So it was Ifaniyi's bithday on Friday. As a typical somewhat shrewd Capricorn he wanted something small, food and a few drinks with some good friends with maybe a lady or two thrown in. But though he didn't get any ladies, we did find ourselves at an eating establish where the female waitresses took to dress in an almost costume sexy manner. From the tight satin on the cute lil bartender to the non-existent skirt and Catholic school girl style, glasses on legs longer than the lines at opening day for Why Did I Get Married, someone even joked that we might have ended up at a strip club by mistake. But no, it wasn't the strip club (or Hooters for that matter). It was a slightly upper middle class Fort Greene eatery where it once took 45 minutes for a bartender to get my rum and coke from the bar to the table. But for me it was just fine.
After getting some pretty bad news on Friday what I needed was a night with the boys. Though I love my homegirls to death there's something great about getting down to basics. It's kind cool when you have your elder give you props on your choices in women or when you can make jokes about the married life, politics, music or just chop it up about what's going down with people I know. I miss my old boys club, as most of them have now moved on to the married life, or to other places, or just to different paths than my own. That Thursday moment when the phone calls go around to see what "we" are doing tonight is now a thing of the past.
But it's an even better thing when you get to be the young buck in the room, taking it all in and knowing that anything you have to contribute should come only at the proper time. You're there for the experience. You're there to recant the stories to the young cat at your table when you're the older guy. I love it equally when it's sistas in the same age group. There's something about me that helps me to disappear into the background when the juicy gossip starts. In the past I made the mistake of not knowing how to keep my mouth shut. But these days I've learned to only say what I have to when I have to.
Benita was gracious enough to pickup the tab for me to check out Cloverfield on Friday, which I thought was lame at first, but had to later admit to myself that I'd just been in a bad mood and was also not sitting in the best of seats. One of the film's stars, Jessica Lucas, made the screen sizzle in a disaster movie. And that's saying something. Plus for a 25 million dollar budget they made it look like it cost 100. I'll get my turn one of these days. And hopefully I will show and prove. I've got about twenty pages left in the first draft of the dopest script I've written in my life. And though I didn't work on it last night because I was up until almost three watching The Wire on demand with Benita and the master thespian.
The Bible says that it is best for a man to bear the yoke in his youth. Lately I've been getting beaten to the bone by all kinds of things. But I've learned how to rise above it, how to cover up and just take the punches when needed, knowing that my KO round is still to come. Takeoff is the always the bumpiest part of the ride, but when you're way up in the way blue yonder it's always worth it. Out.
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