should cross it off a list. He would cut off the bun a week later. I felt like Delilah. The one from the bible, not the lady I like on the radio who would not approve of a story so salacious.) After my shift was over, I picked up Julie in her car and she drove Jared and I to Big Louie's to play bingo. Julie lives in Apple Valley. I am nominating her for canonization.

Not only did we fail at bingo (which was a 60-number coverall), but Loretta, irate about my lost keys, read me for pure unadulterated filth.

"I don't go out in public and get drunk and take my shirt off and trade clothes with people!" she cried. "If I did that everyone would think I was a big idiot!"
"No, they wouldn't," I said. "You'd be the life of the party. Like, 'oh, that Loretta. She is so wacky.'"
Loretta was not having it. I had as much luck swaying her opinion as I did winning at bingo. I haven't won in forever. My gambling addiction has been about as fruitful as my alcoholism.




I was lucky enough to attend The Reapies, which is like the Emmys for local comedy. It was my fourth consecutive year of not being nominated for anything. I still had a good time. This is Rana May, who told me that I am a stupid little baby. I enjoy her immensely. A comic who is almost 7 feet tall named William Spottedbear suggested I jumped on his shoulders. I did, and then I totally strained that spot where my pectoral muscles are supposed to be. Comedy is all about pain.