I Guess For Spite's Sake Isn't A Sufficient Reason To Break The Routine

So I’m at work being productive (Read:  Sitting there reading comic books online), when Brian deigns to come over to visit Scott and I.
He leans back on the desk at a point roughly equidistant between Scott and I and says, “Maki, I know you won’t come, but…”
You have to love conversations that start out with someone saying  “I know you won’t do x.”  I seem to have a lot of them.
In any case, he went on to say that the bar that he and Kathleen and their friends hang out at was having a band perform and that I should join them there.
Of course, the phrase “80’s music” came up in describing the band, which led me to point out that I didn’t like most 80’s music during the 80s and that my opinion hasn’t changed over the years.
He added that, for some reason, “lots of hot chicks always show up” when this band is playing, which I guess was supposed to be a carrot being dangled in front of me, because, you know, this time will be different from every other time in my life and somehow, magically, I’ll be charming and gregarious, or at least not be a totally socially awkward spastic dork, and so the presence of “hot chicks” should serve as a compelling reason for a recovering alcoholic to go to a bar that will feature a band playing 80’s music, rather than serve as another reason to stay away, as their presence will only serve as a reminder that every time is exactly the same and that I’m never charming and gregarious and I’m always a totally socially awkward spastic dork.
Ultimately it was spite and a desire to prove Brian wrong that led me to say, “Fuck it,” and drive over to the bar.
I thought about calling first to ensure that they were actually going to be there, but decided that I’d rather walk in and surprise them.
When I got there and looked around the parking lot and didn’t see either of their vehicles, though, so I decided to give Kathleen a call.
They had, naturally, decided not to go, and though they were surprised and impressed by the fact that I had made an effort to be sociable, that wasn’t enough of an inducement to get them to change their minds, and so they opted to stay home and be lame, which I would have been perfectly content to do if it hadn’t been for Brian inviting/challenging me to go out an do something.
Kathleen suggested that I could just go in anyway and check it out, but when people compile lists of The Best Ideas Ever, a recovering alcoholic sitting alone in a bar on a Saturday night very seldom breaks the top 100, and so I opted to simply come home.
And here I am.
At some point at work I’d gotten another invitation for tonight in the form of an IM from Stacy who was inviting me over for dinner and, if I felt up to it, a round of Dungeons & Dragons.
I pointed out that I’m never up for a round of D&D, and, citing the fact that it’s been a long week and I’ve got the hassles of traveling half-way across the country ahead of me (not the least of which is the fact that my flight doesn’t leave until after 5 pm so I won’t arrive in Michigan until almost midnight), so I need some time to “decompress,” I declined the invitation.
(Declining invitations is another type of conversation I have fairly often.  Maybe I should be less of a reclusive jerk.  Then again, when I decide not to be a reclusive jerk [just a spiteful one] it really doesn’t work out for me anyway.  Or maybe Scott and Stacy shouldn’t live all the way down in friggin’ Manassas.)
Still, D&D aside, I can be reasonably certain that if I had accepted that invitation Stacy and Scott would have actually been there when I arrived…
Oh well, I can’t be too bitchy about it.  I mean, it’s not as though Brian and Kathleen had any way of anticipating that I would actually show up.
And I honestly do need the decompression time, as it has been and extremely long, extremely irritating week, so it’s probably just as well that I’m not sitting in a crowded, smoky bar listening to loud, shitty music that I didn’t like when it was performed by the original artists.
(And for the record, the adage of “If it’s too loud, you’re too old” doesn’t apply if the music sucks.)
I got an e-mail from my friend Kevin asking me when I’m going to be out that way, and saying that we need to hang out.
I told him that I’ll be arriving on Tuesday, but warned him that since I’ve given up pretty much all of my former vices I’ve become really boring.
Of course, it’s not as though I was Mr. Exciting before, so I guess it’s not much of a change.  The biggest change is that there’s a lot less of a chance that I’ll have pissed (or worse) on somebody’s floor in a drunken stupor, but other than that I’m still the same boring lump I’ve always been.
I actually had a very odd dream about being back home this morning.
In it I was hitchhiking for some reason, and I got picked up by a very odd, but very hot, young woman who decided that rather than just dropping me off somewhere along the way she would take me to her house.
Most of the ride was passed in silence, but as we neared her house she got extremely talkative and became very flirtatious, though she pointed out that she didn’t find me the least bit attractive and would normally not bother with someone like me, but she was “feeling weird.”
Once we got to her house I found that there was a man living there with her and she said, “Oh, did I mention I have a boyfriend?”
However, the man living with her was not, in fact, her boyfriend but her brother.
My memory of the dream gets hazy from there.  All I clearly recall is taking several pictures of her with my cameraphone.
She then wrote her name (I think it was Teresa) and number on a napkin, told me to call her sometime, but added, “I’ll probably say I don’t know who you are and hang up on you, so there’s really no point in calling me.”  Then there was some kind of accident involving a truck and an airplane (I think the airplane was on a trailer hitched to the truck) in her backyard.
And that was it.
In any case, I suppose I should get back to my busy night of being totally lame, which was made even more lame by my pointless attempt at making it less lame.
Serves me right for trying to break out of my routine, I guess.