I tell the story now, because the pictures are gonna turn up eventually anyway.

Alright, here’s what happened Friday night. For starters, I picked up S/A in the afternoon so that she and I could go get birthday gifts for Mary, since her birthday party was at 8 that night. The birthday party was actually for her and someone else, and they’d been promoting it for a while. “Rollergeddon” to be held at a local skating rink. After some browsing and much deliberation at the Galleria, S/A decided we should go to the bookstore near Whole Foods, to see if the PostSecret book was available for sale. It was, we got it, decided to put both our names on it so birthday shopping stress could end. Then S/A had the idea that we should find a sweet postcard on the rack at bookstore since it could double as a birthday card and bookmark. I found one that depicted the front face of a liquor store that said “Jesus. . . Thank you Jesus” across the top and said “COLD BEER” on the door. Words do not do it justice, I assure you. So we got that one. After we checked out, we went to Dollar Tree for a gift bag, and other miscellany. S/A found a sweet bag that had a card shaped like a lemon attached and was green and yellow with the words “This gift is not a lemon.” all over it. It was pretty sweet.
Gift complete. S/A is so good at this stuff.
We went to Houlihan’s for food since we needed to eat and had time left to go before the party (it only took us about two hours to go from start to total gift package finish). I told S/A my awful story about Houlihan’s, and declared their chicken fingers “above average.” Then we went to the party.
I called Ogre for directions, since I figured he’d be there. He was, and as I expected he was able to get the directions from a nearby person. Following the directions, and then J called. :) I got to describe my irrational panic at the situation. not the party, it’s actually something completely different. My concern subsided eventually, and I feel that I was fully in the right all along. I will not relate that particular incident here.
Shortly thereafter, we arrived at the skating rink. Oh man, it was a blast. I skated more than anybody — S/A can corroborate this. There are details to the party experience, but I’m not sure which would be best to include, so I move on to what will surely be more interesting. A bit before the party ended, Mary invited S/A and I back to (the party after the party?)her apartment, where a few people would be meeting up to hang out for a while longer (we had to vacate the place of skate at midnight.)
This is where things really get. . . entertaining. There’s no way that “long story short, I put on a skirt” is going to be considered an acceptable summary, so here’s the whole story.
We were all sitting around, hanging out, watching the fensler films and Invader Zim. Then no more episodes of invader Zim were being played, so the gathering was experiencing something of a void in terms of focus. Mary asks if anyone wants to put on this red frilly skirt she has. I keep quiet so as not to draw attention to myself, since I can predict that she will begin to pester me about it. She is somewhat persistent in matters such as this. Then for some reason, Mary tells me that I want to put on the skirt. I disagree. Then she puts it to a vote. “Josh wants to put on the skirt” passes almost unanimously, and she calls me into the next room to don me now the gay apparel. Once I have the skirt on, Mary decides that it doesn’t go with the jeans I am wearing it over, and hands me a pair of pink bloomers telling me to step into their rather large closet and take off the jeans, and put on the bloomers. I guess you could say it was my desire to maintain peace and not fight what I knew would be a losing battle that caused me to resist basically not at all. So then I had on bloomers and a frilly layered red skirt with no real pants. When I step out of the rather large closet, which they call “Narnia,” Mary tells me that the shirt doesn’t work with the skirt, and I tell her that I was just thinking that I needed a different top. She gave me this stretchy, shiny, black off-the-shoulder thing, then paraded me in front of everyone. Laughs were had. Pictures taken. Then makeup was suggested. Again, it started simple. I mean. I’d worn eyeliner before, so I knew that it wasn’t so bad. Once they had me sitting though, it was hard to say no to the mascara. More pictures. Now shiny red lip gloss, more pictures. Then it’s decided that my boobs are too small, so Mary fetches another top. This one burgundy, with built in support, and my cups are stuffed with ankle socks to provide me with a “B” cup, which S/A said would be the perfect size, after establishing that no socks would get me made fun of for having small boobs. Then the black top is put on over the burgundy one, so now I have burgundy straps visible really tying together the look into something Mary called “Two dollar hooker.” Then this other guy who apparently has more experience with this sort of thing dressed up in a skirt and tight girl-shirt. Pictures were taken with the two of us. A couple of them feature him groping my “boobs.” Then began the game of “not only am I a two dollar hooker, but Mary is my decidedly abusive pimp.” She decides that Ogre outranks her in the pimp hierarchy, and that he therefore has “use” of her property. Picture of Ogre holding me like carrying across the threshold. I should really wrap this story up, even though there are more details. Fell asleep in the tent in the kitchen. Woke up sore on the sides from the underwire’s digging. A few people who had spent the night hung out for a while, then Sarah needed to go to work, so we said goodbye.
That was fun.