A Night in the Life of Me

            by Luke Vavasour

 

            Nothing ever happens in Berkeley. Sure, there are parties, but its always the same people doing the same stuff. For instance, a typical conversation at a typical party might go something like this:

Drunk girl: Heyyy Luke, what’s UP, I haven’t seen you in forever where have you been?

Me: Uhh… I’ve been around actually. I think we had English together… today, but yeah what’s up with you?

Drunk girl: OH Luke, you are so funny. Remember when we used to have English together? That was SO much fun. I am sooo drunk right now. BEN! Oh My God (she talks in caps too)! BEEEEN.

Me: Yeah. So you actually just fell down three times while you were talking to me. Are you even drunk or are you pretending so that people will pay attention to you?

Drunk girl (not even paying attention at this point): BEN. Heyyy. WHAT’S up? I haven’t seen you in forever!

            So at this point I politely excuse myself and decide to rummage through the drunk girl’s purse to see if she has any money or other valuables I might like. Finders keepers right? Alright, so maybe I don’t do all that, maybe I just hide her purse so that she freaks out and cries about how someone stole her purse and I have a new source of entertainment. Some would do both, but what can I say? I’m such a nice guy. Too nice really.

            Although there are endless possible ways to entertain yourself at a party, for a long time my favorite was the Alias Game. The object of the game is to go to a party where you are unknown and to confuse the other participants with false information. First you and your friends have to agree on fake names. A few of my favorites are as follows: Rupert, Lucifer, Chad, and last but not least, Jorge. My alias was almost always Rupert, but I have seen Lucifer, Chad, and Jorge successfully executed by my friends many times.

            Let me introduce you to Rupert. Rupert is shy. Rupert gives high fives (the real ones, you know, overhand). Rupert goes to College Prep School. Rupert wears his pants around his waste instead of his butt and he also has been known to wear a purple Santa hat to parties around the holidays. Rupert is extremely friendly and outgoing while at the same time totally innocent and nerdy. Rupert also wears a camelback (72 Liters) underneath his jacket so that he may discreetly relieve your parents of their wine and beer. Rupert is the kind of guy you let into your party even when you don’t know him. Rupert was amusing for about a month and then I was forced to hang up my Santa Hat and camelback for good. I was tired of getting phone calls for Rupert. I guess all good things must come to an end.

            Now that Rupert was retired and parties lost their entertainment value I became more and more adventurous in my thrill seeking. Adventure now came not from the party itself, but rather from the ridiculous sequence of events that might follow any given party. For example: after one party I found myself hiding in a closet at nine in the morning the following day. To really explain this, I must start this story at the beginning.

            It is nearing the end of junior year. I have long since retired Rupert and have started going on nighttime adventures. On this particular night, I am at an 80’s day party intended only for seniors. After procuring a large part of their alcohol for my own personal supply the inevitable occurs:

            “ALL UNDERCLASSMEN GET THE FUCK OUT!!!” and with that, I am thrust into the night with nothing more than my cell phone and my hip flask. The friends I had come with all decide to call it a night except one and we find ourselves sitting on the stoop of a nearby house swigging from my hip flask and perusing my phone book. With nothing to do, we decide to do what we always do when there is nothing else to do.

            “Tryna smoke a blunt though?” my friend asks. “I’ve got a swisher and dank.”

            “Man, why were you holding out on me?” I joke. “Lets hit the park, cuz.” Our destination is not even a park, it is an elementary school playground. As my friend breaks the weed down, I split the swisher and empty the tobacco contents. Just then a cop rounds the corner as if from nowhere and heads straight for me. I remember throwing the swisher and running while thinking to myself,  where the hell did he come from? I am not fast enough. I find myself pushed face first into a wall with my hands twisted behind my back. As I mumble and groan I feel expert hands running through my pockets trying to find incriminating evidence. I catch a glimpse of a silver object flashing through the air out of the corner of my eye. Fuck. He found the hip flask. Just then it dons on me.

            “HA! Its empty, you don’t have shit on me. Now let me go.” Defeated, the cop leaves almost as quickly as he came. I do a quick run through my pockets to discover that ten dollars is missing. Crooked ass cop. Having thrown the weed as soon as the cop was spotted, my friend now decides to call it a night and head home. Left alone in the night I do what any teen in my situation would do. I call my girlfriend.

            “Hey baby, are you still house sitting tonight?”

            “Of course. When are you gonna come over?”

            “Ima be right over there. Don’t fall asleep on me.” And once again, I am off into the night, this time with a more concrete destination. I make it to the apartment she is sitting without too much further incident. Having walked all the way across town, I am ready for sleep. I get to the apartment and the rest you can probably guess.

            Here is where it gets interesting. I wake up early that day. I lay in bed with my girlfriend laying peacefully in my arms. I go over the events of the previous night and think about how uneventful the night was. I went to one weak party and then got robbed by a cop. Eventually my girlfriend wakes up and we spend the next hour lazily in bed watching TV. Around 9, the lady from across the hall is supposed to come into the apartment to feed the cat. I guess the old lady who’s home we were in did not trust my girlfriend enough to feed the cat. When I hear footsteps coming down the hallway, I hop into the closet wearing nothing more than 8 hickies on my chest and stomach and my basketball shorts. I hope the lady feeds the cat quickly. But wait, what’s that? There is no lady at the door to feed the cat, only a senior citizen coming home early from vacation to her humble apartment which the trustworthy girl next door is house sitting. The situation for me is obviously quite delicate. I am half naked and there are hickies all over my body.

            This is no ordinary closet. It goes back about as far as any closet, but it also stretches an additional ten feet to the right at a 90 degree angle. I stand to the right in this space so that if the closet is opened, there is a chance I will not be seen. I hold my breath till I feel like my lungs will explode. I wait and wait for my girlfriend to come to my rescue. I listen carefully. The old lady and my girlfriend make small talk and then… silence. No rescue. My girlfriend leaves. Just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, it does. The closet opens. I remain absolutely motionless. The old lady steps into the closet and begins to hang up a jacket. So here I am, standing maybe a foot away from this old unsuspecting lady, covered in hickies, wearing only a pair of shorts, holding my breath because if I breathe out she will feel the hot morning breath on her face and probably have a heart attack. I consider just pushing her over and running, but I am frozen. Petrified. She hangs up her jacket and then closes the door calm as ever. I let out my breath. I thank god for helping me overcome that obstacle and then curse him for putting me in that situation in the first place.

            I now proceed to the back of the closet where there is a small window. Well, it is the second story and I’m not wearing any clothes, but hey, I have no better ideas. I wonder what I might look like from outside, or what I might think if I saw myself from the ground. A terrified almost naked boy trying to escape from a tiny second story window in South Berkeley. But then all is saved, I am delivered. My girlfriend comes to my rescue. The closet door opens and there I am, in all my glory, half stuck out the window. So much for a clean get away.

            Nothing ever happens in Berkeley. But as long as I have stories like these to tell my children, I really couldn’t care less.