There and Back Again

Every now and then, I like to punctuate my lifestyle with a little bit of adventure to alleviate the endless doldrums of working a 9 to 5 desk job like your average boring adult. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I had a truly good adventure that didn't involve being responsible for other people, urine, or both. Therefore, last night seemed as good a night as any to spontaneously make the drive out to Northampton for a visit to Haven to see Bella Morte in concert with Hanzel Und Gretyl and Q. As always, my planning of such things was nearly flawless, until I discovered Von Butternuts had thrown a monkey wrench into things by ending up at my apartment instead of going home because he "hadn't had time to cash his paycheck and didn't have enough money for T fare." I don't even want to know why he was able to borrow $10.00 from his coworker for lunch, but was somehow unable to manage to ask for $3.00 to get home and out of my hair for the night (especially since it costs nearly the same amount to get to my apartment from his office - $1.25 for the T fare, and another 90 cents for the bus). Sometimes, I think someone honestly made a mistake in telling him about the "Mongolian" part of his heritage, when they really meant to say "Mongoloid." Mind you, this was the first time in a good long while I'd had an opportunity for a night out by myself, and I wasn't going to let anything get in my way, T fare be damned. Thankfully I was able to outsource the tard farming for the evening out to our good friend Bob, who came over for a wholesome, heterosexual evening of World of Whorecraft, and was fortunately able to take over the duties of making sure Tom got to the T to get to work the next morning. Frankly, as long as I didn't have to deal with carting his ass to the Alewife T stop at god-knows-what hour in the morning after a night of clubbing, I didn't care if he hijacked a short bus to get to work, therefore this worked out more than perfectly for me.

Thus footloose and fancy-free, our intrepid hero set off towards the formidable barrens of West Bumblefuck with goth men and cloves and angst on her mind. What dangers lay before her in her quest for good gothin' times with the West Bumblefuckians of the Haven nightclub?

Admittedly, aside from the general menacing of Masshole drivers during rush hour, the dangers on the way to the club were few and far between. Traffic during the earlier parts of the commute had me chewing on my steering wheel and threatening to eat the Mass Pike's children, but thankfully the calming tones of Type O Negative blasting from my CD player promptly soothed the beast behind the wheel. The remainder of the drive over was fairly uneventful, save being stuck behind Oldar the Destroyer going 25 mph for several miles in a section of I-90 that had been pinched down to one lane for repaving and the long-distance driving phenomenon I have come to call Al Qaeda Syndrome. The phenomenon can best be described as smooth traffic coming to an unnecessary halt due to drivers unilaterally jacking on their brakes each time they crest a hill or round a turn on a major highway - Tom's explanation being that they're afraid because "you never know, Al Qaeda might be on the other side." To this date, I haven't heard any better explanation, so that's the one I'll run with.

As anticipated, the evening at the club was exactly what I needed, having been unable to really get my goth on since the closure of ManRay (it's extremely sad that I never knew just how good I had it when I was able to rock it out on LipstickGoth Wednesdays and with Adult Diaper Man showing up on Fetish Fridays until the club was gone). Some would say that the goth scene died in Boston with the closure of ManRay, and sadly enough, observation of other goth nights has proven this to be true. The concert at Haven was, most unfortunately, my first respite from clubbing at venues with tourists and frat boys in an "experimental" phase stripping in the cage with the hired gogo dancers in almost a year, having missed the 2006 Black Sun Festival (by the way, folks, in case it was unclear, Dark Intentions in Lowell is well... everything you'd expect from a goth night in Lowell). I think my fond memories of late nights dancing to Beborn Beton will be forever marred by the one time I attended D.I. and was witness to a pasty drunk guy flailing like an epileptic in nothing but khaki shorts on the dance floor to "Another World" followed by an inept gogo dancer tripping on her elevator boots and spilling off the stage (I was later told that Steve's date had commented "wow, this is a better night than usual"). Rockin' goth scene all around... I promise.
Overall, I imagine the night at Haven went pretty well - at least, the parts of it I remember fully. After my 4th glass of shiraz (I'm pretty sure the bartender wholly expected me to finish the entire bottle of Fat Bastard the way I was going), my memory became a little fuzzy though I vaguely recall thoroughly enjoying one of the bands repeatedly counting to 3 in an angry German fashion and having a craving for cloves with no one to bum from. Apologies to anyone whom I might have smeared a big black goth kiss on if it was unwanted - I swear to god, I normally wear Sephora midnight black, but having not been clubbing in so long, I was only able to find this cheap-ass tube of Wet 'n' Wild from a Halloween kit that probably made me look like a 99 cent goth. What can I say? I drank, I danced, and I had no tards to farm - those are the makings of a good night right there - whether I looked good or not was merely a situational detail that I don't think anyone was going to remember in the morning anyways. Standard goth clubbing procedure. What followed afterwards, however, was anything but standard, and in truth, the real adventure worth writing home about.

I imagine that some of my West Bumblefuckian friends were a little bit concerned about my ability to take myself home in the hours that followed - after all, I had about 100 miles to cover between the club and my bed. At some point during the evening, I'd contemplated looking for crash space and asked around for a bit, only to realize that traffic on I-90 is much better at 2 am than it is at 10 in the morning (the time I estimated I would be waking up if I were to really try and sleep off the bottle of Fat Bastard Shiraz), which was about the time that I fortuitously switched from red wine to Red Bull (I'll spare you the details of what that did to my body the next day and instead refer those of you who *must* know to My Fearsome Craps, an alternate webpage for the truly TMI-inclined). And so it was, at about 2 am, the lights came on in Haven and the goths promptly melted, along with any false premises of beautiful creatures of the night (has anyone else noticed that *nobody* looks as good with the lights as they did in the dark? Jesus, I bet I must have looked like the K-Mart goth by then). I found myself delicately prancing over to the parking lot, 3 Red Bulls and a bottle of wine coursing its way through me experiencing the true joy that can only be found in being alone in the night with no one to rely on but yourself. It's been a long time since I've really gotten in touch with the raw pleasure of that one feeling, and I think I realize now just how very vital it is for me to be able to enjoy being alone and responsible for no one, even if only for a single night.
There are those who would say that the primary purpose of going to a club is to meet up with the people you know, introduce yourself to those you don't, form and reinforce that social bond and human connection that for some reason we are all searching for, and maybe, just maybe, find a companion to take home for the night, and possibly nights thereafter. As for me - I far prefer to think of connections as mercurial in essence. To connect with someone is to gently touch a life that one finds interesting, with no more than the intent of enjoying the experience for just one moment, releasing, and watching it fly away. There is nothing more peaceful to the mind than realizing that your life is ultimately bound to no one, nor is anyone else's bound to you - realizing that you are simply alone and just passing through, gently brushing against the rest of the gossamer threads comprising a web woven by human lives. Always alone.

But I digress. While I might have my moments of drunken Zen, you are here to read about The Adventure featured below.

She's going for distance... and she's going for speed...

Of the things I have noticed about driving less than stone sober, a couple of them stick out in my mind as being wholly important the next time I plan the snooze cruise home: the first of which is the fact that 80 mph seems a lot faster when you're sober than when you're not. It's a good thing I'm better at everything when I'm a little tipsy - including driving, which is especially strange, considering statistical evidence stating the contrary about the rest of the population. I guess I must be a little high-strung normally, since I normally tend to absolutely spazz out at the mere sight of traffic complications or getting lost. In any case, 80 on I-90 felt like a granny-pace in contrast to the respectable and reasonable distance-covering speed it should have been (especially given that most people normally go between 70 and 80 on the pike). Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that alcohol turns my feet into lead which, while nonconducive in getting me anywhere by foot, seems to greatly improve the perceived acceleration of my car while cruising down the highway. Oh my car. My Subaru is such a forgiving little car - it keeps me such good company day in and day out. And it puts up with me when I do such stupid things... like stepping up when some driver is a dick.
In all honesty, I'll probably never do that again, and to be fair, it wasn't even that long of a distance, but I somehow managed to get into it with a BMW that had started driving up my ass some distance out on the two-lane section of the pike. As noted before, I was doing 80, which, while not light speed, is certainly not driving like Oldar the Destroyer. However, this BMW seemed to want none of that. And driving up my ass was certainly not enough for him. For some reason, he decided to zip around me, only to suddenly succumb to a fit of Al Qaeda Syndrome. No kidding, a BMW cut in front of me and proceeded to jack on his brakes. Normally, my stone sober self would have merely screamed a few profanities and been done with it, but ah, no... at 2:30 am in my Zen state, I decided that I wasn't going to take that kind of shit from some rich prick driving a wad of German metal. I hopped over into the next lane and began the race for the Reetee Cup. The parallel tailing itself lasted probably less than 2 miles, as I began to see signs indicating "right lane closed for road work." At this point I felt no overwhelming desire to clean the road cones off with the side of my less-than-year-old car, and really, as Bob once said to me, "once you join the century club, it starts getting retarded." I can't tell whether fellow Subaru drivers would be proud or ashamed of me for racing a BMW and keeping up. To be fair to the cars, Mr. BMW was probably not a very good driver.
Putting that experience behind me and vowing not to do that again any time soon, I approached my next challenge of the evening - those goddamn toll booths.
Nothing makes me wish I had a Fast Pass more than early morning drives - especially considering how poorly marked the toll booths are in Western Mass. From now on, I'm going to default to my foolproof decision-making process and always choose "the one on the left." When faced with a pair of open toll booths side by side, both labeled "FAST TRAK," I approached the one on the right, only to discover I'd chosen poorly. No damn tickets! This was a Fast Pass ONLY toll booth. "No problem," I thought to myself, "it's 2:30 in the morning out in West Bumblefuck, MA. No one's going to be at the toll booth except for me - I can just back up slowly and drive into the left toll booth..."
But of course - no such luck. Just as I put the car in reverse, I was met by the headlights of a white minivan approaching the toll booth. Fantastic. For what seemed like an eternity, the minivan and I were locked in a moment of "WTF," until I decided to do something about it by hitting my left blinker. Yes... yes that's right. The moron in the car in front of you went into the wrong toll booth. Go ahead, laugh.
It quickly dawned on the minivan driver that I was, indeed, a moron as advertised, and he thankfully took pity on my dumb ass by backing up, allowing me to switch lanes.
I'd like to say that this was the end of my toll woes, and thusly, my driving woes, but for the fact that the toll booth attendant at the I-95 entrance caught me loudly bouncing and singing to Wolfsheim in my usual ton deef* manner as I scrambled for change. At least it's better than the Arabundi's similar experience driving a Dodge full of women home from the airport and rolling into the toll booth accidentally blaring "Pimpin' Ain't Easy." How right you are, Arabundi. Pimpin' ain't easy.

Thankfully, the rest of the drive home did prove moderately uneventful and otherwise safe thanks to the last two Red Bulls kicking in and I was able to crawl into bed at about 3:30 in the morning, so to those of you who were worried - I hope this has assuaged your fears, which were very much appreciated. At the very least, I can tell you that I didn't fall asleep at the wheel and go into the rumble strips like last Friday on the way to ToV at about 4pm.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

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* tone-deaf, only worse.