Cocktail Relief

I decided to live the "Sex and the City" high life by ditching the pool and heading to a cocktail instead. Usually I avoid these shindigs, preferring to jump into the nearest subway and sulk my way home. Tonight I decided I to accept the last minute invite to this law school fundraiser in the very fancy Rainbow Room. I'd dress up, try to act like a lady and aim to be social. This is New York after all right, why am I not living it up?

I'd never been to the Rainbow Room before. It's the sort of place I'd always fantasized the imaginary husband proposing to me with bottle of wine in hand and diamond ring in the other. I know, I know, keep dreaming.

On the 64th floor, the view of New York is extraordinary. It's like opening a jewelry box, and watching the jewels sparkle away. I could see slivers of bridges, the Empire State Building, and the ripples of what looked like river (maybe the Hudson or the East River ). I felt like I was landing in an airplane, and falling in love with New York all over again.

The fundraiser was packed with lawyers, no duh, given that they had all gone to the same law school. We the press pack were herded to a single table in the back and for the next two hours we were relegated to bad lawyer jokes and even worse lawyer speeches.

Here's a dirty secret: I actually hate socializing, I dislike the idea of flitting around the room and pretending to be pleasant, I feel nervous and jittery and so completely unnatural. I can only do it for so long. There comes a breaking point when I have an urge to run into the bathroom or into the street and be alone, and decompress. They say that too is the burden of the introverted ADD self.

The first place that I headed was the open bar where I asked, no begged, for the obligatory loosen-the-nerves Merlot. A glass down and my dimples emerged from their catatonic state.

The dinner was painfully long. I sat between a California girl who writes for a business rag, and a very cute but very short british journalist who is fresh off of the boat from London. I tried to grasp their conversations but amidst all of the color and activity, it was like pinning down Jello.

I sometimes feel like I need to stare so deeply into a person's eyes to hold my own attention, that they think I must be putting a voodoo spell on them. In this case I kept nodding and smiling at my table mates, until I felt like a toy Bobble head. At least no one could accuse me of not being pleasant.

The lawyer speeches were incredibly boring so we journalists ribbed each other, and cracked jokes about their lack of humor. We joked that the poor guy's speech should be nicknamed, "Waiting for the Punch Line."

Next to the Brit was an incredibly cute American journalist, who resembled Keanu Reeves, hot and sexy as a tamale, but I've learned to stay away from the hot ones. They are as dangerous as napalm.

For nearly three hours I tried to be fixated on the speeches, in the conversations, but instead I kept fretting about the seemingly nice guy, who seems to like me, and we seemed to have a night date yesterday but he hasn't called. I wonder why he's such a mystery to me. He seems really into me and yet why can't he get more physical with me. Why just a kiss on the cheek, maybe he's not physically attracted to me, maybe I'm thinking too much.

My mind was spinning like a lettuce in a lettuce dryer, as I picked at the main course of steak, chicken and some mashed potato that had been transformed to look like a flower. The Brit was saying something to me as my thoughts were pinballing. I didn't hear him but just nodded, tossed my hair back and laughed. It seemed to work. The Brit thought I was nice, girlish and pleasant. Better that he think I'm that then know what was really going on. We swapped business cards and wolfed down the chocolate-layer dessert.

After the epically long night we walked out of Rockefeller Center together, and I glanced at the skating rink and wondered when the tree would go up. The Saks window displays were starting to go up again reminding me that this was another year, and how quickly it went.