My Weekend (In black & white)

WHITE

So, my boy calls me up on Friday night and convinces me to roll with him to this spot called the Saw Mill. It is a club on the boardwalk in this town called Seaside Park.

I knew one of the bouncers there and I figured that it is 2006 and I need to get out of the house more.

We get to the spot and it is only a $1 cover. I paid for both of us. I gave the cashier a $20 bill...he gave me back $8 and my boy and I proceeded to case the joint out. It was a very large club with two floors and we hear a band playing upstairs. My boy told me someone told him that "if you want to meet a good-looking white girl you go to Toms River." I chuckled at the statement since we were only like five minutes away from Toms River.

The Saw Mill was the biggest joint I've walked into in New Jersey and rivaled only the Palace in Saugus, Mass. as one of the biggest places I've ever seen. I could imagine this place filled with 2,000 white people on a hot summer night.

Anyhow...when I get upstairs to buy a drink...I realized that the cashier shortchanged me $10 at the door. I sprint downstairs and tell him what he did. He didn't argue with me and gave me the additional $10. We go upstairs and buy some drinks and listen to this god awful band and watch these uncoordinated white people dance to this music.

After 45 minutes of this, we walk back down stairs and this place has a kitchen and I'm starving. I told my boy that I want to buy some pizza. The pizza was only a $1 a slice but it took the only guy working behind the counter like an eternity to get to me. Meanwhile, this white girl is eyeing my boy and she walks over to him. I see the stary gaze in her eyes and the tantilizing lick of her lips just as she opens her mouth. My boy didn't get two minutes into the conversation before her girl drags her away while giving both of us the evil eye.

We both look at each other, shake our heads and laugh it off. I think we'll be back very...very soon.

On Saturday night, I went to a singles sticker soiree in New Brunswick. The premise is this: everyone that attended got a sheet of stickers that had various phrases on them. After you talk to someone, you are supposed to place a sticker on them that reflects their personality. There was supposed to be an equal number of men and women (way more women...SMILE!) and the women were allowed to get there at 6 p.m. The men weren't allowed to come into the spot until 7 p.m. (hmm...a survival of the fittest thing?). I get there at 7:45 p.m. and I'm behind on my sticker placing activities. I walk in there and I feel like the eyes of every white woman (there were some black women there too) zeroed in on me. I think it is similar to the "piece of meat" scenario women describe when they walk into a room filled with men. It was the first time in my life that I've felt that way and I was nervous. I managed to navigate through the sea of women and place a few stickers on females. However, I did forget to remove one sticker when I went to pick up my friend for part II of my night.

BLACK

The sticker that my friend found on my sleeve later said "player". I don't remember which woman from the sticker soiree put that sticker on me and I pleaded the fifth when my friend asked me about it. We went to this soul food restaurant called Delta's in New Brunswick. We got there too late to order food, so we had drinks at the bar and around 11 p.m. every Saturday night they play hip hop and R&B. I had heard about this place from other friends for a while now but never had the motivation to check it out. I'm glad that I went.

I've sort of complained that I couldn't find a place with an urban flavor and for that night Delta's fulfilled my request. Like any good off duty reporter, I took vivid mental pictures. I suspect the majority of the black crowd was 25-35 and everyone was well dressed. The decor was in a Neo-Soul way and the music was perfect. I felt like I was in the club scene from Love Jones. The only negative is that New Brunswick is like 40 miles away from where I live. I could see myself becoming a regular at Delta's similar to my infatuation with this spot in Providence, R.I.