Weekend In Review/Random Negro Stories File: Homecoming Winning Weekend

Oh my. Where do I start? So many stories to share from this weekend! Are you ready? My apologies in advance for this thesis length post, but this is gonna be a good one! I promise.

Thursday night my friends and I had a girl’s night in with Hooters Wings, Sweet Potato Pie, French Vanilla Ice Cream, and a wide array of white liquors. We laughed it up, shared war stories and love stories. Good times. We hadn’t gotten together like that since my friend’s baby shower last July.

Sobering up Friday morning we got dressed and headed to Howard’s campus for Yardfest. I didn’t pay much attention to the musical acts, but it was nice to be out and about and see old friends and take pictures and eat fried fish and chicken wings. We visited our Journalism mentors and ate up mass amounts of free chicken at this reception hosted by the School of Communications.

Friday night was the big Diddy party at Love and where my interesting Random Negro Stories File begins.

One of my random negroes, No Love In ’08, resurfaced. He texted me asking what I was getting into for the night and I tell him and he says he’ll be there too and maybe he’ll see me. Several shots of Patron and the fact that I probably still haven’t gotten over him had me feeling all nostalgic so I replied that it would be nice. Mistake number one.

So we got all dolled up and rolled out with liquor in car to pre-game. So we pull into the club’s parking lot and notice that two cars full of dudes on either side of us were doing the same. Already having downed several shots of Patron I roll down my passenger side window and start asking what they were sipping on. They answer Ciroc and we start making jokes about how this economy has gainfully employed folks drinking in the car. (Free drinks in the club are getting more and more scarce these days. I think I’ll thank my local Congressman for that. He better hope that SuperBailout Fund works and things get back to normal!) Anyway we end up chatting with the guys in the car on the driver’s side. One guy preemptively laid his claim on one of my girls. We were like dang already we haven’t even made it out the car yet.

Once inside danced around and I swear the music activated my buzz because I wasn’t feeling anything before that. Maybe I’m just becoming a lush. No Love In ’08 texts me and after I while I find him on the dance floor on the second level. We dance for a bit but he kinda moves on but is still hovering in the area. Meanwhile other dudes start dancing with me and he takes it upon himself to start dancing with my friend. I got a lil jealous and started putting on a show with whatever random negro was behind me. I was putting in some serious work. He does the same with my friend. So there we are eyeing each other up going tit for tat with our dance partners. Eventually we get back to dancing with each other and then end up moving on once my friends were ready to check out what was going on in the rest of the club.

So up we went. The third floor was pretty cool. We moved to this “outside” area and danced. I got a Bonecrusher and after I finished my drink I got back to dancing. I ended up dancing with some dude. He offered to buy me a drink so we headed back to the bar but it took so long to get the bartender’s attention that he just ended up handing me some money and took off to find his friends or whatever. I didn’t particularly care. I already had my free drink money in hand so I got some Ciroc to see what everybody has been raving all about. I asked the bartender to mix it with Pineapple. To tell the truth I don’t know if I just got a bad drink or something, but I really wasn’t that impressed with it. Glancing across the bar I noticed this dude that I had a crush on freshman year. We made eye contact so I tipped my drink up to him and he did the same. He was still cute but he looked bammafied to me. He had on one of those puffy vests (probably a North Face) with a long sleeved button up.

After Free Drink Dude rolled out I ended up dancing with this other dude who I later discovered I went to school with. (Duh it was a Homecoming party!) Anyway we’ll call him The Bison. He seemed nice enough so we exchanged numbers. After he left my friends and I finally made it up to the fourth floor where I ran into more people I knew. My friend was texting this guy she wanted to meet up with but en route we ran into one of her old hoes. Trying to run interference for her I ended up getting half molested on the dance floor. But tell me why once we got up there the dude text her back and said he went back downstairs. WTF. So back down we went. All the way to the first level.

I ran back into No Love In ’08. We hugged and started talking. He ends up inviting me back to his place, but the conversation took a nosedive. Somehow we started rehashing ancient history (from him almost becoming my baby daddy to the revelation that nothing was going to happen between us in 2008—hence his nick name—to him telling me that he’s no longer with the girl he chose to be with instead of me, but now talking to someone else—still not me.) I had this Grey’s Anatomy moment where I’m basically drunkenly asking him to choose me. He doesn't. I'm tearing up at this point and he wants a chance to explain later that so much had happened and it was because we lost touch and that I have bad timing. I asked him what was I really supposed to do given that he told me that nothing was going to happen between us this year. I'm quasi yelling, "It's still 2008." He said if the shoe were on the other foot he would have stayed in touch because he wanted my friendship. I swear that's code for lemme keep you on the sidelines just in case I need to make a substitution. I don't want that. I ended up walking away and back to a guy friend who consoles me for a moment. We leave the club and I go to bed disheartened.

Luckily I bounce back quickly. Or at least pretend to. What about the football? Oh yea that. Howard lost of course—at least it was in double overtime though. A little before I got on the Yard to watch the game Saturday afternoon The Bison sent me a text telling me how he met me at Love and wanted to know if I was just in town for the weekend or if I live in the area. I tell him I live here and he tells me that he lives in Hyattsville. He suggests getting together on Sunday to hang out since we both had plans for Saturday night. I agree, but of course because he's a young Alumni I ended up running into him at the Yacht Party that night. I was doing a quick scan of the room when I end up bumping right into him. He hugs me for a long time and then we start dancing. He's like girl I'm so gone right now. You need to be gone like me. So I say, "Well get me gone" and we head to the bar. He buys me a Bonecrusher Leaning in close to me he says, "I was hoping your sexy ass would be here tonight." We danced for a bit and afterwards he tells me he'll catch up with me later and I go back in search of my friends. I make it to the second level of the boat where most people were, so I dance around and run into people.

Like an hour before the boat was supposed to go back to the dock The Bison and I have this drunken text exchange (complete with ignorant slang and typographical errors for your enjoyment).

The Bison: I am gone.
Me: I'm done son.
The Bison: Me too lol.
Me: wheer r u
The Bison: outside the second floor of the boat.
Me: Come back in.
The Bison: I can't lol. I'm done. come home with me and i'll take you home in the morning
Me: If I can find u
The Bison: I'm on the 2nd floor of the boat
The Bison: outside
Me: Outsside too

Despite this clearly drunken exchange I do end up finding him and going back to his place with him. He shuttles his friends back to their cars and we head out to his spot. We get there and bammas are up like it's 4 o'clock in the afternoon rather than 4 o'clock in the morning. One of them is walking around with half a chicken in his hand and offers me some. I decline and he's like, "I made it before I was drunk so it's good." I'll take your word for it playa.

The Bison shows me to his room only to discover there are no sheets on the bed. So he starts yelling at his roommates about where his sheets went. One yells back they're in the dirty clothes. He starts dropping all kinds of F bombs like, “Like what the fuck. Where the fuck are my sheets dog.” He finds a pillow and throws it on the bed and goes back out the room—in search of sheets I guess. I start to curl up on the bed but then I start smelling something rank. I start to move around but this rancid smell is still invading my nostrils so I open my eyes and start looking around. I get up from the bed when I figure out where the smell is coming from. Dude has still not come back to the room, so I yell to him, umm I think someone threw up in your bed. He runs back to the room like are you serious? He looks and sees that indeed someone has regurgitated only God knows what onto his bed. More F Bombs. He figures out which roommate upchucked all in his space. The bathroom is across from The Bison’s bedroom so he’s still yelling, “What the fuck, did you mistake my room for the bathroom?”

He gave up and we go back into the living room. He shifts gears and then starts yelling at him to give up his sheets. The roommate is like is it for her or for you. He’s like for her and her and he comes out with some comforter. I’m dumbfounded that any of this is actually happening. I mean I really thought I was in an alternate universe but then I remember who I am and figured that if this was going to happen to anyone it would indeed happen to me. We end up moving to the couch but the roommate—still wide awake—has brought out his laptop and is surfing the net I guess at like almost 5 a.m. I end up falling asleep and when I woke up sometime around 9 a.m. the roommate is in the exact place he was when I fell asleep. Sitting at this small ass “dining room” table. I swear it was like a tall coffee table, but what really what really made me lose it was seeing the roommate in a recliner pushed up to the table. Ghetto! I woke up dehydrated of course so I ask dude for some water and he brings it out in a wine goblet. Gotta love bachelor life.

So he starts getting ready and asking me if I’m hungry and suggests getting something to eat and then chilling at my place. I’m like only one problem. I don’t have my keys. I left them at my friend’s house fearing that I’d lose them on the boat. He’s like damn and then finally agrees to just drop me back off at my friend’s place. On the way back we talk and discover that we have friends in common and that we actually could have met a couple weeks earlier at a birthday party I was supposed to go to. He said he still wanted to get up later in the day per our original plan from Saturday afternoon, but he was feeling sick all day and I was just tired from the whole crazy weekend.

If that wasn’t a crazy enough random negro story this is sure to put it over the top. Sunday after riding with my friends to see one off to the airport and the other back to her spot, I get home. I start reconnecting with the online world, checking Facebook, Myspace and instant messaging folks online. I sent a quick message to this one dude I met on this dating site, we’ll call him Esquire. So we’re chit chatting about Colin Powell endorsing Barack Obama but then I shift the conversation to when we’re gonna get together and he starts talking about how things are crazy and he tells me that he ended up going out on a date with some woman he was dating about a year ago and that he actually had a really great time and that he was probably going to see “what was up with that.” He said he didn’t (insert air quotes) know that I wanted to date him. Oh really. Last weekend he was talking about how he wanted to go see W with me, but of course that wasn’t going to work out because of my prior Homecoming engagements.

So I’m thinking to myself are you serious. In the span of one weekend I’m really going to get passed over twice?!? I must have been a horrible person in my past life. So I start thanking him for being honest and not wasting my time and he’s like well I’m sure you’re dating other people anyway. So I’m like I thought you didn’t assume things. He’s like I’m not. So I go well unless you’ve seen me on a date how is that not an assumption? He reveals that some conversations we had about blogging (I told him I was addicted to reading them) got him curious about blogging so he did some research about local blogs and found mine. He put two and two together with my blog name and the job and location. Shit. Not that I necessarily wanted to hide the fact that I’ve been dating, but there’s something about discovering that someone you’re trying to date has information that you didn’t intend for them to have. Well at least not all the sordid details.

He confessed that finding it made him realize that he wouldn’t start one because anyone that he might write about could quite easily stumble upon it and that talking to me became a low priority because he felt like he’d just be added to the mix of men in my life and he’s not looking for that. So my big ass mouth and open ass blog cost me a potential relationship. Now I’m all paranoid about who else might be reading this thing. Oh well I’ll keep searching. But maybe I should restrict my Random Negro Stories File entries to foolishness so far in the past it won’t have any impact on my current love life. Or maybe it’s time to lock this baby down and only let invited readers into my crazy world.