Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Yakidoshi, Day One

So far, my year of being haunted by ghouls is going all right - although I think my sink might be harboring evil. It's been draining slow, so I poured half a bottle of drano down into the drain. That clogged it up. I came home from the gym to find a toxic pool sitting there. I borrowed a plunger from Yurena and managed to evict whatever was down there. For now. Drano is supposed to kill things, not make them stronger.

I've been pondering all the things that can go wrong with my life, most of them based on experience. I figure, I've never once managed to predict anything properly, so the more bad things I think of, the less likely those specific things are likely to happen again. Since most of my anni horribili (1991, 2001) involve a combination of break-ups and unemployment, and since I'm single with no one in the wings and in a civil service position, the ghouls are going to have to try harder and be a bit more creative this year.

I intend to have a grand time of it. I always intended to do a mid-life crisis in style. If this is it, I'm ready.

I skipped the Western New Years this year (Cairo sucked and so I went to bed early), and so I missed the drunken morning-after pondering of the past year. Too bad; it was my favorite part of the hangover. For eighteen years life went pretty well as ordained. Life's in small towns usually do. There's not much variety, and relatively few themes to pick from. I hit eighteen and left, and things got interesting. I'd spend the morning after New Years Eve marveling at all the completely unexpected things that had happened the year before. Jan 1, 1984, I would never have guessed that I would go from class dork to Big Ten athlete by the end of the year; 1985, that I would become a frat boy; 1986, that I would have a skinhead in my kitchen trying to talk a girl in a mohawk through a bad acid trip; 1988 that I'd be doing street outreach with Detroit gangs and really, really enjoying it ... maybe a bit too much ... every year just seemed so random and unpredictable.

Sure, though, things slowed as time went on. It reached a point where I pretty much new on Jan 1 where I'd be the coming Jan 1. There'd be surprises along the way (that I'd be a circuit boy at 35, or single again in my 40's, or actually paddling the Moloka`i Hoe), but nothing totally outlandish.

But do I really want to be where I'm at now this time next year? Solid friends, a good apartment, I have a positive credit rating for the first time ever, I love paddling, I mostly like my job ... it's all good ... except the damn dating scene. Which sucks.

So my New Year's resolution is, I'm going to be a bar rat for my yakidoshi. Yeah, I hate the gay bars here. But I used to like them, and the problem now is that I go so rarely that when I do I either 1) don't recognize anyone, pirouette, and leave; or 2) see guys I haven't seen in forever and spend the night chatting with them. There's no room for meeting new guys, all I meet in paddling are straight guys and partnered gay guys, and the only Hawaiians online these days are tweakers.

So it's back to the bars. That's my New Year's Resolution. For now, Friday nights (we train Sunday mornings). Come March, Saturday nights (we train Saturdays). Come June it's racing season, so it all ends then.

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