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By Root 468 0

my cigarette, it occurs to me that I may have been wrong. From the minute I’d been allowed into this English Tudor mansion that was rumored to rent for $20,000 a day and walked from booth to booth, I’d felt this childish greed well up in me. My eyes darted around in a feverish panic—I wanted to be at the Keds shoe booth and the MAC makeup table and the Toys “R” Us mini castle all at the same time, even though I don’t like Keds, rarely wear makeup, and certainly don’t need any toys. Every person stopping me from getting everything all at once—which is to say, every person there—seemed an irritant. Yet no one booth seemed to whet my appetite. The best stuff is over to the right, I’d think. Or, ohhh, Nailtiques nail polish—now that’s what I should be getting. I felt like a contestant on a game show I used to watch when I was little, where the winners could take home everything they could pile into a shopping cart in the allotted time. It used to bring up simultaneous feelings of panic and excitement that I could barely stand. But actually being one of the participants inspired a far more powerful emotion: greed.

And I didn’t much like the sycophantic aspect of my personality the event seemed to bring out. I absolutely adore sarongs, I’d found myself saying to this woman giving out inexplicably tacky tie-dyed sarongs. Or I’ve been looking for sunglasses just like this I said to the guy giving out Ray-Bans I’d never wear. Most everyone was almost painfully nice—way too nice, considering the fact that I was taking things they typically sell and not giving them anything in return—and it seemed impossible to believe in that environment that something like poverty or a famine in Africa or even George Bush existed. Conversations seemed to revolve around plastic surgery and Emmy after-parties and the new line of Juicy now at Lisa Kline. And where were the Emmy nominees, anyway? The crowd seemed to be comprised of tabloid reporters, publicists picking things out “for their clients,” and other seemingly soulless moochers. And I couldn’t deny the fact that I was one of them.

Now that I’m home and have all the contents out of their bags and divided into small piles, I have this strong desire to give everything away. Not to the homeless or anything crazy, just to friends. I don’t deserve all this stuff, I say to myself as I mash a cigarette out, but I don’t know why.

Then I start resenting the event for making me depressed. I’d been feeling so good since getting sober—like I’d exited my life and wandered into someone else’s—that I guess I’d begun to assume that malaise was simply a feeling from my old life that I no longer had to be bothered with. But in my heart, I know it’s not the event that has me down; it’s the fact that it’s been over a month since Adam and I talked in New York and he still hasn’t called.

My phone rings and, as soon as I check caller ID and determine that it’s not Adam, I return to the couch and my pack of cigarettes. I shouldn’t be isolating, I think as I eventually pick up my phone to listen to the messages. They’d warned us about isolating in rehab, telling us that if we felt like being alone, we should do “contrary action” and get out. But I really just don’t feel like it.

There’s a message from Tim saying that he loves the new column, a couple of hang-ups, Stephanie asking if I want to go to a screening with her, and Rachel wanting to know why I hadn’t checked in with her for a few days. How the hell can he claim to be thinking about me obsessively and then not call? I wonder.

I turn on my computer to start going through e-mails I still have to respond to and somehow land on the one Charlotte (aka Tube Top) sent with all her writing attached. I open up the first document, thinking that reading her attempts to sound like a writer should make me feel better about myself.

And then something altogether shocking happens: I’m thoroughly transfixed. Her first attachment is an essay she wrote about meeting a nude photographer, asking him to take pictures of her and then almost backing out of the portraits until