"Of course the night only got better when the married straight girl quoted Morrissey to me. Morrissey. To me. From a straight girl."

Someone's Tweet tonight reminded me of that quote. It was from a friend of mine late one night at the late and lamented (by some*), Chapel Hill bar, Henry's. He had just ditched a party full of lesbians and one straight girl and was suitably vaincu.

Of course, it being Chapel Hill, odds were she was probably bi, at least that night, but quoting Moz to a gay Chapel Hill indie kid like Christopher really was bearing coals to Newcastle. He claimed he had repaired to Henry's for round two of the night's stab at amour, but I suspected he remembered I was going to be there and felt I would be a consoling audience. No idea where he got /that/ from, but it turned out to be a moot point in the end**.

It was about this time of year, I think, sort of the last hurrah of summer. We were drinking gin and tonics -- and, come to think of it, just merry enough to insist on calling them ginantonix in honour of Douglas Adams, who had died in the not too distant past -- because we figured it would be one of the last nights of the year to warrant them.

I think we moved indoors about half past twelve or one o'clock, when the first wave of our friends left the christmas-tree-lit ficus trees and patio table we were at. We switched to vodka 'round about the time we realised that Neil, the local heart-throb cum bartender cum bassist, was tending bar.

We were talking Shelley. Mary, not Percy, and I was trying to make Valperga seem a great deal more interesting than it is. He was trying to convince me to read her mother's Letters from Norway, and wouldn't be convinced I had, even when I quoted the last paragraph from Letter VIII:

What a long time it requires to know ourselves; and yet almost every one has more of this knowledge than he is willing to own, even to himself. I cannot immediately determine whether I ought to rejoice at having turned over in this solitude a new page in the history of my own heart, though I may venture to assure you that a further acquaintance with mankind only tends to increase my respect for your judgment and esteem for your character.

I had used it as the introduction to a production of Williams' The Glass Menagerie; I still thinks it works for that.

You know, this post was supposed to wend itself around and come to a posting of the lyrics of the Rosebud's "El Camino", but I think I'll save that for next time.

*Eric, of course, who lives there now, is one. I'm sure we're not the only two.

**I think I went home with Chris when we both realized neither of us would be escorting Neil home.