Eagle Rock Lanes. When we got here for Laura's birthday, it was still all terrible flourescent lighting and no music. Now it's evolved into blacklight and oldies, which are horrible in their own right.
What's this? everybody asks. Are you really online? And yes, kids, it's true, I am. Try as I might, the screen is as dim as I can make it, but I'm still conspicuous in the blacklight. Oh, the official drink count: 2 Sam Adams, plus the one at my right, which is still very full and cold.
This is how I met Laura: she started dating the guy I was in love with. Or rather, had loved, or with whom I had had an affair that set me off my axis. I don't know if I was over him. He was over me. He and Laura were good, but odd. He was this brilliant poet, and a screenwriter, but those were the days he was giving up screenwriting for drinking and staying up very late. Laura worked at this oversize glossy LA magazine that folded, but when it was still going she brought home a copy of Madonna's Sex book she'd scored, which we all pored over with prurient scepticism. She seemed very together. I didn't know many together people then.
Celebrating Laura's birthday are her husband Pete, the doctor, who looks at slides of things. I ask him before I go: pathologist. Better bowler than me, like everyone else. Adam, who I met when he was a college student with longish hair who'd play Beatles songs on his guitar. Jill and Alan and their new baby Jackson, who is small and doesn't make much noise over a creak. He hasn't even creaked tonight. Or wiggled. He is very new.
Phil is here. He is the tallest man I know who drives a Mini. Peter and Houston, who always look better than the rest of us because Houston is a stylist. She is currently carrying a medium blue metallic leather purse which is probably worth more than my entire shoe collection. Nick, the punk rock drummer, whose hair is traffic-cone orange, and his roommate Misty, who is now the proud owner of a house in Wisconsin. Andrew and Stephanie, who came to the bowling alley directly after buying a 2006 Prius -- a red one -- which I have gone out to the parking lot to admire. It totally has the new car smell. Friends of Laura's who I don't know who are all glowing under the blacklights. I've taken refuge a bit back, so there is a safe buffer between the bowling balls and the laptop.
I thought I might write about the moments of these people that stick with me, but it's a little too hectic. Karaoke is coming out of the bar behind me but some bad radio station is being piped in over the lanes. Then you've got general bowling ally clatter and roll, and the laughing, and the people shouting to the bartender. And I do have to drive home. Any remainder will be after the jump.
