The Best Thing to Happen This Weekend

This is a segment in which the authoress will attempt to identify the absolute best moment from her weekend.

I'm not going to name names in this blog, because the best thing that happened this weekend might be a bit embarrassing to some involved parties. I wouldn't be embarrassed. I would tell this story at cocktail parties until the day I died (perhaps of too many cocktails).

 

I highly recommend the French 75 at the R&J Lounge and Supper Club.

 

This past Saturday, I narrowly avoided peeing myself on the floor of a casino. I actually find casinos kind of terrifying in concept, mostly because of a surreal experience I had years ago. I was driving home from a concert with friends. It was the dark of the early morning, in the middle of nowhere. And yours truly had to pee like a racehorse. So we stopped at the first place that materialized out of the night: an oasis of sickly flashing lights, ringed with semis and proclaiming in neon that they had restrooms. But to get to the ordinary, fluorescent lit truck stop part, I had to walk through a small casino, carpeted in yellow like a fading bruise and with more flashing lights, it was populated with a surprising number of dead-eyed, slack-jawed patrons pawing away at slot machines, oblivious to all else. The stench of bud light hung in the air. It had an otherworldly feel to it, like maybe all the people there were held captive by a fading Eastern deity ala American Gods who fed off of their hopes and their despair.

 

I have never peed so fast in my life.

 

This casino wasn't that bad, but frankly, we are all college educated women and we could not figure out how the damn slot machines worked. And the stocky bartender made a mean Sex on the Beach.

 

So the best part of the evening happened after we had all had some cocktails, but really it was a totally understandable mistake. See, several members of my family and I all had variations on the same lip product: lipstick that came in the form of a fat, vibrant pencil. So one member of our party reaches into the makeup pocket of her purse and pulls out a pencils, then draws thick lines of color onto her lips. Only that color was pitch black--she had grabbed a kohl pencil, meant for lining the eyes.

 

She didn't realize what she had done until she tried to rub her lips together to distribute the product, she turned to me with a bewildered look in her eyes. Not even grasping what had happened, I laughed until my eyes watered and all I could see of her mouth was a black "=" She looked down at the tar-colored pencil in her hand and back to me in horror, the truth dawning on her suddenly goth-y face.

 

The aftermath, cropped to protect the guilty. I mean, innocent.

 

"I thought this was may lip gloss!" She exclaimed, as I tried to wipe it off of her with a cocktail napkin. I couldn't breathe. I really thought that peeing myself was, like, a valid option in the situation.

 

Luckily, this family member is incredibly good-humored, and laughed along with me, making my efforts to clean her up really ineffective since we were both bouncing with giggles.

 

And that was the Best Thing That Happened This Weekend. Have a great week, everybody!