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Justin Bieber’s “What Do You Mean” is being played at a volume that is making it hard for me to hate this place. Every fiber of my being tells me that this club, this dance floor, these drink prices, these fucking people around me – it’s all incredibly stupid. I’m above this garbage but tonight is a little bit different than what I’ve come to know as the standard Friday night out.
“What Do You Mean” brings out a side of me that the world doesn’t see very often anymore. I know its old. I know its been played to death. But I fucking love that song and what it reminds me of. It brings me back to a simpler time. “What Do You Mean”, “Sorry”, “Let Me Love You”, “Love Yourself” – all of those songs epitomize 24 year old JD. A boy with no real goals other than to make enough money to go out from Thursday to Sunday and maybe swing the bat a couple of times if you know what I’m saying.
Bieber’s voice pulses through the bar. I think about that run he went on in 2015 where he just could not stop putting out bangers. I mean every other week it seemed like he was releasing a heater and it didn’t matter that he was pissing in mop buckets or drag racing Lambos as long as he kept making this music.
I think about how much money JB has in the bank and how he’s married to Hailey Baldwin and I start to feel bad about my life for brief moment, but I snap out of it as I’m handed a vodka cranberry from the table a friend of a friend of a friend has bought for the evening.
This is a Friday night sent straight from the degenerate gods. How I (a man with literally nothing to offer other than some halfway decent conversation) found myself drinking for free at a corporate function for three hours dressed in a suit and then parlayed that into bottle service at a club sans Blair, once again drinking for free, is beyond me.
Normally if someone had mentioned the prospect of going to this particular club I would have balked and eventually just gone home. I hate paying for drinks in places like this, but I’m in a zone I haven’t been in for a long while.
Where normally I’d feel hassled having to Uber from the previously mentioned corporate event to a club, I felt nothing. The guy who bought that table and all of those bottles? I’d probably make fun of him behind his back any other night. But tonight is different.
I feel alive. Blair is nice but come on. She said my turkey pot roast was “just okay” and that she “would have preferred sushi.” Forget about the flirtations with other guys. I can handle that. What I can’t handle is someone who doesn’t appreciate a pot roast on a cold winter’s night. Sushi? In this climate? Get the fuck outta here.
I accidentally shared my location with Blair a week and a half ago and forgot to turn it off. She knows where I’m at even though I’ve been ignoring text messages from her for most of the night. I’m chatting up some guy named Adam or Jacob or some stupid shit like that and a girl who I think is his girlfriend. She’s really pretty and compliments the tie I’m wearing.
I say it was nice to meet them after five or ten minutes of banal conversation and make myself another vodka cranberry because that’s the only mixer they’ve got at the table. As I’m pouring, a little cranberry juice splashes onto my white shirt and for a moment I think about letting this ruin my night.
Blair texts me and asks if she can meet me at the club and I leave her on the read. For once I feel like the master of my own domain – untethered from Blair and everything else that bothers me. I’m going to have myself a night, cranberry stain be damned..
Respond
jduda@grandex.co
You made the girl dinner and she actually told you to your face it wasn’t what she wanted? To hell with her.
Johnny Boy growing up before our eyes. One minute he’s ignoring Blair and the next he’ll be going home with a club rat who will show him how to be a real man. Exciting stuff y’all
I used to date a woman whose favorite line was “What’s THAT supposed to mean?” Total power move that instantly put me on the defensive, trying to explain whatever meaningless thing I had said. Just wanted to say that.
I feel like women have been using that line for a while. No good can come of it
Doesn’t matter how much money you have drinking or enjoying things on someone else’s dime is always far superior to paying yourself. Similarly your mother’s sandwiches are always tastier than ones you make. Sidenote: your writing reminds me of JD Salinger a little.
Anyone else confused by the pot roast? Last time, he didn’t make it so what happened here?
This gave me PTSD flashbacks to the night I spilled some vodka cranberry on the back of some girl’s shirt in VIP.
Fortunately, all the girls were frenemies so no one told her.
Duda at his best.
Those string of Bieber hits really take me back to a happier time in my life too. I remember visiting New York City around New Years with some family, going out and hearing Sorry and Love Yourself nonstop at the bars. Was a magical time. Those songs will never get old and instantly put you in a good mood. We need more music like that.
Hell yes Duda
Love that you’ve got more positive things to say about Justin Bieber than anything else happening around you.
I’m absolutely loving unhinged Duda
Blair is a zero. Let it rip JD.