Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [112]
Looking around the apartment, I see that it’s in complete disarray, and realize that it doesn’t matter. I’m tidying up what’s inside, not what’s on the outside, I think as Nadine calls me back and tells me that she’s made my reservation and I have a few hours before the car will come get me and take me to the airport.
After packing, I sit down to make my final apology for the time being—to Adam. Like with the others, I want to make it simple, direct, and absolutely devoid of motive, so I write him an e-mail saying I’m sorry for criticizing his date when I saw him and for generally taking out my frustration on him because he wasn’t doing what I wanted him to do. I add that I appreciate his questioning me over why I’d do something for a living that I didn’t believe in because it was helping me to look at my life and my actions in a new way. As I send the e-mail—Rachel and I had decided that it was okay for me not to make this apology in person because, face to face, I might try to manipulate and cajole him into asking me out—I realize that I don’t actually want anything from Adam anymore. My feelings for him are still there, but if he doesn’t want me, I now see, there’s really no point in my pining for him. It’s clearly not meant to be, and one day I may come to understand why. The feeling that he has to be my boyfriend is simply gone, just like that. Then I realize something even more shocking: my desire to use cocaine and drink is also gone. I’ve heard people in meetings talk about how their urge to drink or do drugs had suddenly been removed and I’d always gazed at them somewhat skeptically, but I guess I’m now living proof that it can happen. As I sit here thinking about how serene I feel, a wonderful idea occurs to me, so I make a call asking someone to meet me in New York.
Who have I become? I wonder as I walk down my driveway to the waiting Town Car. As I get inside, I realize I don’t really have the answer to that yet.
32
“You’re something else,” Joy Behar says after she takes a sip from her coffee cup. “Getting together with two groomsmen. Kissing girls during Truth or Dare. Picking up on a guy at a bar while you were on a date. Most women would be hanging their heads in shame, but you—you’re going around getting rewarded for it. Now why do you think that is?”
The View producer went through all the questions they were going to ask me in my dressing room, so I already have my answer ready. I glance at Tim, who’s sitting with John and Nadine in the studio audience, and offer, “Maybe other people are doing the same thing and they’re relieved someone is actually being honest about it?”
Some audience members laugh and a few of them applaud as Elizabeth Hasselback squints her eyes at me. “Do you think you represent society’s movement toward a more brazen attitude toward sexuality, as some people have said?”
I give Elizabeth a Nadine-coached response about how I’m just being myself but if people want to call me the poster child for a movement, then it’s fine by me. As I continue to field questions from Rosie, Joy, and Elizabeth, I deliver all the appropriate quips and answers but I’m distracted because I know a big moment is coming soon. It seems terrifying but at the same time completely appropriate and I suddenly know that everything’s going to turn out fine.
And then, before I know it, the moment is here. “What are your plans for the future?” Rosie asks, looking up from one of her note cards.
“Actually,” I say, leaning forward, “my plan for the near future is to be thoroughly honest.”
All four of their heads spin toward me, since this is when I was supposed to mention the plans to make Party Girl into a TV series. Before anyone can say anything, I say, “And that means telling all of you that I’m not, in fact, a party girl.”
“Come again?” Joy says. I hear people start whispering to each other.
I glance at Tim in the studio audience and say, “I used to be one—big time—but thank God, that’s behind me now.”
Rosie tries to interrupt me but I just keep talking.
“The thing about it is that my life wasn