Boy good. Alcohol bad.

I have been meaning to post for days but first I had to recover from a very long Thursday night. It was one of my truly marathon evenings.

It started with me rushing home from work so that I could change clothes and meet the boy in San Francisco. Of course it started pouring rain around this time and because Californians have issues driving in rain, the drive was a bit longer than it should have been. I managed to get back out of the house and on the road though -- only to sit at the toll plaza for something like a half hour.

Our first in the City was Baraka. The food was wonderful, especially dessert. I had the semolina custard. Words fail to describe it. I will be going back.

Our next stop was the Mighty. I was able to surmise at this point that we were going to a concert but had no clue who it was. I had thought of asking someone else while the boy slipped off to the bar for drinks but decided that I'd rather be surprised. That I was. Finally Thomas Dolby walked onto the stage and started playing. I had been telling the boy for weeks how I thought that Dolby is a musical genius. It was at that moment that I decided that I could forgive the boy for all the annoying things he has done over the last few weeks.

On the way home, I suddenly had the brainstorm to stop in North Beach at the bar that used to be my home away from home. There were only about eight folks in the place. As we walked in, this group of three suddenly asked me, "Don't we know you from that place in Berkeley? What are you doing here?" What, indeed. The group turned out to be one of the bartenders from the place I always hang in Berkeley with a couple of his friends. The female I had met back in December. She's friends with the band that I love to catch at that place in Berkeley and had tried to get me to come back to SF with them that night in December to hang out after the bar closed. Well Thursday night the bar closed and we headed over to her place. There was lots of vodka and conversation. Somewhere along the way she told us that she is a singer and trying to put a band together. I announced that the boy is a musician. The two of them ended up in a long conversation about music. I was left talking to the bartender and his roommate, both of whom have lovely Irish accents. Somewhere in the alcohol-induced haze I realized that I was holding hands with the bartender. The boy never noticed because he was too busy talking about music.

This time for the first time in my life I realized what I was doing. I have always dumped guys before they have a chance to dump me -- abandonment issues and all. I have never cheated on a guy but I will dump him if someone else comes along. I realized that the hand holding thing was part of my destructive pattern. Then I spent the rest of the weekend feeling guilty.

The guilt is a bit more under control now. My only worry is going back to my fave bar in Berkeley now because Friday is St. Patty's Day. Like I'm going to miss that.