Weed, Rebecca and Wine.

It was a Saturday night, and my friend's Mary, Ira and Jeff were throwing a party at their house in the Oakland, CA. For some reason, whenever these three friends threw a party it was always a great time. I felt at home there. After being there for an hour or so, Mary turned to me and asked if I wanted to go smoke some weed in the bedroom and I gladly accepted. Let me interject that when I was in college I was a habitual pot smoker. Although I was a functioning pothead and would never smoke until I was done with classes and finished with my homework, I smoked every day for over four years. After I graduated, I moved to Surrey England for a small period of time and didn't know where to get weed so I took a break. When I came back home and started smoking again it had a completely different effect on me. I’d get paranoid and think that everyone wanted to stab me and whatnot. So, unless I felt completely comfortable and safe I wouldn’t smoke. However, this was one of those times that I felt completely comfortable. So I went into the room and a group of us smoked a joint. I felt good and walked out onto the large deck and garden area to have a cigarette and then I headed to the kitchen to grab a Mojito refill (the signature drink of the evening LA TE DA!).

As I was approaching the kitchen I noticed a group of girls I had met before at a prior party standing near the table. One of the girls was Rebecca Stein. My unspoken hero. I had met her a couple months after moving to San Francisco and liked her immediately. Her attributes included but were not limited to:

1) Ballsy
2) Walking into a room and instantly raising the energy.
3) Extremely outgoing without being obnoxious
4) Having strong opinions but being far from judgmental
5) Being friends with all kinds of different people.
6) Having no qualms making a move on a man she was interested in.

I have to admit, it was quality number six that bumped her from someone
I would like to become friends with to someone whose picture I put candles around and chanted to at night. No, not really. I found quality number six so astounding because I myself had a bit to be desired in the category of men. Hitting on a guy in my world consisted of two strategies. The first was a strategy where I would ignore the man I was interested in. This strategy was used on those whom had no idea I existed. Right. Strategy number two was for those men whom I was convinced knew I liked them and therefore would be downright mean to. Brilliant. O.K., enough of my dating advice to all the single readers out there and back to Rebecca. The issue with Rebecca Stein was that she just didn't seem to like me. At all. This turned my general interest in this girl to a bit of an obsession where I was dead set on making her like me. Hey, easy, this blog is called “I Have Issues” for a reason.

On the way to refill my Mojioto the weed started to kick in. There were two people standing in front of the ‘Mojito station’ if you will, so I decided to just have wine because it was easily accessible. I poured myself a glass of red and some guy I had never met started talking to me about the intricacies of wine. This was pre-‘Sideways’ where most people still didn’t say much about wine or scream "I aint drinking any fucking Merlot". I found what he had to say quite interesting. He then asked if I liked white wines. Pause. There were a number of things I thought of discussing. I started to think about how most of my friends from home drank white Zinfandel from a box. I thought about how I had spent many nights over a year ago draining box after box sobbing about a recent breakup which had briefly made me insane. (HEY, I’m much more sane now...well...no I'm not.) In fact, the smell of any white wine alone took me back to those days and made me want to curl up in a fetal position and sob like a small child. What good friends I had to listen to me night after night. Wow, I can’t believe that was a year ago...

“Okaaaay, cheers!” said the guy who had asked me about the white wine. Then he promptly walked briskly away. I just smiled and watched his back and wondered how long he had been standing there waiting for my reply before throwing in the towel. Great, apparently another fun filled side effect that weed had on me post England was daydreaming, in public, in the middle of conversations. I was trying to figure out if I was the most embarrassing person I know when I spotted Mary, thank god.

I walked over and stood beside her facing the room. "I'm all sorts of high", I said. "Yeah! Me too", said Mary and smiled at someone to my left. I looked over to see Rebecca Stein walking towards us. She was staring directly at me and a grin wrapped around her face. Everything was moving in slow motion. If I had a soundtrack to my life the song "You Light Up My Life" would have been playing.

"Hey, Dee. Hey Mary" she said.
"Steiny!" yelled Mary.

The two embrased. I stood and watched. I am many things; however, a premature hugger I am not. I know when I have reached that point in a relationship and Rebecca and I were not there yet. She looked at me and could see that I was trying to say something. I had noticed she too was drinking red wine. Should I say something about the guy from before or might it be better to say something about the Mojitos? They were quite refreshing really. The longer I waited the more panicked I became. I couldn’t have this huge pause only to come out with "hello" and I certainly could not play the part of mute girl twice in a matter of minutes. I had to say something witty, funny or at the very least something original. Between my confusion of which alcoholic beverage to comment on, the weed I had smoked and my excitement of Rebecca’s full on acknowledgement of me I was completely flummoxed. After what seemed to be an entire minute of silence I broke out and yelled "Mojitos!" loudly enough for everyone in the kitchen area to look over at me. My right arm had thought I was going for the story about the random guy asking me about white wines and so it pointed towards the kitchen counter and bottles of wine. My left arm, being all too forward, went to wrap itself around the poor and confused Rebbecca who was still visually stunned by my boisterous scream. However, as my arm was going towards her I twitched (side effect number 8,587,252 that weed now gave me) and knocked into her glass of red wine. The glass shattered all over the ground but not before it managed to spill it’s entire contents all over her shirt. Somehow in the mix I cut my elbow and was bleeding. Fabulous. I stood with my mouth open and drooled, which as you know, is my personal deviation from the typical fight or flight response and caught a glimpse of Rebecca heading in the direction of the bathroom. After a little bit of time I managed to help Mary pick up the pieces of the broken glass on the floor. It was official I was the most embarrassing person I know.