The Valentine's Day Massacre

I view Valentine’s Day much like I do New Years Eve. I hate participating. Except this year I had a date. His name was Graham, and I had went to college with him. He was sweet and great, and of course I would end up messing it up, but this date was hilarity in the making. My friend Coco called me during the day, and asked if I would go out with her and some guy from her high school that was in town on business, and had asked her out. I told her that I had a date with Graham that night, but if she was uncomfortable, then she could come with us.
I stopped at my watering hole, Chili’s, on the way home and had a glass of wine. Graham called and told me that he had burned his balls while Nairing them. I would say that that story sets the tone for the evening.
Coco was buzzed by the time I got to her place, and then she and the boys did shots before leaking her apartment. We went to Sushi of Naples where our favorite sushi maker, Yoshi, was slaving away. (After our breakup, Sushi of Naples closed. Graham ran into Yoshi and apparently it is going to reopen under different management again. In my heart, although Graham and I are broken up, we share 50-50 custody of Yoshi if Sushi of Naples is ever to rise again. It is California after all). The sake was flowing like a sieve, and after deciding to ditch Coco’s lame date, we headed out to a few more bars.
To say that we needed a kid leash for Coco that night was an understatement. She would wander off while Graham and I were talking, and then we would have to look under tables, in bathrooms, and on the streets for her before she would wander back in from the abyss with a glazed look in her eye and an undesirable man on her arm.
We ended up going to Alex’s Bar in Long Beach. Basically the night would go like this: Graham and I would be talking, and someone would come up to us to let us know that Coco was in the photo booth posing. There would be no money in the booth for pictures, there would be a line of people wanting to take a picture, and Coco would refuse to get out. I was able to get Coco out of the photo booth, and then she walked onto their karaoke stage and started dancing with dimly lit fluorescent light fixtures. We managed to get her back into a seat at the bar (or maybe she wandered over there herself, I can’t recall).
Cut to, I was talking to Graham again, and one of his friends from the band Mars Volta walked up. Graham said hello, and the band member said, “Your friend just spit in my face.” Apparently Coco didn’t like this guy hitting on her so she spit her drink out in his face. And then came the best part of my evening (outside of being with Graham).
Graham and I were talking, but he was looking over in Coco’s direction. She sat there, glazed eyes and all, stirring her hundredth Jack & Coke, her feet up on the bar stool in front of her.
Graham: “She’s peeing.”
Sapphire: “What?”
Graham: “She’s peeing. And she’s making eye contact with me while she does it.”
I looked over and locked eyes with Coco who was in fact peeing while sitting in her bar stool. It was hypnotic. I couldn’t watch but I couldn’t turn away.
Graham: “Get her out of here.”
I put Coco in my backseat and drove to her house while Graham talked to the owner, who was left to mop up her urine.
I couldn’t figure out how to open Coco’s door, and she was even less help than I was. My phone was dead so I went home to wait for Graham. He came home, and said that he had had his cab stop by her place to make sure that she was OK. He said that no one was there. We went to bed, and then my phone rang one hour later.
Coco: “This is unacceptable.”
Sapphire: “Oh my. Are you still outside?”
Coco: “Unacceptable.”
We drove the half a mile to Coco’s house. I stayed in the car while Graham went up to Coco’s apartment to look for her. This is how he tells the end of this tale.
Graham: “She came up out of the darkness (oh, did I forget to mention that she was wearing a dress, but used an off the shoulder Pat Benatar shirt as a cover up from my back seat) with vomit on her shirt.” And this was how I spent my first and only Valentine’s Day with Graham.