The gods of urination were with me, as someone was leaving the small bathroom just as I reached it. Rushing in, I let the door close behind me as I quickly undid my fly and let go at the urinal. It was one of those fantastic, drunken pees where you throw your head back and just sigh in pleasure. My head was swimming and I let the calm of the tiny space embrace me. Yes, a lot of it was that I was wasted, but it was also that I was just letting myself go. Being around that mass of people, feeling the rhythm of the turntable and the bass line coarse through all of us at once. Oh my god. Am I… happy?
Behind me I heard the door suddenly open and a woman’s voice say, “Oh! Jeepers!”
“In here! In here!” I couldn’t stop peeing if wanted to, but I frantically tried to shift my body to find the position that would least likely give her a glimpse.
“Oh oh. I’m sorry! It wasn't locked!”
As if she couldn’t tell, I again yelled, “In here!” Stop peeing! Penis, stop peeing! “The door! Close the door! I’ll be just a second!”
“Right! Sorry! Right. Jeepers.” Finally she managed to get the door shut as the last of the urine dribbled from the tip. I leaned my head against the wall. Jeepers, indeed.
At 4 a.m. the bar had emptied significantly. A group of us had pulled together chairs and were still talking. Jake and a woman he had befriended, who was sitting in his lap. Oscar and Julie and the fiddle player, Sasha, and the drummer, Derrick. And then there was Frank, Peter, Warren, Dave and myself. There was another group of boisterous boys still sitting at the bar, but otherwise the place was empty.
Jake was in the middle of his story of the time he and I had gone into Macy’s on Herald’s Square and tried on bras. “The damn saleswoman was so damn confused! After the whole ‘Where is the men’s dressing room’ argument, she still could not get her mind around the question, ‘What ties go with this lace?’ And Allen just kept asking, ‘But does it stain?’ That poor lady. Sixty-five and now she has to deal with us pervs.”
“Allen,” Oscar laughed, “you just have that sweet innocent face that can get away with murder.”
“I was young,” I said. “That was what? Ten years ago? I could never pull that off now.”
“Sure you could!” demanded Jake. “You have such a talent for stupid gestures when you want.”
Julie said, “How about the time with the food coloring in the snow? How awesome was that?”
I picked up my beer glass and looked into it, trying some how to hide behind it. But the glass had long been empty and I was way past the point of needing another. “Yeah, well.”
“Tell it,” Julie pleaded.
“It’s a good one, Allen,” said Oscar.
Everyone began to loudly beg and cajole. My drunk was become a dizzy spin and I wanted to climb into myself. I could see the boys at the bar throw us dirty looks. Then I felt a hand lightly on my shoulder. Dave leaned into my ear and quietly said, “Go ahead. I want to hear this.”
I lifted my head and swallowed. “Well, it was right after I had met Amy. She’d been working for some fashion designer as an assistant and the company I was working for was doing the lights for one of their fashion shows. Not as a designer. Just a light tech. As soon as I saw her, I of course developed on of my instant crushes. Just became infatuated by her. So, um, whenever we had a question about something, I made sure I was the one who got to ask it. And I made sure I asked Amy first. Which of course was stupid because she didn’t have the answers to anything we needed to know. So then she had to go off and ask someone and then come back to me with the answer. I drove her crazy with that for two days.
“Keep in mind she’s all dressed for high fashion office stuff and I’m dressed as skuzzy lighting technician. I mean, I could get her to laugh and smile, but then she’d be all, ‘Who is this dirty boy chatting me up?’ But I was trying to work my charm hard and, well, I was getting close, but not quite close enough. At the end of the load-in I ask her out, but it’s in such a roundabout and vague way that she doesn’t quite get what I’m asking. I didn’t know that at the time but she told me later.
“So the show runs the weekend and the load-out is going to be Sunday morning at like six a.m.. And I get the idea to pull a ‘Say Anything’ type thing. I go get some food coloring, but it’s four in the morning and the market just has the little boxes with four squeeze bottles of different colors. Red, blue, green and yellow. So I buy all they have. It’s like eighteen or twenty boxes. And I go to where the fashion show was. This is January and there’d been a fresh snow. That’s what gave me the idea.
“So I go to the where the fashion show was and I try to write in the snow with these stupid little bottles. It’s in this courtyard everyone is goin' to have to walk through when they show up. And I’m trying to write big letters but the bottles just drip, so I cut off the tips with my utility knife. And I get die all over my hands. But now it’s going okay, but time is running out so I start to rush. I get ‘Amy Sweet Amy,’ because, yeah, you want to get prolific when writing in the snow with little bottles of food coloring. So I get ‘Amy Sweet Amy, Give me a chance.’ But I only get C-H-A before I run all out of dye. I was alternating colors but not using yellow for, um, obvious reasons. But now I have no choice. All I have is yellow. So the rest of ‘chance’ is in pee yellow and all of ‘Allen’ at the end.
“So I am standing there by my masterpiece, my hands all rainbowed, and all the crews start to come in, and I just have this grin on my face like an idiot.”
Everyone was laughing. I hadn’t even thought of that story of so long. I was remembering how I felt when I as doing it, taking this bold foolish gesture for a girl I hardly knew.
Through tears Frank asked, “What did Amy say I mean like how did she react?”
I wiped away my tears from my own laughter, “Well, she’d called in sick, so she didn’t end up coming at all. But her boss took pictures of me standing there and emailed them to her that night along with my phone number. Amy called me the next day. When we met later that week, I still hadn’t gotten the dye out of my skin.”
When everything died down again, Peter said, “Man, that is very cool. You should do that again.”
“I don’t have anyone to do it for.”
Jake cried, “Well, find someone. Go out and look!”
“It’s not that simple–“
Julie piped in, “Allen, you’re just gun shy. Find a simple safe way to do it. Something less…big and colorful.”
“ONLINE DATING!” hollered Warren. We all turned to him, including the boys at the bar. “Dude. On. Line. Dating. It’s so not just for ugs and freaks anymore. Totally mainstream.” Suddenly everyone was agreeing and saying, “Yes! Yes! Perfect!”
Trying get out of this, I said, “Oh, I don’t think–“
“That’s just it,” snapped Warren. “No thinking required. The totally fucking brainless way to totally fucking yourself brainless!”
The bartender yelled, “Okay! That’s it! Last call was an hour ago! Get out and go home!”
We all pried ourselves out of our chairs and gathered our stuff. As we headed to the door, Oscar pulled me aside. “Hey, would you be interested in helping me with a project?”
“What?”
“Well, in January they have this thing called the Idiotarod. It’s a big shopping cart race. Five people, one pushing and four pulling like dogs with a dog sled. It’s an arty event, more theater than sport. But I want to go big this year. Go all out. Big team, uniforms, mad tricked out carts. I think you’d like it and I could use your sensibilities.”
“Oscar, I am so drunk right now that nothing you just said to me made any sense. Shopping cart race? What?”
“I’ll call you about it later. It’s not until January. There is plenty of time for us to prepare for the big event.”
As our party exited the door, the boisterous boys at the bar were still giving the bartender a hard time. One of them shouted at us as we left, “The HayZeedz suck! Suck with a Z!” We all laughed it off but I could see that it upset Julie, if just a touch.
When we were halfway to the subway, Warren announced, “Oh, crap dudes. I left my wallet at Hanks. You go on. I’ll meet you by the tracks.” He took off back to the bar, jogging.
Everyone else was going in different directions and it was just Peter, Frank, Dave and I waiting for the train when Warren reappeared. He had a huge grin on his face and his green bicycle jersey was ripped. I wasn’t sure but I could swear there were little dots of red along one sleeve.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said with a shrug, “Nothing. Just had to get my wallet. All is good.”
“Is that,” I said cautiously pointing, “a cue stick?”
He looked down at what he was holding in his hand. “Nah, dude. It’s half a cue stick,” he said tossing it onto to tracks.
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