"He who sins first kicks the first ass."

On Saturday evening, I grabbed some dinner and some beer with Jane at our local pub. Seduced by the television over the bar and the crap VH1 programming, we nursed our beers and watched the Surreal Life while occasionally I would take a moment to flirt with Cat, the very cute bartender. She would flirt back . . . which was nice.

Holly called me in the midst of this to ask me to have lasagna with her at her brother's place. Hurrah, I thought. Maybe this will be a makeup for the lack of action I got on Friday. I hurriedly settled up my tab as Jane gave me a pep talk with comments on what I should wear for dinner and I noticed that Cat was paying attention to this little exchange.

* * *

When Holly and I reached the top of the narrow stairs, we were greeted with the smell the lasagna coming from the apartment ahead. Once inside, I can only say it was as though I suddenly entered Borgin & Burkes in Knockturn Alley (from the Harry Potter novels). The walls were red, the exposed beam ceiling painted black, and every inch of the walls and ceiling hung something from pictures of medical dissection, skulls and mismatched light fixtures to Victorian medical oddities preserved in formaldehyde. It was amazing. Later Holly and I sat up in the loft drinking beer and watching her brother and his friends get on with their sculpting. When it got late, we kept with the horror show theme by going back to her place to watch Ringu.

Nevermind the movie. I was expecting something more out of our trip back to her place. Perhaps a little making out? But apparently the gods had other ideas. We watched the movie on separate chairs, and when it was over I tried to get a car service back to my place in an attempt to retain some of my dignity. Unfortunately car services don't like picking people up in Bed-Stuy at 3:30 am, so I stayed over and slept on the air mattress.

Clearly Holly and I must be on different wave lengths.