Yesterday, I Jenny G picked me up and we drove around Austin looking for places. First we sat around Jo's coffee shop, wich was really a shack on the side of a downtown road. We tried to sit there and have a pleasant afternoon in the sun, but it was incredibly windy. So after a few minutes we retreated to her car. There was a small fence in front of us and we sat there and watched the monarch butterflies for a while. After a while we noticed that there were quite a number of butterflies, and it reminded me of a story I wrote long ago called "A Lot of Pretty is Bad".
Texas monarch butterfly. Not to be confused with the its Mullerian mimics, the
queen butterfly and viceroy butterflyHaving satisfied our desire to be outside for a while, next on the list was to find a place called Buffalo Billiards so we could play pool. Jenny G had seen it the night before, but she was lost when she was found it and couldn't find it again. At one point she thought she saw it, so we got out of the car, she paid the parking meter, we walked down the street, and of course it wasn't there. So we wandered down toward the area of Emo's where I had seen a few bars on Sunday night. We wandered into the Red Eyed Fly, but it being around 4 in the afternoon, it wasn't open yet. Rats. It was started to get annoying when most places we found were closed. We had money, we wanted to get loaded, but we couldn't find anywhere to give our money to. Ah, it's nice to not be working on a Tuesday afternoon. Eventually we stumbled upon the Casino el Camino, which Jenny G had heard about, and it turned out that they opened at 4. It was 4:05, so we headed in, bought two $1.75 Lonestar beers, and went upstairs. It's a pretty big place, with three pool tables upstairs, a lot of seating, and then a garden out back, complete with a fountain featuring some sort of Mexican idol. Most of the bar's decoration took the form of flames and various demonic or dark imagery, which we thought was pretty cool. The walls were also embedded with large fake jewels, which gave them a sort of Land of the Lost feeling to me. Anyway, we had a few drinks, had a few laughs, took a few pictures, and played some pool. I won, three games to two. I was on a roll, up two to zero, until I spilled half my beer on the table. Then I missed a straight shot on the 8 ball, and she took it. But a good time was had by all.
Jen, frenching the odd idol in the back garden of the Casion el Camino
Me, taking the idol from behind. The setting looked of a Brady Bunch vacation
Contemplating. I totally took her to school.
The red light on the booth table.
Lining that shit up
Portrait of us in the Casino El Camino, upstairs.So then I went back to her house, and waited for Doug to come pick me up. I won over her dog with some of the beef jerky I had, but like a buncha wild animals, Linc and another of the dogs kept coming back for more. I figured they'd like it, since it's only a step or two above dog food anyway. So Doug showed up soon, and we drove to a Tex-Mex restaurant called Chuy's. Chuy's also suffered from the poor neon-sign upkeep that is endemic in Austin. Also, for some reason the place was festooned with Elvis paraphernalia. But the food was outrageously good. One of my bigger complaints about New York is the lack of good, cheap Mexican or Tex-Mex food. When I think of this kind of food, I imagine a plate full of rice and meat and cheese and corn tortillas, and this is what I got. Nice bucks was a little pricey, but for the amount of food I got it was well worth it. By the end of the meal I was having trouble breathing. Over dinner we discussed such things as the Cobra Kai from the Karate Kid, urination problems, and various aspects of the military. A good time had by all.
So then we drove up a hill to a spot looking over Austin. It was something of a make-out place, which of course probably led to some sideways glances of me and Doug. Texas, you know. Anyway, it was pretty dark and kind of creepy, but once we got to the top, it was a nice serene setting. There was no moon, so it was pretty dark, with little light coming from the city. But the sky was crystal clear, and I felt compelled to state that, indeed, "the stars at night/are big and bright."After dinner, we stopped briefly at Best Buy, where I bought the extended version of the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Doug asked me why I had to buy it today, and I tried to come up with a real reason, which I kind of did, but in reality I just wanted to buy it as soon as possible. It was calling to me. It's my... well, you know. Then we came home, and Doug's ladyfriend came over, and we shot the shit for a while about terrible things we've done in the past, ex-girlfriends and boyfriends, and then we watched Queer Eye on Bravo for two hours. Interesting watching that show with a Texas crowd.
And now I'm sitting here, waiting for Jenny G to come pick me up. I have a 3:40 flight out of Austin, then to Atlanta, then to Newark, where it is cold, windy, and rainy. Sweet. It's sunny and in the 60's here. Anyway, we're going to have lunch, make a last ditch effort to find me a hat, and then she'll drop me off at the airport. Still have an hour to wait though. And it just occured to me that instead of doing this, I could be watching the Two Towers. So off we go...