Home and Away
The roadtrip weekend was a lot of fun. For me, the highlight was our time in Pittsburgh. I fell a little bit in love with Pittsburgh, although I might need to check it out again in a different season. The thought of parallel parking on all those hills in icy winter gives me pause.
When we got to Pittsburgh, we were all sweaty and rumpled from the car, so we freshened up and changed clothes before meeting Sarah’s friends for dinner. By coincidence, we all ended up changing into sundresses. After dinner we went to this awesome divey bar in Polish Hill, where I had the best whiskey sour of my life, and I spent at least $10 at the jukebox, because it was all Dead Kennedys and the Dirtbombs and Pavement and GBV and the Yardbirds. We wanted to play some pool and ping pong, so we left our table up front and wandered to the back room, and immediately felt like Pee Wee when he walked into the biker bar.
This bar was full of regular dive bar folk, people I feel comfortable around, all T-shirts and sneakers and tattoos, and we were six girls wearing dresses, standing there in a pack, talking. You could feel it: everyone hated us. We might as well have been a bachelorette party, squealing and carrying penis straws. I suppressed my urge to shout, “Hey, we’re drinking whiskey! I just filled the jukebox with Dead Kennedys!” Instead we left and drank on Natalie’s front porch, which was much better, because she had chocolate cake. On our way out the door, a cute boy with a pool cue handed me a cigarette. I quickly tucked it behind my ear before his friends could notice and turn him out on the street.
I’m packing right now for Europe. I leave in 15 hours. I’m bringing the sundress.