The Bird

During my senior year in college I spent a lot of time in a place called “The Bird.”  Like many of the seniors before my class, this place became a sacred place to us for the 2011-2012 year.  First of all, the Bird is the senior class bar, sometimes shared with townies, with an established silent pact that we tolerate the others existence even though we’d rather not.  It is one of the few bars that actually cards people, I’ve seen Trish the bar tender chase some underage kids out with a bat once.  She also keeps a nerf fun behind the bar.  It’s a legit security measure.

In my younger underclassmen days I never understood why everyone was so obsessed with the Bird and why so many of my classmates were so hung over on Wednesday mornings.  But then I learned, and I fell in love.  Like big love.  Team Tuesdays became a ritual.  I was devoted to that bar and the people in it.

The first week of school also came with the realization that my dorm, the always awesome Prince George B (also known as PGB) was the closest to the bar.  I could actually throw a rock and hit the back porch.  It was a simple walk down the hill, hop over the rope fence away from my front door.  It was the fastest way to get alcohol that wasn’t in my freezer.

I became that senior with a hangover on a Wednesday morning at 9:30.  My classmates often looked at me in disgust, asking how I could be wasting my senior year in such a fashion.  Didn’t I have papers to write, better yet, my thesis?  And here’s the bottom line, here I am, a college graduate, so you tell me if my constant Tuesday drinking affected my work.  In their defense it was a bunch of lithousers in that class, so I guess that didn’t really understand the allure of being hammered on a Tuesday, or ever.

I was never much of a beer drinker before the bird, but at five bucks a pitcher, I’ll drink pretty much anything.  And since I was usually all for shelling out the extra dollar, I mostly ended up drinking two pitchers of Angry Orchard.  And since we were such frequent patrons of the bar, I got to know Trish the bartender pretty well, I put my cup down and as soon as I went to get another it was already full.  On Saturday’s when Trish didn’t work it was a husband and wife team and their drinks were generally all booze and no mixer.  I got a tequila sunrise once that was basically just straight tequila.

Things we did at the bar: Karaoke nights, watch some asshole sit on and then break the big main table up front, watch a giant florescent beer sign fall on someone (bud light I think it was), a horrible amount of shots. Threw up in the bathroom and rallied for more.  I talked to townies I was never going to see again, and saw alums that just didn’t get that they were too old to still be going back.  They just looked like sorry frat bros and sorority girls who still thought they were the cream of the crop.  But worst than them were the lax bro alums, still thinking they were in their prime glory days.

This is a side note but does anything know if the lax bros know that we all think they’re a total joke?  Or do they actually think everyone at the school worships them?  I hope that weren’t that stupid (I’m kidding, I do) but I actually believe they have no idea that everyone at the school thinks they’re a complete waste of space.

The bottom line is this: I love The Bird.  It was the perfect bar, with just the right amount of off putting air, and the perfect amount of cheap booze.  Where else could you get all you can drink for a ten dollar wrist band?  I made my money back and then some.  Actually that night in particular is a complete blur.  It was also underclassman free and cheap enough that after Team Tuesday I still had enough money to binge for Friday’s drinking activities.  I’m just going to blame The Bird for my rising alcoholism senior year.

My Friend Shanna

This is going to be about my friend Shanna, but I guess since no one reads this piece of shit blog, it doesn’t matter to anyway when I say “skip over this”, because it’s just for her benefit.

To preface this entry, it is important to say that before Shanna, I never had any gay friends.  I had only ever had girly girl friends, and rarely did I ever have guy friends.  You’d think that as a giant homosexual I would have surrounded myself with people with common interest, girls being the biggest one.  But this was not the case for me, most likely because I went to a tiny high school and all of the boys were actual morons.  Some of them continue to be morons, I’m sure.  Though I could not say this is the complete truth, as I have unfriended almost every single person from my high school save for possibly 14 people.  All of them happening to be girls, and one member of the faculties son, who I like to keep tabs on so I know he’s not growing up to be an asshole.

Anyway, I had only ever been friends with straight girls.  I did not intentionally set out to do this, as for a long time, it was a very lonely way to have friends.  First of all, I wasn’t exactly out in high school.  This stems from the fact that if I was, every single person (not an exaggeration) there would have been privy to this information by lunch time (I went to a tiny school).  I was not ready for that kind of exposure at the tender age of 14.  Because not only would every kid have known, but every single member of the faculty would have as well.  And that’s just a daunting thought when you a) have not informed your parents b) many members of the faculty are actually like your parents and c) many members of the faculty were (and continue to be) very judgmental.

You might ask how this pertains to Shanna, well I’m fucking getting there.  When I was 16 I set out to find a job.  This tasks was made slightly more difficult by the fact that I had school Monday – Friday and on most days I was there until 5 at night except Monday (out at 4) and Thursday (out at 3:15).  I know, it’s weird.  So I applied to work at the movies, because why the fuck not.  I had been there a couple months when this girl started working there, college age, really weird orangey red hair color, and totally gay.  I knew this because I have awesome gaydar, even my super gay boss at the time didn’t know (she has a knack for accidentally hiring lesbians unknowingly, as this continues to happen to her).

Of course, upon meeting Shanna I got over excited about the possibility of having a gay friend that I scared the shit out of her by jumping into our new delicate friendship with the hard hitting questions, namely, “How do I come out to my parents?”  This scared Shanna, as it should have.  That’s generally a question one saves for their school GSA club (which I didn’t have) or someone you’ve known longer.  But that’s just not the kind of person I am, I just straight up ask what I wanna know.  Unless those questions are about feelings for other people in which case I pretend those questions do not exist.

I thought Shanna was the Bees knees.  She was in college, was out, had a girlfriend, and was super awesome.  I finally had someone I could talk to about girls without feeling weird.  At that time in school my only friends were made up of one super Christian, (I’m pretty sure she only kept me around so she could say she had a gay friend), girls who were obsessed with boys, or girls who did not like to talk about other people like that.  My other friends who I could have talked to about these things had graduated and had left me to fend for myself.

And so for the next year until I graduated and went to college I had a big gay sister.  She would listen to me talk about “South of Nowhere” or obscure gay movies no one had heard about.  My little gay brain blossomed and I saw that there were other people out there that appreciated boobs as much as I did.  I finally had someone that I was never in any danger of getting a crush on which was awesome.  I went to college and stopped worrying about gay stuff, and I just started to be Tory, it became less about defining myself as gay and more about defining myself as nerd, student, friend.  Shanna stopped being my big gay sister and just started being my super awesome pal (companion, platonic partner?).

I have this problem where I outgrow my friends, and we lose all interest in each other.  This generally happens after four years of friendship, usually the span in which I am stuck with them, usually coinciding with school years: middle, high school, and college.  Shanna is one in only a handful that I have never outgrown, and I am confident in saying, that I will never outgrow.

Through college we didn’t text often, but enough to figure out that we were both alive and having a good time.  I once texted her that I had finally made out with some girl while I was completely hammered at a party and she texted back “was it your hand?”  This joke would have been funny if I A) hadn’t been shitfaced and B) This hadn’t been the first girl I had kissed since high school sophomore year (I wasn’t kidding when I said (actually don’t think I mentioned it) I was the only out gay person or gay person period at my school).  This joke offended my drunk minded brain so much that I refused to talk to her for two months.  No worries, we moved passed it.

I also like to drunk dial people, top of this list is usually my 30 year old friend who I like to leave messages for and Shanna, who I called drunk after my senior homecoming at school.  It was during this phone call that someone poured a drink on top of my head from the balcony over the front stoop of my dorm.  Now, any other friend might have asked if I was ok, but this is what Shanna did, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”  This continued on for some time.

Shanna and I like almost all of the same things.  I’m going to say all because I have yet to find something we don’t both appreciate in some form or another.  Shit we get ourselves into: We both really wanted to see the Glee 3D concert film.  We decided this was two embarrassing to do when other people were around so we went to the earliest show that we could find during a weekday, pulled our hoods up, and sat in the very back row of the theatre.  This then turned into a super awkward event as a bunch of preteens and came in and sat in front of us, so then we looked like creepy pedophiles.  Upon leaving the theatre we both made a pact that we were never going to talk about the fact that we went to and saw it.  This pact held for less than 10 hours, Shanna got drunk that night and told people.  She is a horrible secret keeper.

I also went on her first date with her awesome girlfriend Stephanie.  This is less weird than is sounds since neither of them at the time knew it was a date but I did.  Ok, that’s as awkward and weird as it sounds.  And to top it off, Steph had to change in my tiny ass car, and then it started pouring, and she threw a rock at me.  It was the start of a beautiful friendship between the three of us. 

Sometimes I feel really bad that Steph has to put up with us.  I mean, Shanna and I am some point in time are going to get a set of harry potter tattoos with mine saying “I solemnly  swear that I am up to no good” and hers will say “mischief managed.”  Not a lot of girls would let you get a tattoo with some other girl, but Steph said ok.  Also Shanna and I have our own yet to be filmed show, based on Troy and Abed in the morning, only ours is called “Shay and Tor Tor in the morning.”  Steph also has to deal with us getting overly excited about fanfiction.  In fact, instead of having this be a whole blog out Shanna, I feel like it should be a giant apology to Steph.  Sorry that I come over on Friday nights and getting super hammered a lot, Shanna invites me over and I have to go.  That’s the thing, Shanna says let’s do it, and I have to.  How does getting shitfaced in Salem on a Friday night with a bunch of our friends during a Halloween weekend NOT sound like a good idea?  Well it certainly doesn’t NOT sound like a good idea, I can tell you that.

And to close out this novel, this is what we text about:

Me: What are your thoughts on a power rangers phone cover?

Shanna: You should get one obviously.  It would always be morphing time.

Things that happened to me before 9:00 a.m.

I just really needed to share how my day has started

2.       6:15 a.m. Forgot to set my alarm but I woke up anyway because my brain hates me

3.       6:45 a.m. Went downstairs to make myself lunch but stopped in the living room to look for my shoes.  I turned on the light and was shocked to find my brother sleeping on the couch.  Now this wouldn’t be so weird if the TV was still on so that I knew he had just fallen asleep watching something, but the TV was off and he was in his pajamas.  He then woke up and looked completely disoriented, more so than one usually does when waking in the morning.  He seemed to have no idea where he was and he then told me that he had taken his contacts out and definitely had fallen asleep in his room in his bed.  So he was sleep walking, which people do, but Nathaniel has never done that in his life.  I went upstairs to tell my mother because I thought this was hysterical, meanwhile I hear Nathaniel moving around downstairs.

4.       7:00 a.m. I go back downstairs to the kitchen where I see that the freezer is open, so I call to Nathaniel in the dining room (where he is on his computer) to tell him he forgot to close the freezer.  Upon further inspection I see that there is water everywhere and now realize that sometime between Nathaniel leaving his room and falling asleep on the couch he had managed to open the freezer and then pass out, leaving it open.

5.       7:00 a.m.  He tells me not to tell mom while he closes the door and then runs upstairs.  Yeah, like she’s not going to notice everything is melted when she opens the freezer to get a bagel.  My brother the genius.

6.       7:07 a.m. We realize that he obviously didn’t do it on purpose, because he was asleep, but know that my Dad will not understand that, so I attempt to start cleaning things up.

7.       7:15 a.m. I realize I am going to miss the train so I drive to Wonderland to take the blue line in.

8.       7:50 – 8:30 a.m. Everything is normal on the train

9.       8:32 a.m. Transfer to the Red Line to get to Harvard Square.  For some reason it is way more crowded than usual and I am stuck where I cannot reach anything to hold onto.  This is very bad I realize and I can’t move my legs so there’s no way I can possibly balance myself.  First minute is ok but then I am completely unstable and grab the nearest thing next to me.  This happens to be an older man and I say I’m sorry and as soon as I am stable I let go.  Only to grab hold of him again two seconds later.  It is at this point that I will definitely take someone out if I let go of him, so I do not.  He says “no problem” but he says it all proper in what I realize is a French accent.  Of course I’m clinging to an older French gentlemen, of course I am.  This is made more embarrassing by the fact that I still have five more stops to go, so thankfully enough people leave so I can grab the bar and not him, except for he does not get off the T until Harvard with me, and then he walks off with his little French wife.  

10.   9:00 a.m Should be at work by now but I stop at panera because I didn’t get to pack my lunch of eat breakfast because I was cleaning up my stupid brothers mess.

And that was my morning, just thought you should know.

Edit: Upon further investigation, turns out Nathaniel was just blackout again.  Fucking douchebag.