There's one restaurant in Italy that I can never return to ever in my life, but I can't remember which one it is because I was too drunk, but it's somewhere in Florence. I just hope if I ever find myself in Florence again I'll have the good sense to ask all the waiters there if they've ever seen me or someone like me throw a glass of wine in someone else's face, and then I will know to leave immediately and never return.
I didn't even have a good reason to throw a glass of wine in this person's face. Or at least, at the time, I didn't have a good reason. I found out later that he had been cheating on me for three weeks, which is a fact that I wish I had known at the moment that I was throwing wine in his face, because it would have made the event seem justified, or even awesome. But no. I didn't even really have a reason besides the fact that I was in such a hideous and terrible relationship with this person that I just hated so, so much that when I got drunk enough, I actually just threw things at his face in public. Liquid things, to clarify. Liquid things, and it only happened once, but Holy Christ did I hate this person, for incredible and valid reasons that do not belong in a throwaway comedic article.
We weren't even alone. I met him and a mutual friend in Italy after he had been traveling through Europe with his adult puppet show for a month, and I waited until said friend went to the bathroom before whipping around out of nowhere and tossing some wine across the room. In fact, splashes of it hit the people behind us and there were actual gasps in the restaurant before everyone realized that they were Italian and saw this shit every day, and went back to their meals.
Yes, he was a puppeteer in an adult puppet show, which is exactly what it sounds like and more or less as confusing. And there were some parts of it that were absolutely delightful, I am not going to lie, but I can and will credit none of them to my no-good, very bad ex. When you have a drag queen singing into a microphone with a three foot ponytail of hair hanging off of it and teacups elegantly dancing to Au clair de la lune, I am just sold, and that's the truth.
So he was a puppeteer. Maybe he still is, who cares. But he was not a good puppeteer. He traveled through Europe with this team of artists as the equivalent of a swing or an understudy, waiting in the wings for one of the talented puppeteers to get a tragic hand cramp or whatever happens to puppeteers so he could swoop in at the last moment and proceed to be astoundingly terrible at puppeteering.
Now, I'm no expert. I don't even know what string you pull on a marionette to make the things go, but I do know what humans look like when they're moving, and unless it is a very specific stage direction, they are not supposed to look like really shaky, arthritic old men that drag their legs behind them when they walk, gingerly slapping the items around them while their head looks in the complete opposite direction, if it is in fact possible to slap something gingerly. If you've ever seen a bad puppeteer, you know that it is possible. To be fair, people-puppets are probably some of the hardest to maneuver, but when you're piloting a UFO, for instance, and it spends the majority of its time onstage halfheartedly turning slowly in the air with one end drooping sadly until it finally crashes into a wall in an act of desperation, and then a succession of curtains that you're captaining get hopelessly caught every single time they try to open like a kindergarten graduation's Hell of Repetition, maybe it's time to hang up your delightfully wacky checkered blazer and rainbow beanie with a propeller, Mr. Quirky Artist, and stick to gluing red sparkles on the devil puppet's enormous foam dick.
The girl he cheated on me with, consistently, for three weeks, before I threw wine in his face, was another puppeteer in the group, and a more successful artist. They had had an "art routine" or whatever together where they dissected stuffed animals, that bled for some reason, while they themselves were I guess scientists or something dressed only in cellophane. So. I guess I should have seen that coming, and I would have, if she wasn't such a nonsense human being. Every time I saw her, she was embarrassingly, cryingly, nakedly drunk, tripping over her stilettos that she couldn't walk in sober and having everyone ("everyone" in this sense meaning "me") take care of her ass even though she was like, twenty-eight years old. I was maybe nineteen, and bewildered as shit. Secondarily, she was also physically unattractive and smelled like Trix cereal. I know because she very frequently leaned all over me, while a drunken mess, and publicly molested me more than once. But, it's okay, though, guys... she was drunk. It's okay to grope people when you're drunk. (It's actually not.) My mean Belgian friend told me that some men, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, like to sleep with really plain women while they're with attractive ones. Being mean, he never directly indicated that it might be the case with my relationship, but it made me feel better all the same. Thank you, mean Belgian friend.
I once went to this girl's birthday party, in which she was in fact turning twenty-nine for those of you following along at home. The invitation said to bring "glitter and fun crafts", again, to a twenty-nine year old's birthday party. I mean, I'm all for being young at heart but do you have to drag everyone down else with you? Furthermore, fucking glitter? By the time we found her shitty apartment in the bowels of Brooklyn, she was entirely naked, having had her body painted by guests as a party activity, which we sadly missed. At this point, she was drunkenly painting figure eights on the walls of her apartment and absolutely covered in god damn glitter, which if you don't know, never comes out of anything no matter how hard you try and if you ever get any on you, congratulations you have been sentenced to a life of glitter-face. Even if you scratch off your own flesh, the glitter will somehow find its way permanently into the bloody wound you've carved into your own body. Basically, fuck glitter, is what I'm saying. Anyway, when she saw us, she came right up to us and gave us both our own big individual, naked, glittery hugs.
I decided then and there that I needed to be the most stoned and drunk I ever was and ever will be.
I'd only smoked the mary-juana cigarettes before, and so when someone passed me a bong I wasn't sure if there was something different to it, and I asked the girl next to me. She gave me the snottiest, judgiest look I've ever seen since, and I've glanced in a reflective surface while I'm talking about interpretive touch-dancing. I very clearly remember saying "alright, get over yourself" before like, inhaling from a bong? Is inhaling what you do? I don't remember, but I'm sure inhaling was a big part of it.
Etcetera etcetera etcetera, the girls at the party started like, mean-girl "complimenting" me on wearing a sheer blouse, like they were surprised because they think of me as the biggest prude on Earth, which if you know me, you realize this is patently untrue in many ways, although I will grant them that I don't get naked at parties and have people paint me. They started saying my blouse was "so risque", while their drunk friend tripped naked over the one stiletto heel she was still strapped into, the other having been lost to time and the elements. At once point they dragged a bag of wine out of its box and told me to drink from the spout and slap the bag "like a baby". This was a little bit before I was going to a lot of hipster parties and before it was kind of a thing to slap items like you might an infant, although for the life of me I still have no idea what that shit is about. I just got backed into a corner, feigning ignorance and entreating that I can't slap it like a baby, because I just wouldn't slap a baby. Seriously, guys?
I stumbled out of the bathroom later to have Weird Guy McWeirdyPants waiting for me outside, insisting that my boyfriend made out with a guy in the other room while I was gone. He followed me for a bit, insisting, until I decided I was so fucking leaving it wasn't even funny.
Anyway the moral is, get your story together before you throw a drink in someone's face, because you might need an interesting story to tell Italian Customs when you finally get your act together and cheese it.
No comments:
Post a Comment