Saturday Howling

Does Saturday night have a soul? Tom Waits says it has a heart.

Fess up now: If you were going to write a song about any weeknight, would you write about Thursday night or Saturday night?

At almost every stage of life it seems there is some anticipation of Saturday night. As a youth, I dreamed of drinking Dr. Pepper and playing board games come Saturday night. When I was old enough to be dragged out into the world with my parents on a Saturday, we went to Catholic baseball fields where the smell of beer and sweat blended with cigar smoke. In high school it was a night of cruising, looking for a party or congregating in Cox’s Park until the police arrived. As an adult with cash, Saturday was a night to dine.

As an adult with kids, Saturday night excitement is lacking, and for that reason I qualified the word every with the word almost. I wouldn’t dream of drinking Dr. Pepper and playing board games now because the Dr. Pepper would keep me up all night, and really, what’s there to do? Although with your own teenager out cruising, you can never really sleep soundly because you wait for the sound of the garage door opening, and upon wakening at two to realize you haven’t heard it, you have to pad down the hall and open the teenager’s bedroom door to make sure the bed isn’t empty.

Dan Zanes suggests in “Carelessly” that Saturday is a special night for couples. Unfortunately, “Carelessly” was the theme song of my divorce. My ex and I had separate but equal copies of the CD:

Could every night feel like Saturday night?/
Could every word come from the heart?

For most, amorous expectation defines Saturday night. It’s a night where hope springs eternal, even for the betrothed. My sister once sat at the bar at Two Keys Tavern in Lexington, Kentucky, eavesdropping on a man who told the bartender that his Catholic wife would only have sex with him one night of the week, and it was, yes, Saturday night. If I could put one footnote in this blog, that footnote would tell that the man at the bar identified his wife as a graduate of my own esteemed high school.

On Saturday, as a high schooler, I never stayed home. Now I see my Facebook friends (who were my high school classmates) status updating about quiet evenings at home on Saturday. There’s comfort in knowing that my status is not so unusual--maybe other people who consider themselves social are indeed a la casa on Saturday night. Yet there is something inside me that yearns on a Saturday night, something that can’t ever be quite satisfied by sitting on the sofa even if I am watching Austin City Limits.

So while you’re sitting at home tonight on your sofa, open your window. Listen for the howling of my soul. It’s another one of Sam Cooke’s Saturday nights. The restless voices deep down inside me, they bark the loudest about domesticity come Saturday night.

Hollywood has already diagnosed my yearnings as Saturday Night Fever. Steve Marriott says I don’t need no doctor.