MUSINGS ON EVENINGS

SO LAST NIGHT I WENT TO A SAVED BY THE BELL PARTY. I had been looking forward to it for weeks, so I got decked out in a Letterman jacket and some groovy hi-tops and conned my friend Brian into driving me on this route. And presumably back home again. In exchange for this I'd bring him to a party where we'd be in an environment rife with nubile girls looking to be facebook friends. Perhaps even some love time. Either way, I convinced him to drive and, better yet, to go as Screech, going so far as to lend him one of my dad's shirts from the early 90s that looked very similar to a Dashiki.

We made a quick stop to buy birthday presents for the girls (a bottle of Don Julio that we were gonna drink and a shitty card), then drove the endless miles out to fucking Westchester to see what this party had to offer.

The answer, we soon found, was not a lot. There were slight ruminations of bass emanating from an empty garage, and a lone girl was trying desperately to re-hang a sign emblazoned with "HAPPY BIRTHDAY NAT AND MAD" but she was too short to reach. I gave Brian a look belaying my hesitance, comforted myself with the fact that I had some amazing Dr. Simon weed in my pocket, and headed in. Scattered crowd. No music inside, just an iPod in the garage. Dead as Elvis. As I turned to Brian and started to say "At least there's not that many dudes," EVERY guy in the greater Los Angeles area showed up and started mobbing on the few girls that were there. I wasn't too mad as there hadn't been much eye candy and the girl whose affection I was vying for (the birthday girl) looked really worn out and way too tired to fuck.

We decided that the only solution that will fix every problem is more alcohol, so we applied the theory in full effect. The Jungle Juice that allegedly had "six handles of vodka in it" got a little tequila face-lift from the girls' birthday present that Brian and I had helped ourselves to in true indian-giver fashion. Everything began to seem more interesting for the moment, and I talked to a couple girls doing the "stick and move" routine that usually works really well. It didn't.

This party was so full of guys, you had to book an appointment just to have a two-minute flirt. So I went into the dining room and played the worst drinking game of all time, flirted with somebody's wasted girlfriend, and killed time while Brian tried to lay the mack down. I decided it was time to dip into my supply of Dr. Simon's magical weed and invited a girl I had been talking to to sit down with me and smoke a J. She accepted, I got a couple frenchers, and we went about our business. I went back inside to see what Brian was up to. Let's just say he wasn't winning it. I was pretty fucked up, but I decided the best thing to do was to snatch bottle of Don Julio and nurse it until Brian got sober.

While I waited, I met with a fabled creature of yore, the uncharacteristically ever-present unicorn of parties - the beautiful, boring-as-fuck-girl. This girl was about 5'5", with bright, perky c-cups and long brown hair. She was sitting at the table getting hit on by two guys and I was drinking the Don Julio so I elbowed my way in and started talking to her. I instantly regretted it. Even my most base of flirts was met with a look of complete confusion. This girl was dumb as a fucking rock. I tried to get her to tell me about her stay in Germany, and heard the same boring stories of beer-halls and museums that everybody fucking has and I had to close my eyes so she wouldn't see me rolling them. I couldn't help it. She told me she spoke fluent Spanish so I busted out the classic "Entonces hablamos Espanol," which usually gets girls to raise their eyes in amazement that a guero has such a good accent and a degree of fluency on par with a native speaker. Not this little muffinbrain. She just looked at me like I had punched her in the face with a pillow. Complete confusion and a stupid grin. I decided this girl was not worth my efforts and smoked the middle third of the joint. I went back in. 1:15. I texted Brian to get us the fuck out of here, but he was still drunk as a priest. The solution was for him to eat cake. After fifteen minutes of him stuffing himself with birthday cake, we decided that it would soak up enough of the alcohol for him to be  roadworthy.

Not the case. He makes a wrong right turn that lands us on a familiar-sounding street, and all seems well for the moment. We bitch about the party and girls and life and muse on music and movies and pop culture and economic downturns while heading down this street for about twenty minutes. "Where the fuck is the 405?" Brian slurs, looking around in a fog. He is shitfaced, and we are doing an easy 80 down this street. I cannot possibly attempt to describe where we went because honestly, I have no idea what fucking portal we entered into alternate-universe Los Angeles. I do know that we were, at some point, in Windsor, then El Segundo, and finally Randy's Donuts. The route, as I can retrace it, is something like this. Except more driving. But while we were at Randy's Donuts, as I smoked the last of the joint and Brian pissed on a wall, the experience began to transcend into one of those magical evenings that affirm friendships so well. We bought 20 dollars worth of 80 cent donuts and milk and OJ and downed the shit like a hooker on crank. We sat in Brian's car, high, lost, and happy to have found this magical 24-hour donut shop that served pure joy. We sang along to Biz Markie's Just A Friend, and we sounded so amazing I had to send it to my friend Michele. We had fallen into a shitty evening, gotten lost, and found ourselves at a donut shop at 3AM.

We took pictures outside of Randy's iconic 20-foot donut knowing we'd never be there again. It was just by the magic of the evening that we'd even wound up so far from home.

But sometimes, far from home is right where you need to be.