May 17, 1999

Late Saturday afternoon, I was sitting in a Mexican restaurant near Wrigley Field with Sue and Kim and Jimmy and Michael, and we were enjoying a pitcher of strawberry margaritas, killing time until we had to get ready to go out to eat. Damn, those margaritas were strong! The more we drank, the gigglier we got, and I started to feel...drunk? The last time I had more than a glass of wine was almost a year ago, so I started to feel kind of daring. Maybe tonight will be one of those wild and crazy nights, I thought. Maybe I'll get reeeeally drunk, we'll go dancing, and I'll find myself in a cab at three this morning trying to remember Jimmy's address. Maybe I'll smoke a cigarette! The possibilities were endless. Chicago is a big city. Instead, I had a fruity drink with dinner, then switched to water. What was I thinking? I am almost 30. I am old. I'm not Cameron Diaz, I'm not Sara Michelle Gellar. I am not young and cute, I don't shop at Limited Express anymore, and no one cards me. For one thing, I'm tired. I am not used to staying up much past 10:00 p.m., and it was nearly that by the time our plates were cleared. The thought of bar hopping until the sun came up was so far-fetched it wasn't even a blip on my radar. Instead of shaking our maracas at Excalibur or whatever, we wound up back at Jimmy's playing Outburst! and watching Saturday Night Live. (Excalibur? Hell, I don't even know what bars are trendy in Chicago anymore.) Plus, I'm married. Sue and Kim are not only married, they are mothers. Gone are the days of going downtown to go to the Art Institute and, instead, winding up at a street festival, sneaking beers with our fake I.D.s and yelling at Tommy LaSorda's limo. Gone are the days of drunkenly chowing on Cinnabons as we rode the train back to the suburbs, hung over when we arrived. Gone are the adventures we created because we were young and had a sense of humor...let's spend the day in the Gambler! We'll go for lunch, play pool, dance on barstools to "Express Yourself", smoke, talk about AIDS, make phone calls to our friends from behind the bar, arranging our evening into a party celebrating us and our goofiness. I'm not sure when it happened, but I've become someone with a history. I used to go out and get wacky. I used to wake up at Sue's or Midge's with yet another battle tale under my belt, a throbbing head to prove I'd earned my merits. The year I was 21 I wrote in one of my journals, "I like going to the bars and partying with everyone, but I don't know...sometimes it just seems like all we're trying to do is outdo the last weekend. How many times can we go out and get stupid...and enjoy it? When will enough be enough?" It's not so much that I'm wistful over the passing of my party days. Being drunk and sloppy doesn't really appeal to me much anymore. I am, however, a bit regretful that I'll never tell someone about how I was recently voted number 2 on the Top Ten List of Fiesta Days-Goers by Mike Lawlor. It will never again be relevant that Midge tried to bribe the guy who was towing her car with three cans of warm Miller Lite. I still am not sure if I was there the night we stopped by Pat's apartment at 3 in the morning and, finding everyone asleep, left a note in pencil--scrawled across their living room wall. These stories seem funny in a way that elicits polite smiles from people, but nothing else. They are no longer alive. They are part of the permanent past. It wasn't last year that my mom called Joe and I at the Gambler and told us it was time to come home. It was six years ago. It was a hundred years ago. Sue, Kim and I had a great time on Saturday night, but by 10:00, Sue had her head on Michael's shoulder and Kim was sore from having to nurse. I have many stories left in this life, but sometimes it seems like all the good ones are already written. Wanna be notified when I update? Send mail and thou shalt receive!