London 15C: Day 11 & 12 - Class & I find a Girlfriend (Party)

There are so many people crowded to get into the club for the closing night party - hundreds of them - that Suzanne suggests we get a coffee while waiting for the line to die down. Next door to the club - a late night donut shop! A strange thing in London. In the USA we have donut shops all over (some sections of the Valley seem to have a donut store in a strip mall on every single block!), but other parts of the world have no donuts at all. Donuts are an American invention - a relic of the Great Depression. Deep fried dough was about the cheapest thing you could eat. Odd that even after the depression was over, people had developed a taste for them and they stuck around... though very few people during this financial downturn can afford a dozen Krispy Kremes.

We drink coffee and I eat *two* donuts, trying to absorb some of that wine before adding beer to it. The huge heavy bag is dragging me down, but I’m stuck with it. The donuts are dry - yesterday’s donuts, or maybe donuts made at 6am that day. They donuts are like me - should have been retired hours ago.

After we’re finished with our coffees, there is no line outside the club, so we show our ticket stubs and go in... where the crowd is. As usual, music turned up to ear-bleed, so many people packed into the room that you can’t turn around without hitting someone (and the heavy bag clips a bunch of people) and the line for drinks at the bar? Well, imagine those hundreds of people waiting for drinks! Janet and Suzanne and I split up and stand in different lines... and the race is on! I don’t think I win. But I do get some pilsner. This club is decorated Middle Eastern, so I guess they don’t serve Guiness. After we get our drinks we yell over the music to each other and I say hello to some of the Raindance staff people and some of the film makers and audience members I’d come to know. There is no place to sit - so we stand. As we get to the bottoms of our drinks, we discover that out ticket stubs *also* get us a free drink - from sponsor Absolute Vodka - Vodka mixed with... something. Hell, it’s free so we all stand in line again and snag another drink. I think they were supposed to take our tickets to prevent us from getting a second free drink, but they don’t do this - all of us still have our tickets. Though, I wouldn’t discover that until an hour later...

Because after getting my drink, I lost Janet and Suzanne in the crowded night club.

This really isn’t a problem - it’s a *party* - so I try to mingle as I casually wander through various sections of the club looking for them. A bunch of people come up to tell me how funny the steel cage match joke was (I could not tell if they’d been drinking before the awards ceremony) and most asked if I was an actor, because I had a good voice. Conversation after conversation... and then I find myself talking to the producer of REDLANDS and wondering if she had read my review and was about to poison my drink... but we just talked - I congratulated them on winning Best Debut Feature, and then said I had to split to find my friends (before she could ask me what I thought of her film, which I did not like). I finally found Janet and Suzanne, and they had found a place to sit. Just one place, so we took turns. We all had our tickets, and wondered if we could get another free drink - the bar line was only a couple of people.

One more free drink, but they took our tickets this time. Probably for the best, because Absolute was the sponsor, not whatever they were mixing it with, and the drinks were *strong*. I was glad I had those two stale donuts. After drinking most of the second drink, I’m floating. Janet and Suzanne skip to the loo, and I notice the Tall American Girl in the corner with a group of Raindance people, and wander over to say hello.

Though she was polite, for some reason she was not interested in a fat drunk guy probably twice her age who was hitting on her with zero subtlety. I wonder why? After saying goodbye, I went back to where Janet and Suzanne were standing and realized I’d made a complete ass of myself. I’m sure I wasn’t the first fat old drunk creep that hit on the Tall American Girl, but it was depressing as hell to think that I was the last. (Wait... is that some other guy talking to her now... hey, I *wasn’t* the last!) Janet suggested I try computer dating - but that’s not really the solution. I must actually find the time in my schedule to get out and find some woman to take to London next time I’m here. Every time I do something cool like this, I’m doing it alone. I need to fix that. And not with an escort who does nothing but talk about investment strategies.

Janet and Suzanne left, I talked to some of the filmmakers for a little while longer, then realized I needed to stagger back to the hotel and stagger up the stairs and get some sleep. Tomorrow would be my last day in London, and I had to settle accounts with Elliot and then head over to Holborn Tube Station to meet friends and total strangers for Drink With Bill In London Night. Great... I’m going to have to make my deal with Elliot hung over.

- Bill