Booze, Drugs, One Night Stands: It's What's For Dinner

So I'm standing in line at the bank yesterday morning, nursing a mild hangover, and I'm really absorbed in the program on the little television that they have hung over the teller's station; I realize that although they never have anything really good on, it's a nice way to placate the masses so they don't have a riot in the middle of the exchange of money and crappy muzak versions of "The Girl From Ipanema" that are floating in the lobby.

It suddenly occurs to me that I'm really into this program; it happens to be some really badly done cartoon, but I'm watching it like it's Casablanca. That's what happens when you do three bong hits when you wake up after a night of Jack n' Coke. I'm mildly aware that the only people in the room as absorbed in this engaging program as me are all under the age of five. We're all very similar; we're drooling, wide-eyed (mine are bloodshot, however) and oblivious to the fact that this is a moving line.

"Uh, excuse me, they called next like three times," a hipster behind me tries to sound as polite as possible despite the fact that it wasn't in her contract for her trust fund. I giggle, cough, and walk up to the teller and make my transaction, finding out that I have about $500 less in my account than I thought I did. Yet another thing to worry about. I also started smoking cigarettes again - not seriously, just a couple over the last few days, but now I have a jones for it, so I'll have to try to ignore it.

My brain then travels to the last 24 hours. Due to a myriad of reasons, there was a lot of alcohol, drugs, merriment, and revelry over the last several days in fact; but it culminated in my waking up on a Saturday next to someone whom I had to think twice about what their name was. I still don't know his last name; something that started with the first letter of his first name, which was...Steve? Oh, Christ. I have to ask myself: how the HELL did this happen?

Sure, I'm in my 30's, and any self-respecting (or not, as the case may be) woman has a couple of one-night-stands under her belt, mostly from her days at college where she found her legs pinned behind her ears like Bugs Bunny more often than not. Then again, the same thing could be said for a gal in her 30's, considering what our sex drives go through the freaking roof. Nobody told me I would be hornier in this decade than the last to THIS extent. I thought "yeah, yeah, sexual peak, whatever," but I had NO idea that I would practically be humping people's legs everywhere I go.

So back to this one-night-stand. Sigh. I won't go into details, they aren't that memorable, but what is memorable is the way that I felt this morning; like a jack-ass. AHA! I thought, as I rolled over and realized that 1) I didn't even know this guy and 2) We weren't going to exchange numbers -- now I know why I haven't done anything like this since college! Why? Because you feel kinda shitty. I'll tell you, I've had sex with more than one man in a day; with several men in a week; it all was on my terms and I felt fine with it...sure, we've all had lousy lays and people that we look back on and wish maybe we would have thought twice about, but for the most part I've enjoyed my swinging pendulum between monogamy with the right person and absolute abandoned sexual revolution.

But this experience left me feeling...used. That's really the only word for it. At least the sex was relatively okay, but being hungover bigger than shit didn't help with that "oh-so-fresh" feeling this morning. His attitude really made it the worst, though; I've had sexual partners with whom we never really hit it off, but there was some semblance of respect to some degree...and this guy was like "UH. Thanks - how do I get out of here?"

I just hope that somewhere, he has a really bad hangover and gets stuck in an elevator with screaming children and a man with really bad gas. And they're playing a bad Muzak version of "Every Breath You Take." Yeah...that's probably a rung of inferno that would be good enough.