The Birthday Party Mix-Up

On any given Friday or Saturday night, somewhere there's a girl throwing herself a birthday party at some overcrowded trendy bar in Downtown San Diego. Personally, I've always found throwing yourself a birthday party is a bit sad, but I'm the type of guy who forgets it's his birthday until he gets his mail, and sees a birthday card with a check in it for $20 from his grandmother...so maybe I'm the sad one?

Anywho, wheneve I've gone to parties like these where I only know the person who invited me, I wind up spending the night doing three things: 1) Talking only to the person who invited me, 2) spending the night being the most witty person in the entire joint but no one can appreciate my humor, or 3) pretending to be doing something very important on my cell phone but really I'm sending mass text messages crying for help. One time I even left a party, went home for a bathroom break, stopped off at Ralph's for a quick snack of almonds and yogurt then come back without anyone even noticing. Anti-social? Perhaps.

So a couple of weeks ago, I fell victim to a friend's false promises of good times and access to available women. "It'll be fun," he said when he called to convince me to come to some poor girl's self-thrown 30th birthday party. "No it won't," I responded, but went anyway because nothing was on TV that night, I was out of Newcastle in the fridge and I didn't have to get up early the next morning.

I get there, and there are maybe 15-20 people present with a surprising even mix of men and women, and as all us men know, anything better than a ratio of four dudes for every one chick is rare, let alone promising. Let me paint you all a picture: Drunk Birthday Girl has WAY too much makeup on and is acting like Lindsay Lohan after a four-day bender. She spends the whole party slurring her words, while greeting the incoming guests, and saying goodbye to the departing ones. I smile and give her my standard "Happy birthday, it's nice to meet you" line. She smiles back, and gives me a "Who the fuck invited you?" look.

I have a feeling it's going to be another shitty night, so I decide to go into "people watching mode" and what do you know? It's the same people as every night, just different faces. There's the section comprised couples with the guys talking to the guys, and their other halves talking to each other. In one corner, there's the three man tag team - a trio of guys talking to one woman, all hoping to be the one to get the digits. In another corner, there's the guy who hangs with Drunk Birthday Girl the whole night because he's in love with her, but to her, he's just a friend. The closest he'll come to physical contact with her is when he inevitably holds her hair back at 3 AM when she's puking her guts out.

Oh, and then there's me! The charming fellow playing Brick Breaker on my BlackBerry with such determination so it appears as if I'm genuinely busy conducting some sort of important business, like wiring $4 million to my off-shore account.

My friend leaves me to go talk to some girl he secretly hoped would be there. I know he only invited me so he'd have someone to hang with in case she wasn't there. But alas, she was, so there I stood. I made some polite conversation with a few people, and even got a phone number from a girl. But by 1:00, I was done. I left my shamelessly left my wingman and by 1:45, I was asleep.

A few days later, my friend calls and tells me that Drunk Birthday Girl was asking about me. In what seemed like a scene from Ferris Bueller, he heard this from the chick he was hitting on who is friends with someone with whom the birthday girl works....or something like that. Anyway, he wanted to know if I was interested because he could give me her number, if I was. "We barely said hello to each other and to be honest, she was a drunk mess. But what the hell, give me her number." So he did.

The next night I called Drunk Birthday Girl, and let's just say my call wasn't received with the enthusiasm I would expect from a woman who was supposedly interested in me.

"Wait, you're who? How do I know you?"

"Um, Joe? Sean's friend? We met at your party last week? Sean said you might be interested in going out or something."

"Oh, wow, this is kind of awkward," she explained. "There was another Sean at the party, and I was interested in his friend. So sorry!"

We made small talk for the next twenty seconds and she apologized again before saying good night, and was actually pretty sweet about the whole thing. Sober Birthday Girl is actually pretty cool. But it's not to be. She wants the other Sean's friend.

Good news is that night I set a new all-time record for Brick Breaker.