Leave it to Partygirl to depress her readers on a Friday.

After my bubble burst, and I spent a considerable talking to this guy on Friday evening, I realized that I was an hour late to meet my friends. Merdi!

I hung up the phone and ran out the door, frantically trying to hail a cab in midtown Manhattan. I ran a block down to Second Avenue and spotted a lone cab in the middle of the four lane avenue. I assessed the other hailers, two corners taken by guys in suits, and I knew I had to buckle down and run into traffic to win this fight against Wall Street's finest.

In perfect frogger form, I weaved in between cars and lanes, and just as I reached the yellow door to the taxi, I stumbled over a massive pothole and twisted my ankle. Forging ahead on sheer determination, I hopped into the taxi, and groaned in pain.

The secret's out kids, I am the clumsiest person you don't know. I am absolutely the most graceless person you've never met, which is comical, because my name was supposed to be Grace. I used to fall all the time as I child. My Dad said it came to a point when I was three, that for a week he was afraid to take me out of the house because he thought he was going to be accused of child abuse.

But, to this point, I am also fearless. Which is why I should have been that stunt person starring on MTV's "Jackass." Puh-lease. I was car-surfing in my high school uniform before people even knew there was a name for it. Chicken? Played it all the time, and once, got wedged between an 18-wheeler (coming toward me) and my competitor who braked and swerved because he thought my car was going to be crushed. Sucker.

Actually, I really don't behave this way anymore. At 27, I am much more cognizant of my own mortality. And the fact that I just don't bounce back from falling down a flight of cement stairs quite like I did when I was 19.

And I would like to add, that nothing makes me laugh more than one of my injuries. I mean, is there anything funnier when you see someone trip and fall? I have to laugh at myself, because I know it's going to be hilarious.

*~*

So I get to my friend's apartment, but as I am sitting there, I realize, I really am not in the mood to go out. I need some down time.

I make this announcement, and as they prepare their argument for why I need to go out for "1 drink" I quickly grab my coat and my messenger bag and fly out the door (laughing my face off) before they can block me from exiting the apartment and force me to drink. [This tactic has been used before. I have learned you have to be quick to escape].

Luckily, the elevator was there and I jumped in as I heard them laughing at my bizzare flight from the apartment. And I walked home, clearing my head and evaluating my life.

Sometimes, it's painful to do the self-examination. Frankly, I hate to do it. But you have to take that look inward and recognize your flaws or failures.

And that's what I did on Friday night. Thought about why I run away from the men in my life. Or the men who want to be in my life. Thought about my opinion of myself. I thought about chances: Take chances and giving people chances. First chances, second chances.

I went to bed thinking about these grown up things, and working on my half of this problem.

I woke up on Saturday, still thinking about all of these things. And cognizant of the fact that I have the power to change my life. We all do, you know. And not to sound "new agey" here, but every day we wake up - we have the power to change the direction we are going in. It's not easy, but we can do it.

Now thinking about this, I headed out to run my errands. I stopped in a thrift store on First Avenue to poke around and I noticed an old book that I remembered my parents had: "I'm Okay, You're Okay." I remember growing up with this book, but never seeing anyone read it.

So I scanned the inside cover to see what it was about. Basically, it offers advice on gaining control of yourself, your relationships and your future, no matter what has happened in the past. It explains transactional analysis (theory of personality) and what I thought was interesting was the description a patient's "life script" with the suggestion that we can all replace violent organizational or societal scripting with cooperative non-violent behavior.

I think I've already done this, to an extent that I've debilitated myself. But more of interest is the concept, "I'm ok, You're okay." That's what you are supposed to believe. My problem is that I think you're ok, but really, I don't think I'm ok. I think I totally suck. But I would never tell you that. I would hide that. And you would never suspect that, because I appear to have everything in order.

Basically, after reading this summary of this book, I am thinking that maybe I am totally fucked up. And although I am soooo not a self-help type of person, I was compelled to buy this book.

*~*

But, figuring that I am not going to be able to fix myself in one day, I decide to take a small step in making myself feel better about this shitshow called my life and run out and do a little shopping.

I picked up a few necessities: red leather knee-high boots, a leopard print slip skirt, a two-toned blue cashmere/mohair skirt, a small silver sequined hand-bag and a maroon and black faux python/patent-leather hand bag.

And then I came home and got ready for the night. Ended up at the SNL after party, where I proceeded to get myself liquored on $10 Vodka Tonics. This continued, as we closed that spot and headed to an after hours place, where I remained until about 5:15AM. When I could no longer stand being nice to the girls X-ing next to me, who bummed about 8,000 cigarettes of me (amateurs...who X's without at least 3 packs of smokes???) and reached a point of total body numb, I took myself out of the game.

Hit the deli about 5:30AM and begged them to turn on the grill. We cut a deal and the grill went on as long as I cooked my own sammy. This arrangement was going well until I got busted resting my sleeve on the grill, but I told them, it really wasn't that hot, and then I stumbled over the wooden crate floor (my slingback was stuck in there!) with a knife in my hand. Lucky, I did not fall, someone caught me and righted me.

However, this behavior resulted in supervision for the rest of my grilling. During which, I continued to rest my coat sleeve on the grill and they would yell, "Pardy, your sleeve, your sleeve!" and I would yell back, "Relax! It's not that hot!"

So I got home around 5:45am and started returning calls. Oh yes, I did. Went through my caller ID with the intention of calling back everyone I hadn't had a chance to call that week. Called Marnie2000 and gave a shout out to her roommate (our other cousin) and her boyfriend.

As I was hanging up, I noticed that the sun was coming up, and thought it was in my best interest to hang up the phone and go to bed. I walked upstairs and into my bedroom, and as I was taking my jewelry off, I spotted the book that I had bought with the best of intentions earlier in the day. And then I thought about my actions during the last few hours and I thought, "I'm not ok. But I'm sure as hell fun."

previous next