The Dinner Experiment

Success! A triumph unrivaled by any other social enterprise I've ever attempted. Saturday's soiree was superb. An evening where wine and conversation flowed freely and, while domestic diva I am not, my hors d'oeuvres and cupcakes were a hit.

The concept I alluded to in a prior post was a dinner party where all the guests would be vetted by moi and selected based on a balanced boy-girl ratio. While I witnessed several crackberries whipped out to exchange information, I can't say definitively that there was a love connection. Unless you count what transpired between several guests and my super moist cupcakes. I'm being literal, how bout you get your mind out of the gutter, whack job?!

The ex-boyfriend who is evidence that I am indeed both a love pariah and a glutton for punishment has surfaced yet again. He moved back to London last year and finally checked himself into rehab. Hey, what did we say about being judgemental on this space? It's my job to judge, yours to vacillate between shock and awe. Anyhoo, he comes to New York every so often but I haven't seen him since our pathetic New Year's Eve. We toasted hot chocolate at his flat in London while he sulked about how much he had fucked up his life and made me feel like the IRS at a casino: not too welcomed. He was here for the marathon but after some suggestive emails admitted that he had gotten back together with Sara (I'd elaborate but I don't know either). Yesterday, he sent me a text informing me that Sara, like his drinking, was history and he wants to see me to "apologize."

For what? I don't want to bore you with the details of how a Brit conceals his alcoholism by maintaining its European to drink heavily at every meal including breakfast. I mean we've all seen the movies, it's just like that except most people probably catch on sooner than I did. When his benders would cause him to inexplicably disappear for hours, sometimes days on end, I convinced myself he was simply afraid of commitment. On several occasions, I suspected something was remiss ("Aww, he's drinking my Gatorade out of a glass, how civilized"..2 hours later..."where's my gin?") but my girlfriends said, "He's not an alcoholic, he's just British." Wrong again, girls. So he's in town and he's kind of a mess but still sober and wants to tell me he's sorry for all the crap he's put me through. I'm trying to steer clear in an effort to maintain some semblance of peace and quiet in my life but I've been told that I'm only happy when it rains. And, well, he is the rainmaker and the Love Pariah has been in the throes of a drought.

The Love Pariah Ponders Early Retirement

What started out as a guilty pleasure, poured out in blog-form for the like-minded girlfriends who have told me for years that I "should write a book!" has turned into the bain of my existence as of late.

In the past three or four days, I have been bombarded with defensive, unjustified emails from people who have called my blog a "pity party", told me that my alarm at showing pictures of me was an overreaction to an innocuous gesture and then, perhaps the final straw, an email that reminded me that I'm in my thirties and yada, yada, yada, bottom line: people are going to figure it out. Really? How?

I don't understand why my assertion of my anonymity is being construed as a self-aggrandizing effort to put on airs. I am a journalist by profession. In other words, it's how I make a living and occasionally, I am in front of the camera doing it. Is it so hard to understand that I don't want people thinking the new freelancer doing a live shot for them is the infamous "Love Pariah?" And while it may seem counter intuitive to post a blog if my privacy is important to me, I didn't think it was a leap in logic that my friends, many of whom are reporters, would understand the need to keep who I am under wraps. Instead, I'm the bitch who can't get a grip. How the hell did that happen?