Crawling towards Fabulous

Jhim called up yesterday afternoon asking to hang out that evening and I was more than happy to say yes seeing as how he’s rare to catch in town with free time.

We started the evening in the usual manner (for us), drinks at Halo and dinner at Merkado. Because metrobus wasn’t operating even close to their vaguely defined schedule, I walked down from my place. It was a lovely evening for it, though I did show up a little sweaty, but a cold drink took care of that quickly enough. Halo around 6pm on a Weds night is really kinda dead. Perhaps people are staying in or out enjoying the nice weather or something, but it was a bit of slow crowd. Naturally the boy I just kicked to the curb was there, chatting up another fellow of the african persuasion — Jhim commented, “Well he certainly has a type!” He walked past us a few times and, as predicted, completely failed to take notice of me, kinda like when we were dating! *nyuk nyuk nyuk*

After a few cocktails and good conversation we headed over to Merkado, which has gone from Latin/Asian fusion to just plain Latin. It’s really not the same. But a friend Josh is currently waiting tables there and it was good to see him plus I got to meet Kyle, an infrequent commenter on my journal and in person a very nice guy giving off some great energy. Dinner was good, but my appetite hadn’t really kicked in yet, so 1 doggie bag later we were on our way.

The crawl: Started at Halo, dinner break, then Cobalt/30° where the energy was, once again kinda slow, we strolled past Club Chaos, but weren’t really feeling it. Then we walked over to Dupont Circle for some browsing of shops and men, the older gentleman behind the counter at Lambda Rising was rather blatant in hitting on me. After that we went in search of The Fab Lounge which we read about in Metro Weekly and neither of us had heard of. After walking up Connecticut Ave a bit and totally not seeing it, I sent a text message to Google SMS and got an address back, which wasn’t much help as it was on Florida, not Conn. Right next to the titty bar, in fact, well 2 floors up.

I really liked the place, the bartender told us that usually the crowd is 1/3 gay men and 2/3 lesbians on some nights and as usual is more packed towards the weekend, but I could definitely see coming back there with friends, in fact I’m thinking of having a little birthday drinks trip next Friday since I know at least one person won’t be able to make it to the dinner being planned — though that’s to be expected when you invite a vegan to Fogo de Chao…

We’d planned to end the evening at Omega, but were having such a good time at Fab that we finished our round there and Jhim was nice enough to take me back to my door, shortly after which the hunger kicked back in and I devoured the leftovers. Shrimp & crab cakes, yum! Also, thanks to him, I may be developing a taste for sugar free Red Bull in lieu of a cocktail when I need a break.

Tonight I’ll be having dinner with my father who called about an hour before Jhim yesterday to let me know that he’ll be in town tonight, with slightly more than 24 hrs notice – he’s improving. I haven’t a clue where we’ll go, but I think I just got a great idea for where to go.