Throw me a party full of strangers, will ya?

Caprini sandwiches, fried green tomatoes, water. Later a minor, private beer bust with Pinstripes and homemade ginger vodka.

Maresa has thrown me a birthday party. Which is nice. Maybe I'm not so into it, but it's nice. I'm not me, though. I mean, I'm me, but the me of the moment being Ron, a skinny white guy in his 50's. Everyone else is their normal age and all. And otherwise I'm still regular old me. So I'm at the party. The main room of their house is a large space with old white plastered walls and terraced along one side, with barstools on the terraces. It's almost like a courtroom and this is the Jury box, just that the box aspect has been taken away. Lots of heavy, dark wood. Historical things are on the walls. Sheryl Wolf is there. I hold her hand and tell her how much we appreciate her has a friend, that she always is there with some helpful gift or suggestion, and she's really enriched our lives.

At some point, I look around, and on these barstools are sat a bunch of guys I don't know. I mean ANY of them. Maresa has thrown me a birthday party and invited strangers. Or at least I think they're strangers. I mean, maybe I've met them before somewhere, but I certainly aren't FRIENDS with any of these guys. I kind of chide her about this. "I don't know anyone HERE, Marsha!"

I need a break. Me and my buddy from my boys only adventure club are going to skip back over to our apartment. We start out and cross what is essentially a college campus, though much of it is boarded up. There's a lot of sneaking and climbing involved. At one point there is an area like the square in front of Zimmerman Library, and there's a couple inches of water in it. I've been running, I think on my usual all-fours, and now I dive into the water. It's completely shallow, but I can still body surf and kind of swim in it, much apparently to the amazement of those looking on. Some firemen are running their hose from the truck, the source of the water. They turn the hose on me, hitting me in the legs and back and the seat of the pants, propelling me faster. What a pleasure.

We get finally to our building. But the direction we've come from has put us in a place where the courtyard and entrance is several floors below us, apparently the complex is nestled into a hillside. I feel I don't have time to go all of the way around, so I simply resolve to climb down the face of the building. [I've dreamed this place before. See Everybody's Drunk Here, January 16, 2007] The face of the building is mostly windows, which protrude as casements only a couple of inches, and the windows open outward from the top, so I need to be extremely careful not to misstep, or pull one open and fall to my death. There is a thin lip just behind the frame of the window, I need to focus on keeping my fingertips on those lips as I lower myself down. I can imagine that a few of the mean old divorcees that live in these places are going to take exception to crazy old Ron climbing down the face of the building. But they should be used to it.

I do make it down without major mishap. My buddy meets me at the bottom. He took a safer route. We go up to our apartment. It's really kind of a dorm, and there is a common shower room. Nothing nasty about this place, though. It's a luxury palace. Each person has their own shower head, below which is a stone pedestal sink-shaped shelf piled with soaps and shower products. Each shower head is individually cast into the shape of an animal, the showers issue from their mouths. Mine is a sort of two-headed serpent or dragon. Some skinny kid is lurking around. I go after him, challenge him. But my buddy tells me to cool it, that this is so-and-so, a new member of our boys only adventure club. I apologize. We do really need to be getting back to the party, though. We've been gone a long time.