Party Girl

by Anna David

  I come as close to bouncing out of bed as a person with a significant hangover can, and feed the cats. Sometimes I feel like my life is made up of the act of pouring dry food into bowls and scooping wet food from cans on top of the dry food, and then the things I do in between doing that.

  “I know it’s late for breakfast,” I tell them in my cat voice after glancing at the clock and seeing that it’s 4 P.M. “Let’s consider this brunch.” Then I realize I’ve become someone who’s perfectly comfortable talking to her cats in catlike voices, and wonder if I’m slowly losing my mind.

  I light a cigarette and pour five scoops of coffee grounds into my one-cup coffee press while I boil the water but I don’t feel like I have the patience to let it seep, so I just stir and gulp it down. As I feel the caffeine hitting my central nervous system, it occurs to me that I haven’t checked my home or cell messages in something like two days. Somehow this gives me a great surge of optimism, which is further enhanced when the woman’s computerized voice informs me that I have three new messages. I am loved and adored, I remind myself.

  “Hey, it’s Chris,” I hear, and am so annoyed that my voicemail had the audacity to count this as an actual message—and not, like, a submessage—that I delete it before he gets much further.

  Second message: “Hello, Amelia, it’s your mother,” I hear, and her voice makes me feel so automatically guilty that I want to curl up in the fetal position and never get out. “Your dad is extremely upset that you haven’t called him, and he wants me to tell him why. What should I be telling him?”

  I delete that message, feeling tears springing to my eyes. My mom hasn’t been married to my dad for over seven years, but in some ways, she’s as married to him as ever. Even though he left her in the midst of one of his affairs, when Mom met my stepdad and fell in love, Dad decided he’d made a crucial error and wanted Mom back. Mom isn’t going to go there again but she acts like she’s still married to him by having dinner with him once a week and trying to coax me into seeing him. But he’s angry and sad, so I stay away, and Mom guilts me for it. I’m not sure who’s the bad guy and who’s the good, or if the words “good” and “bad” are even relevant here, and I’m not remotely in the mood to ponder it. I delete her message before it’s done, also.

  Message number three: “Hey, it’s me again,” I hear, and recognizing Chris’s voice immediately, I toss the phone across the room so that it smashes into the wall and the piece of plastic holding the battery in breaks in two. Amazingly, Chris’s voice withstands even that. “I’m wondering if you’d want to, I don’t know, hang out,” he’s saying. I realize I have to get the hell out of my apartment immediately if I’m going to be able to get through this day without massively suicidal feelings overtaking me, so I smash out my cigarette, put on my gym clothes, and drive the three blocks to the gym.

  “How’s it going, Amelia?” I hear, as I’m running on the Stairmaster, with the latest issue of Absolutely Fabulous propped in front of me for reading material, and Eminem’s anger blasting into my ear through my headphones. I look up and see Chad Milan, a talent agent I met like my second day in L.A.

  “Got any plans for tonight?” Chad asks, and I shake my head and remove my headphones, accepting the intrusion.

  “I had a really late night last night,” I say when I realize that it’s Saturday and Chad is about to jump to conclusions about my pathetic lack of a social life. “What about you?”

  “Dinner with Sam and the guys and then we’re going to Doug’s party in the hills,” he says. He references the party like he assumes I know about it, so I act like I do. Chad continues to talk to me about where they’re going to dinner (Woo Lae Oak) and why Doug’s having the party (he was just made VP at Warner Brothers), and I’m so busy wondering why I get invited to so few parties that I barely notice that Chad’s stopped talking and his face wears the expectant look of someone who’s just asked a question.

  “I’m sorry?” I ask.

  “I just asked if you’d want to go to dinner next Saturday.”

  I feel unprepared for the question, and immediately conflicted. I couldn’t in a thousand years see myself hooking up with Chad, but how the hell do I work that into a casual conversation? How come other women seem to know how to say, “Actually, I don’t see us having a romantic connection” or some such?

  “I’d love to,” I say. “That sounds great.” It occurs to me that maybe being taken out by a nice but dull agent may be exactly what I need. I don’t even think I’m lying to myself when I tell him that I’m looking forward to it as I leave the gym a few minutes later. I mean, that’s seven whole days from now, I think. Who knows how I might feel then?

  Even though working out usually enlivens me, I’m still sluggish after the gym, so I decide to stop by Kings Road for a cup of the strongest coffee in town. I notice Brian sitting at one of the café’s outdoor wooden tables as I approach the coffee shop.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I ask. Brian lives in the Valley.

  He gestures to a tall, lean, adorable man with dark brown hair sitting with him. “Amelia Stone, Tim Bromley,” he says, and then adds, “Tim’s the editor of Chat, in from New York. And Amelia,” he turns to Tim and smiles, “well, you’ve just been hearing all about Amelia.”

  “Indeed I have,” Tim says in an upper-crust English accent as he shakes my hand, and I try to look completely cavalier. Chat is a sort of combination of Vanity Fair and what Playboy used to be, and it wins national magazine awards while also managing to have millions of readers. I know exactly who Tim Bromley is, though inconceivably the fact that he looks like a male model had never been made clear. And I certainly didn’t know that Brian knew him, or that one day I’d stumble upon them having coffee and apparently discussing me.

  “Uh-oh,” I say with what I hope is a charming smile. “Should I be worried?”

  “Not at all,” Tim says, as he pushes one of the iron chairs toward me and I flop into it. “Brian was simply telling me that you’re constantly regaling him with outrageous stories about your personal life.”

  “Oh, was he now?” I ask, mock angry but secretly thrilled. I know that I probably should feel betrayed because God knows I’ve told Brian some incredibly intimate things that I never imagined him passing along in casual coffee conversation but something about Tim is making me too thrilled with the attention to care. “What can I say?” I shrug. “They’re all true.”

  Tim smiles. “So have you gotten up to anything interesting lately?” he asks, and I find myself launching into the story of last night and Truth or Dare, complete with the details about the dick that was shoved in my face repeatedly, the girl-on-girl kiss, and the out-of-work actor wanting to take me away from all this and rub my stomach. Somehow, nothing I’m telling them sounds depressing and tragic anymore, but exciting and dramatic, a night in the life of a spontaneous party girl with outrageous and decadent friends. It’s amazing how my perception can shift so thoroughly when I get the slightest glimpse of how other people are seeing something. And I don’t know if it’s the material I have, the fact that I feel like I’m walking through glue today and am therefore less self-conscious, or that Tim’s smile is as white and bright and non-British as a Midwestern picket fence, but I find myself embellishing the stories a bit as I notice that and Brian and Tim are eating up every word, laughing hysterically the whole time.

  Brian drains his coffee and turns to Tim. “What did I tell you?” he asks.

  “If anything, you under sold her,” Tim replies.

  I’m reveling in the feeling I have right now, of all this attention on me, and feel their validation washing over me like a Jacuzzi stream would on aching muscles. And then I suddenly panic, positive that I’m going to say something utterly inane that will screw up this fabulous impression I’ve managed to make on Mr. Debonair Hot Shot Magazine Editor. I realize I have to get the hell out of Kings Road before Brian and Tim discover just how backward and unimpressive I am. I glance down at my wrist
and pretend I’m looking at a watch even though I’ve actually forgotten to put it on today.

  “Would you look at that, I’m late!” I say, instantly shooting to my feet.

  Brian and Tim look surprised by my abruptness, but before I can even begin to analyze that, I start making my way toward the door.

  “Good to see you, Brian! Nice to meet you, Tim!” I sort of shriek as I knock into a Kings Road waitress.

  “She never even got coffee,” I can hear Tim say in his crisp English tone as I scatter away like a complete freak. I should probably talk to hot men only while intoxicated, I think as I rush back to my car.

  I wake up the next morning with the sense of purpose that anyone rising before noon and without a hangover on a Sunday morning must feel before remembering that I told Brian I’d go to this NBC party tonight. Brian tends to pass party invites along to me when he doesn’t want to go, using phrases like “really good career opportunities” and “important just to get out there and network.” The parties always sound terribly exciting at the time—and I always feel flattered that I’m the one he wants to go in his stead—but the day of, I always regret having said yes.

  Part of the problem is that invariably you have to go to these things alone. When you’re at Brian’s level, you get an automatic plus one; but when the invite’s been transferred to me, somehow that extra space they would have had at the event evaporates, and I’m left circling the room endlessly, constantly pretending I’m looking for someone specific when really I’m just seeking out anyone I know or someone who looks friendly enough to approach.

  As I glance at the invite for the event—which will be held, as all of these things seem to be, at one of those glamorous but nondescript Culver City hotels—a feeling of dread threatens to overwhelm me. Why did I tell Brian I’d love to go to this? What made this sound good at the time?

  I put the invitation down and remind myself to think positively. Who knows what could happen here? I could meet a television producer who could decide I’m far too interesting to be wasting away at a cubicle desk and create a show around me. When you live in L.A. and aren’t physically deformed in some way, everyone always asks you why you’re not trying to be an actress. Theatrical though I am, I always felt that I didn’t have the struggle to be an actress in me—I mean, I feel shitty enough without lining up with a bunch of bitchy anorexics to compete for one line on Grey’s Anatomy. No, I’d decided that if acting was going to be in my future, it would come to me because I’d been discovered like Lana Turner. Then I’d be able to have an assistant deal with the stalker-type calls from Chris. A fabulous party is probably just what I need.

  As I’m getting dressed for the party—the one little black dress that doesn’t seem to attract the piles of cat fur that the others do, arch-abusing Jimmy Choo’s—I remember that I still have a stash of Alex from last weekend tucked into an envelope in my sock drawer. I’d forgotten all about it before Gus’s get-together, and the sudden realization that I have some coke feels like the best epiphany I’ve had in weeks, if not ever. It will be a perfect pick-me-up for the event, I think. Just the added boost I need to be the schmoozing powerhouse journalist of Brian’s dreams.

  I grab the envelope, which contains coke inside one of Alex’s infamous Lotto tickets—his signature coke-holder because everyone in L.A., even the Mexican drug dealers, has to add an ironic twist to everything—tap the powder out onto a CD case, and use my Gap credit card to chop it up on my coffee table. I start to roll up a dollar bill before remembering that I’d recently bought straws in order to avoid trying to pay for things and having all my bills emerge from my wallet folded a billion times and sprinkled in white powder.

  Grabbing the package of straws, I slide one out, cut it in half, and snort the four lines quickly, feeling the drip down my throat and excitement coursing through my veins.

  One of the cats jumps up on the table and starts swishing her tail over the CD case that still has a thin layer of coke on top of it, enough for a small line. In my more paranoid moments, I think that my cats know that I’m doing coke, and are hell-bent on keeping Mommy from cracking out, but right now I get that she just knows that I’m intently focused on something that doesn’t involve petting her or opening cans of her food, and she wants to know why. I pick her up and place her on the floor, but she jumps back onto the table and knocks the CD case completely over, scattering bits of the powder into the off-white carpet. I feel crushed by this disaster and utterly convinced that everything I do always ends in this kind of catastrophic disappointment, and there seems to be only one way to cushion this realization.

  When I pour out my next two lines, I decide that I’m going to make them extra thick but I make them so thick that they essentially kill my entire supply. I light a cigarette and lodge it into the silver Vanity Fair ashtray that I swiped from a book party at Kelly Lynch and Mitch Glazer’s house.

  I feel infused with somewhat manic energy and suddenly decide that I should spritz on enough Marc Jacobs perfume to give off just a whiff of it, transfer the contents of my frayed brown bag to my fake Frada nighttime one, and get out the door within the next three minutes. But between the spritz and the purse transfer, it occurs to me that I’ve done enough coke now to have to be concerned about a comedown, which—if I’m to trust my powers of estimation combined with my body’s consistency when it comes to drug reaction—should occur sometime after appetizers are being served . I’ll just have to drink my way through it, I decide. I only call Alex when I’m partying with friends so I certainly won’t be paging him to come meet me at some phony Culver City event.

  If I were to do that, it would mean I had a problem, I think, and remind myself that I’m acting like an amateur and I’m perfectly capable of doing a little coke and then going to an event. “I wouldn’t be so paranoid if I didn’t have these thoughts,” I say out loud, but then realize it’s the other way around.

  My paranoia has developed legs and possibly arms too by the time I valet my car. I try to shrug it off as I approach the bar with faith that a screwdriver will bring me back to “happy buzz” mode. The drink goes down smoothly and I realize that this had been my problem—I’d just been missing my lubricant. I decide to do a lap to look for anyone I know.

  I pass Tori Spelling (regaling a group of men with some story about her dog) and Bill Maher (ogling an Asian woman’s breasts, to her seeming delight) and the stylist Philip Bloch (talking about how he picked Halle Berry’s dress the year she won her Oscar) during my circle of the room before finally coming upon a face that’s familiar because we actually know each other: Brett Lawson from Sprint, who gives free phones to celebrities and other allegedly influential people but never to me. It’s not so much that I want one—I actually have a BlackBerry that I’m more than happy with—but I always want to be deemed important enough by him to receive the offer. He’s sometimes extremely nice to me and sometimes a bit cavalier, depending on if he’s talking to someone less or more important than me at the time, so interactions with him always feel a bit like a worthiness test.

  “Brett!” I say and he gives me the cheek kiss and then goes in for the other side. The two-cheek kiss seems to be sweeping L.A. lately.

  “Amelia, do you know Trent?” he asks, nodding his head in the direction of a tan, gelled guy that I can tell is gay and also a publicist before he even opens his mouth. Trent and I shake hands as Brett explains that Trent works at Sony, after having been Pat Kingsley’s assistant for six years.

  I start to ask Trent about upcoming Sony releases, but when I see that Trent and Brett seem to be far more interested in each other than they are in talking shop with me, I realize I’ve tripped into The Void, and there won’t be any finding my way back tonight.

  The Void is what can happen when you’re on a little too much coke and a silent, paranoid, and completely insecure personality usurps the bubbly, impassioned, talkative one coke is supposed to give you. In this state, all I can think about is how uncomfortable I sound
and how disinterested people seem to be in me. I’ve tried to escape the void with more lines, but moods, as most anyone who’s done drugs can attest, can be impossible to shift once you’re high.

  I make a sudden decision to exit the premises immediately, skip out on dinner, and let my tablemates endure the empty seat. I bid Brett and Trent good-bye, but they’re too busy talking at each other to even hear me.

  The next morning, I’m walking up to my cubicle thinking about how exhausted I am despite my ten hours of Ambien-induced sleep when I see Brian scribbling a note for me with one of his Sharpie pens.

  “Looking for me?” I ask.

  He seems incredibly harried. “Yeah, I was just leaving you a note. We have to talk.”

  “Why?” I ask, instantly paranoid.

  “I’m worried about your lack of professionalism,” he says, as if he were saying he was worried the office coffee wouldn’t be strong enough. Doesn’t he understand how abrupt he sounds, how horrifying this is to hear? Doesn’t he know that my heart has instantaneously started beating faster than it has during any coke binge? How can he go from being my biggest fan, raving about me to charming British editors one day to taking on this stern, humorless boss role the next?

  Brian folds his arms, the bottom of his white button-down unearthing itself from the top of his jeans. “What happened to you last night? Melanie McGrath left me a message saying she thought she saw you walk in but by the time the dinner started, you were AWOL.”

  “I felt sick,” I protest somewhat weakly, and remind myself that this isn’t in fact an outright lie. For dramatic effect, I add, “I threw up all night.”

  “Amelia, you went in my place. If you felt sick, you should have at least introduced yourself to the publicist and told her how sorry you were that you couldn’t stay for dinner.”