friday february 8 2002    |    2:33 a.m.

i haven't smoked a single cigarette all day. i ran out last night after drinks at the abbey with patrick and denise, and just let it go. don't worry, no lasting damage: i'm planning to wake up early in the morning and run down to the mini-mart for some broncos. just felt a little detoxing was in order after months of indulging myself.

so yeah, drinks were surprisingly good. patrick's girlfriend didn't come, luckily: neither denise nor i get along with her. so we drank and caught up some, but didn't really talk too much. it was less avoidance and more... i don't know, really. after denise left patrick and i spent the rest of the night altering photos in the new times, scrawling obscene doodles and cracking each other up without saying much.

so this guy jc is one of the bartenders at the abbey, and he was there last night. when i was in high school he used to hang out in the music room -- he'd graduated years earlier but kept coming back -- after school, with the rest of us misfit kids. he dated my once-best friend and there were some odd things between us, but all i really remember doing is going to my first fugazi concert with him (and patrick). and seeing him bartend at this now-defunct café by my old house, where we'd go hang out back in the day. he's always been this sort of comically tortured guy -- you can tell he works on the image, probably the state of mind too. or maybe i'm just being a bitch. but you know what i'm talking about, the kind of guy who'll spend hours in the local coffeeshop apparently absorbed in some fascinating shit going on in his journal, lifting his eyes only to cast soulful gazes out at nothing.

at the same time, and i hate myself for saying this, he's a pretty good-looking guy. ahem. and i hadn't seen him in years. so we get there and he and i are talking, and he's playing it off all suave and whatever, and he tells me he's working on a novel. (red flag! red flag!) yes, so right away i'm a bit suspicious. or maybe i'm just jealous of go-getter writer-types, because i'm terribly lazy and, in the words of rob breszny, self-flagellating when it comes to writing. worse when he pulled out a general outline of the plot, and then an extended outline of every scene. holy crap. so i was concerned when he had me read the three-page plot synopsis or proposal-to-self or whatever, but i couldn't resist. and ok, it wasn't terrible, although all his characters were studiedly tortured as well, and the ending was too spanking-clean. and you know, he asked for my opinion, and i gave it to him, and i swear he told me he'd never heard the phrase "constructive criticism." sigh. anyway, the flirty spell was broken and we remained wary of each other for the rest of the night, although he said he "practically lives" at my place of work, and he's sure he'll see me soon.

in another rare moment of near-serendipity, roly's car was parked outside the abbey when we got there, but we never saw him. patrick left a post-it under his windshield wiper.

anyway. papo's instant messaging me and i can't concentrate. and i'm tired and i have to be at work at 8:30 in the morning, "b&n time." bleh. secretly i'm glad. staying home drives me bananas. today i only managed not to smoke, to skim and continually roll my eyes at time magazine, to explain for the trillionth time how to write an e-mail to my father, and later to have him inexplicably become furious with me for no reason apparent to myself.

so. better things tomorrow i hope. disclaimer: i would also like to clarify that in the past few entries, i am wholeheartedly embracing a quantity-over-quality, matter-over-substance approach. yes. thank you. proceed.