Comida Mexicana... Tarot Cards... Drag Race... Fabulousness... Visions and Oneness (Part Three)

I'm so tired, it's ridiculous. It's 5:03 AM. Imagine, however, that I was also tired at 2:53 AM when I was approaching the exit from 66 to go home. I tell myself that I will be home in less than 10 minutes, so just stay awake, concentrate, and enjoy the soft warm bed soon enough.

Visions and Oneness

I dropped my friend off at 2:20, and the entire way home, I was so tired I had to bite my wrists and forearms to stay awake. (This works VERY well!) But, I was so tired that even staying awake, I kept hallucinating. I kept feeling my body slipping away--not trying to slip away, but fall off or into something else. It was so strange. I hate hallucinating... anyway, my hallucinations involved me seeing huge biped creatures in the distance walking in or across the street. I won't even bother trying to explain how strange and scary this is, but imagine 15 foot Sasquatch dragging a club and walking across 66 in the distance. It's almost 3 in the morning and you've been awake for almost 24 hours. This happened from the time I was still in DC until I was about a mile away from home (over 30 minutes later.) As I turned into my subdivision, the vision returned.

I saw a creature walking slowly, zombie like, in the street. It was only a few feet away, and as I slowed down my driving, I realized that it was a real person. What the hell was he doing in the street? Behind him sat a totaled car wrapped around a tree. Funny how all your self-preservation instincts go out the window when someone else is in trouble. I rolled down the window, to ask him if the guy needed help, from the safety of my car, but even as I did so, I pulled over behind him, turned on my flashers, and got out to talk. I asked if he needed someone to call 911 since there were no emergency responders around. He said he did. The guy looked scared as shit, but definitely not drunk or belligerent. I guess I subconsciously knew this because I didn't hesitate to open my phone to call as I also opened my trunk and searched for a first aid kit. I was shaking so much, I felt enclosed by an entire cloud of sleep-deprived adrenaline. The one where your consciousness has all but shut down, the physical body is being animated by competing neurotransmitters and the mental body by the subconscious mind. God knows where emotional, spiritual, social bodies went... fair-weather friends. ;)

As I was calling, I was surprised to NOT hear my voice in my head as I spoke. It was like my lips were moving and communicating information with the 911 responder, but I had no idea what they were saying. In fact, when I first held the phone to my ear, I almost panicked that no one was answering before realizing I hadn't activated the phone application and dialed 911. I did it. Fumbling through the first aid kit on the ground to find gloves, the responder actually said, "Hello" to me 3 times before I realized someone was there on the line, that they were talking to me, and that it was my cue to answer. Amazingly, I gave an incredibly accurate description of the location. I continued to fumble with the gauze pads. The poor guy was sitting on the ground talking to his dad on the phone, scared shitless. I was scared for him, though the obvious extent of his injuries was the huge gash on his right knee. Fumble, fumble fumble. Fucken gauze pads. I think I broke the disposable ice pack trying to activate it. I asked the guy if I had permission to help him, though I was already crouching on the ground next to him, opening the kit and not paying enough attention to him to wait for a response. The responder asked me to ask him if he had any stomach or chest pain. He said he did where the seat belt caught him, but other than that, no. (And, BTW, thank GOD he was wearing the seatbelt. There is no amount of first aid kit in my trunk that would have helped him had he not been!!! So kiddies and adults alike, FUCKEN BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELTS!)

I wipe the blood that had dripped down his leg... there wasn't a lot, but the gash was deep and will definitely require stitches. The first gauze pad was comically thin, so I added the abdominal gauze pad on top. Perfecto! I held pressure until the paramedics arrived. The second set, since the first set was on their way to another accident further down the road but stopped to make sure that the guy I was with didn't have any life-threatening injuries. I'm glad they remembered the correct questions to ask because, between him talking to his dad on the phone and me shaking and waging a holy war against the sterile gauze pad packaging (who would have though tearing a fucken PAPER packet open would be so difficult) with no conscious facilities, I sure as hell wasn't gonna notice that he was missing a limb, his heart laying next to us(talking, no less!)or that his neck was broken in half, or something else painfully obvious. Fortunately, none of these things happened. Anyway, the po-po and the paramedics arrived, and I was surrounded by a dozen 30 to 50-something year old white dudes in the middle of the night... (Deja vu?)

The car was FUCKED UP! I mean, the poor guy! As it turns out, he was returning home from dropping off a friend and he fell asleep driving. (It was, after all, 3 in the morning!) His car hit the curb and did at least a 90 degree (and possibly a 450 degree, if done twice) spin around a tree. Ack! He hadn't been drinking... he was too scared and sober to lie about what happened. But he remembered driving, then he remember waking up with horrifying pain in his right leg and his car on the opposite side of the road. (Not his words.) At some point before the responders arrived, the operator I'd been talking to on the phone hung up. I don't remember when, I just know we asked me about the seatbelt thing, asked for something and I said the address again, which was the wrong answer apparently. I think the right one was my name and phone number. Anyway, responders arrived, took over, EMTs secured his neck and back to a board on the stretcher, police looked around the scene trying to piece together what happened, and I just kinda sat there in my car since I couldn't get around any of the vehicles at this point. I picked up my phone to call my mom and let her know what happened, or to play bejeweled, or send a text to my friend whom I'd dropped off earlier... and my phone died instantly. Had it died 10 minutes earlier, or with just a few more functions like another text message or so earlier in the evening, I wouldn't have been able to call 911. Weird how things work out, huh?

Anyway, the kid's dad came (sorry, I should say that the guy was probably about 19 years old... and I'm calling him a kid, even though he's only 5 years younger. Hehe.) The dad followed the ambulance to the hospital. I don't think he saw me at all the whole time. Funny how I just disappear sometimes. The po-po got my information. Had I not been so scared when they asked for it, I'd have said something like, "Go ask Officer So-and-So in This-and-That county... or 50 other of your cop friends. I've been pulled over enough times, I'm sure ONE of them has my data!" Anyway... free to go. Me, sleepy to the point of hallucinating, had been on scene for 30 minutes.

I got home and told mom, "You'll never believe where I just spent the last half an hour: doing first aid at the scene of a car accident a mile away from the house." I guess I felt proud because I know some people will just drive past, assuming that responders have already been called, afraid that the person involved might be some sociopath, or just not wanting to be bothered with being obligated to someone for a period of time--however brief. But, the more I think about it, the less proud I feel. Feeling proud should come from doing something extraordinary, in my opinion. Helping out a fellow living creature is NOT extraordinary in most circumstances. It's something that, if done more often, would lead to a much happier, less fucked up world.

I FINALLY got home, and approaching the door I see a bug moving on the porch. I stepped over it, not wanting to look at it (because if you look at it, you have to acknowledge it's form and the fear it incites within, which I would have rather not done.) I turned around anyway, and saw a beetle on it's back, it's legs desperately waving in the air to either grab onto something with which to leverage itself up, to flip itself over, or to get my attention. Only the latter worked. I bent down and flipped it over with my house key. I left before it could walk any closer to me. Fear, yes, but even that doesn't excuse us from our duty to other living beings.

Locking the front door and walking over to my mother to tell her the story of the evening, I was reminded of a verse, "i have abused my so-called power forgive me/ you mean we actually are all one/one one one one one one one."

-One, by Alanis Morissette
Retrieved from http://www.elyrics.net/read/a/alanis-morissette-lyrics/one-lyrics.html

Comida Mexicana... Tarot Cards... Drag Race... Fabulousness... Visions and Oneness (Part Two)

I got my reading first, and went outside while my friend got his done to give him some privacy. While I was out there, I saw this gorgeous, thin drag queen walk quickly past me. She had tons of curly blond hair and a short, blue Tinkerbell-looking dress. She was so cute! Normally I am not a big fan of blondes, but drag queens are totally my kryptonite. All the better if they're actually my age...

Drag Race and Fabulousness

After the tarot readings, my friend and I got more cash out of the ATM at 7-11 (and I got a sugar-free slurpee, yay me!) and we walked over to the club. It was still a little early, about 10 minutes early, so we sat outside and talked about stupid stuff while my friend finished his cigarette and I finished my slurpee. As we went in side, we waited for about 5 minutes, and the drag show began. Now, I've been to drag shows at this club several times before, and they usually last 45 minutes tops and they're not particularly crowded. Tonight, the club was PACKED (and, the show lasted over 2 hours!) But we didn't know this before...

Apparently, the night was replicating RuPaul's Drag Race in D.C. Local amateur drag queens were competing for $250 tonight and a chance to compete further for $2,500. As soon as I realized what was going on, it occurred to me that maybe the blonde blue-fairy might be one of the contestants. Sure enough, she was like the 4th. I hadn't seen her face before. She's really cute, in a fairy sort of way (i.e., long and pointy nose and chin, very thin--though not skeletal, shy and coquettish... etc.) Anyway, it was great watching each girl do their routine (though some were more irritating than others. For the final runway walk, each girl had to walk down the runway with a spoon in her mouth and an egg in the spoon. I think like 4 of the 8 dropped their eggs... it was hilarious. I kept covering my eyes like a little kid and giggling so incessantly. Good thing it was so loud in there and so crowded, otherwise I might have been too self-conscious in the lack of anonymity to enjoy myself. God forbid I should RELAX and ENJOY MYSELF for once...

Each girl was great, but it was clear from the beginning who the winner was. She could DANCE. She seemed VERY shy, which I thought was strange given her talent. Congratulations to you, Coco! The blue fairy was runner up, which surprised me because the audience didn't seem to care one way or the other for her (and she was from North Carolina, so it might have been that they just weren't cheering for a friend like with the others...) But she had her makeup done very well, none of her tucking came undone, her wig stayed on... and if judges were just going on technicalities, then that got her a lot of points right there. Congratulations to you, too, Blue Fairy.

Of course afterward everyone was free to dance in the club. It was great being with my friend (and maybe just where I'm at in my life) because I really wasn't concerned with checking out cute guys or worrying about how I looked. I was very excited about the drag show (and savored my 3 hour crush on the blue fairy) and was with a cool guy and completely sober (I'm always amazed when I'm able to go to a club without drinking and still have fun... sounds stupid, but that's definitely a skill I never thought I'd have.)

We had a lot of fun dancing to all the queer music, hanging out in the smoke pit with this weird ass guy talking about some shit... I had NO idea what he was saying. I think he might have been a little high--he was talking way too fast to be drunk. Unless that's just how he rolls. Anyway, he was talking about renting a boat and going out to Occoquan with his uber-straight Asian friend who's really tall and muscular and he's SO into muscle guys and they were smoking camel crushers (WTF?) and he had crushed the ball into his fingers and got badly burned from it and for some reason he and his straight muscle friend had to carry part of the boat somewhere... I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, and he really didn't make any pauses (like the sentence above.) But I did notice something interesting. I guess when you go out with a friend, and the two of you meet a stranger, the stranger will talk to the more 'attractive' of the two. This is strange to me since 'attractive' is so subjective. I didn't even realize this was what was happening because people have always talked to the person I was with (I was always 'the friend.' Anonymous, simple.) I'm not sure if it's because I was a good 3-4 inches taller than my friend, that I've been on T for longer, that I had this stupid fake grin on my face the whole time, that I used 'active listening skills' such as nodding and repeating choice words that he had said, or some twisted combination thereof, but he'd glance at my friend--in between us--while talking mostly to me. Strange, strange, strange. Then again, I don't feel too bad--my friend isn't into biological men, and I most definitely am. The guy's name is Joseph, though I doubt anyone would remember him telling us this in conversation. Active. Listening. Skills.

We ended the night listening to Telephone, by Lady Gaga and Beyonce. I will assume that everyone has seen that music video (if you haven't, DO IT!) so that I can send you to the parody link. ::insert evil grin here:: I love you all!

SHERRY VINE!!!!! PEPPERMINT!! TELEPHONE Lady Gaga parody
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8685ogp7QRQ


Stay Tuned for Part Three: Visions and Oneness

Comida Mexicana... Tarot Cards... Drag Race... Fabulousness... Visions and Oneness (Part One)

This will be a multi part series because, if it were all in one post, you'd get bored reading it very soon. But this is the story of 8 hours of my Friday night.

Comida Mexicana and Tarot Cards

I met up with a friend in DC tonight. I was reluctant to go, not because I disliked the person (on the contrary, I like him a lot) but because I have so much work to do and so little time to do it. Nevertheless, I went. Because everything happens for a reason. Once we finally found parking, we got dinner at a restaurant on U Street called Alero. While we both like lots of different food, Mexican was the first thing we'd agreed on--plus, it was close and I'd heard good things about it before. The wait for the food was long, but it was (sorta) worth it. My friend ordered a margarita and some guacamole and chips (he wasn't very hungry) while I ordered a grilled portobello mushroom in a tomato sauce (AMAZING!) and a giant salad. Dinner was great. (I didn't drink because, lately, I've been finding it extremely hard to force down alcohol... good thing, since it saves me money in the evening!)

Like I said, the wait for the food was long. We had a lot of time to talk (though I feel like I dominated conversation, which I always try to be mindful of doing) but talk was pleasant. Despite getting to the restaurant at around 7:15, we didn't leave until around 9:30. It was too early to go to a club (most open around 10:30), so as we were walking around, we passed a psychic. My friend insisted that we go, which is completely cool cause I like to get a reading done once a year--and I appreciate anyone who believes in tarot/psychics/horoscopes, or at least doesn't judge me for believing. I won't relay what the psychic told him since that's his business, but I'll break down what I remember of the tarot reading:

Life: As with most psychics, this one told me that I would live an extremely long life... if not into my late 90s, then definitely into my early 100s. She said that longevity was in my genes and that not only would I live long, but I would live an extremely health life as well. YAY!

Love: Next she said that love was not in my cards for the immediate future (well, for the rest of the year.) She said that I've had horrible luck with love and pretty much a nonexistent love life, and that that wasn't likely to change over the next several months, so I shouldn't stress about it. I guess I'm supposed to use the rest of the year to work on myself (?) and that would help me when I finally meet this person. She said that I don't know him yet, but that his name would start with a "D" and that we would meet in a very public place. Not like in a club or a bar... but somewhere completely unexpected, like a grocery store or library.

Career: I may be going out of order, but the next topic that I remember was her talking about career. The psychic said that I wasn't doing what I was meant to do. She said that I was meant to be in a leadership position. Specifically, I was meant to be in the military in the future. She asked if I had ever been in the military (I said that I had) and then asked if I'd ever considered returning. I said that I had considered it, but nothing more. She said that the opportunity would arise for me to reenter the military and that I should definitely do it. I was born to be a military leader, apparently. (I laugh a little when I think of all the people who are spiritually choking on their egos as I type this, and can't figure out why. For that reason, alone, I hope she's right.) She said that I'm not in the career I'm supposed to be in, and while I may make progress and things may go well, it's not permanent by any means.

Finances: Haha, so then she said that my financial situation would be set by the age of 33. She said that when I reach the age of 33, I would no longer have any financial worries. I wouldn't have any worries then, or for the rest of my life. I suppose all my current debts would be paid off and I'll be making enough money to never struggle for things I need. She said that I was blessed to always financially be provided for. So far, she's been right because even my worst has been better than 80% of the world's populations, sad to say.

School: Ugh, the worst news I got was that she said that for some reason I would be encountering delays in finishing my schooling. She said that it wouldn't been finished for another 3 years. I hope she's including graduate school in that because another 3 years in undergrad, and I might kill someone. She said in October I would find many distractions from my school work, but would eventually get back on track (seems like within the same semester.) Nrrrh. I REALLY hope that doesn't happen, but we'll see.

Family: The psychic said that my family life was relatively calm, without major disputes. I suppose if she figures my dad and I being completely estranged while living in the same house 'calm', then sure.

Children: So, as mentioned in the love part, she said that I would meet my true love in the beginning of next year (which, with psychics seems to mean anytime in the first six months...) and with this true love I would have three children. Then she clarified that these three children won't be biologically mine (no shit) and that one of them may not even be a human child, but something I love like a child. She asked me if I had any pets, and I said yes without saying what kind, and she said that it would be with me for a very long time. I guess that makes sense because while a goldfish doesn't last long, a cat can live to be 20 something years old. Yay for Serious!

Spirituality: She didn't say much about spirituality, other than over the next year as I come closer to meeting my true love, that I would been improving my own spiritual health and ultimately achieving a higher level of inner peace.

I think that's it. If I remember anything else, I'll edit the post and add it.

Stay tuned for Part Two: Drag Race and Fabulousness and Part Three: Visions and Oneness