Here's what you've missed last week:

-- Ray got drunk and broke his arm throwing a football.  Not getting tackled, not falling -- throwing the ball.  Cast fo' 10 weeks.  This sorta thing doesn't happen to John Elway.  More like Chris Chandler.

-- I got put back on Paxil (it's an anti-depressant).  The doc gave me a good talk on side effects, most notably possible sexual dysfunction.  As if my sex life couldn't get any worse...

-- Akiyo is having problems.   She had an anxiety attack on Friday which caused chest pains, so she went home early.  I'm worried.  Somebody get my mind off her for me, please.

-- I managed to avoid my birthday, until Saturday.

-- Saturday I rented a convertible and drove down to San Diego to see Nicole, who was stupid enough to remember my birthday.

OK, so that's where I'll begin anew:

My birthday always depresses me, since it reminds me what a failure I am to everyone I know.  It's one day of the year where I wanna feel like shit, and I don't tell anyone about it in case they try to change my mind.  So I manage to go to work, come home, slip inside quietly, and went to bed without alerting a soul that I was home.  Outside of a page from my mom (Oh, I bought a new pager), no one wished me "Happy Birthday", which was just how I wanted it.

Nicole's mom was getting married (for the third time) on Saturday, and she (Nicole) was gonna be in San Diego, and since I got my license renewed, I figured I could see her and go to a wedding to boot -- my first since I was four.

Anyhow, I got down to Rancho Bernardo around 9:30, and after a brief tour of the old 'hood -- they put on a stoplight on my old street, and I almost drove onto the sidewalk when I saw it -- I went to her house.  She came down with her buddy Jessica, so after 45 minutes of watching the groom's relatives walk around the house, we went on a little shopping tour.  We had lunch at Chevy's (it's a Mexican franchise restaurant.  It kicks ass over CPK or Olive Garden), and as Nicole was getting ready to pay the bill for us, I hear this high-pitched whistle (is there any other kind?),  and suddenly I had something on my head that turned out to be a sombrero and the waiters were singing some sort of birthday song.  I turned bright red and might have managed to pass into the infrared spectrum. 

So after some more shopping (I bought and got lots of neat clothes stuff, although I dunno why I do -- who's gonna notice?), we came back to get ready for the wedding, which was gonna be at her mom's house.  The wedding starts on time at 6, and about 50 of us sit through and watch it.  It was a mixed Jewish and Christian ceremony -- had a pastor and a theologian, a bible and a cuppa (sort of cloth overhang over the bridge and groom) and that glass thing they stomp on (in this case a light bulb --> very expensive).  It didn't feel like a real wedding to me because it wasn't that fancy, it didn't cost $30,000 to put on, and I didn't see anyone crying.  That was probably because it was Nicole's mom 3rd and Dick (that's homeboy's name)'s 4th.  Still, I thought weddings should be more sincere and emotional.  This is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, can't you get more worked up or decked out for it?

I did think it was surprisingly short, which turned out to be a nightmare in disguise -- after the wedding there's mingling and people and talking and, ugh, the things I fear. 

I freaked.  I didn't know anybody (besides Nicole and Jessica, who were busy doing what I should have been doing), almost all of them were at least 35 so I had nothing in common, and so I kind of kept walking around, trying not to stay in the same place for very long.  Then they poured champagne, and I tried to stay where I was hoping that no one would notice me.  Of course, Jessica notices me and hands me a glass.  I feigned sipping it, but then I was walking around with it, deciding if I was ready to drink it or not, since booze would at least make me more sociable.

I decided not to, left it on the bathroom, and took a walk.  After coming back for 30 minutes, noticing how well everyone was immixing, and talking with Nicole's great aunt, and feeling like a piece of furniture that has to keep getting moved so it doesn't get in the way,  I decided to get the hell outta there.  I drove around a lot, kept taking leaks on my old school (might be a Paxil side effect --> peeing a lot, not necessarily on my old school), and having Akiyo page me to let me know she was canceling our tentative dinner plans for Sunday, I ended up passing out in the car.  Having Akiyo cancel was the nail in the coffin for me for the nite.  The car  was cold and uncomfortable (kind of how people might describe me).  I dunno how anyone can sleep in a car.  Or have sex in one, at least with the top up, unless you're having sex with a midget or a four-year old. 

To make the rest of this boring story short, I drove around San Diego listening to Sarah McLachan and had breakfast at Denny's (my first) until Nicole and Jessica were ready to go to the airport to fly back to Berkeley.  I picked them up, and Nicole was cool with the whole thing -- she figured out why I disappeared and knew what I would do.  She's so smart.  I still feel like an asshole for doing it.  It's embarrassing, it's embarrassing for her, and I'll probably not get invited to another wedding for another 21 years.  It's extra-embarassing when compared to Jessica, who would be the definition of "extrovert" in a living dictionary.

So yeah, that was the trauma that was my weekend.  I am such an anti-social monster.  It felt like such a set-back, too: i hadn't seen Nicole in forever, and I wanted to impress her with what progress I've made in my life.  Instead, I make a hejira out of her house and sleep in my car like a bum.  It wasn't even my car, it was a rental car.  Whatever, if I can't manage to last three hours at a friend's mom's wedding, how can I manage...anything where I'm surrounded by strangers? 

I know, worrying about it is pointless, but then again so am I.   I dunno how I'm ever gonna change, and since I don't wanna be a hermit and never meet people, I'm sorta fucked here, too.  And it ruined, I ruined, what had been a perfectly great day until then, too.