I would hate for you all to think that I had too much to drink last night, but my evening started at three o’clock in the afternoon in Faneuil Hall, and ended at five in the morning in Jamaica Plain, with me attempting to break into a stranger’s house, Robert Downey Jr. style.

It all started innocently enough. My pals Isaac and Cathy decided to go away for the weekend, and generously offered to let me housesit their fabulous apartment. This accomplished two things: it gave me space to write a piece that I was working on for the Black Table, annd it got me ever so much closer to public transportation, allowing me to participate in an old-fashioned impromptu pub-crawl with one of my all-time favorite partners in crime, Meredith.

We were originally going to meet for coffee. Coffee turned into shopping, and then shopping into drinking, and then drinking into carousing. Things got … a little crazy. After we left downtown Boston, we went to Cambridge and prowled Mass Ave. At one point in the evening, I actually said, loud enough for people to hear: “Christ, who do you have to blow around here to get some bourbon?” The answer? No one at Middlesex, I don’t think. The bartenders there were very attractive and smelled delicious, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t interested in me.

We ended up at the People’s Republik, where we ran into our old pal Bob from high school. A perfect evening, really. I even got to flirt with inappropriately young Harvard students, which is always a good time. You never know what you’ll get at the People’s. I know lots of people who’ve met lovely people there, for a variety of purposes, ha ha, but I generally seem to attract homeless men.

“That’s nothing,” Meredith said, when I told her that. “When I was there last week, Julie got macked on by an actual pinhead. He was all like, muh muh muh muh … scho, can I haaave yer sscchnumber?”

No pinheads this time. Still, it was fun. And afterward, we went out for pancakes, which is always great.

The only downside happened after Meredith’s friend dropped me off at Isaac and Cathy’s. I lurched up the steps, dug out my keys, and tried to stick them in the door. I tried both keys, the inside and the outside key, several times. Unbelievable! They didn’t even fit in the lock.

Meredith got out of the car and marched up the steps, shouting, “Hey, Drunky, are you having a problem?”

“I schnick the problem isch that I have two keys.” I held them up.

Meredith looked at them. “Well, did you try them both?”

“Yesch. But you schee, the problem is, I have TWO keys.” I rattled them helpfully.

“Give me those.” She took the keys and tried them in the lock. No dice. Then she looked up at the building. “Hubley. This is the wrong fucking house.”

“No!”

She pointed down the block. “Isaac and Cathy’s house is two houses down. Jesus, kid. Are you going to be OK?”

“Of coursch I am.” I swiped the keys from her and put on an air of affronted dignity. “It’s just that all these housches looksch alike.”

It occurs to me that I might not have any right to make fun of pinheads, come to think of it.