A week ago I spent the whole weekend alone. I didn't go out at all and was in bed before midnight both Friday and Saturday night. I felt like a failure in some ways. I've had an incongruously busy summer and have been working almost non-stop between a day job, a few side projects, and the production of a short film that I just finished shooting. For the first time in months I finally had a weekend that was completely unspoken for in advance, without any pressing tasks that needed completion before another Monday descended like an unwelcome guest. I had no idea what I would do, but sometime mid-week I started looking forward to the luxurious array of possibilities. I could do anything I wanted. Still, I decided to stay at home and, save for a few excursions for coffee and sustenance, vegetate.
As a kid I was always swept away with the images of urban nightlife I saw in movies that always seemed to star Michael J. Fox, at least in my mind. As a twelve year-old I felt like I had only to wait patiently for my turn on the giant carousel of big city social cavorting that was my irrefutable due. I was born to consume viscous liquor in tinted glasses while chatting casually with women in sequins. Growing up in Fresno, a former cow town that got swept away in the thrush of cheap real estate and strip mall outgrowths in the late 80's and 90's, the idea of doing this in a city like LA, San Francisco, or New York was almost too much to bear. Finding myself alone in my studio apartment with bars and night spots one or two blocks away from me, in literally every direction, and willfully choosing to stay in for some much needed sleep and decompression felt like an abject declaration of defeat.
I didn't even do anything moderately productive like finishing Snow Country, which I've been dragging my heels over for weeks, or watching either of the Netflix discs that have been sitting on my desk for a month like incriminations against my mental sloth. I didn't call up any long lost friends or write some confessional email to a loved one. I didn't exercise, or clean my apartment, or do dishes, or go grocery shopping. Instead, I loafed around idly shopping for cell phones online, refreshing my email waiting for something interesting to come to me, and then I played a few hours of a Wii game called Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles.
I reminded myself of Bridget Jones, stuffed into pajamas and safely inoculated from the world outside by a self-indulgent larding of empty media. Brushing my teeth on Saturday night I actually found myself looking forward to the prospect of waking up early Sunday morning so I could do laundry. Having two full loads of laundry done by noon on a Sunday must be on the checklist of every free-wielding bachelor in the western hemisphere, no?
I imagine a self-centered connection between my avaricious waste of a weekend and the fantasies of nightlife that I indulged as an adolescent. The image of going-out is just another way of aggrandizing the ego, of projecting your own sense of self onto a larger-than-life screen and seeing that inflated self do things you'd never imagined it could do in ordinary life. Drinking exotic drinks, dancing in a sea of people, seducing someone beautiful. Is there really a difference between that and the escapism of sorting through cell phone models to find the one that will look right in my hand as I send out texts while waiting in line for coffee? Is there a difference between making small talk with a stranger over loud music and moving through a fake zombie house shooting rabid dogs and giant tarantulas while unwrapping some execrable narrative about biochemical experimentation gone awry?
What do you do on your nights in? Do you enjoy them, or do you feel guilt for not being out and attacking the social scene in full force?
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