So last Friday night I stayed over at a friend’s house. It was later on in the evening when I got there – 8:30, maybe – and she and I had a great time eating delicious food, drinking delicious wine, paraffin waxing our hands, and dancing to music on her iPod. She passed out around 11 or 12, but I, ever the night owl, decided to stay up and do some work.

And finish the wine.

Whatever.

After about an hour or so of Lightroom and Pinot Noir, I decided to go outside for a cigarette. And you know that feeling you have, sometimes, right before something goes completely wrong? Like, that moment where you catch your breath and realize a mistake is in the works, JUST AFTER it becomes too late to stop the pendulum from swinging braggishly toward disaster? It’s a little hiccup, a certain slowing of time, before everything clicks back into place and you realize you’ve just locked yourself out of the condo.

Locked. Out.

The doorbell was no use – my dear friend, it seems, is a very sound sleeper – and anyway the buzzer is two floors down from her bedroom. To make matters worse, I could SEE her cell phone on the granite countertop just inside the door. My options were limited.

Inside the condo were my purse, license, cash, credit cards, laptop, hair elastics, and the rest of the wine. Outside, I had my car keys, a pack and a half of Camels, my iPhone, and a case of Diet Coke. Also a bottle of vodka and a jar of tomato sauce. But I didn’t see how those last two things were helpful.  I retreated to the car to think things through.

My parents lived nearby, but it was almost 2am. And I was kind of drunk. Plus I didn’t have my license. For the same reasons, driving home to Revere wasn’t a viable option. As if to concretize the situation, I turned on the Yaris and realized I was running on fumes – the gas light blinked eyelessly from the dash as my phone buzzed it’s 20% battery warning. I lit another smoke and contemplated my fate. I’d done this before, I thought, that time in the hospital, with less battery life and certainly less Diet Coke. People bivouac on the sides of mountaintops. Come on, we’re just in the suburbs here. We can do this. It’s like a vision quest, but without the peyote.

After a moment of rummaging I came up with an iPhone charging cable and my trusty DC converter with dual USB out, but the gas situation was problematic and it was really, really cold. Plus, I figured I wouldn’t be able to get inside until at least 6am. I browsed idly through my apps, trying to find something to occupy my mind for the next 4-6 hours. Music would be nice, I thought.

And then, it happened. I downloaded Spotify. And somehow, by some miracle, I got a free upgrade to a premium account. For the uninitiated, this basically means that not only did I have “some music”, I had *ALL THE MUSIC*. I mean, almost all the music. But still, SO MUCH MUSIC. Feverishly, I began to search. I found a Bassnectar remix of Underworld’s “Rez“, which led me through both their entire catalogues, which somehow led me to my old favorite Akufen, which brought me to a multi-disc mix called Up All Night, which brought me back to Bassnectar. And then, dear friends, then it was sunrise.

The snow was falling gently as I clomped through the drifts up to my friend’s doorstep. I rang the bell, firmly, once every three seconds until finally I heard her start to stumble down the stairs.

“What the – ”

I grinned like a moron, shaking snowflakes out of my hair.

“How long have you BEEN out there?”

Best night ever? MAYBE.