What We Did For Many Weekends

Many, many crazy things are afoot right now. My girls have been gone to Montana for two weeks and that always makes me very sad. This year my group of friends have all done a fabulous job of keeping me entertained and distracted.

The first distraction was the all-weekend multi-family garage sale. Saturday was spent completely goofing off and not being good sales people. I, seriously, made $9. I blame it completely on my ridiculous co-salespersons.....




This is John, my real life co-worker. I "just happened" to catch him relaxing on the pile of pillows with his Shape magazine, his golden challis and a bejeweled apple. If my yard were the Garden of Eden, John would have been Eve. (slut.)

Speaking of sluts (ohhhh! just kidding!) Natalie was encouraged to pose seductively with the neighbors hot rims (she was employed in the "Rim Job" department). The fairy wings were added to give this hard core shot a bit of sensitivity and playfulness. She is totally going to end up on a grease-smudged mechanic's calendar somewhere....


Many beers and sunburned cells later this fantastic little guy dropped by our garage sale to peruse our wares. He happened to also be a meat salesperson, selling steaks and things from the back of his freezer truck. We sold him nothing and spent all of our profits (that were not spent on beer) on steaks. He was a bit uncomfortable, I think, with the level of friendship that we felt we deserved with him, the meat man. The man of meat. Ha.

Throughout the next week I was kept busy with random things, all leading up to a rollicking night out with my co-workers Daniel, Candice and John. John is leaving for Pennsylvania for a job with our company and I'm a bit irritated that he is going. It's against all my plans and I don't appreciate his lack of forethought on my account.

We all met at Daniel's house in Capital Hill in Seattle. Capital Hill is a community that is mostly gay and lesbian and therefore has the best nightlife around. Daniel and his boyfriend were wonderful hosts. I served up wonderful margaritas with little "S" limes on top (because my name is Shari and Shari starts with an "S"). It's really all about me. The best thing is I made a few bucks due to the tip cup that someone thoughtfully placed on the kitchen counter.

During the imbibing of the margaritas we also played a screamingly exciting game of Jenga as demonstrated by John's face in the following picture:

The best part of the night was when we actually went out to the gay bar ("Neighbors"). I once had a lesbian roommate for a few years and had been indoctrinated into the gay bar scene - so I suppose I knew what to expect. John, as it turned out, did not know what to expect.

I warned him early on not to wear the "metro" shirt in the picture above, but he thought I was being a brat. There are many things one should listen to an older woman about....shirt choice in a gay bar being only one of them.

We descended to the lower part of Neighbors into what was dubbed "El Noche Latino". Sounds promising, right? Oh si, es muy bueno. Many gay hispanic men were milling about in button down shirts and squished straw cowboy hats. John seemed to be doing quite well until I noticed him staring at the buxom girls across the bar.

"John. That's a man."

"What!!? No it's not! She has boobs."

"Yeah. Well the part that might matter more is still a man."

"No way!"

I was ready to give him the blow by blow (so to speak) regarding transgender individuals when I was rudely interrupted by the beginnings of "La Noche Latino's" drag show. If you have never seen a drag show I suppose it could be relatively confusing. And not just because of the gender issues.

Why is it that it is important to dress up so extravagantly and lip sync popular songs?

I do not know the answer to this question, but I will admit that it is quite entertaining. The best part of this particular show was the look on John's face through the entire thing. The first guy (who was actually dressed as a guy) was most of the way through his song when John said, "Hm, he's a really good singer." The lip syncing thing hadn't quite hit him yet.

I could have just sat and watched his face all night, but we decided we must go upstairs and check out the dance floor. Daniel and I immediately dove into the fray, leaving John with Christopher, Daniel's boyfriend. Unbeknownst to us, Christopher also left John. Poor guy...he was standing in the middle of the gay bar for a good 20 minutes all by himself with his Paul Bunyan-esque looks and metro-sexual shirt.

It's amazing he was still there when we came off the dance floor.

He seemed to be a bit disturbed by the guy dancing in the cage and the adorable little man that passed us by dressed in only white satin underwear - a white handkerchief tied jauntily around his neck offsetting his cowboy hat beautifully - to check his own ass out in the mirror to our left. But by far the most disturbing to John was when he was surreptitiously pinched in the side and hit on by a very available and interested-in-some-Paul-Bunyan-roleplay man.

"I'm straight!" John literally yelled at the poor man.

Oh, it was a great evening.

I could go on and tell you about the most recent weekend, but I have to stop this at some point. I think a new post is in order.....