I took a small vacation to Chicago last week.  Just an overnight.  I stayed at a swank hotel, wandered the city, and ate a lot of amazing food.  I also learned about “bulletproof” coffee (what a fuckin’ joke!  You can’t combine two things and then they magically have powers to burn your fat when they didn’t have those abilities separately!  I sure do like butter, though!  And coffee!  Together?  Wtf are you thinking?!).

It was enough of a break that when I came back to work I felt invigorated.  All the underlying bullshit that goes on with this job became more tolerable.  I didn’t snip at people immediately when they were being jerks, instead I tilted my head and more-than-politely asked what they were talking about.  I had the energy to lead conversations out of danger-zones instead of just yelling at someone for putting us there in the first place.  I was, frankly, nicer this past weekend.  It had a lot to do with my trip to Chicago, and probably more than a little to do with the shift in weather.

Spring is in the air, and people are loving it.  Runners are out with their dogs, people are smiling more, total strangers are complementing my hair.  I haven’t gotten it cut in over 5 months.  People in general are smiling more and being NICE to each other.  FOR NO REASON other than it’s gorgeous outside!

Moving along…  The main story I have from this last weekend is a double bachelor party ride two and from the strip club.  It started out as a party of 10 (they had more, but only 10 were going to the club).  I got assigned to it, being a 6-loader minivan, and one of our prius got the other 4.  On the way there, they were fun and friendly.  The man who sat in my front seat was the cat-herder of the group, for which I was grateful.  It sucks when I’m sitting and waiting for people who don’t have their shit together and are trying to figure out where the rest of their party is without much motivation.  When an extra person tried to fit themselves into the van and I put my foot down about it, everyone was understanding and didn’t make a fuss.  He got out and we moved along.

During the long ride to the west side, there was a lot of easy banter.  They mentioned that their hotel room had two kegs in it (the man in the front seat was a home brewer and had his own kegs).  The bellman at the hotel had stopped them on their way up to the room so he could get a photo of these professional partiers with their supplies.  They also mentioned lightly that they were all straight, but they’d gone to the local gay dance bar the night before and boogied their butts off.  They all agreed it was a blast, but they hadn’t mentioned more than the one casual time that they were straight.  They didn’t mention if they were dancing with girls or guys, just dancing with each other.  It was refreshingly free of homophobia or reassurance of straightness.

The ride home from the strip club several hours later was a completely different animal.  Originally the call was for 5 people, but there were only 3 ready to leave.  One was one of the bachelors and he was pooped.  He wasn’t sloppy drunk, just tired and ready to hit the hay.  The man in the front seat was the same cat-herder as before, and he protested.  “Nonono!  We have some kegs in the room!  Time to rally!”  The bachelor said his version of rallying was to nap and prepare for the next day of hangover.

Conversation lead through to how the guy in the front seat used to be roommates with someone in the back seat, and how his cats were great, but would sit on your face and wake you up too early in the morning.  Bachelor #1 agreed, and that it was a total dick move.   He also had a cat who would do that.  “Samuel L. Catson is a DICK!”  Cat-herder exclaimed.  He followed it up with, “he’s a pretty cool cat, except for the face-sitting.”

Now, I’m not sure exactly how conversation lead into this next subject.  I think it was a bit of carry over from the ride TO the strip club, but some of these dudes like to snapchat their balls to each other.  I mentioned how I sometimes poopchat my friends (I don’t send photos of my poop, but of my face as I’m pooping), but they topped it with actual photos of balls.  Now that I’m talking about it, the cat thing had led to talk about someone’s dog eatting cat poop, then went to the poopchat topic, then went to the ballchat topic.  Drunk people are weird and totally stream-of-consciousness.

So then the bachelor chimes in with how sometimes, to be extra funny and over-the-top, some of their group will get together and take photos of their balls touching and send that photo through text to other friends in their social circle.  He bragged about the last time they had SIX BALLS TOUCHING!  He BRAGGED about this.  I was trying to work out the logistics of if as he added, “you know, we just hold our wieners and then stick our balls out.”

This might have been the most positive, non-homophobic, non-gay, and non-sexual discussion of balls touching in the entire world.  I couldn’t stop laughing about it for hours!  These dudes were totally goofy and awesome.  I don’t want them to know my phone number.