From The Ashes ...

Drunk, Sober, And Back to Drunk

Good lord, I'm Toby. Fine, be that way I'm two Tobys (Age-wise, anyway. I'm pretty sure I'm hung better, but double is doubtful). Last week I worked the day shift. I felt traumatized. It had been years since I had been to work at 10 am. I'm serious. The last time I was even up before then was the AIDSWalk in May. I didn't get to bed (last week) before 5:15. Mostly because I was worried about getting up in time. Go figure, I'm worried about over-sleeping which causes insomnia. If you know me, it makes a kind of twisted sense.

At any rate, I'm scheduled for the day shift today and tomorrow. Now that I have one under my belt, I was able to sleep last night by about 1 am. I get the sense I was sleeping fitfully, and I have no idea if he was the direct cause, but the The Fuckin Ex opened up my bedroom door at 5:30 this morning and woke me up. To explain: The Ex works a 9-5 job (more or less). He rarely drinks a drop on the weekdays. On the weekends, beer, tequila and blow (he's so 80's) are on the menu. It works something like this: He leaves the house around midnite, and spends two or three hours doing an E. Village crawl, always ending up at Urge because we know the owner/manager and drinks, and cocaine (for him) are free. Then he wanders home around 4 am where he proceeds to lurch around the apartment like the TV sheriff making sure I, a grown gay man over 40, do not sleep with the TV on. Afterwards he plugs in his headphones and either The Beatles or Oasis or some other unwashed uncouth British rock band plays and he proceeds to warble and wail away to them, which, at 5 am sounds like I'm holding some little retarded boy captive in the back bedroom. Several trips to the bathroom as well as inexplicable tours of the apartment and at least one unremembered food rummage are sure to follow. The problem is I'm angling for the weekend day shifts and I can't have Drunky The Drunk Man waking me up to police my television. Tonight if I remember I'll lock myself in, which, over time usually breaks him of the pattern he's in, whether he's aware of it or not.

Speaking of drunk, I got off work this evening intending to pop into the gym. Go figure I forgot to wear or pack some sneakers. Of course I could have run home and picked up a pair but I believe in listening to The Universe. If I was meant to work out I would have remembered the sneaks in the first place. Besides all I was really interested in at that time was a martini. So I had one, two (FINE!) three martinis and a glass of wine. I napped for about an hour and then woke up. Went out for pizza and salad and some garlic knots (have I mentioned I'm single?). On a (not seemingly) related note, I'm going to try and get my gym schedule under control. I'm shooting for three days a week for now. That will be acceptable.