P.D.A.

Gooski's rules: No P.D.A., no wagging of tongues while saddled-up to the bar. Punishment for your infraction: Being spit-balled and loudly heckled by the grossed-out, blacking-out bar flys. I've heard a couple or two has been shown the door by the bouncer for necking in the dark, cave-like booths that line the side wall. Me and some girl once got ketchup packets chucked at us and a stern warning from the bartender to cool it or take it home. Her head was resting on my shoulder. We sheepishly apologized, finished our drinks, and took it home.

But tonight I'm not at Gooski's, I'm not even in Pittsburgh. Tonight we're at some hip karaoke-sushi bar in SE, D.C. Tonight those rules don't apply.

Weirdos

I tell A. that I sleep in a sleeping bag, in bed, every night. "I've got one for every season: zero-, twenty-, and forty-degree; winter, spring and fall, summer."

She says it's weird. "Girls don’t like that," she says. "Don't do that."

I shrug my shoulders and tell her it's not weird, it keeps the gas bill low.

A. is forty-eight years old, divorced, has two kids, and is dating my pal B., who's thirty-one. Some might think that's weird.

In the last month the first girl whose boobs I touched got married, the girl I lost my virginity to got married, the girl I spent a majority of my senior year of college obsessing over got married, and my best friend from elementary school through high school had his second kid. I'm twenty-nine, I haven't been in a relationship that's lasted more a month in five years, I don't mind that my dog sleeps on the furniture, I haven't kissed a girl in six months, and I sleep in a sleeping bag every night.

I'm not the weirdo, you are.