I hate Saturday nights. They exist only as a reminder that life is not fair. Take last Saturday night for example. The day started out all right — I heard that there was going to be a party. A party!! I’ve been in Berkeley for 3 years now and I still have yet to go to a party. Even after someone peeled me off the ceiling, I was still floating on cloud 9. My friend Lael was having a party and he had invited me. Lael was really cool. He’d just returned from a summer as a sheepherder in New Zealand, and one fragrant night he’d entertained me for hours with tales of his wild sexual adventures. But an hour after inviting me, he called me up and told me that there was a slight problem: his landlord was very strict so he could he throw the party at my house perchance? What could I do?
At about 5 o’clock the kegs started arriving, C.O.D. Lael called me and asked if I could pay for them, he’d pay me back later that night after people had given him money. Then the guests started arriving. I stood at the door to greet them and promptly got knocked over by the surge. Then I saw…her. The most gorgeous girl I’ve ever seen. I got up and started walking to the stereo. I popped in Led Zeppelin’s “In Through the Out Door” and smoothly cruised in her direction. She looked up and watched me saunter over. When I finally reached her she said, “Hey– aren’t you the guy that did those bird calls on Letterman?” I preened, then complimented her on her terrific memory. “You are a fucking loon,” she said. My mouth dropped open. She even knew my call!
So I decided to keep with my disco-suave man act, since I was obviously in the right vein. Besides, I’m a Leo and since my horoscope said romance was on the horizon, I knew things were swinging my way. I looked at her, winked seductively, put my hands to my mouth and emitted a perfect Loon mating call. She stared at me, blinked twice, and then slowly shook her head back and forth. I could tell she was in a trance, amazed at my skill. I told her she was gorgeous, and she quietly said, “Get out of here.” To further impress her, I told her how I could do the call of a Loon who was baked on marijuana. “No, GET OUT OF HERE,” she replied.
I stepped back, heartbroken, then quickly turned around. “But, but, I was on Letterman,” I said. My boyfriend is a Letterman, she told me. A huge frat guy with Letters all over his varsity jacket stepped between us. He said, “I do bird calls, too.” Really, I replied. Like what? He responded by beating me viciously and throwing me out into the alley behind my house. “Stupid bastard,” I yelled. “That’s not a bird call!” Infinitely depressed, I wandered down the alley, thinking about life’s injustices. You spend four years of your life perfecting the ultimate bird call, and the only chicks it gets you are fucking loons.
