Girl’s night out last night.  I went out with my friends Sue and Denise.  I was DD.  We went to O’Donovan’s Pub in Minneapolis.  This is where we go to watch rugby.  When there is no rugby, we drink.  Guiness.  No cute guys were around for the single chicks in the group to flirt with.  For some reason, someone threw a quarter at us as we were getting up to leave the table.  Freaks.  There otta be a law.

Then off to Starbucks for coffee.  Except I had to pee, and the door of the bathroom was locked.  I waited and waited forever for the inconsiderate boob to finally finish up and get out…turns out, someone had walked off with the key hours ago.  Grumble.

So I went upstairs in Block E, and used the public restroom.  As I approached the bathroom, I saw a woman going in.  A man followed her halfway in, and there was an exchange of cash and a small white object that looked like it could have been folded paper.  Ten to one, it wasn’t.  The man leaned against the wall, and people started to stream into the narrow hallway outside the bathroom.  A couple of people went into a slightly more secluded area behind a bend in the wall, and another guy took up the post beside me…watching the door that lead back out into block E.  I would have left…but I’d had a pint of Guiness and two pints of ice water, and damnit, I had pressing business of my own. 

Before long there were close to a dozen people waiting in the hallway, doing furtive little hand-offs.  A suburban-looking couple entered the hallway.  I was watching the floor pretending like I wasn’t even there, and couldn’t see anything if I was.  I had come here to pee, not narc on drug dealers…anyway, the bathroom opened up, and the man from this suburban couple shoved his way in front of some guy who was carrying his palmed score into the bathroom (the men’s bathroom), and ushered his wife or whatever in. 

Part of me was saying “Oh, dude, now you’re going to make me have to watch someone shoot your ass”.  Suburban man leaned against the wall and appeared to be as oblivious as me to the continued exchange of goods and capital all around us.

The ladies room opened up, and I went in and did my thing, and left as expeditiously as possible.

Sue and Denise and I sat in the Starbucks and drank our coffee.  I rambled on about kids and school and stuff…Sue talked about work and school and kids and stuff.  Denise listened and tried not to look like she was ready to bolt.

Then we all went up to the den of iniquity that was the block E second floor public restroom.  It was crawling with cops, security personnel, and a perky-looking manager type that kept poking her head in and looking around suspiciously.  We laughed a little about the flakes of stray pot all over the sink in the ladies room.

Denise headed off for her car, and Sue and I headed off for mine, but we got way-laid by a cute boy handing out free admission tickets to a club.  We thought we’d go in and have a beer and check it out.  The place was “Drink”…The Original “Fun” Bar. 

It was PACKED with cute, trendy 20-somethings, and ‘80’s memorabilia.  I saw a blond woman in the balcony wearing…and I shit you not…a hot pink Flashdance sweatshirt.  “Jesse’s Girl” was blasting from every speaker…followed closely on the heels by “The Humpty-Hump”  Freaky eighties flashback shit here.  Every last person in the club knew all the words to “Jessie’s Girl” and “The Humpty-Hump”.

A young man, obviously completely wacky on “E”, came up and threw his arms around us both and urged us to “Shake our asses”.  I managed to not put him in a joint-lock and mangle him.  You would understand how miraculous this is if you knew how crowds, loud noises, flashing lights, and sudden, unexpected hugs from total strangers affect my nervous system.  He had that look of “I just love humanity.  You are precious angels of light” look on his face that is the hallmark of the “E” freak.  As we disentangled ourselves from this guy, Sue was being engaged in conversation by another guy already.  In fact, she got a lot of attention. 

I as already feeling old in this sea of skin and spandex, and then I made eye contact with one of the most beautiful creatures I’d ever laid eyes on in person.  He gave me an up-and-down look, winked, smiled, and looked like he was going to walk towards me.  I felt massively old and dumpy as I realized that this boy in his early twenties elicited no response from me beyond the urge to offer him milk and cookies and remind him he should be doing his homework.  An adorable girl-child intercepted him, and swung exuberantly around his neck, shooting me a look…which I expected to be something akin to “What the hell do you think you’re doing looking at my man?”

What it actually was appeared to be something closer to the look you might give 100 pounds of heavily frosted chocolate brownies.

My conclusions:  Either I was imagining things, or they were really, really, really high, or they were consciously fucking with my head, or there is some sort of weird trend in Mrs. Robinson fetish that Katie Couric somehow missed in her “411” special.

Either way, Sue finished her beer in a hurry and we fled, concluding that we should restrict our “Girl’s Night” activities to O’Donovan’s and Starbucks from now on.