Party Girl

by Anna David

  At dinner, where a few of the editors split a bottle of wine and the rest of us drink sparkling water, I listen to basically every single one of them call me a genius, and act like this is something I’m actually used to or feel I deserve. Afterward, we go to Butter, where a steady stream of well-wishers come up and congratulate me on my column or tell me how funny I was on the Today show. A Nicole Miller publicist hands me her card and tells me she’d like to send me some outfits that she hopes I’ll consider wearing “out on the town.” A Playboy senior editor asks me if I’d be willing to write something for him and then hits on me when I explain that my Chat contract is exclusive. An actor who’s on CSI drunkenly confesses his love for me and tries sticking his hand down my pants. Eventually, I return to the Royalton to sleep, and before I know it, I’m back on a plane home.

  Just after the plane boards, I get a call from Mom, who’s a bit underwhelmed by the process of explaining to people how she feels about her daughter writing about a ménage à trois experience at a wedding she hosted. The details I’d given Mom about the column had been deliberately sparse, both because I hadn’t known quite how to broach the content topic and because I thought my chances were decent that Mom would be too submerged in her poetry world to be more than even tangentially aware of her daughter’s “highly fictionalized” column. But appearing on the Today show was clearly like taking a banner and waving it in front of her face.

  “I just don’t understand why you can’t write about something that’s meaningful to you now,” she says.

  “Mom, no one in the world at large wants to read about the adventures of a girl who goes to meetings at Pledges and hangs out with her gay best friend.”

  “Nonsense—you just think that because you haven’t tried to write it yet.”

  “Jesus,” I find myself screeching, causing a model I just saw on the cover of Elle who’s sliding into a seat a few feet away from me to glance over with some concern. I lower my voice. “Why can’t you just be happy for me?”

  “Oh, I am happy for you, honey,” she says, sounding anything but. I’ve never met someone less able to hide how she truly feels than my mother—or maybe it’s that I’ve never been quite so skilled at interpreting someone’s subtext. “And Dad is, too.”

  The mere concept of my dad reading my column is horrifying and a thought I’m planning to repress as soon as humanly possible, but luckily, I won’t have to hear about this from him since Mom is the family’s unofficial gossip columnist and spokesperson when it comes to dramatic events.

  “Look, Mom, they’re asking me to turn my phone off,” I say, even though passengers are still coming onto the plane and all anyone has done to me since I’ve gotten on board is smile ear to ear. I hang up and think about calling Adam, but it feels like it’s too soon. I could phone Stephanie, but I already talked to her a few times yesterday. Justin has been hanging out with his old boyfriend again and has been increasingly distant, and Rachel will remind me that humility is especially important when the outside world is validating me. For the first time since I’ve been sober, I don’t feel like being grateful. I was the one cracking up Meredith and Matt. I was the one being fawned over wherever I went. I’m publishing’s latest sensation. With a slew of saved messages from well-wishers on my voicemail, why the hell can’t I think of anyone to gloat about that to?

  22

  “Here we go,” Tim says as the Town Car pulls up outside the Roosevelt Hotel. “You’re on.”

  We’ve just had dinner at Mr. Chow’s and are on our way into Brent Bolthouse’s night at the Roosevelt, where Paris and Jessica Simpson are regulars and the paparazzi wait outside knowing that they can make their week’s worth of money on this one night. It’s all part of Tim and Nadine’s plan to have me “out there” more, and while part of me loves the attention, this other part of me is exhausted by it. It’s a full-time job keeping up the persona of Party Girl, I think as the driver opens the door and helps me out.

  As we approach the throng of people gathered outside, the doorman, Andrew, lifts the velvet rope to let us through. “Hey, Amelia,” he says, as I walk past, Tim and John on my heels. I spent years introducing myself to Andrew and he never gave me the time of day. Having people know me now is, while wonderful, also surprisingly unnerving. It makes me feel like I’m constantly under observation. But I smile at him and smooth down my cleavage-revealing Marc Jacobs silk dress.

  As we walk toward the bar, I wonder if Adam is going to be here. It’s been over two weeks since we talked in New York, and I’m shocked he hasn’t called but I know there has to be a good reason. I keep seeing promos for his show and torturing myself with the idea that he’s fallen for the main girl on it—a former Miss Teen USA in her acting debut—and forgotten all about me. And even though I know that I could call him, I can’t seem to bring myself to. A connection, by its very definition, can’t be one-sided, I keep thinking. Of course he’s going to call.

  When we get to the bar, Tim asks me what I’d like. It’s our first time out together and I’ve been preparing for this question for many days. Rachel has said that I don’t need to tell anyone why I’m not drinking if I don’t want to and that if somebody really wants an answer, I can always just say that I’m on antibiotics. Just tell him you’re sober now, my mind says, as I scan the bottles lined up in front of me. What’s he going to do, take the column away?

  Instead I ask for a cranberry and soda and he just nods and orders that, along with vodka tonics for himself and John. I’ve been noticing lately that a lot of people just don’t seem to think about alcohol all that much, and Tim could be one of them. He probably thinks I’m just wild twenty-four hours a day, drunk or sober, I think, and I can’t decide if that’s something I should be horrified by or relieved.

  “So what have you gotten up to lately?” Tim asks as we settle into a booth. John looks up from his drink expectantly, and I suddenly feel enormous pressure to be all that they think I am. Think of something, my mind says, quick. I go over the past few days: Monday night I went to a meeting at Pledges to meet Justin but he didn’t show, Tuesday I played with my cats, obsessed over Adam, and read the Pledges book. Wednesday? I can’t remember what I did on Wednesday and I get momentarily excited, thinking that I’ll surely have an exciting story to share with them when I remember that I’d randomly flipped to this show on Animal Planet about polar bears and had become instantly riveted. I start to panic, thinking I’m surely going to disappoint them, when I remember the night I went to Guy’s with Chad Milan and left with Rick Wilson. It’s not like I’m making it up, I think. I’m just fudging the dates a tiny bit.

  “Well,” I say, “I went out with a CAA agent the other night.”

  Tim nods politely but looks a little disappointed.

  “And left with this random, out-of-work actor I had a crush on when I was sixteen years old.”

  “No!” Tim shrieks disbelievingly, suddenly wearing a huge smile. He glances at John and adds, “You naughty girl.”

  “Well, I was looking for a way to get out of having to kiss the agent guy goodnight,” I say, shrugging, like I think a modern, sexually evolved woman would. Channel Angelina Jolie pre-her humanitarianism, I say to myself as I continue to tell John and Tim about making out with Rick in the car, leaving the message for Chad and then being busted by him at the gym the next day.

  “This is why she’s so good,” Tim says to John as he sips his drink. “She sees what she wants and goes after it, while the rest of us get mucked up in always trying to do the right thing.” I nod and smile, thinking, I am a total fraud. I can’t stop thinking about Adam and don’t do a damn thing about it, but I sit here and act like I’m some kind of warrior woman. I will Tim and John to stop talking about me, and then marvel at the fact that I’m even thinking such a thing.

  Suddenly, the music gets turned up louder. Tim and John continue to talk but because they’re sitting next to each other and I’m across the table, I can’t really hear them anymore so I pretend to
look like I’m completely wrapped up in the scene around me, while inside I’m thinking about how I’d much rather be in a bubble bath.

  Just then, the waitress stops at the table and deposits a tequila shot in front of me, motioning her head toward the bar where Jeremy Barrenbaum, a producer with a Sony deal, stands and smiles at me as he holds up his own tequila shot. I smile at him and look down at the shot.

  “From a fan?” Tim asks, as he leans over and I nod. I glance down at the lime and salt the waitress is depositing on the table and when I look up, Jeremy Barrenbaum is standing right in front of me.

  “Party Girl, would you do me the honor?” he asks, slurring his words slightly and holding out his shot. When I don’t respond, he says, “Okay, fine—if you insist on doing body shots with me, I’ll acquiesce.”

  Years ago, I’d had a crush on Jeremy. Someone had pointed him out to me at one of the first Hollywood parties I went to, mentioning that he had produced these two movies I’d liked and had dated this actress on Melrose Place. I’d thought he was cute, but knew for a fact that if he were a plumber and not a successful producer, I wouldn’t necessarily think so. Later that night, someone introduced me to him and he spent the whole time we were talking glancing around, giving me the distinct feeling that he was simply killing time until someone more important or famous came along. Eventually, he excused himself to go talk to Rachel Hunter. After that, when we saw each other, we would do the sort of Hollywood head nod, that I-know-we’ve-met-but-maybe-one-or-both-of-us-don’t-remember-the-other’s-name, and when someone started to introduce us at a premiere last year, I explained that we already knew each other while he held out his hand expectantly, looking like he’d never laid eyes on me before. I’d wondered at the time if he just walked around doing that Hollywood head nod to everyone or if he was pretending not to know me as some kind of a power move. Was being introduced over and over and only occasionally acknowledging it a distinctly Hollywood tradition or did this happen in other cities?

  “Here’s to the best little wedding guest out there,” he says, clicking his shot glass against mine. I watch him pick up my salt and pour it on his hand, lick it, take the shot and then reach down for a lime wedge and bite into it. The smell of tequila is so strong I feel like I’ve practically ingested it myself. “What’s your problem?” he asks, gesturing to my still-full shot glass.

  I glance at Tim and John, who are watching us with interest, and introduce everyone, after which there’s an awkward pause. “Got sick on tequila in high school, and haven’t been able to touch it since,” I finally say, smiling. At least the first part was true. “How about I do a shot of something else?”

  “Sure thing,” Jeremy says. “I’ll do another one with you.” He motions the waitress over and she stands there expectantly.

  “Hmmm,” I say, wondering how the hell I’m going to get out of this. Then, buying time, I say to the waitress: “You know, for some reason I can’t decide. Can I follow you to the bar so I can assess my options?” She shrugs and starts walking so I gesture to Jeremy, Tim, and John that I’ll be right back before following her. And once we get to the bar, I remember how I’d drink from my parents’ vodka and gin bottles in high school and fill them back up again with water. Why wouldn’t the reverse of that work now? So I say to the waitress, “I know this sounds crazy, but can you give me two shot glasses and fill one with vodka and one with water?”

  She glances at me for a second, then nods. I swear, nothing is too bizarre for L.A. waitresses. She’s probably thrilled I’m not asking about the caloric intake of Absolut versus Ketel One. “Can I charge him for two shots?” she asks. I nod, and she hands me the vodka and water shots.

  Oddly empowered by my water trick, I start to feel the “Party Girl” persona come over me the same way it did when I went on TV. Confidence and a sort of brazenness flood through me as I make my way back to Jeremy, swaying my body back and forth to the Jay Z song that’s now blasting through the speakers. I reach the table, where Jeremy, Tim, and John are now chatting animatedly, and hand Jeremy his shot.

  “Here’s to running into each other,” I say, in an attempt to figure out if he realizes I’m the same girl he’s been introduced to before, or even if he cares.

  “And to our continued relationship,” Jeremy grins, clinking his glass with mine. He downs his shot as I chug my shot of water, crinkling my nose as if it were vodka. I swear I should win a fucking Oscar for this.

  “God, I love Ketel One,” Jeremy says, then takes out his cell phone and adds abruptly, “We should go out this week. What are your digits?”

  I give him my number, wondering why it’s him and not Adam wanting to go out with me this week. Be excited, I tell myself. Tim and John are watching. And this would have been an entirely thrilling prospect at one point.

  Just then, a Kanye West song comes on and these two girls wearing bright tube tops and roughly inch-long jean skirts jump up on the bar to dance.

  “Hey, Party Girl, you should be the one up there!” Jeremy shrieks exuberantly. Tim smiles and John nods. I shake my head and think, I’m too old and way too sober for this shit, just as Jeremy starts chanting, “Party Girl” over and over. Tim and John join in the chant, and the next thing I know, Jeremy is grabbing me by my waist and trying to hoist me over his shoulder onto the bar. When I notice his friends, two agent types, walking in our direction, I realize that it’s too late to turn back now.

  So I accept a bartender’s hand as he helps me to my feet on the bar and feel all eighty or so people in the club staring at me. Trying to act like this is perfectly normal, I turn toward the two prepubescent-looking tube top girls and start dancing. I’m a good dancer—I don’t flail my arms around spastically, nor do I just stand there and step back and forth self-consciously—but it can take me a few minutes to find my groove. Alcohol used to help with that. But now I have no alcohol and no crowd to surround me, just two girls whose ages together probably don’t add up to mine. I suddenly remember once trying to join a hopscotch game when I was little and being shut out.

  Please acknowledge me, I think as I try to project calm confidence while I face the girls and dance. And please don’t let Adam be here. One of the tube top girls looks at me and grins.

  “Look, it’s the real-life Carrie Bradshaw!” she says, as she juts her body back and forth in what looks like a succession of hip-hop dance class moves.

  “Cool!” her friend says, less impressed or perhaps completely indifferent—I can’t tell which and don’t really care. I’m just grateful that the first girl moves past her friend to start dancing with me.

  “Woo hoo!” Jeremy yells from down below, and I notice Tim moving in his seat and John clapping. It all starts to seem kind of amusing, and I find myself swiveling my hips into Tube Top as she swivels hers back into mine. Someone turns the music up even louder as Tube Top moves in closer to me. The next thing I know, we’re full-on dirty dancing. And she must be the one in the Patrick Swayze role because she starts moving forward into me and I have no choice but to move back as we sort of grind our hips into one another.

  And, while I still don’t think I have a lesbian bone in my body, Truth or Dare kiss be damned, something about dancing on the bar at the Roosevelt with a Paris Hilton wannabe feels oddly exciting. It’s less about being turned on and more about letting myself go. I surrender to the music, and manage to almost forget where I am. This is why I liked doing drugs, I think, as Tube Top and I swivel and gyrate. They gave me a break from this busy head of mine. The self-consciousness that usually seems like an intrinsic part of my DNA evaporates completely as I keep dancing, suddenly dripping in sweat.

  A flashbulb goes off, a few more girls jump up on the bar, and when I look around the club, I notice that most of the people are now dancing—even, shockingly, Tim and John. The attention seems to be totally off me and Tube Top, who’s now dancing with her original friend again. Jeremy walks up to the bar, snapping his fingers from side to side, looking like he’s conce
ntrating really hard on the finger snap.

  “That Ketel One really went to your head, didn’t it?” he yells up to me.

  I look at him as I keep dancing and smile. “It sure did!” I yell back.

  23

  “I can’t imagine doing all of that sober,” Stephanie says, as she takes the cup of coffee I offer her. She’s stopped by to bring me a copy of the New York Post, which happens to contain a picture of me and Tube Top (the daughter of some famous photographer and his supermodel wife, as it turns out) dancing on the bar—along with a story about our secret affair. “Stone, who goes by the moniker ‘Party Girl,’ after the highly publicized column she writes for Chat, has been seeing the nineteen-year-old Crossroads grad for some time,” Stephanie reads. “‘Amelia may claim to be straight,’ says a close friend of the comely columnist, ‘but it’s all a front. She’s as gay as can be.’”

  Stephanie tosses the paper onto my Shabby Chic coffee table and takes a generous gulp of coffee. “I love it,” she says. “You know you’ve made it when the gay rumors start.”

  I pick up the paper and slide it into a folder that contains the other press I’ve received. “Come on, you know you haven’t really made it until people start saying you’re a Scientologist.”

  Stephanie laughs and puts her coffee down. “It’s just hard for me to picture you dirty dancing with a scantily clad prepubescent when you’re stone cold sober. I mean, how do you do it—just pretend you’re drunk?”

  I think about how I used to drink and do drugs to escape how I felt, even though it never really worked—if anything, partying only exacerbated my loneliness or discomfort. At Pledges they say that it’s important to create a life so comfortable that you don’t need to escape, and I guess that’s what’s happening to me—the sort of self-conscious, occasionally shy daytime personality I’ve always had is mixing with my wild-while-intoxicated nighttime persona. I don’t need what other people need to help them let loose anymore, I think, deciding that such a skill is so rare that it should almost be considered a superpower.