Almost Forgotten Five-Day Weekend

I really don't remember what happened on Thursday, and I'm really not too clear on the rest of the weekend, but let's try. Friday, I was supposed to go out with Viki, Ricky, and Jack. Jack predictably flaked out, Viki and Ricky unpredictably flaked out as well. A few minutes after figuring this out, Derik drops by to have a beer. Oh shit, this last detail has jarred my memory about Thursday... so let's get into that first, and then we'll come back to Friday.
It was Thursday, a little after six, I had just returned from my first class after spring break. I'm getting ready to make dinner, sitting in front of the computer checking my e-mail. When... BOOM! I'd just heard the faint sound of screeching tires followed by a massive explosion, and then the power went out. I went downstairs to see what was going on, I run into Jim, and we walk together toward the sound of the explosion. When we get to the back of our complex, we see a crowd of people gathering. We stand behind a fence and see a crumpled up pickup truck with a fucked up Mexican sitting a few feet away. The police were just arriving. It appears that he was flying down the backstreet, something happened, he crashed into our building, then the transformer, thus killing our electric. The paramedics rush up to him, cut his clothes off, and put him in a stretcher. They were still looking in the car though, more specifically the flattened passenger side. It appeared someone was still in there; when they started using the Jaws of Life, we knew we were right. After fifteen minutes, they pulled a crumpled up girl out and immediately stabilized her in a stretcher with straps. After this, I suggested to Jim that we go across the street to the bar for drinks and dinner. When we get there, it's dead as usual. We order up a pitcher and some chicken strips. We sit in the lounge a while smoking cigarettes, talking to the bartender, talking to the few customers in there, and then I switch to hard liquor and shots. I call up Layla to see what she's doing during the power outage; her and Jess are just walking around outside, so I tell them to come over to the bar. When they get there we all sit outside for about a half an hour and bullshit. I ask them if they're going to the hookah lounge, they say they are, but are going to shower first. I tell Layla I'll call her in half an hour and we'll go. They leave, and shortly after, Jim and I do too. We go back to my place to drink some free booze by candlelight, and use my walkman as a stereo. After a bit, Jess and Layla come down, then Mick comes over. We all have a couple of drinks, Mick leaves, and the rest of us go to Tuts. Once inside, I see Derik, Seth, and Nancy. Jim and I sit with Derik, and the others go elsewhere. Derik starts to point out these two good-looking girls about ten feet away from us. I tell him how I call Jim 'Dr. Game' and that he can get them over to us easily. Derik doesn't believe it, so Jim walks right over there. Jim comes back in a couple minutes, he tells Derik they're lesbians, but they'll come by in a minute and talk to us anyway. They do, we have a nice little talk for a few minutes, and then they go home. This prompts Derik to start asking 'The Doctor' questions about what he says to girls and what not; but that's one of those ‘if you have to ask, I can't tell you’ type of things. There was more of this type of talk, which ended up in Jim going over to a group of three blondes and talking to them for a while. By now, it was just Derik and I left in the booth. With our minds turned to this subject, I suggested he call up a girl we were at a party with a few weeks back. She texts him back and says she’s on her way to Le Girls; a strip bar in Northeast Phoenix. Tuts was slowing down anyway, so we decided to meet her over there. We didn’t really know where it was, so drove into the Scottsdale/Tempe stripper neighborhood looking for it. We ended up pulling into Skin to ask for directions, and discovered it was about five miles west of us. When we get in and sit, we’re immediately pimped by the waitress to buy the two mandatory six-dollar drinks. After which Derik spots the girl we were meeting, and waves her over. After about a minute of talking, she asks me if I’ll let her practice her lap dancing skills on me. Sure… why not. We walk over to the side of the club and she starts. And, wow… she sucked. Now I understood why she needed practice. She has her shirt off by now, and I’m trying to guide her on what to do. I tell her it’s key to be more sensual, because she’s trying to fuck me like a jackrabbit. I feel her back and it’s all sweaty, I’m not sure if it’s from the extra effort or all the coke she was on. After about fifteen minutes of this, I get an idea to help things. I tell her the reason it might not feel right is that she still has her jeans on, and that she should take them off. She agrees, but right when this is about to happen, the bouncer comes by and asks her too leave. This was due to the fact she did not work there, and was giving me a lap dance. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised it went on as long as it did. I go back over to the table where Derik is sitting and we strike up a conversation with one of the girls who worked there about what just happened. When she leaves to do a dance Derik tells me that later on he’s going to invite her back over to my place. In the meantime, a bunch of the girls keep coming by asking us for lap dances, one of which jumps immediately into my lap and launches into an aggressive sales pitch. However, no lap dances for us, I mean twenty bucks a song, it’s simply not worth it. I go to the bathroom, and when I get back Derik tells me he asked that girl if she wanted to come by, and he was turned down. We were getting ready to leave, when another girl came by and asked me if I’d be interested in a four-song lap dance and a t-shirt for twenty bucks. Well, deals like that are ones you just can’t turn down. So we went in the back, did our thing for about fifteen minutes, and Derik and I left. When we get back to my place we find the power to be back on, and Jim downstairs playing Contra. Jim comes up, Mick and Nancy drop by, and we have a few drinks. After a while, everyone leaves, and Derik and I get the idea to go on Myspace under his account, and send random funny/asshole comments to all the decent looking girls listed as swinger within a five-mile radius. We tried to setup certain criteria, and treat it as a scientific experiment, altering comments to profile content, location, and amount of friends. It was getting close to seven am when we finished, so Derik crashed out on the couch, as he had to go snowboarding a little over an hour from then. I said goodnight, and closed the door to my room.
Okay. So now, we’re back to Friday. Jack, Viki, and Ricky flaked, and then Derik came by for a beer. He asks me to come over to Tuts to smoke a hookah, on him, so we go. We get there, and most of the regulars are present. We find a booth occupied by a couple of girls Derik knows, we talk for a few minutes, they end up leaving Tuts, and leaving a near full hookah for us. A couple minutes later Tommy comes to our booth with his hookah. He tells us of a party that may be going down soon. In the meantime, we leave Tuts and go to my place for a few drinks. While there, Derik checks on our Myspace experiment from the previous night; just what we expected, a twenty percent response rate. Tommy and I end up taking a bunch of shots and getting a bit drunk. We head back over to Tuts and actually buy a hookah this time. While there we run into a few girls, talk for a bit, and invite them back over to my place. Tommy and I come back first, running into Layla on the way back. The three of us get to my place, listen to music, and drink more. Shortly afterward Derik comes in with the girls we just met. We all hang out for a while having drinks, taking shots, and listening to music. At one point Derik and Tommy went into the bathroom and gelled their hair up into big fros and mohawks for a laugh. Then we started drinking rum straight from the bottle. Now we go back to Tuts, even more drunk. There we find more people and invite them back over to my place. About seven more people come over and one of them buys shisha and coals on the way. We get back, fire up the hookah, and make many more shots. So, I guess a party had evolved from Derik and I simply going to Tuts to smoke a hookah. Several hours go by, and then everyone is gone except for Layla and I. Then Mick and Samir come by, we smoke more shisha and sniff some Rush. Then everyone leaves, and the night is over. Sorry for my lackluster reporting on this one, I know a lot more happened, but I was very drunk and the night was fuzzy.
Saturday. Two hours after I fell asleep, the FedEx guy is banging on my door. My new cell phone had arrived. My heart was pounding, and my head was banging; so I went back to sleep. Another two hours later, I wake up and decide to setup my new phone. I need a cover for the battery, to switch my phonebook over from my old phone, and activate it. I remember the locations of some cell phones shops around town from my previous travels, so I hop on my bike and start searching. After about two hours of riding around I find nothing, no data transfer, no battery cover. I find myself riding south, now just hoping I’ll find a cell phone shop, and I do. They don’t have the battery cover, but they’ll do the phonebook transfer. I pay them and they get to it. Fifteen minutes later, they inform me they can’t do it, and return my money. Layla calls me, and says she and Tommy are hanging out, and I should come home. When I get back, Layla borrows some tools from me to put her desk together; Tommy and I go to Tuts to smoke a hookah. When I get back home I call Derik, and ask him to give me a ride to the mall, so I can try to get my phone sorted out again at the Verizon store. While I wait, I talk to Layla on the steps about some party going on later, and we’re not sure if we’re going to go because we’re supposed to dress up nice for it. Jack texts me, apologizes for flaking the previous night, and asks me what I’m doing that night. I tell him I’ll go to the bar with him. Derik gets there and we head out to Arizona Mills. On the way, we talk of our plans for the night, and see a sweet accident right off the freeway. At the Verizon store, they don’t have the battery cover, but the crafty technician figures out a way to do the data transfer. When we get back to my place I try to activate my phone online, but of course, there’s more problems. The site tells me I need to call them, which I do. I’m on hold forever, during which; Derik checks Myspace for more responses to our experiment, Jack comes over, and Casper drops in with a couple of friends looking for some weed. After all of this, and the holding, I’m told that I missed the tech department by thirty minutes; try again tomorrow. Fucking typical. Derik heads out to some mansion party on Camelback Mountain, Jack and I head out to the bars on Mill. First, we go to the Cue Club to meet Matt. We have a drink or two there, and then go next door to Zuma. There we have several drinks, and then decide to go to Ra for several Sake Bombs. After a bunch of those, we go next door to Rula Bula for Car Bombs. After that, shit is fuzzy. I think I remember going to Slices. I remember running into a guy I met at Zuma, and drunkenly giving him my number. I don’t remember saying goodbye to Matt. I do remember standing in the median on Mill Ave. hailing a cab for Jack and I. We take the taxi to Tuts. When we get in we see Derik sitting with a couple of people, and he tells us he left the party early. I tell him I just talked to Layla, and she told me that we didn’t need to dress up for the party and that we should head over there. He told us he needed a few minutes. In the meantime, Jack and I went to my place, where I threw up in the toilet and threw on a sport coat over my polo. Jack and I stumbled back over to Tuts, got in the car with Derik, and we were off. When we get to the party, it’s a drunken mess. We walk around, doing the rounds, saying what’s up to everyone we knew; Derik and I, Jack just kind of rocked back and forth from the alcohol. We settled in, and I started to help myself to some jungle juice, when a fight broke out. With that, the party was over as soon as we got there. We grabbed Tommy, and the four of us hopped in Derik’s car and broke out. After stopping at Derik’s house to check on his dogs, we came back over to my area. We went in Tuts; they were closing, so we told Samir to come over when he was done. Then we went to Texanos to get some California burritos. During all of this, Jack disappeared, and so did my keys. I text Jack, and search Texanos and Derik’s car for my keys. Can’t find ‘em. I stand in front of my door pissed off, and I kick it. It opens. It was at that moment I remembered that I left my door unlocked, with the keys in it, before we went to that party. We all come in, eat our food, and start drinking. Samir comes by, then my neighbor Mika. Then Jack texts back telling me he was picked up by one of his Tempe girls. About an hour goes by, and then the cops come. We weren’t even being loud, which further confirms my suspicion that my uptight downstairs neighbors are harassing me. I explain to the police that if they inform the manager of this complaint—which they are required to do—I will be evicted. They say okay, they’ll give me a freebie, but they had better not have to come back. Samir and Mika left, Derik, Tommy, and I hung out for another hour or so fucking with Myspace, then I went to bed.
Sunday. I really don’t know. You could offer me a couple grand to explain what happened then, and I still couldn’t tell you. My memory has erased this day for some reason.
Monday. I wake up late. I get a few packages; t-shirt iron-ons, some CDs from London, and my new ATM card. I decide to take the bus into Scottsdale to find a cell phone shop I heard carried the battery door I needed for my cell phone. After a long bus ride to the area I heard the place was in, I head into the nearest gas station to activate my new ATM card and buy a pack smokes. I ask the clerk if he knows where the shop is; across the street. I walk over to find out that they are the only ones around who carry it, but they happen to be out of it at the moment. The clerk asks if I’d like them to order it, I tell him no, I’ll just order it myself. I get back on the southbound bus and decide that I’ll stop on the way home to go to the In N Out Burger, since I’ve heard so many good things about it, and never been. When I go in, I’m surprised at the small menu, and the outfits of the employees. I get it to go, and eat it while walking across the Rio Salado Bridge. That shit was good too; definitely the best fast food burger. After I finish, and discard my trash on the other side of the bridge, I cross the street, and some girl is honking at me as I cross. I look up and she is waving, not recognizing her, I wave and keep walking. A second later she is yelling my name out of her window, I look again and realize it was Jaime; how random. I get on the bus for about six blocks and get off. I walk the rest of the way home. When I get home, I decide I’ll go over to Carmen’s because I haven’t seen her since I left for New York. Knock, knock, knock……….. Knock, knock, knock…. No reply. When I get back over to my place I sit down to check my e-mail. Knock, knock. It’s Carmen. She says she knew it was me because I knock a certain way, and that she was going to come over tonight anyway. Apparently, she was napping on the couch, and I had awoken her. She comes in, and asks if could burn a My Bloody Valentine CD for her, and I ask her if she wants a beer; we both accept. We sit around for a while, drinking beer, and catching up. We decide that we’ll go over to the Vine around nine for dollar drinks. We split up for an hour to take showers and get ready. When I go over to her place, I knock, but no answer. The door was open so I went in; she was still in the shower. So, I grabbed one of her beers and played with her cat while I waited. Twenty minutes later, she comes out of the bathroom and gets dressed; we go. At the Vine, Dennis was working the door, so we didn’t have to pay cover. Then we are hassled by two cigarette promoters, I think we’re getting free packs, so I play along. After we’re done, he gives us portable ashtrays. What the fuck? With that, we head inside to the bar. I order up two shots for each of us and a drink for myself. We slam the shots immediately and head outside to smoke and talk about the things we usually talk about. Then we go back in for another two shots and a drink for each of us, then go back outside and talk more. After a while, we’ve decided to walk down to ‘The Bar’ because it’s less crowded and has a smoking lounge with couches. There we drink Red/Bull vodkas, I put some songs on the jukebox, and we sit on the couch; all the while getting progressively more drunk. She tells me she wants to go back to my place, smoke some bud, and watch an old foreign film in a bit. Then we start to kiss on the couch a bit; probably because we were so drunk. Shortly after, we leave. On the way back, we fall down in our parking lot, and kiss some more, then she says some things to me, which I’m not going to repeat. We end up on my couch and just pass out for a bit with The Cure playing. We wake up in my bed; I’m sure nothing happened, but she says she has to go. When she leaves, I go into the hallway and drink more. Samir comes up from getting off work, and asks if I want to drink more; I accept. He gives me some Soma, and then we head over to the store to get some after-hours wine from his connection. We hang there for a bit talking to the guy and his wife about going to the strip club for Samir’s birthday, and some crazy girl from Tuts who might be interested in me. When we get back, Mick comes over, and we bullshit and drink for a bit. I tell them I’ll be right back, and I go over to Carmen’s to check on her. She opens the door and collapses back onto the couch. We talk for a minute, and I leave, telling her I’ll be back shortly. After I get back, we all talk and drink some more, then Mick and Samir decide to go out to East Phoenix to get some illicit materials. I go back to Carmen's. We lie around on the couch for a while, and then head into the bedroom. We’ve been in bed for a bit, and we’re getting ready to go to sleep, when Samir calls me up; I ignore the call. He calls again five minutes later; I answer this time. Now I knew he was getting coke, which is why I didn’t answer the first time. It turns out that he had also gotten some OxyCotin, which prompted Carmen and I to immediately get out of bed and go meet them at my place. When we get over there, Samir starts crushing up all the pills to snort. Pharmaceutical heroin folks; got to love it. That turns into hours of drinking, snorting dope, and smoking crack, while of course… listening to music. Near ten am, Samir borrows some more porno from me, and he and Mick go upstairs. Carmen and I grab one of my movies, go to her place, and fall asleep on the couch while watching it.
I wake up around three to sound of Carmen dropping a set of keys on the table. She had already showered, got dressed, and was getting ready to leave. I had to go home and do a bit of the same for a review session I had to go to a little over an hour from then. The five-day weekend was over.