Went for martinis last night.

I went for martinis again last night. There were these four middle-aged lesbians sitting at the bar next to me and my friend, one from Antigua, one from Ireland, one from Mexico, and one from the U.S., and they were all excited since they had stand-by tickets for Ellen. They were there for quite a while, and all got pretty hammered. When the bar-people turned Idol on so everyone could watch results, the Mexican woman was on her third martini, and when Brooke got voted off and started crying and was started singing a deep, smoky version of "I Am I Said" as her farewell song, the Mexican woman's face was just stricken, and you could see tears welling up in her eyes, and she was like "But I love Brooke" out loud to no one in particular.

When on her second martini, my friend who I went out with was like, "Is it just me, or is Ryan Seacrest the biggest tool in America?"

Also, the American lesbian introduced me to their friend who's a tarot card reader, and she comes in Tuesdays/Thursdays/Sundays and gets a small private table in this alcove near the door and does readings all night for patrons.

I thought that was interesting, since the last time I went for martinis me and my friend met at the bar these two bleached blonde, tanned women in their 30s who were decently hammered, and after I told them about my Iowa trip, the one started telling me about how once when she was in college she couldn't breathe and had this huge pressure on her heart as well this overwhelming compulsion to drive home (she lived like an hour away from home) and check on her dad even though he should be at work, even though she could have just pulled over and easily called from a phone booth or something, and when she got there, he was in his easy chair with his hand on his heart and he started crying when he saw her and all he could do was say her name over and over and thank her for coming because he was so weak he couldn't get out of the chair, and she called the ambulance and went to the hospital with him, and at some point during all that she could breathe again and no longer had the pain in her chest, since it disappeared once she got in contact with her dad right then.

As it turned out, too, her dad had a large tumor over his heart and died within the year, but she considers that experience of hers as a gift to her from somewhere before he died, since that brought them closer in a way that even knowing he would die wouldn't have, since from the moment she showed up when he was in the chair he knew that someone had brought her to him.