It's my birthday and I'll whine if I want to....

Some friends invited me out last hight to an actual gay bar. That's right. A gay bar. In West Hollywood. On a Saturday night.

You may be asking yourself "but Pans... where would someone ask you to go on a Saturday night? The fights? A Lakers game? Spearmint Rhino Gentlemans Club?". Well, okay you're right (I will however shoot you a really withering look for asking...). It's not that it's soooo out of the ordinary, it's just that I haven't been to one in years. I spent the better part of the 80's and the 90's in them, closing out the bar and looking for my next after-party. I had my group of party-hearty friends, I had a Rage gold card and knew a lot of people who did a lot of partying. Then I just...... stopped. Why?

It was BORING.

That's right, boring. When it comes down to it, it gets boring. The people who do it are boring. When I did it, I was boring. I was bored with being boring, being nice to bores in the hope that they'd invite me to the "cool" after-party.

There was also the drugs. Crystal was coming in big time. I'm no angel, but I like to sleep, and anything that is going to keep me from doing so is not high on my list of things to do. Staying up for three days straight is not my idea of the perfect vacation. (That would be Vin Diesel feeding me Tuescher on Anachini sheets and telling me how gorgeous I am before rocking me to sleep in our heavily air conditioned suite. And a bottle of Musc Kublai Khan. Just in case you're thinking of a birthday present) My friends were getting heavily into it. I tried it once and hated it. My friends and I drifted apart. I ended up seeing one of them years later as he was leaving a bar at 5pm or so. I was on my way home from work: he crossed in front of my car. He'd lost about thirty pounds that he could ill afford. My sun visor was down and I was wearing glasses (and let's be honest, about 25 extra pounds) and I didn't call out to him, although the top was down on my car. I felt horrible- this was someone that I used to really love. But the last encounter I had with him was really frightening- it was near another birthday, and he'd clearly been up for days. He wished me a happy birthday and proceeded to tell that the nuclear holocaust was coming, and when it did, not to let the men take me down into the caverns, because they would fit my arms and legs with machines and force me to work 24/7, etc. His appearance didn't lead me to believe that he was clean and sober (that and walking out of the Spike at 5.30 pm).

Now you might be asking yourself "when is Pans going to get to the point?" Whippersnapper....

The point is that my friends took me to this gay bar and I could not wait to leave. It was too noisy, too crowded, the music was meh, the crowd was either "I'm too sexy for my shirt" or to screechy. The drinks were overpriced, I had to yell to be heard and, well, there was the matter of that 25 lbs. I was so relieced when they wanted to leave.

The nicest thing was that my friends could not believe that I was actually the age that I am.

I suppose I'll give it another shot. Just get me back to power yoga for a month first. That's Pansy, chronological age $5, mental age 16.