The idea was a good one: get out for a night of fun, leather and drinking and have Don drive so I could drink my sorrows away in excess if I wanted without worrying about getting home.

In execution, it wasn't as great. The event was Gear for Life, a charity event put on by Mr. Piston 2010 to raise money for a local AIDS charity. And it was at Pistons, which is a bar in Long Beach that only serves beer. No vodka, no cocktails, just beer. I don't drink beer if I can avoid it, and when I must, I prefer something along the lines of Guinness, which Pistons doesn't have. The best I could do was Newcastle, at $6 per bottle.

Next, I don't much like being at a bar alone. Despite Don driving down, he had many people to see and jobs to do as Mr. Sister Leather 2010 so I was essentially alone. I had invited Joel, Daniel, Gus, James... I had picked my brain to find someone in Long Beach to join me... nobody was free. I'm just not good in social situations when I don't know people. I recognized a lot of people, but they had other people and I didn't. It's odd. Now I'm just whining. I'm supposed to be a big leather daddy... but I can have a soft side, too, right?

I didn't take my Canon, so I didn't have a camera to hide behind. The beer wasn't working, and there wasn't a "show" so I never really knew what to look at or who to watch. We left around midnight, and Don ended up shuttling one of the Mr. Los Angeles Leather contestants home with us, so conversation was... small talk, mostly.

It wasn't the "drunken fun getaway" that I needed, but it was alright to get out and see and be seen. Who knows what might come out of it.