Brian and I were both locked out of our apartments for about 12 hours, up until this morning at 11am.

We came home from the party at midnight last night, having spend $16 on a slow and harrowing cab ride through the horrible choking mess of Market Street, and climbed the stairs looking forward to pajamas and tea and getting out of our dumb costumes. I had left my keys at home because Brian had his, and has a set of my keys on his ring.

Only he had the wrong keys all along–he had the keys to the dojo out on Potrero Hill. We were stunned. But I figured, my roommate will just come home soon, and maybe we can just taxi over to Brian’s apartment. But: Brian’s roommates were not home and would be in the East Bay all night. And my roommate never did come home, and not only that, her cellphone didn’t really work until this morning, when she had turned it off anyway.

So did we sleep on the freezing stone porch? No. Luckily, blessedly, our downstairs neighbors arrived presently, and asked us to come in, warm up, have a cup of tea. They are cute and English and married. The wife was sort of drunk and giddy, and they were such fabulous hosts.

They already had their spare futon reserved for other guests, so Brian and I ended up on the hard living room floor with a couple of sleeping bags and pillows. It was 2am when we lay down, and roommate still hadn’t showed. I fell asleep and woke up around 4am, and accepted that this was going to require new plans.

The worst part of this whole thing (though it was all pretty shitty) was that my cold had finally bloomed last night, and I was sneezing and blowing my nose and feeling awful. I wanted a BED and my JAMMIES and a BATH. It sucked to lay there on the floor knowing my own bedroom was only 12 feet away and unreachable.

We tried my roommate’s cell again at 8am and finally were able to leave a voicemail. At this point the plan had changed to: get the spare keys from the landlord. So first I had to get the landlord’s phone number from our hosts, who were of course asleep.

Landlord was of course not up. At 9, we left, having slept in our clothes. Our clothes were our costumes from the Trailer Trash party, so it was awesome to walk down 24th street in a tiny denim miniskirt, hideous purple-print tights, and white sneakers. Brian had on tapered black jeans, a black day-glo Days of Thunder t-shirt, and a ridiculous Members Only jacket. It was a perfect costume last night, but now everyone thought we just dressed this way. But who cares.

The sun was shining prettily. All the people who had slept all night were very chipper.

We had breakfast and then called my landlord again. He was up and said sure, come get the extra set of keys. His house is only 6-7 blocks from mine, so we set out and got the keys. Then took the train back to my street. Finally in my apartment at 11am. Took off hateful bad thrift store 80s clothing, showered, washed teeth, fed cats, fell down into bed, the end.

It’s now dark, and I’ve just awakened from a nap. Drinking tea. Feeling quite stuffy and sick. Weekend: ruined. Haven’t written a single word of the Novel. I wonder which part of our costumes and props last night brought us so much bad luck.

Believe it or not, we stayed in good spirits and good humor throughout most of this ordeal, except where I teared up a bit sometime around 8am this morning whilst still snuggling on the floor with Brian. It all seems very faraway, like a nightmare I woke up from just now.