Suzanna Danna

Alright babies, I have completely been neglecting you like some gorgeous oil painting hanging in the bowels of the Louvre. You ARE gorgeous and I DO indeed love you, but I have been a little preoccupied. No excuses. Okay, a few excuses. My previous years have had a slight pattern that I could sort of count on. This year, that pattern went out the freaking window and I thought that I would have ALL of April to be all lovey dovey with you, but no (NO! I SAY!) it has not worked out that way.

Well, that and I have been avoiding you so I won’t get all talky speaky with you and give away all of my secrets (psssst, I know where Atlantis is).

So, there’s that then.

Let’s talk about how insanely addictive crack … er, I mean FaceBook is. Shall we? Holy shit y’all. Let me give you a for instance. A few weeks ago I was merrily working away (at work… redundant much?) and I got this email from FaceBook that said Dre’ would like to add you as a friend. To be honest, it actually said Andre, but I call him Dre’ because we are like this*, yo. (*finger gesture) (No, perv, not THAT finger gesture.)

I got all hyper and shit because I have been Google stalking him for eons and there he was… and the real kick in the ass was that we live not three miles from one another and have for years. So I accepted the proffered friend request and BAM! It was like it hadn’t been twenty-one years since we had spoken, but more like twenty-one minutes. Which is just about the time now between our texts, emails and phone calls. We started chatting and adding one another to our BlackBerry messengers and damn, it was like I found a missing piece.

Now we are all finishing one another sentences and comparing notes on life, work, love and happiness. It is amazing that one little program can give back so much.

A few weeks ago we all met up on a Saturday for a “cheer up Joey**” Happy Hour. And yet, it was a Saturday and not even after work and WAY more than an hour. But fuck it, that’s how we roll.

**More on you later Joey.

So Stacey puts this whole thing together, kind of last minute and we were all up for an excuse to get out anyway… so she says to meet at the bar at 7 o’clock. She had been tailgating at the Jimmy Buffet concert all day so I get a message around sixish that she is muddy and on her way, will be a few minutes late. Another message from Dre’ he is out with his wife doing the mani/pedi thing and they are taking forever… so HE’s gonna be a few minutes late. No clue what time Joey and K are supposed to get there but I figure, what the hell. And I head over to the club around 7:30.

7:45 and no one has shown up. My waitress is precious and because they don’t allow smoking indoors at ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE ANYMORE! I was “holding a table” on the patio. That shit was empty. So there I was, lookin cute as shit with a little black twinset (surprise!), dark wash jeans and my Jones of NY snakeskin, berry colored, strappy, 3-inch-high cork wedged sandals. Yes, ass, this part IS important. I was looking forward to seeing Dre’ for the first time in over twenty-one years, Stacey and I were gonna get to chat, and Joey and K were coming. This was going to be awesome! I even brought a bag of four photo albums because I am a complete dork. (But you all love me anyway.)

My waitress sits down and looks at a picture of Dre’ in his awesome glam rock acid wash outfit from the last day of eighth grade. She and I strike up a conversation and we start drinking together. Shut up. She totally loved me. So around 8:30 when Dre’ and his buddy “I only date strippers” Brad show up I am one (or two doubles) and a shot in.

When Dre' hugged me it was like we had just seen each other yesterday. So awesome.

8:45 message from Stacey: “Hold me a chair!”

9:00 message from me to Stacey: “If you passed out and left me for dead I will keel you.”

9:20 Stacey shows up and then Joey and K follow shortly after… and after that “I only date strippers” Brad’s friend the “professional trainer” Charlotte shows up. She was totally a stripper… and a complete doll. She talked a million miles a minute and was a low talker.

me : [notice Charlotte’s mouth is moving rapidly, we all lean forward to hear what she is saying… look at Stacey and Dre’ for confirmation that she is speaking, they nod… strain to hear]
Charlotte : [sounds only dogs can hear with extremely animated hand gestures]
me : Honey, speak LOUDER, we are OLD and cannot hear you.
Charlotte : [sounds only dogs can hear with extremely animated hand gestures]
me : LOUDER!
Charlotte : [sounds only dogs can hear with extremely animated hand gestures]
me : I give up. [lots of nods, smiles and “uh huh!”s ]

Joey starts buying shots. I start buying shots. Somehow a picture is taken of me doing lewd things to the waitress… for every shot we get, she gets one too. I went straight past the beer when I got there and was drinking vodka and whatever else was put in front of me. We are telling stories and it is so great to have all these old and new friends together it was a bit heady.

Dre’ and I are laughing over old things that I should totally remember and stories are being doled out by the bushel. (PS… am such a whore.) Stacey is laughing so hard she is crying. It was wonderful.

And yes, we were all supplementing our alcohol intake with water.

K and I decided to go to the ladies’ room. We finish washing our hands and stand over by the Vortex hand dryers and are speaking low and pretty intensely about some private business when … (TA DA!) In walks Tami. And NO, we did not know her from Adam. She walks directly over to us and says, “How do you get an asshole out of a bar!?... Leave your husband at home!” and she laughs uproariously. She is the funniest shit she has ever heard. K and I do the polite giggle with a head nod and she grabs us and says, “Gotta lighten the mood ladies!” She physically pulls us over to the mirror, puts some lip liner one K and I, then lipstick (WAS SILVER… God.) and then puts lotion on our hands and tells us to rub it into our necks. We were so stunned (and polite… and kind of afraid of her) that we did exactly as she said. The lotion smelled like porn and… vanilla… and a stripper’s dressing room. Or something. We disentangle ourselves from Tami and walk/laugh/stumble back to the table on the patio. On the way out to the table I tell K, “We smell like sex.” We both have our hands shoved into our own faces (with matching silver lipstick, that Tami swears, “Oh GIRLS, MEN love that shit!”) laughing at our sex hands***.

***Completely different than jazz hands, I assure you.

Back at the table we are shoving our hands into peoples’ faces, “What does that smell like!?” Mixed bag on the answers… we were yelling, “SEX! Our hands smell like sex!... And strippers!” Brad looked a bit interested… Charlotte mumbled something that sounded like, “Let me smell.” We thrust our hands under her nose.

I squatted beside Dre’ to reach under the table for something. Number one. What have I told you about squatting? Not attractive. And Number two. With my ass I should have known what was coming. One second I was squatting, the next, on my ass looking up at the couple behind me laughing hysterically, “Oh honey, let us help you up!” Hi. Embarrassed much?

I finally got up, put my shoes back on. I freaking fell off my shoes. (See? I told you that the details of what I was wearing was important.) So I got my shoes back on and my ass in the chair and the silver lipstick off of K and I and then Tami showed up at the table, dragging her mortified brother behind her. The lights came on, last call was yelled and our precious waitress showed up with our tabs.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

Hi, two hundred and thirty-nine dollar tab, how YOU doin?

Joey and K threw money at me Stacey threw money at me, I had to have help with the bill because Math is my Waterloo, I wanted to make sure that the waitress was properly (overly) tipped and the whole time the only thing running through my head was, “I am in SO much Trouble!”

Indeed, I was in trouble.

But, to sum up, you will be hearing a lot more about Dre’, Joey and K in more posts to come.

Thank you for giving me my friend back FaceBook. For this one, I owe you.