Traps

I went to a party not too long ago. It was a house-warming party for friends of a friend (who is only really, sort-of a friend). I hadn’t planned on drinking or staying very long, due to me being on the tail end of being sick, as well as still taking anti-biotics. But, we all know how plans work out in the end, right?

After a couple of hours being at the party, and feeling the effects of mixing alcohol and medicine, I quickly found myself standing line for the one bathroom at the house. I started talking to another man, who was in line ahead of me, and a super cute, red headed, local girl who was behind me and trying, and failing, to use her feminine assets to get us to let her go ahead in line. I was too focused on the beautiful ‘lady’ I had met earlier, who was currently surrounded by men trying to get her attention, to pay any real attention to this red head.

‘Red,’ while standing in line with us and finding that only asking to cut in front of us wasn’t working, had then tied the bottom of her shirt up around the top of her beautiful, golden-brown, tanned stomach. Then asking us if we thought she had a nice stomach. My response was to laugh and poke her in the belly with my finger. The other guy said nothing, just stood there staring. She did have a great stomach, but I was seriously too enthralled with my ‘lady’ to really focus on this girl in front of me.

Later in the evening, when I was back in the kitchen, watching and trying to not care about the half-circle of men forming a wall around my ‘lady,’ ‘Red’ showed up before me again. Her shirt was still tied up and she seemed very proud of her flat stomach; as she should be. She wanted me to come into the other room and dance with her, but I still couldn’t be pulled away from my ‘lady’. But, even after turning ‘Red’ down, she stayed and talked/flirted with me for a little bit. I’ll never complain about a beautiful woman flirting with me, especially one that has, and is showing off, such an amazing stomach, but all I could manage was to poke her in the stomach again. With my finger! Stop being inappropriate.

Much later, after my ‘lady’ had left and I stayed for a bit with her phone number in my pocket and my heart full of courage and stupidity, I found myself confronted by ‘Red’ again. I was in the living room, just sitting and talking to a couple friends. Someone got us all up to dance and before I knew what was happening, ‘Red’ was in front of me, smiling with a dangerous look in her eye. The alcohol coursing through my veins, my ego inflated beyond imagination, I allowed her to take my hands and put them on her naked hips, where her shirt was still pulled up. We didn’t dance for long, but we did bump and grind for a bit. Something in my gut told me to stop. I thought it was just that I was trying to be satisfied with having already won the attention of the most beautiful girl at the party and gotten her number, but there was something else that was going off like spider sense. Screaming at me to go home and stay away from the evil temptress. I didn’t go home yet, but I did stop dancing and went over to the line for the bathroom.

‘Red’ didn’t follow me at first, but after coming out of the bathroom, she was standing in the hallway leading back to the living room, talking to one of the other guys I had met earlier. I stopped and talked with the two of them. ‘Red’ quickly turned the conversation to sex and other such things that drunk people talk about. She also told us that she lived just down the hall, in another apartment. There was so much flirting and sexual tension in that hallway that anyone else who might have walked by would quite possibly be risking his or her life.

When ‘Red’ mentioned her living down the hall, I asked her who she lived with. A lot of people here will live with their parents or other family members up until they are married, but occasionally you’ll meet some that live alone, or with friends.

‘With my parents.’ she replied with a sly smile.

‘Damn!’ I thought to myself.

The stupid drunk part of me was taking over and all I could think of was, ‘How tanned is the rest of her.’ I clearly wasn’t listening to my gut. Luckily, the other guy stepped in and saved both of us.

‘How old are you?’ he asked.

Most of the people at this party were at least in their mid-20’s. I was 27 and my beautiful ‘lady’ was 28. I expected ‘Red’ to be 22 or so. I knew she was young, but I had no idea.

‘I’m 16!’ she said with a devilish twinkle in her eye.

‘Well, bye!’ I half-stammered, half-laughed, while turning around and walking as quickly away from her as possible. I may have been drunk, but my survival instincts kicked in and saved my life. I made sure to thank the other guy before I left the party. I’m pretty sure some higher force saw how much I was ignoring my gut and sent an angel down, in the form of a half-drunk stranger at a party, to protect me.

‘Red’ was pissed that I had just walked away and kept yelling at me any time she was near. She could yell and talk shit all she wanted, I wasn’t going near that death trap of a 16 year old ever again. I feel like anyone under 21 should be required to wear a wristband or something to identify them when in a group of drunk 20-somethings. Or drunken men should just always ask a young looking girl how old she is, before anything else is said. What’s the word I’m looking for here? Oh yeah, responsibility.

Late Night Goodbyes

4am

Turning off my alarm,

I was awake anyway.

How could I sleep,

With you in the bed?

Last night in town,

With you, with me.

Trying not to think,

About the future.

When, where, how,

Will I see you again?

Just this moment,

Feeling you next to me.

My body, your body,

Feels like one body.

I have to go,

We both feel it,

But neither will say it.

If we put it to voice,

Our world will shatter.

4:30am

Packing the last,

Finding a place for you.

Me, kneeling over my bag.

You curled up on the couch.

So focused on my bag,

I’m startled to see you watching.

This moment, that look,

It passes between us.

I’ve never felt this before,

But I know it.

It’s what I’ve wanted,

Searched for, waited for.

I want it,

Even more now;

Now that I can see it.

I don’t want to go,

But I don’t stop.

4:45am

The last hug,

Last kiss, last smile.

The last look,

And I’m gone; you’re gone.

This last moment,

I don’t hold onto it.

I hold onto that moment,

You on the couch,

Looking at me, looking at you.

The moment that passes,

Between our eyes,

Between our bodies, our spirits.

This is what I hold.

What I remember.

The thing I had given up,

Trying to find.

I found it.

It lasted only the briefest,

Almost non-existent moment,

But there was a lifetime,

A life long search,

Hidden inside.

5:45am

This is what I hold,

As I board the plane.

Conversation with a Girl in a Bar

‘I have a bucket in my room that I pee into at night.’

‘What? You’ve got to be kidding me.’

‘No really. I have a small bladder and I have to go often at night.’

‘Don’t you have a toilet? You can’t tell me you don’t have a toilet.’

‘Of course I have a toilet. But it’s soooooo far away. I hate having to walk all the way out there.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah, it’s a long way out to the toilet and it’s dark and cold.’

‘Wow.’

‘Did you just lose some respect for me?’

‘To be honest, yes. Maybe if you had to deal with the winter we had last year and you had a TON of snow on the ground every night, then maybe I could understand, but it’s spring now and there isn’t any snow! That’s just gross.’

This was a real conversation I had a few months ago with a girl in a bar. I’m not the one with the bucket.

Tooth

If she’s missing one tooth it isn’t always a deal breaker for me. But it really depends on where the gaping hole is located. If it’s off to the side there’s a lot more of a chance that I’ll let her hang around. Now, if it’s right up front and she presses her tongue up against the hole every time she smiles, that will probably turn me off. Not always, but probably.

Now, if she has a great story for why her tooth had to be removed, then I might be able to look past it, but still the tongue pushing through would kill it for me. That’s just gross. Maybe her tooth was knocked out in a fight the night before while she was saving a baby from a tiger. Or maybe she did it on a dare to win $50. These are reasons I might accept. But, if it’s due to neglect or rot…I’m always down for that.

There just isn’t much in this world hotter than a 20-something chick missing teeth due to her own bad hygiene or laziness. She just needs to keep that body in check and I don’t care about her teeth. As long as it’s not a problem for her to eat some and stay alive, I don’t really care about her tooth holes. It’s hot. A chick with little to no teeth.

I’ll take them any way, but I prefer them toothless. That way it doesn’t break the skin when they bite you.

Floods

I stayed up late just because I knew she wouldn’t do anything with me when the others were awake. She can’t take the risk; she’d lose her job.

We’ve been hooking up on and off for the last 5 months, but only when I’m staying at the hostel, and she’s working the night shift. She mentioned something about having a boyfriend a few times, but she did it in a joking way. I had thought that she meant that she wanted me to be her boyfriend. Turns out she actually does have a boyfriend that everyone else at the hostel knows and I’ve seen a few times but never talked to. He looks sort of scary and I’m sure if he found out that he’d try to kill me. I should probably stop, now that I know for sure.

A couple weeks ago she and I were both at the hostel again and the whole thing started over. I was promising myself that this would be the last time, but I quickly focused on other things than if and/or when this would happen again. I won’t go into the details of what happened. I know you don’t want to hear that. Well, maybe you do, but I’m just not perverted enough to tell you.

Afterward, I was walking to my room and heard a noise that sounded like someone taking a shower downstairs, where I knew there was no shower. Turning to ‘her’ I asked if she saw anyone downstairs on the camera. She said, ‘no’ and that she couldn’t hear any noise. I went down to investigate this showering phantom.

The lights were off, but as soon as I stepped down off the last step, I knew what was happening. The basement was flooding! The noise was coming from the bathroom, which had only a sink and toilet. I know my plumbing fixtures pretty well, having been raised in a family of plumbers, and neither a toilet nor sink should be making the noise that was coming from behind the door. Opening the door I was hit in the face by a wall of steam, such as covers the bathroom after a particularly hot shower. My glasses instantly fog up and I can’t see a thing. Taking them off I can see a jet of water shooting out of the wall next to the sink. My first thought is that the hot water pipe in the wall burst, and if that’s the case I had no idea how to stop it. I didn’t know where the main water valve was for the building and ‘she’ was too afraid to ask anyone to help, because of the chance ‘she’ might get caught with what we had just finished doing.

Eventually enough of the steam left the room and I was able to put my glasses back on and found that the water wasn’t actually coming from wall, but from the flex pipe at the back of the sink. This I could fix! I turned the water off coming to the sink and then assessed the situation of how much water had flooded into the basement, which had just opened one week ago as the new common room of the hostel. There was water over most of the floor, but not all of it. Because of the way the floor is slightly slanted from the building being on a hill and the fact that the basement used to be a garage (I assume there wasn’t a ton of effort to make the floor perfectly flat.), there were different levels of water all over the room. The highest was almost two inches. The interesting thing about the water was that as you walked through it, the temperature changed from cold, to warm, to hot again.

‘She’ and I started the clean-up work by trying to shove the water toward the only drain in the entire basement; in the bathroom away from where most of the water had settled. After about 30 minutes of just the two of us trying to shove all the water toward the tiny drain, we woke up the other staff member at the hostel (who I’ve also hooked up with in the past and actually had made out with earlier that night, yes I know I’m a bad man.) and had her come downstairs to help us. Luckily I have a reputation for staying up very late talking to the staff members, so I’m sure no one was questioning why I was up at 2am.

We got all the water cleaned up by a little after 3am and I went to bed exhausted. I remember thinking to myself and possibly saying out loud, ‘It’s like a damned flood.’ 

Turns out, there was more than one flood in the hostel that night.

Don't Come Back Drunk

‘I might come back and stay here again tonight. I don’t know’, I said to the receptionist.

‘Don’t come back drunk again.’ she responded.

What the fuck did she mean by that?

Did she mean that she thought I was drunk last night? Because I wasn’t and she wasn’t even up at 5am when I did come back, so how the fuck could she have seen if I was drunk or not? Did she mean that I had over the past few months of my staying here occasionally, I had in fact been drunk more often than not while arriving back for the night? Did she mean that she didn’t want me to come back drunk like I did two nights ago and sleep in another room with the American girl I met earlier? She might have meant that since I’ve been sleeping with this receptionist on and off for a few months now and she probably thinks I fucked the girl. Which I didn’t. It was just drunken cuddling. Not for my lack of trying though… Did she mean to say that she knew about me coming back drunk last week and making out and almost having sex with one of the other receptionists? My friend did tell me that he saw them laughing together a couple days after that and having two girls that I’ve hooked up with laughing together about anything isn’t a good thing. I have no clue what she means. Probably should just ask her.

‘What do you mean by that? I wasn’t drunk last night!’ I reply trying to hide my defensiveness and failing.

‘What? Nothing. We’ll talk about it later.’

Nothing? How can we talk about nothing later? Apparently there is SOMETHING but maybe she doesn’t want to talk about it here because there are other staff members around. Or she wants to have a personal conversation about why I’m hooking up with other girls. No, it’s probably not that. I’m pretty sure that’s just an American thing.

She follows me outside while I leave. I’m thinking that we’ll have our ‘later’ conversation out in the courtyard before I leave. I like this because if it gets too awkward I can just bolt but if it’s not I can sit down and hang out for a bit. Outside I ask her why I can’t come back drunk tonight.

‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk about it later. It doesn’t matter right now.’

Jesus. You can’t say something like, ‘don’t be drunk tonight’ and not expect the person to want to know why they can’t be drunk. That’s just insane and cruel. I leave the hostel perplexed and racking my brain for a reason to why she would say it. I’m convinced that she knows about myself and the other receptionist and she’s pissed. Or maybe the staff collectively has decided that I have been coming back drunk too often and it’s time to warn me and then kick me out.

For a week or so I try talking to her about it but she keeps putting it off. Then finally she tells me but it takes her so long to put the words together that I think she’s forgotten all her English. Turns out, she’s just trying to find a way to say it without offending me. She thinks I have a drinking problem and then asks me if I use alcohol to take the place of my friends who are no longer in country with me. I tell her yes, of course I use alcohol to fill the friend sized hole in my heart. I can’t go through life in this country without them, so I drink myself to sleep every night. She then asks me if I’m an immoral person. Actually she asks me, ‘how much of you is immoral?’ What the fuck?!

‘How much of me is immoral? I don’t know. Maybe 15%.’ I say sarcastically. Again, she thinks I’m serious. I don’t know what to do with this girl. Yes my dear, I can tell you that exactly 15% of me is immoral. I don’t know. How the fuck am I supposed to answer that?

As we talk more she brings up, really she hints at it and I have to bring up, me sleeping in the other girls’ room. I don’t know if she cares or not, but apparently that is part of why she thinks I’m immoral. Also, apparently I proposed to the other receptionist the other night. Of course I did! How else was I supposed to get her to take her shirt off while she was working?!

Maybe I should stop coming back to the hostel drunk…at least for a little while.

Oct. 5, 2012

I found this on my computer a few days ago. I remember the day, but don't remember writing this. It must have been a really good bottle of wine.

Tired

Sleep

Want it

But I can’t

Not yet

Soon, but jer ara

It’s there for the taking

But I don’t want it yet

Yes, I’m drinking alone in my room tonight. No I don’t care what you think. You want to judge me? Go ahead. I don’t give a fuck. You don’t know what I’ve been through. You’ve never even left the country. The worst problem you’ve had is trying to get a girl to sleep with you. Try getting a super conservative Christian girl that doesn’t speak English to sleep with you! Then maybe I’ll have a little more respect for ya.

Went to the store today to get some shit for other shit. Bought wine and raisins instead. Good choice. The wine is gone now, but the raisins remain. Hopefully they will add a little extra something to my oatmeal for the next week or so. Fucking good choice at the store. Sometimes, like today, when I go to the store in Tbilisi I feel like the girls working there are all in one some secret about me. They seem to all be watching me, but not in the way that they might think I’m stealing shit. They watch me like they know something that I don’t. Maybe they think they know how much control Georgian girls have over me, but the truth is that I already know this. Hahahahahahahah joke’s on them.

I’m gonna make some history.