Saturday Night... Look a-Live

When I lived in Charlotte, my best friend Missie and I would spend weekend after weekend agonizing over the fact that there is veritably NO night life in that city. In anticipation of going out, we'd spend all of our money on designer clothes and shoes, get ridiculously dressed up and then pout all the way to the same two shitty bars crowded with the same bunch of pretentious banker-douchebags who were impossible to impress anyway. We'd get drunk, go home, and complain over bloody marys the entire next morning about our lousy lives. I escaped that hell as soon as humanly possible, and needless to say New York has few of the same problems. But what's interesting, is that I, strangely, still do.

I was lying in bed just a moment ago, weighing my options for this Saturday evening. None of which seemed especially appealing, and all of which required me to actually get OUT of bed. I sighed as I hung up with my roommate who was "doing karaoke in the village," shrugged off an invite from another roommate who is going to someplace called "Flow" where "girls get in for free until 11!" and ignored a text message from my friend W who is headed downDOWNtown to someplace called Libation, which I can't even find on a map. I'm wrapped in a fleece blanket wearing my glasses on 151st St and nothing about an hour long prep and hour long commute in the cold seems intruiging to me right now. I'm such a loser. And nothing has changed.

Then Missie called.

"I'm dragging my depressed and miserable self to a bar to have drinks with people I hate," she mumbled. "Please tell me you're doing something fabulous in New York."

"Actually," I sighed, "We're living frighteningly parallel lives." I couldn't believe it. I'd abandoned that awful city in an effort to lead a more fantastic, fulfilling and glamorous life...and here I am, wrapped in a blanket watching DVDs. I started thinking about Charlotte, and if it was really the one to blame.

"Well," Missie cut into my thought. "I wish we were at least miserable in the same city. Then it could be fun-misery. Like we used to have."

I smiled. The nights we drug ourselves to the bar in our thanks-to-credit-cards outfits, even in Charlotte were bearable because we made them that way. And in hindsight, I'm not sure what I was so miserable about. Always looking for the greener grass, I guess. I hung up the phone and decided to get out of bed. No city...no matter how fabulous...can make a good time for you. You've got to do your part. If Missie can make an effort in awful little Charlotte, then I most certainly can give a Saturday night in New York a chance.

But it turns out that life is mostly the same no matter where you lead it. The life I left behind, though in very few ways resembling my life now, forced me to endure a lot of the same things. You've got to get out of bed, you've got to hang out with people you hate, you've got to make a good time where ever and when ever you can. You know why? Because it's fucking Saturday night.