when Ritsuko times out

Hey, that’s what it said on the flier.

Bist Du allein am Heiligen Abend? Hast du lust, in internationale Runde zusammen zu sein? Dann bist Du bei uns herzlich eingeladen.

So as you can see, it really was a Christmas party for lonely people. We wished each other Merry Christmas, being the freeloading atheists who were too poor to go home and had no family here, and while everybody else drank beer, I drank tea (almost spelt beer the German way there).

I met a Chinese group, every one of them from Mainland China. I went in and started to make friends with them (easy because I speak Chinese and I am ethnically Chinese). I couldn’t remember all their names, but there was this guy called Dong Zheng, who promptly offered to invite me to many events in exchange for my phone number (no, he wasn’t trying to pick me up. He’s the organizer). Thanks to him, I can now find some events for my band to perform in.

Then his girlfriend pointed out that there were Japanese behind me. I looked – and said, yeah, I guess. And she said ‘why not go pick one up?’ And I took another look and said: ‘eh, not good looking enough.’

But then after scratching my head for a while, the bad boy within me arose from his 30 year slumber and started to goad me on. And that was without a single drop of alcohol – well, maybe half a bottle of beer – and so I went and talked to her. We found many things in common – music, knowledge of Japanese culture, yukata, she comes from Shizuoka, and whatnot. I met one of her friends – she seemed to be Japanese, and I questioned her to that effect. But apparently she wasn’t Japanese at all – apparently all the people who looked Japanese except the one I was talking to were actually Russian. Did Japanese originally come from Russia, or from China as they say? Is Japan a morphed form of Russian culture? Well in any case, after this I had two cups to juggle…  the Chinese friends, my Japanese friend with a whole cohort of Russian friends I haven’t properly talked to yet, Ozzie (who was there for some reason – and incredibly enough, he didn’t recognize the girl who introduced us in the first place, who wasn’t there), and even Dil was there with his buddy Paolo, which was a big surprise, because I thought he would be off busy sending a package to his mom.

The feeling you get when you meet a close friend unexpectedly at a gathering is very unique. We were loud and bantering the first couple minutes. I wonder what kind of impression I made on the girls – it seemed like I knew almost everybody there. I even struck up a good relationship with the barkeepers. I even left my PSP with them and asked them to play some Glenn Miller songs on my PSP, but they said ‘Jazz? no way, no way that’s going on our speakers’… and I said ‘techno?’ and they said ‘fuck no’, and so I had to settle for good old Detroit Metal City’s SATSUGAI. Boy, it sounded good, but the point of getting them to play my songs was so I could ask Girl Y to dance (by this time, the Japanese girl was making out with some guy who seemed to know all the girls in the room, and I focused my lines towards Girl Y instead, which wasn’t that hard, because she looked better than the Japanese), and you just can’t dance to metal, you see. Especially not metal from Detroit Metal City. But I think they were impressed that I had jazz and metal on the same memory stick. I also think that mentioning that I play piano and guitar and I can sing (that’s why I had to drink the tea, not alcohol) had a positive effect. Oh, and of course, I can speak 6 languages, including Japanese. That helped too.

There was an event in which you had to sing a Christmas song in your own language in order to get a gift, and I spent a couple minutes arguing with Japanese girl and Girl Y about which song to sing, when suddenly Girl Y stood up with a Russian girl next to her and started to sing something. Some song. It’s Russian, I suppose. Traitor, I said. But it didn’t matter because by and by, it seemed they had too many gifts, and I obtained a stick of marzipan (mmm, nice stuff), which I shared with the girls (oh, and the Chinese group too). When I returned to the Chinese group, Dong Zheng observed that I was getting friendly with the girls and I said ‘why else do you think I’m here?’

But by and by, as I alt-tabbed between these three (occasionally four with the barkeepers included, since I talked so much I seriously needed a lot of tea to get my throat from going out) groups, Dil decided that he had enough and wanted to go home. It was 2330, and I asked why – he said he liked R&B, they were playing nothing but crappy pop (and I had to agree on that, but hey, I played my song on the speakers, wasn’t that good enough for him) – and so he was going home.

Home!? I said. No way I’m going home. I’ve spent the last 18 years of my life celebrating (well, more like waiting for Christmas to pass by) Christmas at home, and I’m not about to start doing that now, no, not with Girl Y around. So I just said bye to him and Paolo. Well, it was fun for me, and now I had one less group to alt-tab to. And when I came back, I found the Chinese group gone. Eventually Dong Zheng from the Chinese group came back, and he told me that he went off to see his friends away.

By and by this guy from Iran came around, and it seemed he was trying to pick up Girl Y. This is where all those tips from sosuave.com and David DeAngelo (god, how long ago was that) and Ryan Clauson came in handy (the last two, BTW, also brought more spam into my GMail, well at least GMail’s spam filter is good). While he was complimenting her body, clothes (I asked – don’t you want to wear skimpy clothes, after having to wear so many layers of clothes in cold Russia/Siberia, as she liked to say instead), I was dissing her teeth, her skin, her body, but… her hair? yeah, I guess her hair’s good enough. German Philology? ‘We could NEVER go out’, said I, copying word for word (I usually paraphrase) the good old Prized line with rubato for good measure. And on top of that, I took short breaks, out into the night to breathe the fresh air and stare at the night, time out to talk with the bartenders and ridicule them on their paltry selection of Beatles songs, time out for the bathroom, and time out for more tea. I drank about 8 cups of tea that night, 5 of them with the same teabag.

Then by and by, I don’t know what happened, but I somehow got kissed on the cheek. By the Iranian. I couldn’t kiss him back, naturally, in front of Girl Y and everything, who was busy talking in Dong Zheng’s direction. Do they do this in Iran? I kissed my fingers and pressed them to his cheek. That should be enough.

Pretty soon he was resting his hand on my knee, and smoking right in front of me, which I hated, but I tried to pass that off as being afraid of his ‘homosexual’ advances, much to the amusement of Girl Y and Dong Zheng. One time, he tried to feed me some chocolate. I had to refuse, naturally. I managed to turn that around, by asking the girls if they thought bishounen ai was cute. They just kept on laughing, so I shoved the chocolate into his mouth like I was feeding some cute animal and scratched him on his chin. That did it – even though the Iranian guy would move in close to touch her and all that, I could tell Girl Y was paying attention to me from now on. I made sure a couple times by attempting to speak German and looking at her for help. It worked. The attempting to speak a foreign language thing really helps with girls! Woohoo!

Then there was a photo taking session. The Iranian guy got a shot in with Girl Y at first, and it seemed he only wanted pictures with him+Girl Y in it. Then of course, he couldn’t act greedy, so I had a shot with the Japanese girl and Girl Y flanking me. Dong Zheng just had to get in the picture. Garrr. Well, he was keeping her busy while I acted disinterested and alt-tabbing, so I need to thank him (he already has a girlfriend, see). And then the Iranian guy wanted another picture, but as fortune may have it, it ran out of battery and there were no other AAs around that had enough juice left. La dee la dee da.

I alt-tabbed to the Russian girl whose camera we used and her boyfriend, and I somehow managed to insinuate that he was getting jealous because I was fiddling around with her camera and asking her to send the pictures to me, upon which he promptly denied so in a joking way (I followed it up with a raised eyebrow, joking, of course) and gave me his email address, much to his girlfriend’s amusement.

Afterwards, I had the bright idea of sitting in Dong Zheng’s chair (while he was still in it, naturally), and Girl Y was really laughing now, and she asked me why – to which I replied: Dong Zheng’s more attractive than the Iranian guy. I asked her if she thought so too (hidden question, you see, just to make sure she isn’t that into him, even though I could see the signs). And really, it was such a relief to get away from the cigarette smoke. He even blew some into my face too, which wasn’t that great. Well now everything’s hanky panky, I’m in the same direction in which Girl Y’s directing her conversation, we exchanged emails (she didn’t give hers to the Iranian), discussed music taste (the Iranian offered to listen to my music, I asked him if he liked jazz, and Girl Y said ‘I don’t think so’, which was in the same vein as what a certain girl who hadn’t a high opinion of me said before) and I just managed to convince her that I was lesbian and that she was totally gay when the party was announced to be ending soon.

Now, having walked three kilometres with an injured knee (obtained by falling off my bike, thus totally screwing it up) for an hour, I wasn’t in a hurry to get back again, you see. It was only 2am, and I had just gotten my cup of tea refilled for the umpteenth time. Fortunately, Dong Zheng (whatever would I do without him, and I just met him that night) brought up the bright idea of going back with Girl Y. Apparently, she came here with someone else’s car. And it turned out to be the guy who was making out with the Japanese girl.

I had to thank him. It seemed that he was a Don Juan, a real Don Juan, and he seemed to tolerate my presence because I was a hit with Girl Y and to a lesser extent, the Russian girl whose boyfriend’s email I had obtained. Loud R&B music, crazy driving, dancing while sitting down (the girls really seemed to enjoy themselves around him), and one girl for each guy in the car meant that the ride home was over very quickly.

I didn’t ask for her number at all, or I would be found out.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was probably the second best party I ever went to.