The first night she was here, we went to a bar with the Sean(e) crowd. I had carefully arranged to have an event going on so that she would know how I am happening and fun and have many likeable friends. (Later I blew this casual coolness by accidentally referencing the fact that I had planned the event myself. The sad truth is, I am never invited anywhere. And am happy about this.) After two margaritas I got in line to break the seal and was happily leaning against the wall where Ellie’s childhood picture hangs (even back then she was a hottie) when the big-haired Texan behind me started talking. We had one of those We’re All Drunk We’re All Girls We’re All In Line We All Have To Pee Like A Racehorse Isn’t This Fun I Feel Really Close To You conversations. Then somehow she was really close to me. She just kept edging nearer and nearer. Which is why I was not as surprised as I might have been when she darted into the single stall bathroom after me.

The way this bathroom is set up: it’s like a house bathroom in that it’s one room, but there’s kind of a Chinese half-screen thing separating the toilet from the sink. It gives you the kind of intimacy you’re prepared to have with your girlfriends when drunk and peeing – together, still conversing while doing your thing, but no one’s actually watching you. It’s a little more intimacy than I was prepared for with the big-haired Texan though. I mean it’s not like she ducked around the screen and watched me. But as people go, I just am not what you call warm. I take a long long time to get physically comfortable enough with someone to where I am happy about hugging them or peeing in their presence. For example, I’ve known Michele since sixth grade and only became comfortable cuddling with her a few years ago.

I realize this story should properly end with her cornering me as I was re-adjusting my thong and trying to get a little dido action. It doesn’t though. I waited for her to pee and then returned to my group. Feel free to incorporate the beginning part into your fantasy life, though, and choose your own ending. Now I’m going to write about the zoo.

We went to the zoo with Jason Shamai and the Lad. It was raining and late and no one but only no one was around, which as you know is ideal when it comes to zooing.

Here’s the best part: the Lion House. This consists of little lion apartments that have doors opening out into the outside lion enclosure. Two lions, both a little sick, were hanging out in their apartments, and also a tiger. We were the only ones in the lion house, and we stood very close to the cages. I’ve never been so close to a lion before, or any large predator. Eventually their lack of activity and depressing circumstances palled, so we quit poking them and started to leave. At the door we turned around. Both lions were standing perfectly still at the bars of their cages. Staring at us. It was an extreme Ray Bradbury moment. I was terrified. (I am also terrified when I stand in front of the saber-toothed tiger statue on the UC Campus. I am a timid thing.)

Again, this is a story without a good ending, but let’s say for drama’s sake that the doors to the lions’ cages swung suddenly open and they both leapt out and came streaking across the floor at us, faster than we dreamed possible, and the only things which saved us were these: that the lions’ muscles had atrophied from the years of boredom and enclosure; that while the three of us were poking meanly at them, kind Jason Shamai had been befriending the tiger in a Saint Francis way; that now Mr. Shamai flung open the tiger’s cage whose keys he had luckily lifted from the pocket of a game keeper whose wallet he had been aiming for; that the tiger sprung out in front of the lions to defend his new Francis pal and while they were fighting it out to the death the four of us made our escape and went to watch the hippos yawn at each other. Let’s say.