When we left the last story, Laura and I were walking along Skidmore, back towards the hotel on Interstate. Both Laura and I were rather... tipsy... off our 4 beers apiece, and we hadn't eaten any proper food since, technically, the day before, since it was now well past midnight. Remembering the words of the cute young Indian girl that checked us into our hotel room, there were supposedly some restaurants near the upcoming intersection. We passed one, then two restaurants that were long since closed, and, dejected, turned south on Interstate to sluff towards bed. Then, low and behold, there came a flash of lights, neon, and a sign that said "food"! The Alibi came into view, and as the sign lit our tired faces, the words on the door lit our hearts.
We walked into a jungle-themed karaoke bar. I flung myself into a booth after taking a quick headturn in an effort to spot some kind of food. Laura went to the bar to get a drink as I looked at the bar menu. At the top, in tiny letters were the words "Bar Menu served until 7pm". SEVEN PEE-EMM??? I was ready to just give up and go to the hotel, but Laura joined me at the booth, her hands empty, and bouncing with excitement.
"There's a lady over there who's giving away free cigarettes!"
I ordered a midori sour (lots of sugar + cherry = dinner, right?) and Laura got herself a beer. Suddenly, 3 guys walk in - all kind of looking half-frat/half-punk-wannabe. As I was rolling my eyes, I caught sight of one guy's face. "Omigawd," I whispered to Laura, "there's the dude who was in the airplane line!" Laura, confused, "Eh? Airplane line?" "Yeah, in Boise. Don't you remember? He had his iPod in one ear and was all "g" with the cellphone in the other ear. We were making fun of him." The 3 guys, who were all very visibly drunk, caught sight of the free-cigarette girl, who had made her way to our table. We took the survey, which was for out-of-staters only, and one guy noticed that our IDs were from Idaho.
"Hey!" he said, “We’re from Idaho, too!"
I looked warily at Laura. "Really? From Boise?"
"Yeah!" sayeth guy #1
"Well, from Mountain Home, actually." guy #2 interjected.
Ah, Mountain Home. At least now we could tell where their special style came from. They decided to sit down with us. Guy #3 comes back from the bar and slips in next to Laura and starts going off about lesbians and how he hates them. Laura asks if he has heard about the recent legislation that made even more illegal for 2 people of the same sex to get married. He responds in the affirmative. "And it's good!" he spits,"F'n lesbians. I hate them all."
This is the part in which Laura becomes a lesbian:
"But I'm a lesbian. Do you hate me?" says the newly lesbianized Laura.
The guy #3 was stunned silent for a second and subsequently went into a tirade I promptly ignored. I instead focused my attention to getting rid of the guy that was trying to get me to come with him back to their hotel room. I kept attempting to catch Laura's eye and give her the "hello, let's get the heck out of here" stare, but she wouldn't budge. She was on a roll, and no matter how many times I kicked her, she would pay no attention to me.
The Mountain Hominids #1 and #2 finally left to sing some karaoke, and I started gathering my things. The guy #3 to whom Laura was speaking was now a semi-blubbering mess, blathering about how all his girlfriends "were treated like queens! But they were horrible" to him... I wrote a couple of sentences on a piece of paper, handed it to him, Laura stuffed it into his pocket, and we were off.
The time was 2.00am. We got back to the hotel in just a minute, as it was literally kitty-corner to the Alibi. I, the paranoid one, stared out the window for a while at the front door of the Alibi, afraid that somehow the guys had seen where we ended up (and if the car in the parking lot was theirs, I was afraid they would actually try to drive somewhere). After 10 minutes or so, I tired of my perch and joined Laura on her bed, internetted for a while, while exclaiming the strangeness of the night, and finally got to sleep (in my own bed, thankyouverymuch) around 3.30am. There was so much ahead of us, and we had only been in Portland for 8 hours.
The rest of the trip was generic - shopping, meeting up with friends, having a good time. All in all, it was a lovely mini-break, and that Thursday night trumped all the rest with regards to obscurity and obscenity (not to mention the awesomenessestness). Be watchful of that Alibi on Interstate. That is, unless you want to listen to the worst. karaoke. ever.
I HAVE to know... what did you write on the paper?
Posted by: Ladyface at March 7, 2006 9:16 PM