Letter Never Sent

MaryAnn and her husband, Eric, just had a daughter. Welcome to this crazy mixed up, wonderful world, Sarah!

Jody and I went to Oklahoma this weekend and I did and experienced a lot of fun and interesting things. Oklahoma was a lot less desolate than I had imagined. I always thought it would be more treeless and flat for some reason. It was very green and charming. There are native-american casinos all along the highways and many things like gas stations are named after different tribes or inspired by native american cultures. Here’s a list of a few things I particularly enjoyed:

– Seeing the milky way stretching from one end of the dark horizon to the other like a cloudy ring. I had never seen it like this before.

– Glowing firefly larvae dotting the rim of a pond at night. When I would step closer to look they would stop glowing. I finally detected a couple of them with my flashlight. Apparently, they feed almost exclusively on worms, snails, and slugs so I assume they were there to find food in the soggy ground.

– Fishing in the cool, clean air and watching the sun come up over the horizon. I hadn’t been fishing
in years.

Michael came to visit Austin and we got to hang out a bit. He’s really Susan’s friend, but I got to know him over im and spent some time with him while he was here. He’s a very nice and funny guy. Here we are at Hill’s Cafe:

Last night I was able to get off work to attend the bachelor party or whatever of a friend of mine I worked with at Fedex. We met at this pool hall over on Airport Blvd, the one I always thought looked super-seedy from the outside. Inside, it wasn’t so seedy but dim and smokey. I was under the impression initially that despite tradition there were to be no strip clubs, strippers or anything strip-related going on that night which really for some reason annoyed me. Maybe because it stunk of puritanism or matrimonial repression. Like most people I have mixed feelings on the subject of nude dancers, however my contrary nature keeps these feelings smothered and my justifications well defended. So after a few hours of playing pool, I started to get bored and tried to build up the necessary resolve among the group of mostly married or engaged men to browbeat the groom-to-be into going to the Yellow Rose. I was pretty soused by this time so I felt in the right frame of mind to do some brow-beating. Luckily, once the momentum started he just buckled. It helped that this guy, a relative or good friend of the bride, offered to pay for everyone’s cover.

It was fun. This same guy kept paying for everyone to have lap dances. He kept saying it was a wedding present. Do you send a thank you note for that sort of thing?

One thing that was weird was that I kept running into people I knew at the strip club like this dancer I had met at IHOP one night while eating with some people after work. She was drunk and eating by herself so we invited her over to sit with us. This sounds weird and it was weird. She seemed to be one of those people who’s lived the wild life for a number of years. She had that smoker voice and a touch of the sunned out, washed out look. She wasn’t doing too bad for thirty-six. Anyway, I saw her again which really isn’t that big of a surprise since she told me she worked there. I also saw this girl I used to work with at Hollywood Video when I first moved to Austin. At the time she was sixteen and still in high school and I was eighteen and had just started college at UT. It was weird to see her some eight years later all grown up and womanly. She was there with her boyfriend, and they were leaving soon on a trip to England. I talked to her for a few minutes which is all the time you can really expect in such a weird situation and after so many years.