Aaaaaaaaaalbuquerque, or, things I'm not proud of

Albuquerque was not supposed to be on my itinerary. Instead, I was supposed to be up in Taos to ski, but a scheduling change meant I had two days to get to Phoenix from Oklahoma City instead of three, therefore, Albuquerque. This was not all bad news, as it provided me an opportunity to seek out some frybread tacos or other southwestern fare NOTE: NOT the same as Mexican (more on this later). But there was bad news: I don't know anybody in Albuquerque, and I didn't have money for a hotel room. This left me with two options 1) slum it in a Wal-Mart parking lot 2) Paratrooping. If you believe that I have some level of decency, you should probably just stop reading this post and preserve that illusion. If you already know that I am depraved, look up the term "paratrooping" on Urban Dictionary and keep reading.

I planned it out so that I would arrive in Albuquerque around 9, so I wasn't sitting at an empty bar for too long, but still had enough time to get in several salvos of pickup lines and even a venue change if necessary. Of course my first move was to go to a grocery store and buy some Chimayo chile powder (more on this in another post). After having to walk all the way back to where I parked my car to drop off the Chimayo, I went to a bar that the guy at the burrito joint I ate dinner at told me to go to. This entire night was kind of ad libbed, so bear with me.

Monday nights in ABQ are dead. The first bar I went to was a total dive. There were two hipsters playing ping pong in back, and two guys that looked and spoke like they went to Ridgemont High at the bar. The only thing I got out of it was an awesome tip on a breakfast burrito. The next bar I tried was a tapas and tap house - decent, but it was only groups of people and the only really cute girl was the waitress, who both busy and having none of it. Beginning to wonder if I would have to ask my iPhone to find nearby Walmarts, I went to the highest rated bar on yelp that was within walking distance. It's a bar on the second story of a restaurant and as soon as I walked in, I knew that if it didn't happening here, it wasn't gonna happen: decent crowd, some cute girls, and they even had O'Dell 90 Schilling Ale on tap! The bartender commented on my Wisconsin license and a couple people around me started talking to me about that. One of them was a homely girl whose family was from Neenah, WI. There is only one thing to say about Neenah - it has a foundry that makes manhole covers found all around the world. She found this fascinating. I could have bit the bullet, completed the mission right then and there, but there was a  brunette across the bar and I wanted that. So I wished the sure thing a nice evening, ordered another O'Dell, and waited to operate.

Accompanied by a cute friend and some guy, the newly acquired target was a gorgeous girl with dark features and flowing hair. I pretty much just cold-approached her and it turns out she was both a model and a total bitch. Obviously my mistake was talking to her first, so I tried to right the ship by shifting my attention and chatting with her friend, who was actually very interesting. A photographer and a runner like myself, we talked for a while about various thing including linguistics, of all topics. I began to think that maybe I could get the guy out of the picture, who seemed to be into the nice girl, and I would complete the objective. Then the model came back and I found out why they were out. The photographer girl and the model girl were going to do a photo shoot in the middle of the night and decided to get drunk first. Apparently this was needed because the model would be photographed dressed as a prostitute. My second, biggest mistake, was somehow not seeing this shoot happen. I mentioned that I would like to join them, since I had nothing better to do, but the bitchy girl was having none of it. I should have insisted, done whatever it took, because it would have been a fantastic story; I will probably have several fantasies about what would have happened had I found a way to go with them. But, rejected, dejected, drunk and out of time by this point, I resigned myself to a night in the parking lot.

The night was not without collateral damage though. On my way back to the car, I, for whatever reason, tried to open a door to a closed down restaurant/bar. I will never know why. There must have been something out of place, like it was a little ajar, because, to my complete shock, it was unlocked. Naturally I went in to explore. Then I found the bar, an almost full bottle of Blanton's single barrel bourbon and went into klepto mode. I stuffed it under my sweatshirt and snuck out the door to an empty street, taking pulls from all the way back to my car. Having already said "fuck it" to just about everything that day, I climbed into my passenger seat, put on my jacket and stocking cap, and just went to sleep parked on the side of the street.

I will add that, until I had that breakfast burrito the next morning, I did not feel really good about any of this. Maybe it's a sign to start living virtuously. Maybe the universe is just on "expert" mode right now and I'll need to up my game to continue. Anyways, I'd like to publicly apologize to the owner of a bar in Albuquerque. But it's not like anybody was drinking that anyways, it was mostly full.

Thanks for reading my confessional, now enjoy Weird Al