cup a noodle.

He held up his digital camera to show me the picture just taken of us: him, me, and Josh. I didn't need to see the evidence to know what sort of expression had just been saved for posterity: I looked a bit terrified. Smiling, but there was definitely a touch of terror in the eyes.

I invited some coworkers to Josh's show on a whim, because I felt bad for never bringing people to the shows. I'd never asked people from work before because I still don't know them all that well and didn't expect any of them to come out. Clearly, I had been wrong. Judging by the enthusiasm that met me, you'd think they'd been waiting for me to finally ask them to hang out. Maybe socializing isn't as hard as I make it out to be.

He showed up drunk, so much so that it only took me a few seconds to figure it out. That's fine, he had a designated driver along and it was Friday night, after all. I introduced him to Josh. I was relieved to remove myself from the conversation a bit. Josh is so much better at talking to people, no matter their state of intoxication. I try to avoid those situations, always feeling at a loss trying to make sense where there is none. I feel obligated to follow the general tenets of conversation, even when the other person suffers from no such requirement. They're happy to repeat the same point over and over, and sometimes it's not so much a point as a random catchphrase, in this case "CUP A NOODLE!" Josh, and well, anybody else, really, seems to handle this better. They manage to laugh it off or else they have the patience to pretend that actual things are being said.

To be honest, I was embarrassed. I had invited this guy here, and I knew from working with him that he was generally a very coherent person. He read books, he had opinions, he could communicate effectively. I wanted to reassure everyone of that, as if they couldn't tell that he was just really drunk. For all they knew, he was always really drunk or even incredibly dim even when sober. Then again, I only know that he's sober for 40 hours a week.

I should not have been embarrassed. Most people I know tie one on now and again. I've been a conversational burden before. I hated it, because I could tell that I was not making sense, but I couldn't seem to start making sense. I've been to that place a couple times. And a lot of the people at the bar that night go to that place a lot. They don't hate it. In fact, they seem to like it a lot. No one cared that I invited this wasted guy to the bar where he got more wasted. It was just me, being a stick in the mud or something.

I worried that it would be awkward for me on Monday morning when I had to face my sober coworker. But it was only awkward for me, because he's like everyone else. He figures that we're on the same page about drunkeness, since most people do seem to be on that page. He doesn't know that I'm on a different page, one with a picture of a bunch of mud and a stick. But it's still okay, because he doesn't remember most of the evening, including the part where he yelled "CUP A NOODLE" over and over. I didn't remind him.