let me tell you a little saturday night story. not the story i would have liked to have told after last night; not the story of my expectations being realized in every detail, and everything going off without a hitch. definitely not that. but not a bad story all the same. it had its highs and lows and its pleasant surprises, so we can’t be to picky.

where to begin? well how about with the first hour of our prevalentines party bringing in a maximum of maybe two or three guests that weren’t either residents of this apartment or co-hosts of the party. no, how about expanding that more generally to include the whole night which brought in the least amount of people of any party we’ve ever had and might barely even deserve the term “party” as college students are given to understand it. it’s safe to say it was more or less a flop. but what can you do. there were a lot of other parties last night. bigger better parties. so it goes. i’m not bitter, honest.

let’s move on. some people did come, and it wasn’t all bad. for example, one girl came and we ended up going into my bedroom and sitting in front of my bookcase and talking about books and reading and eastern religions and i have to say that was a high point. a pleasant surprise. she said she wanted to raid my library and i gave her my phone number — we’ll see if she ever uses it, but if not she was still very nice. another interesting point was there being 2 out of maybe 12 guests who went by “jen”, especially since i had spent the whole prior evening with another jen. these two local jens were also so good as to stay at our party for a while and make it feel like less of a failure. and they were both good people. plus freshman-jen brought a friend that used to deliver frozen foods in the neighborhood i grew up in back in illinois (mmm, schwan’s ice cream bars…) who even remembered delivering on the street i lived on. that blew my mind.

so at about 3, when the party had pared down to a tidy 8 or 9, junior-jen and two of her friends decided it was time to go to IHOP, and so three of us went with them (one being the all-important non-drinking car-owning friend whom we owe our gratitude). that turned out to be a lot of fun and probably the highlight of the night. slightly-buzzed conversation over pancakes (or in my cases fried appetizers — the admitted mozzarella stick/chicken finger junkie) at 4 in the morning really can’t help but be funny. i remember using the word “hoist” for some reason which prompted the comment “dude…words are dope,” which pretty much summed up our appreciation for the variety of our colorful english language in a succinct four words. a true and profound statement, even the next day. words are pretty dope.

and sure, i didn’t get to bed until 5:30am. sure, i didn’t find anything close to a valentine despite my commitment to do so. sure, it was a party so underattended i even told my friend spencer at one point, “if this wan’t my party, even i’d leave right now.” but it was still a good night. maybe i’ll just have to let this february 14th drop off my radar. or rally in the home stretch here and make something happen…but let’s not kid ourselves. chances are strong that i will spend the late evening on thursday watching a movie that reminds me of what i don’t have (i’m leaning toward reality bites i think), and thinking of someone that i can’t have. at least not right now.

so it goes.