Good Journal Name

I'm a bum, again. After a week of bike shop bludging, Peter texts me this morning to say that he and three friends will be staying tonight and that Doug and I will have to leave.

Doug is out of the city delivering a bicycle (unnecessarily, it seems) so it's just me that needs evacuating. I don't want to sponge off Alex again, but it looks like the only alternative is sleeping on the concrete floor of the bike workshop. I would do it if I wasn't the only one, but sleeping there alone.... nah.

I'm moody already. Not quite hungover after drinking half a bottle of sherry last night. I drank half a bottle of sherry because it was roughly the same colour as the two pints of cider I drank earlier when I was at the pub with Ewan Skydiver. That was an awkward experience. It reminded me of being in Melbourne and being invited to dinner at the house of a very interesting fellow, only to be confronted by a horde of informed, opinionated, hip friends of his who occupied my host while I sat on the couch being molested by a small dog.

Last night it was simply a gathering of blonde girl-shaped things and a guy who was "definitely not gay" despite appearances. Informed and opinionated they were not necessarily. Nor were they particularly hip, though they were clean, which is not to be underrated. It was more a case of being outnumbered and having no idea what they were talking about.

Blonde girl next to Ewan Skydiver had imbibed a little already and was bestowing proprietary displays of affection all over the dude despite assurances of platonicism, and my eyebrows spent a good hour or so nested in my fringe. She went out to find food and in order to bring the interaction back to a position I could relate to, I engaged Ewan Skydiver in a rousing game of thumb war. He managed it whilst taking a call from aforementioned blonde girl. Another blonde girl asked me about travelling, and her eyebrows disappeared into her hair also when I talked about what I've been doing. "Alone? I could never do that..." Then the conversation switched to vibrators.

Blonde girl #1 called to say she was at an outdoor bar which I like to call "Some Wanker's Backyard", so we went to meet her. She wasn't there, so the plan was to get another drink and wait. At this stage Ewan Skydiver said that he wouldn't think less of me if I piked at this stage -- my discomfort being obvious, apparently -- so I said OK and hastily took my leave. I traipsed back to the bike shop where everybody was watching Gran Torino, and then proceeded to drink half a bottle of sherry.

It wasn't even that I fancied the fellow. Sorry Ewan. It was more the sense of losing an excellent bullshitting companion. It was the disappointment of meeting someone in one situation and then discovering that they are completely different in a different situation, and that I should have just left it on a high. It might be akin to post-shag-shame. It's a big neon "WELL THAT WAS INADVISABLE, WASN'T IT?"

So now I'm locked out of the bike shop, sitting down the road in a hostel which is reassuringly sterile, with uncomfortable couches and hot water from the taps in the toilets. I'm waiting for someone to return to the bike shop so I can get my bags out and head to Alex's place.

I'm a bum.