In my paranoid-bitter imagination everyone — every last person on earth besides me — is well-set socially at all times. At this very moment as I’m typing this I think: Everyone I know has fabulous plans for Memorial Day weekend, because they planned ahead, made the inquiries and reservations and everything necessary for them to now step back, behold their weekend in front of them and say, “This is going to be just perfect.”

Their thoughts go something like this: I am going to be doing lots of fun things with people who like and/or love me this weekend!!! I also have plenty of hobbies and too many things I want to do to even list, so when I’m not relaxing by a friend’s pool eating perfectly grilled chicken, I will go for a gorgeous run in the bamboo forest down the hill from my casually elegant redwood home, where I do not live alone. Might sneak in some book reading, until I am summoned to the NEXT pool party! I’m so glad I have a group of tight-knit friends that is like a safety net for plans-making. I always have plans when I want to! Friday nights are fantastic, they are not full of dread at all!

I should probably be talking to a counselor or therapist about this, but even now at age [REDACTED], I might as well still be the friendless weirdo from high school, when it comes to weekend nights. Today’s weekends are the descendants of those long-ago Fridays, and the family resemblance is queasy-making.

Never mind that the self-satisfied straw jackass whose thoughts I invented above is in a small minority. I know this cognitively because people tell me so. They tell me they, too, get bored and lonely a lot. Things are tougher all over than I think, in my endless solitude filled with wine-time TV, the occasional bleh social outing (but never on Friday or Saturday! that is too-valuable real estate to invite Scott onto), and the hard, boring, lonely work of writing.

A friend of a friend, let’s call him Person C, had a friend, who I will call Person D. C and D were good friends in college. The way friendships are in those years; you’re coming of age for real, not in the rudimentary pubescent sense of high school: You have free will now. You can get as drunk as you want now with impunity. And stay up all night talking to your friends, bonding. C and D became friends in that context. Then graduation came.

Nobody knows what to do, socially, when college ends. Everyone must disperse, and it’s hard. C still hung out with D after graduation, though. They both lived in New York City. Before and during college D had done some acting, and had small parts in some films. Now he had actually just finished shooting in a lead role on a film. One that unbeknownst to anyone would soon catapult him to cult star status, and then eventually to star star status.

C told us how he would get calls on Friday nights from D during that season post-college, before real fame took hold for D. The voicemails went something like this: “Hey, C, it’s D. Just seeing what you’re up to tonight. Let me know if you want to hang out or something. Cool, call me. Thanks. Bye.” C had plans usually, and D usually didn’t, and C started to consider the phone calls almost a nuisance, and kind of pathetic. He didn’t always want to hang out with D! D had kind of an air of the sad sack about him, with his puppy eyes and slow, melancholy voice.

Obviously: The calls stopped soon after D became a movie star. And now every time I see D on a magazine cover I think of this story. It makes me feel better about my empty Friday nights. The difference between D and me, of course — besides the obvious one — is that at least D tried to reach out to people to make plans. I have never really tried that. And I’m too old to start now.