weekend requirements include social skills

I was out getting thoroughly messed up last night, at my friends Keith & Jaime’s house party. They’re my favorite married couple, because they believe in throwing a lot of house parties, and coordinating trips to places like, say, Amsterdam and Paris. Keith also believes in serving a lot of food and drink at these parties, so I almost always end up having to get a ride the whole mile home from their house in West L.A.

The 4am was the end of a very long day though. I started my day by waking up and immediately starting the process of baking cakes. Specifically, chocolate mint cakes. I had a brunch and a housewarming yesterday, at two separate friends’ houses, and I hate showing up empty handed. But I’d barely pulled the cakes from the oven when it was time to head out to East L.A., for the first stop of the Saturday: the used clothing warehouse in East L.A..

This requires some explanation. As part of the festivities on the 27th, Code Pink is doing a fashion show. I’m obviously helping with this. I’ll probably actually be in it as well as working on it. But we needed slips for it, things we could dye pink, and I knew exactly where to get them: the clothing by the pound warehouse in East L.A. Instead of paying $5 a slip at a Salvation Army, I picked up a dozen for $13 – and had the blessing of Shareen, who runs the vintage boutique at the back of the warehouse that magically transforms women through classic mid-20th century dresses. Shareen let us into the closed warehouse to get the slips, and wished me luck on getting W out of office through fashion.

From there, we went to a new friend’s brunch on the Silverlake/Los Feliz border, at which I met more girls I liked. Finding cool girls to be friends is difficult in Los Angeles – unless you have them already. Like attracts like, and I found myself at a brunch with new people having a wonderful time. And even from there, it was off to another friend’s housewarming on the West L.A/Westwood border, where I immediately joined some of my best friends on the roof of her building to drink white wine and gossip.

The only negative note of the day came after I had to leave that housewarming to go see my friend Bryan Master play at the Viper Room. I hadn’t bene to Johnny Depp’s club before, and wasn’t sure what to expect. Not to mention, it’s slightly ludicrous to me to find myself bouncing down the Sunset Strip, enroute to the Viper Room. That isn’t someplace this little Canadian girl expected to end up; it’s a club out of L.A. mythology. But aside from the $12 cover, it would have been fine, if I hadn’t had to see ow ex-co-workers there. Who didn’t even bother to say hello to me. Not that they said goodbye on Friday, either – but that lack of any basic courtesy or social skills leads me to believe that they must really not like me – and that’s always going to hurt. It’s always going to be like being excluded in high school, it’s always going to re-open wounds of being excluded for ten fucking years as a teenager, and it’s always going to make me need as much reassurance as I can get immediately afterwards.

Fortunately, upon returning to the housewarming, I got it. And it was reinforced right through the house party. Hugs aplenty. Much talking. Reinforcement that my friends do like me for who I am, as after school special as that sounds. In twenty minutes, I was able to stop worrying that there’s just something in me that’s unlikeable that they just haven’t found yet.

And after five hours of eating, drinking, and general merrymaking, my guy roomate and I were dropped at home. I immediately shucked off my capri jeans and passed out, so I could wake up FIVE HOURS LATER to go set up the CodePink booth at the Farmer’s Market and go to a L.A. People Connection girls-only pajama breakfast. It’s been a busy weekend, and a very social one – and now, I’m off to the Tofu Festival for more of it.